F1: Brazilian GP Qualifying

The weather was perfect, though the prediction for race day is that it will rain. This again highlights the need to change parc ferme rules which require wing settings to be fixed before qualifying.

Every team has to decide what configuration to run the cars in qualifying and the race. But if ambient conditions change it becomes a lottery, which can greatly affect the quality of the racing for the worse.

This will be David Coulthard’s final grand prix as a driver. There is a new helmet mounted camera to give the TV audience footage from the driver’s view. It’s pretty neat but the view is quite limited and it depends on where the driver looks, which is often not where the car is pointed. And there’s a lot of bobbing around. The car mounted cameras are much more TV-friendly.

In Q1 the Ferraris of Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen topped the time sheets. Lewis Hamilton was third in his McLaren – not clear who’s running how much wing and fuel.

Q2 was quite spectacular with the top ten drivers separated by just 0.339 seconds. Heikki Kovalainen was first in his McLaren followed by Sebastian Vettel in a Toro Rosso. Robert Kubica did not make it past Q2 having struggled with his BMW.

Q3 was all Massa as he posted the fastest time. When all the major players began their final laps, Massa was out front and timed it just right to be able to get 2 laps on the rest of the pack after the clock ran out. He ended up improving his time further to take pole, followed by Jarno Trulli (Toyota), Raikkonen, Hamilton, Kovalainen, Fernando Alonso (Renault), and Vettel.

Massa, always fast at Interlagos, really needs to win and have Hamilton finish lower than 5th in order to take the driver’s championship. Ferrari looks likely to take the constructor’s title, but the driver’s title at this point depends strongly on how clean of a start we get.

Tomorrow’s race is looking mighty exciting. I won’t be able to catch it until Wednesday but will be eager to take notes about it.

F1: Chinese GP Qualifying

Robert Kubica barely made it from Q1 to Q2. With 5 minutes to go he was 17th, the car was in the garage and his mechanics were swarming all over it. Out he went and did the lap he needed.

The McLarens were 1-2, led by Lewis Hamilton. The Ferrari duo were 5th and 6th or thereabouts. David Coulthard was irate with Nick Heidfeld for passing him prior to the start of DC's flying lap, and then coming in. Heidfeld was later demoted 3 starting positions, and rightfully so. But come on DC. Calling it the most unsportsman move ever is just a slight exaggeration.

In Q2 Kimi Raikkonnen went out early on soft tires. My guess is this was to obtain data for the team and title-contender Felipe Massa. Normally they save those tires til the end of the session or for Q3. Kubica was on the bubble near the end and was not able to move into the top 10 as hard as he tried. Teammate Heidfeld did.

In Q3 Hamilton took pole, Raikkonen was second, Massa 3rd, and Fernando Alonso a strong 4th in his Renault.

F1: Japanese Grand Prix

Qualifying

This was a snoozefest. Not because it wasn’t interesting to watch but watching it live in the E.S.T. time zone was around 1:00 AM so I was dozing off intermittently after a long day.

The first few thing of note was that the green grooves on the tires are a gimmick. Sure it’s part of a larger Bridgestone corporate message about sustainability, but all so transparent. Nothing has changed from the previous races this year as far as F1’s impact on the environment.

The change makes it hard to tell which compound each car is running since ALL the tires have green grooves and the softer tire has a white groove as well, where as the previous convention was that only the softer tire had white grooves while the other tires did not have any color grooves. Plus next year they’ll go back to slick tires.

On a more serious note about tires, since there is no “tire war” because Bridgestone is the only supplier, why do they have to bring custom compounds to each race? It makes the racing less predictable because each team’s performance can be compromised based on the chance that Bridgestone choose specifications that don’t suit their cars, which does nothing to reduce operating expenses.

They should make two compounds of a fixed specification for the entire season and bring that to every event. That way the teams will have a clear and equal starting point from which to design their cars, instead of having to do more and more simulation and testing just to pick which tires to use for each race weekend. Sure, the tires would likely not offer quite as much peak performance but the racing would be closer and that should be the top priority.

Other rules in F1 that should be dropped include the requirement that wing settings from qualifying be subject to “parc ferme” restrictions. It is foolish to compromise race day performance by having to choose the car’s wing settings the day before. Whenever weather conditions change, suddenly the car’s performance will be compromised purely from chance. As long as the teams don’t replace the wings with different components, there should be no problem with wing settings being changed on the grid prior to the race.

