2009 Formula One Telefonica European Grand Prix, Valencia - Race Day

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2009 Formula One Telefonica European Grand Prix, Valencia - Qualifying

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Review: 2009 Formula One Santander British Grand Prix, Silverstone

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Review: 2009 Formula One Petrol Ofisi Turkish Grand Prix, Istanbul Park

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2009 Formula One Grand Prix De Monaco, Monte Carlo Street Circuit - Race Day

Button did it again. And this time in Monaco.

On a day we see BMW and Toyota could not catch up the Force India, and the day we see McLaren crumbles while Ferrari took the second best, Jenson Button simply outpaced everybody, his teammate included.

While most of the team chooses to start with the prime hard tyres, the Brawns start the race with soft tyre sets. In a mastery of tactinal analysis, Ross Brawn shines the best by making the right decision for his drivers. In spite the expectation of an early safety car period, they have managed to acknowledge the importance of pulling away at the start as Monte Carlo Street Circuit is not any other circuit where you'll have a lot of overtaking opportunities.

The anticipated safety car period never came, eventhough there are few accidents and kisses with the wall of Monaco. Unusual, yes. Cars that are fitted with the prime should plan to run longer but this doesn't seem to be the case last weekend.

RACE RESULT


Although starting from second and the fact that he run on KERS, Kimi Raikkonen failed to take advantage in the run to the first corner. Both he and his teammate Felipe Massa suffer a wheelspin at the start, causing them to lose half a second during the start. And this caused Raikkonen to lose second place to Barichello and Massa failed to overtake Vettel.

Since only the Ferrari and McLaren run on KERS, the wheelspin therefore is not foreseen. Maybe the street is too slippery for the hard Bridgestone compound and pushing KERS button on the start might aggravate the situation by causing wheelspin. No indication whether the McLarens are having the same issue upon starting the race.

Kimi Raikkonen at one time seems good to take the second spot but on his second pit stop his left front tyre had some difficulties to put on and lose him a few crucial seconds.

Vettel retired after hitting the barrier at Sainte Devote, the same spot where Hamilton crashed during Q1. Massa was promoted to fourth, sealing the best Ferrari finishes combined this season.

Kazuki Nakajima also suffered a crash late in the race. He could have finished in points. Nelsinho Piquet got hit at the back when Sebastien Buemi crashed into his car, retiring both contenders.

Kovalainen suffered another DNF. If we put his DNFs into perspective relative to the number of races so far, he would be Nelson Piquet personafied. Hamilton finished in a lowly 12th after starting from the worst grid position of his career. Steve Slater really feel for this guy, and in his words, "it is better to retire than having to suffer the misery of an underperforming car".

Alonso again finished in points. He really got the hang of monstering the R29. If this is the Champ Car or Indy 500, he could be leading the championship with such consistency.

Monaco Grand Prix signalled the return of form for Ferrari and the dominance of Brawns. In Turkey where we head for a normal race circuit in two weeks time, we might see a different pecking order. Toyota, BMW and McLaren might be going to challenge the midfielders in Monaco.

Hopefully Ferrari can continue to better their current form and fight for the win in Turkey. The championship could never get more exciting!

2009 Formula One Grand Prix De Monaco, Qualifying

Jenson Button seals his fourth pole of the season while Kimi Raikkonen shows how much the Ferraris have improved by securing front row alongside the championship leader.

In a too close, too tight qualifying, Ferrari and Brawn GP gave it their all to top the timesheet.

QUALIFYING


Barichello nearly grabbed the second spot if not for a flying performance by Kimi. All weekend long, Barichello seems to be the faster Brawn as Jenson Button continue having problem setting up his car to maximise the downforce and tyre grip.

If the practice times are any indication, it seems Button have the problem solved by Practice 3 where he was faster than Barichello, which earlier topped Practice 1. Moreover, Practice 3 is usually the time where teams started to run short race simulations and qualifying setup. The time clocked in Practice 3 is never far from the car's top performance.

