2012 F1 season off to a proper start

The 2012 Formula One season is off to a rousing start, and the lights haven’t even gone off at the start of the first race yet. If the first qualifying session of the season is any indicator of what we can expect for the entire season, F1 fans around the globe are going to have plenty to watch and talk about.


For the first time since the 2009 season, there isn’t a Red Bull in the first two rows. What that means for viewers is perhaps a dawning of a new era in F1, with new teams and a newfound competitiveness up front. Of course, it’s only the first race, and we haven’t even had the race at that, so it would be prudent to keep the enthusiasm a bit in-check – more bridled than unbridled.

The first row was swept by the McLarens of Lewis Hamilton and Jensen Button, and deservedly so, if not for the drivability of the car than for the design of what has to be the best looking F1 car on the grid. Going in a different direction than every constructor save Marussa (nee Virgin), McLaren has shirked the platypus step nose of all the other builders to present the cleanest, most elegant car on the grid. That alone should be worth one point per race in the standings, just out of principle.

The biggest surprise, more so than the 5th and 6th placings of Red Bull’s Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel, was the 3rd place showing of Frenchman Roman Grosjean, returning to F1 and putting the Lotus (formerly Renault) in the rarified air of the front of the grid. He’s joined on the second row by Michael Shumacher, who has looked positively rejuvenated in the four on-track sessions thus far this season.

Biggest disappointment of the early season would have to be Ferrari, where Fernando Alonso spun early in Q2 and ended up 12 on the grid. Still, that effort was much better than Felipe Massa’s disappointing 16th, having barely escaped Q1 with a mad dash on soft compound tires. In a make-or-break season for Massa, the start of his campaign has exactly gone to script.

With seven constructors making out the top ten in qualifying, the first race of the season is stacking up to be one of the more competitive – and potentially surprising – early season races in years. Here’s hoping Sunday’s race keeps pace with Saturday’s qualifying.

Race along with Ray on Twitter @RayHartjen.

This for that for team orders

The F1 beauties grid up on the Nurburgring this week for the German Grand Prix and among other topics of discussion along the garage is the rekindling of the team orders debate. Of course last year’s German Grand Prix at Hockenheim gave us indelible images and sounds of Ferrari race engineer Rob Smedley telling Felipe Massa, “Fernando is faster than you,”an euphemistically veiled message that translated to effectively to “let Fernando Alonso pass you and win the race.”

Then, at the last race, the British Grand Prix just two weeks ago, team orders again came into the news as Red Bull management instructed Mark Webber, running third at the time, to “maintain the gap” to teammate Sebastian Vettel as he was clamoring all over him for a late-race overtake.

Now, when Massa was instructed to let his teammate Alonso pass last year, “team orders” were banned by F1’s sporting regulations, put into place after Ferrari made a shambles of team orders in Austria in 2002, having Rubens Barrichello, who had led every practice session, qualified on the pole, and led every race lap, give up his position to Michael Schumacher in the final stretches of the last lap to ensure Schumacher got maximum points in his quest for another World Driving Championship. That was a total mockery of sport, and even Schumacher acknowledged as much as he grabbed Rubens and drug him up to the top step of the podium. While last year’s orders weren’t quite such a slap in the face to fair play - in fact, Alonso just nearly did win the title due to the orders - Formula One nonetheless decided to ease the controversy by allowing team orders again, as its fairly obvious to race observers that it’s a regular occurrence.

Team orders have been around in motorsport since the advent of multi-car teams. You see it in every series and in every class, and there’s not really anything wrong with them when applied with a bit of common sense. For example, in NASCAR, you’ll see a driver give up the lead for a lap to ensure his teammate gets a bonus point for leading a lap; then, the next lap, take the lead over again and get the race a-going. Additionally, a team wants to make sure its often overly zealous and competitive drivers don’t take each other out of the race and give the boys back the garage two wrecked cars to re-build before the next race - see Vettel's run in with Webber in Turkey just last year.