Again, qualifying was uneventful. Lewis Hamilton took pole, Kimi Raikkonen was second, followed by Heikki Kovalainen, Fernando Alonso, and Felipe Massa. Massa didn’t deliver when it mattered in this title fight.

Race

At the beginning of the show, Speed TV talks with McLaren about their wheel nuts which are not hexagonal. They adopted a design from Indy car which has many more angles and allows the gun to always fit the nut without any axial alignment by the operator. That probably saves a tenth or two during each pitstop (not to mention reducing risk of error).

Race day temperature was cool at 16 C, we’ll see how that affects tire performance from various teams. The start of the race was chaotic. Raikkonen and Kovalainen made great starts and got by Hamilton, but Hamilton elbowed his way past his teammate and had the inside line to Raikkonen at the first turn.

Hamilton played Kamikaze and overcooked his entry and that forced Raikkonen wide. Both McLaren and Ferrari drivers then went off the track and Alonso was able to take the lead followed by Robert Kubica.

Kubica is the most complete driver on the grid this year. His interview responses indicate he thinks quite methodically and was flexible to track conditions. When Peter Windsor asked him before the race how they’re dealing adapting to the track and tire combination, he indicated how he looked after the tires on different laps (i.e. different driving lines), opened up the differential, and change his steering angles. In other words, he changes the settings and way he drives on different laps to get the best out of the car.

All the drivers do this to varying degrees, but the way that he responds to these questions so naturally suggests that he has tremendous mental capacity to do so under peak pressure and is also a great test driver. More on this later.

David Coulthard and Kazuki Nakajima go off the track and break their cars; Coulthard’s car is done while Nakajima continues back to the pits for a new nosecone. It appeared Coulthard’s right rear suspension was wobbling (broken) all over prior to his impact with the tire wall. The Red Bull car does seem quite flimsy, breaking not for the first time this year, though it’s uncertain what caused the break.

Then Massa and Hamilton make contact and Hamilton spins and has to wait til everyone goes by. It looked to me that Massa was at fault as Hamilton was ahead and had the line.

Adrian Sutil is out on the main straight with a flat tire and parks it but not before leaving debris all over the track. Kovalainen’s engine blows. Then Massa is given a drive through penalty for hitting Hamilton, and Hamilton is given one for his move on Raikkonen at the start. One has to wonder if a drive through penalty at Fuji is much harsher than other circuits because the front straight is so long.

Sebastian Bourdais then leads a grand prix for the first time in his career. Then he pits and comes out while Massa is going by and they make light contact. Massa spins and continues. Raikkonen chases down Kubica and the two have an intense scrap for several laps before Raikkonen’s tires start going away.

Massa is under investigation for the Bourdais incident. It will be investigated after the race. F1 just shot itself in the foot again. When there is ample time to make a decision during the race, the stewards should settle the matter immediately in order to avoid possible penalties being imposed later and changing the results after the fact, as well as raising questions of manipulation of the championship outcome.

Another thing is the debris left from Sutil’s incident should’ve been cleared off. It was left there for the duration of the race and a bunch of drivers ran over bits and pieces while attempting to overtake.

Amazingly Alonso won his second race in a row. Kubica was second and Raikkonen brought it home third. Massa managed to salvage a point while Hamilton scored none in a very eventful race. Neither drove like championship contenders in this race.

Hamilton is a very good driver but he is also super lucky considering the mistakes he has made. He has had virtually no mechanical failures in his entire time in F1.

Having had a very lackluster season and now out of contention for the title, Raikkonen’s body language on the podium says he’s done. The Iceman’s fire appears to be out.

Meanwhile Alonso appears to be on fire even though he too is out of the title chase. When he finally gets a seat at Ferrari there will be epic battles with Hamilton and McLaren.

Ultimately, if there’s one driver who has performed like a champion this year it’s Kubica. He’s fast, intelligent, level-headed, and has made the fewest mistakes – if not diplomatic (easy on publicly criticizing the team Robert).

F1: Singapore Grand Prix

Good start to the race, fairly clean. Most drivers were using the harder tires. Kimi Raikkonen started setting fast laps within the first 10 laps which was sooner than has been usual.