PRACTICE 1


PRACTICE 2


PRACTICE 3


Nico Rosberg again topped one of the Practice sessions. The last practice session was dominated by Alonso, clocking the fastest time all week at 1:15:164.

Although starting at sixth spot tomorrow, Nico Rosberg did topped the first qualifying session, promising a step forward by the WIlliams. But to the dismay of his fans, the other cars on the grid got faster and faster, noticeably the Brawns and Ferrari, leaving Rosberg settled at sixth. Teammate Kazuki Nakajima made it to the top ten as well.

Both Force Indias made it to Q2, making it an interesting midfield runner while the Toyotas and BMWs never made it past Q1. Alonso is frequenting Q3 as Nelson Piquet struggled to match him.

Red Bull made an upgrade to their B-specs car with new rear wings and carbon-fibre gearbox. The wings are also spotted on Toro Rosso.

McLaren made a similar change to their rear wings as well, making them running near the pace of the frontrunners. But the ever-lucky Hamilton is not lucky this time as he smashed the tyre barrier at the Sainte Devote corner and broke his rear suspension in Q1. A further change to his gearbox made him starting from the last spot tomorrow. Heikki Kovalainen meanwhile made it to Q3 and secured seventh. Hopefully he won't be facing another technical glitch that cost him his list of DNFs.

The frontrunners seems to be having a similar strategy although Vettel will be the first to pit, followed by the Ferraris and the Brawns. Here are the provisional weights of the cars after Qualifying:

1. Jenson Button, Brawn GP, 647.5 kg
2. Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari, 644
3. Rubens Barrichello, Brawn GP, 648
4. Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull, 631.5
5. Felipe Massa, Ferrari, 643.5
6. Nico Rosberg, Williams, 642
7. Heikki Kovalainen, McLaren, 644
8. Mark Webber, Red Bull, 646.5
9. Fernando Alonso, Renault, 654
10. Kazuki Nakajima, Williams, 668
11. Sebastien Buemi, Toro Rosso, 670
12. Nelson Piquet, Renault, 673.1
13. Giancarlo Fisichella, Force India, 693
14. Sebastien Bourdais, Toro Rosso, 699.5
15. Adrian Sutil, Force India, 670
16. Nick Heidfeld, BMW Sauber, 680
17. Robert Kubica, BMW Sauber, 696
18. Jarno Trulli, Toyota, 688.3
19. Timo Glock, Toyota, 700.8
20. Lewis Hamilton, McLaren, 645.5

Felipe Massa looked like the faster Ferrari earlier in Q1, but as the track got better Raikkonen steals the show with blazing laps and topped Q2. When he stole P1 from Vettel in Q3 and even Barichello could not better him, it seems finally a Scuderia will get to pole. Out of nowhere comes Button with 25/1000 a second faster.

Alex Yoong put it in the best sentence when he said "Button will start tomorrow's race and think, I believe I'm seeing a Ferrari besides me -- with KERS".

At Catalunya Massa managed to overtake a few cars before settling at third in the first lap. Kimi Raikkonen might be able to pull the same stunt starting at second. The fight to that first corner will be interesting tomorrow.

Cross your fingers, we might see a Scarlett Car leading the field when the camera pan to the Sainte Devote corner tomorrow !

Will Formula One Survive Being Ferrari-less?

Not only Ferrari - Renault, Toyota, Red Bull and of course, Toro Rosso.

Ferrari has been there since the inception of Formula One Championship. It has seen the ups and downs of teams, including itself and the sport as a whole. It is always there to support any initiatives by the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile - from commercialization, driver's safety, regulation changes, participating in GPDA, OWG, and FOTA to road safety campaign and budget cut.



The Scuderia Ferrari team has been the benchmark for other team to compare to, even when they run as midfielder. There are times when they are not winning for years - tens of years in fact - and they are still there in Formula One.