In the big-money, big-pressure world of Formula One, teams and drivers battle for two championships – the constructor’s championship and the driver’s championship. For some teams, like Williams, it’s simple: Drivers drive for the team and the only championship that matters is the constructor’s championship. If you take care of that, you’ll likely take care of the driver’s championship as well. Of course, not all drivers see it so clearly.

The aggravating part for race fans come when team orders are unnecessary, like 2002 in Austria and two weeks ago in England. In 2002, there was little to no chance that Schumacher wasn’t going to win the title, the same with Vettel this year. That horse has left the barn, and the rest of the grid knows its racing for second place.

Likewise, the constructor’s title is not in doubt this year either – c’mon, we know Red Bull is the car both to be beat and ones that can’t be consistently beaten, at least not this year, and certainly not with its already huge points lead. Close racing and overtaking is something that is often very difficult to find in Formula One – please, fellas, please be very thoughtful and careful when taking away our long-awaited head-to-head duels.

So, let the team orders fly. Give one driver preference when new equipment is scarce and when race strategy calls for different calls. Even let one driver pass the other. Just do us three favors: 1) don’t insult our intelligence, 2) do it when only absolutely necessary, and 2) do it for the right reasons.

Remember when Aryton Senna let Gerhard Berger pass on the last lap of the 1991 Japanese Grand Prix to reward Berger with a race victory for being such a great teammate during the course of Senna’s championship season? Well, that’s one of the right reasons.

Give your team orders on Twitter @RayHartjen

Boneheads and Their Blunders

I’m thoroughly convinced that Formula One teams are comprised of the best and brightest minds in the automotive business. Each one of those racing machines, particularly those at the front end of the field, are absolute technological marvels. The amount of organizational, engineering, and mechanical knowledge floating around an F1 paddock is staggering. So, it’s all the more befuddling when you see one repeated bone head move after another. It seems each week, the F1 circus is intent on one upping each other in blunders.


The true silly season started even before the start of the season. A big Boneheaded Blunder award deservedly goes to our very own USF1 entry, an ambitious project spearheaded by Peter Windsor and Ken Anderson. Big on intellectual horsepower, but woefully short on financial horsepower. Despite preparing early and appearing to have all their “ducks in a row,” the team massively underestimated the budget required to even get started with producing a car. We should have known something was amiss when the team was a no-show at the first test session.

Speaking of no-showing at a test session, another big Boneheaded Blunder award goes to Christian Horner, Adrian Newey and the lads over at Red Bull Racing. They decided to skip one of the four test sessions so as to further refine the aerodynamic package – the thought being, “Why test when we’re going to make changes?” Here’s the reason: to develop reliability. Two races into the season, Sebastian Vettel has seen two easy victories turn into one forth place finish and one DNF. Instead of sitting on 50 points in the championship, he has 12. If we’ve learned one thing from modern F1, it’s that building an early lead in the championship is critical. Will Red Bull make all the tests next pre-season? My money says “yes,” particularly if Vettel can’t overcome his early season deficit.

While Vettel was failing to finish last week’s Australia Grand Prix, the cars of Virgin Racing, driven by Timo Glock and Lucas Di Grassi, went into the race knowing they wouldn’t be around at the end. Somehow, with all the technical engineering know-how back at the shop, the boys at Virgin Racing designed a car with a fuel tank that was too small to see their cars to the end of the race in Melbourne. Last year, no big deal. This year, the first with no refueling allowed since 1993, it’s a really, really big deal. It’s not like they were a few drops shy. They estimated they were a ridiculous 12 liters shy of the fuel necessary, and that’s what they admitted to. Either they’re planning a very expensive redesign to accommodate a larger fuel cell, or we can expect the Virgin cars to be parked well before the end of several Grands Prix this year. To Virgin, I bestow another Boneheaded Blunder award.