The race was uneventful until Nelson Piquet’s crash which brought the Safety Car (SC) out, and closing the pits to refueling. The rules stipulate that when the pits are closed cars may not be refueled. If they are refueled, the driver will be assessed a 10 second stop-and-go penalty, which means he will have to come back to the pits and then remain stationary for 10 seconds. In effect, the penalty is more like 25 seconds when accounting for pit entrance/exit time (depending on the track and pitlane layout).

The intent of the rule is to prevent a mass dash for the pits when there is a SC period. But the effect is that it ruins race strategies and artificially shuffles the order of the field. Furthermore, when the SC period occurs during a fuel window (lap 17-ish today) then some drivers are about to run out of fuel, so they have to pit and incur the penalty. Then they have to pit again to serve the penalty, and if this happens to multiple drivers as it did today, has it really cut down the pitlane traffic that much?

This rule does not work well and should be eliminated or changed.

Felipe Massa’s electronic “lollipop” gave him the green light before the fuel hose was removed causing him to leave and rip the hose off the machine. Good thing for the back up hose as Kimi Raikkonen was stacked behind him in the pits and could not have otherwise been refueled. Massa had to stop at the end of the pitlane, losing a lot of time before his crew could come and remove the hose. That effectively ended his race.

To make matters worse, as we’ve seen before, his speed is fragile. By that I mean he is very fast, as evidenced in the first part of the race when he led with a sizeable gap. But once things don’t go well he begins to compound his mistakes and loses pace. Here we saw him start missing chicanes, struggling to pass backmarkers (admittedly this track is not easy to pass on) and then he spun and hit the water barrier.

Adding to the team’s disappointment, Raikkonen launched over a chicane and crashed into the wall so neither car scored any points. McLaren took over the constructor championship lead with Lewis Hamilton’s 3rd place finish.

The way the Ferrari team is performing is not the way of a championship winning team. I will be very surprised if they take the driver’s title this year, though they have a better shot at the constructor’s title.

Renault, on the other hand, have no hope of either title but they showed everyone today how it’s supposed to be done with Fernando Alonso winning from 15th position due to a little bit of luck, good strategy, and a car that seems to be well-suited to this track.

The venue is absolutely fantastic. It looks like something straight out of a movie or video game. The track needs a few revisions to make the racing better such as lower curbing, wider chicanes, shorter configuration, better pit entrance, and smoother pavement in a few spots. Also the marshals in Singapore need better training. One was knocked down by the front wheel while frantically rolling away Rubens Barrichello’s Honda. But overall F1 nailed it. This is a great preview of things to come.

F1: Singapore Qualifying

Neat new circuit. I like the “kart barrier system” of linked barriers that are often found at kart tracks. Unfortunately Giancarlo Fisichella did not get a hot lap as he experienced impact with said barriers pretty much as soon as he left the pits.

This track looks really neat but is a little too slow with an average speed around 110 mph. Because it’s so narrow, there probably won’t be much passing unless it rains.

It looks like the main issues for tomorrow’s race will be weather which will dictate tire choices, as well as visibility due to it also being a night race, brake temperatures (lots of corners), tight chicanes, and the pit entrance which requires cars entering to essentially stay on the racing line and block the cars behind, which will be running at high speed.

But the biggest question to me is the turn 10 chicanes. It looks to me that because it is so narrow there, as well as there being so much run off room (relatively) we’re going to see people going off there while attempting to race side-by-side. That would just lay the ground work for more Spa Francorchamps-like penalties. Let’s hope not.

Lewis Hamilton was lucky to make it into Q1 as he was 10th in Q2 because he waited too long to go out, overdrove by locking his tires frequently, and then ran into some traffic. The harder compound tires don’t seem to suit the McLarens as well as the Ferraris under those conditions. Also, Kimi Raikkonen seems to have a narrow operating window with his setups – maybe the front tires aren’t gripping quickly enough.

Felipe Massa is on pole by 0.6 s, Hamilton second, and followed by Raikkonen. Let’s hope for an exciting race tomorrow with lots of overtaking. No idea what fuel strategy anyone is running.

F1: Italian Grand Prix Qualifying

It was a very wet day at Monza at the start of qualifying. Every driver got on track immediately to minimize the risk of being caught out if the rain were to intensify during the session, or there was a red flag or safety car situation. There’s little doubt that wet conditions typically result in unusual starting grid positions.

Often this is a result of car set up. One of the challenges for the teams is that the rules require the rear wing position used for qualifying to also be used in the race. So if the conditions change by race day, the teams and drivers are stuck with those settings.