When they won for years that the FIA changed the rules just to give them major disadvantage, they didn't budge.

The fact that Ferrari has been in Formula One for so long, and so successful, and at the same time amassed a huge amount of fans that turn up on every Grand Prix weekend that translate to billions of dollars worth of money, made them virtually Formula One itself.

Without Ferrari, Formula One will lose at least half of its fans. And half of its revenue in total.

Nobody would want to race a Formula One Grand Prix without the Scarlet Car on the grid. It's like English Premier League without Manchester United. It's like World Cup without Brazil. It's like Formula Renault where all the teams are running BMW cars. All the current drivers agreed they could not imagine Formula One without Ferrari and that it would be less interesting to race.

To lose Ferrari is one thing. To lose the whole bunch of teams, is another.

In pursuit of attracting new teams to Formula One, Max Mosley should not simply abandoned the current teams. If he did, then who will guarantee what will happened to the new team once they become old and Max want to attract newer teams? Will Formula One be a second class league where teams come and go - and dare I say it, exists and then perish?

FIA and FOTA really need to find a compromise - and quick. A two-tier FOrmula One is not the solution. And definitely not a smart move. It's like having both GP2 cars and Formula One cars competing with each other in the same race. We know who'll win. It's not Formula One anymore -it will be Formula One and Two.

Many sports critiques and columnists said that the latest furore in Formula One is simply a political manouvre by the teams to steer FIA out of implementing the 40 million pounds budget cap. But for fans out there, they can feel the team. Any laymen can understand why the team would want to pull out if F1 is going to be a two-tier championship.

Here's a hypothetical scenario: If you are an F1 owner and you have 400 workers working for you, and you spent the last ten years to developed that group of people with certain set of skills, would you simply dump them in accordance to the budget cap? If you have 200 million pounds annually to run the whole operation, would you be able to maintain the status quo with a fifth of your current spending?

You ought to throw people out and that means wasting away your investments.

To lose Ferrari for sure will kill away half the excitement of Formula One. To lose them together with Renault, Toyota, Red Bull and Toro Rosso will definitely kill the sport altogether.

No, Formula One will not survive being Ferrari-less.

(Hey, let's watch A1 GP instead! With all the teams running F2004, A1 GP is technically Formula Ferrari!)

Review : 2009 Gran Premio de Espana Telefonica, Catalunya, Barcelona - Race Day

And then there were four.

Jenson Button claimed victory at Catalunya, his fourth out of five race this season, in a rather unconventional Spanish Grand Prix. The last eight pole sitters goes to win the race, but in a straight start-line-to-the-finish fashion. That did not happened to Button.

When the red lights went out, Button lost the lead to Barichello as Massa goes third and held Vattel and Webber behind him. A big crash at the back of the field saw Sutil, Buemi, Bourdais and Trulli got out of the race. Hamilton got off the track for a while but being a very lucky person, he got away from the third corner accident.

It all happened when Trulli, pushed out by Nico Rosberg hurriedly turn back onto the track and caused Sutil to hit him. That alone saw huge debris flying all over the third corner. Then comes Buemi, who, being a rookie and probably never before circumnavigate a big crash in a blink of an eye, virtually stopped on the track. And that caused his teammate to crashed behind him big time.

And being a defending world champion, Hamilton slows down and managed to not only avoid the collision but at the same time circumnavigate the debris on the track.

The Brawns opted for a three-stop strategy at first, since three-stop is the fastest way, but they changed it for Button in the first round of pit stop because they managed to conserve fuel during the six laps of safety car period. And that seal the win for Button instead for Barichello. He must be furious.

Massa defended third position like a true champion would, even after a wheel rim cover spun out of his left tyre. And even after the first pit stop where he and Vettel went in together and go out together in the same position.