All of the above was prior to today, when the big bully on the F1 block, Ferrari, made another colossal screw-up, bigger so than the shockingly foretelling Massa Malaysian Qualifying Mess-Up of ’09. At the Sepang circuit today, both Ferraris were safely ensconced in the garage, out of the elements of the wind and rain, brilliant in their red finish, so sparkling as it was being bone dry. The other cars, mind you, were circling the wet track, posting timed laps – any time – in case the weather got worse. Ferrari gambled, and lost. The weather did get worse, the times grew slower, and by the time the cars of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa took to the track, a sailboat would have been a more preferred vehicle to post a fast time.

Gambling makes total sense when the goal is to be the quickest car. However, the goal of Q1 is not to be quickest; rather, the goal is to not be in the slowest seven, and thus earn your way into Q2. Ferrari gets to start Sunday’s race in 19th and 21st. Alongside those honors, they can also show off their own Boneheaded Blunder award.

So, if the F1 teams are filled with the best and brightest minds of the automobile industry, what explains the ongoing parade of idiocy? Ah, I overlooked perhaps the key words – “best and brightest minds of the automobile industry.” Oh yeah, that’s right.

Tweet me up at the track @RayHartjen

For the Love of Tires (or Tyres, as the case may be)

The Formula One season begins this week in Bahrain, the middle eastern tax haven "home" to a surprisingly large number of Formula One pilots.  They don't actually live there, like they often do in places like Monte Carlo.  But, plop down a few mil for a residence and tax haven, he we come.

Racing for luxury townhomes is one thing, racing on the track entirely different.  This season shapes up as the most anticipated in recent history.  The stories are too many to count:

1. Combacks - Schumy is back, albeit with Mercedes; Felipe Massa is back in the Ferrari
2. Driver transfers - World Champion Jensen Button (can't believe I just typed that!) has moved from Brawn to McLaren; Reubeniho is in the Williams; Rosberg is in the Mercedes; Fernando Alonso looks superb in Ferrari livery
3. World Champions - Schumacher, Alonso, Hamilton, and Button (4!) are in the field.  I could have probably added Felipe Massa's name to that list and not come up with too much of an argument due to his near miss two years ago. 
4. Constructors - Brawn is now Mercedes; BMW is now BMW Sauber Ferrari; Toyota has left, perhaps in the nick of time to deal with its burdened consumer brand; and Renault is sorta still Renault, sort of Lada
5. New constructors - Lotus, Virgin, and HRT.  No USF1 - ugh!  Of course, these teams will struggle.  But, keep the lookout for Lotus F1.  They have experience in management, engineers, crew, and maybe most important, drivers.  They'll have the quickest pace of the newcomers and will be the first to get points. 
6. New drivers a-plenty.  Have deep pockets?  You might be a F1 pilot next year!
7. New rules - the usual tweaks of the technical regulations, with one big one - no more mid-race refueling.

It's the ban on mid-race refueling that will play out over and over again throughout the season (in addition to the struggles of the newcomers).  The new fuel rules have a "trickle" affect.  First, cars have to accomodate the extra fuel - over 300 pounds or over 20% more again of the car's total weight.  That extra weight is going to play havoc on two areas of the car - the undertray (boring, but a potential source of disqualifications this year) and tires, or as the Brits so lovingly spell, t-y-r-e-s.  Those Brits are so cute.  Precious, indeed.

Tire management will be THE deciding factor in the races this year, compounded by the fact that teams must start the race on the tires they qualified on.  Up front, that will be the "super soft" tires, which, while fast, will be going off after just a few laps of race pace.  Early in the season, look for some strong results from mid-field qualifers on the harder compound tires.  They'll be able to go longer on their first tire stints.  Moreover, they'll be able to save their super soft tires for later in the race, when the tracks are rubbered in, and more importantly, their cars are hundreds of pounds lighter.

On Sundays, the races will be won by the swift, for sure.  But, the early season wager might be best played on the mid-field qualifer, where "swift" is better defined over the course of the entire race on Sunday as opposed to a single lap on Saturday.  For the first race, look for Adrian Sutil of Force India, sitting surprisingly racy on the tenth spot on the grid.

Of course, on the tenth spot of the grid, the entire race might be done by the first corner.  That's a story for Monday.