Not only is the rear wing a major factor in overall downforce levels, but it greatly affects the aero balance of the car. The level of downforce dictates to a large extent the level of suspension stiffness needed to help control the attitude of the car. At a place like Monza (the fastest track on the calendar) a stiff ride height seems crucial, but at the same time rain will require compliance in order to improve mechanical grip in the turns. The curbing also requires compliance to help the cars ride over them.

Effectively the further ahead the settings have to be decided, the more of a role luck will play. It might (or not) spice up the action but it is artificial and arbitrary.

Another tidbit of interest mentioned by the crew of SpeedTV is that some drivers now use a heated helmet visor that reduces fogging in moist conditions. Hopefully they’ll talk more about it during tomorrow’s race.

During Q2 Kimi Raikkonen, Lewis Hamilton, and Robert Kubica all spun but none suffered any damage. Hamilton was the first (and perhaps only) driver to switch to intermediate tires from full wets and promptly came back in. It was too rainy for those tires.

Both he and Raikkonen missed the window of opportunity to advance to Q3 when they were unable to post faster times toward the end of the session as the rain intensified. As a result, they ended up 15th and 14th respectively. A bad day for those two.

Felipe Massa and Heikki Kovalainen were able to advance. Massa took the 6th starting spot while Kovalainen will start 2nd. But the big news was that Sebastian Vettel took his first pole position. He’s also the youngest driver to do so, at the age of 21 years and 70-some days. Great stuff.

The Toro Rosso cars, and Red Bull teams in general, have been doing very well with Mark Webber 3rd (Red Bull), and Sebastian Bourdais 5th in the other Toro Rosso. David Coulthard, driving in his final Italian Grand Prix was a distant 13th.

Tomorrow’s race will be decided in large part by set ups already on the cars. It’s going to be a lottery and the outcome is probably going to surprise.

Amazingly no one crashed in qualifying. There were several spins but overall the drivers did an amazing job.

Monaco Grand Prix Qualifying

Always fascinating to watch Monaco.

It’s hard to draw conclusions from looking at the final times. This is because they are set in different sessions depending on a driver’s final qualifying position. We’re not comparing times from the same event.

On the surface the final times show that Fernando Alonso out-qualified his teammate by a mere 0.081 seconds. But the true gap is whatever Alonso’s time from Q1 was compared to Nelson Piquet’s final time, which was set in Q1 since he did not advance beyond that. Everyone remaining had a different fuel load in Q3 than they did in Q1 (and the track conditions also likely changed), so the times are not comparable. It’s not as close as it looks.

In other words, the final qualifying results do not accurately show the performance of the drivers. The first session is better for that.

The best driver in today’s event was Nico Rosberg, 0.8 seconds off the pole time but only trailing the Ferraris, McLarens, and one BMW which are currently the cars to beat.

Felipe Massa is possibly the strongest qualifier in F1 over the last two seasons, though he’s hot and cold. Kimi Raikkonen is more consistent in race performance. Ferrari’s line up is superb.

Lewis Hamilton might’ve been on pole considering his speed in the first sector but he struggled a little in the other two sectors. There’s something about the way he drives that is fast yet different from most of the others. Supposedly he is much harder on the front tires. Not sure how this will affect his race tomorrow, but I’m guessing he’ll have to make more than one pitstop, though that’s probably the faster strategy any way. McLaren’s drivers are quite strong but it’s too early to tell as they’re both only in their second year of F1.

David Coulthard had a big crash coming out of the tunnel though it looked like it may not have been driver error. Luckily he had more run off room there than anywhere else. The Red Bull doesn’t hang on to its wheels very well after impact.

Nick Heidfeld and Piquet were way off the pace, outqualified by their teammates by 8 and 10 positions, respectively. It seems Nick Heidfeld has all the speed needed but lacked motivation. Then when Robert Kubica joined the team it lit a fire under him but now he’s starting to accept that Kubica is faster and hasn’t done well lately. As for Piquet, he’s just not ready for F1. Renault should try to sign Vitantonio Luizzi for the rest of the year and put him in the car immediately.

The fact that positions 5 through 9 on the grid are occupied by different teams means that F1 is extremely competitive and the driver makes a big difference now that driver-aids have been eliminated, especially at Monaco. It will be a surprise to get through tomorrow’s race without a safety car period.