In the process of holding Vettel behind him, Christian Horner deviced a different way to diffuse the bottleneck situation for Mark Webber. Webber was fuelled longer so that he will have extra laps when the second pit stop comes. And it worked. Webber stole third position after the second pit stop.

When we all believed that the race will be concluded as they were, something interesting happened. Massa's race engineer contacted him on the radio with an alarming situation - he don't have enough fuel to make it to the chequered flag! It happened to be in the second pit stop the pump didn't deliver enough fuel to his F60. And now the situation where we should be praising Ferrari for a leap of performance turned into a situation where we will be condemning them to the lack of scrutinity.

It's not the lacked of pace that hampered both Raikkonen and Massa. The former was due to electrical failure that shuts down his hydraulic on lap 18. Could be the engineers fault, could be yet another McLaren sabotage through its standardised ECU. The latter meanwhile was due to pure human mistake. In this case, you can sum up both cases as the lack of quality control.

Steve Slater, being a proud British mentioned that this would never happened under Ross Brawn's watch, and dare he say it - when Nigel Stepney was around. There's an air of truth in his view. Before the hoard of British came into Ferrari, even the genius of Jean Todt cannot turn it into a world championship winning team.

It was something imprinted into the Italian work culture. I'm not being racist, but I have the view that each nation and race are gifted with certain skills while the others are not. In the big picture, the key to the future is held by the united people of earth, to cancelled each other's weaknesses.

We need a British or two inside the Ferrari organization.

And these small things caused Massa precious points. He was forced to slow down his pace to conserve fuel, in the process have to let Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso passed him by. Vettel did it on lap 54 and then comes Alonso a few laps from home. A straight to the point solution. It could be even worse if the engineer did not detect it. It could be a catastrophy if Massa end up not having any points at all. He was forced to satisfy with three points, the same as Raikkonen. On the way back to the pit, he was stranded beside the track.

Heidfeld shows where BMW are in relative performance. He score two points, just ahead of Nico Rosberg. Kubica meanwhile finished eleventh, still searching for that few tenths that saw him fighting for the win in Australia earlier in the season.

Hamilton finishes outside of the points, sealing the fact that in the first round of upgrades McLaren are already fallen behind. I'm going to say this again - we could see the worst attempt at defending a World Championship yet.

Timo Glock, the last Toyota in contention did not finished in points either. One third of the diffuser gang, the TF1.09 clearly lack the pace in high speed corners of Catalunya. Trulli, lost the race in the third corner, means that Toyota came out of the Spanish Grand Prix empty-handed.

The next round will be the tight corners around Monte Carlo, Monaco - where aerodynamic and car balance is nothing and fuel load doesn't mean anything. The further up you are, the better you'll perform. Unless there's safety car period. Or rain. Or a big red Ferrari crash in your behind.

Review : 2009 Gran Premio de Espana Telefonica, Qualifying and Practice Sessions

As predicted, everybody on the paddock was running various testing all Friday. Catalunya saw teams like Ferrari and BMW with major updates on their cars. Small parts did come for Force India, Renault and Brawn, but it seems McLaren are not introducing new updates on the MP4-24. The Red Bulls and Toro Rosso are similarly going to be fine tuned, rather than adopting new parts.

Friday practice sessions nowadays is not a definite indication of relative team performances. It's not like a few years back where the practice sessions are not that far off. Saturday session give somewhat a better clue.


PRACTICE 2



Nico Rosberg again topped the second free practice, but this time in style. Nakajima complete a one-two, pressing the fact that they might have got their act together that both cars are showing promising pace.

Alonso, facing a home crowd, is definitely going to monster the car as high of grid position as he could. He clocked the third fastest time in Practice 2.


PRACTICE 3



In Practice 3, the one that might shown the real pecking order of the week, the Ferraris topped the timesheet. Both the F60s clocked under the low 1:21:00, lower than last year's pole.

If previous practice sessions throughout the season are any indication, the Brawn should get a few tenth of a second than the time they set in the last practice. Even half a second slower, if they can find that few tenth, it could mean that they are still in front.


QUALIFYING



Qualifying is a big blunder for Ferrari again, and this time, it involves Raikkonen. He failed to qualify for Q2 and got stuck at 16th. It is a shame because the Ferraris do have the pace - Massa qualify third and have the pace of the Brawns and Red Bulls. Steve Slater insists that Raikkonen still have gremlins on the car but the team chose to hide it via a calculated tactical blunder, a 'smokescreen' to the real problem. A lighter chasis for Raikkonen does not mean anything after an electronic, hydraulic or mechanical malfunction.

The more surprise is that the McLarens are not far off from Raikkonen, and there's nothing or no one at fault. Kovalainen at a low 18th and defending world champion Hamilton is at 14th. If the season evolve like this, we could see the worse defend of a world championship yet. McLaren have finished their upgrade and it doesn't put them anywhere in the point scoring position. When the upgrades kick in for the other teams, they are simply left behind.

A near one-two for the Brawns saw Jenson Button lead the grid tomorrow. The fact that Jenson and Barichello are on the cleaner side of the track tomorrow will probably left the pack lead by the Brawns.

But being the only KERS-equipped car in the top ten, Massa is a big threat to the others, especially upon startup. If things goes okay for him, we could see the Scarlet Car jumping ahead the queue and simply take the lead. And being a little bit slower, he might just hold off the other car behind him.

One more thing, the Ferrari is heavier than the other four car! A delight in the Ferrari camp that without the extra weight, they might be as fast as the pole sitter! Here are the rest of the field at post qualifying weighing :

1. Jenson Button, Brawn GP, 646kg
2. Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull, 651.5
3. Rubens Barrichello, Brawn GP, 649.5
4. Felipe Massa, Ferrari, 655
5. Mark Webber, Red Bull, 651.5
6. Timo Glock, Toyota, 646.5
7. Jarno Trulli, Toyota, 655.5
8. Fernando Alonso, Renault, 645
9. Nico Rosberg, Williams, 668
10. Robert Kubica, BMW Sauber, 660
11. Kazuki Nakajima, Williams, 676.6
12. Nelson Piquet, Renault, 677.4
13. Nick Heidfeld, BMW Sauber, 676.3
14. Lewis Hamilton, McLaren, 683
15. Sebastien Buemi, Toro Rosso, 678
16. Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari, 673
17. Sebastien Bourdais, Toro Rosso, 669
18. Heikki Kovalainen, McLaren, 657
19. Adrian Sutil, Force India, 675
20. Giancarlo Fisichella, Force India, 656

Anybody who took Steve Slater advice regarding the Toyotas to shine at Catalunya, I pity you all. Behind the Toyotas are a group of heavily fuelled cars - some of them might run a one stop strategy and finish in points.

Alonso, fuelled light for the Qualifying, secure eighth. Previous years saw Alonso to have good startup in Catalunya and similar circuit. He might overtake a fer cars in the process and seal a higher point score.

Catalunya have a short pit lane, some of the front running cars might do a three stop strategy as usually done by Ferrari in the Schumacher era. Fast flowing corners emphasize on the benefit of KERS. Only two teams opted to run KERS - Ferrari and McLaren. Renault and BMW chose to abandon the technology for Catalunya.

Review : 2009 Formula One Air Gulf Bahrain Grand Prix, Sakhir - Race Day

Jenson Button made it three wins in four races. As competitive as the Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel could be, he cannot challenge for the win. And in my opinion, Button has Jarno Trulli to thank for.

In the second part of the race, after the first pit stop, Vettel and Barichello got held up by the Toyota of Jarno Trulli, which is on the prime tyre. Since the Toyota is clearly under the pace set by Jenson Button and the fact that it took some time for Vettel to make it pass the TF109, it created a quite comfortable gap between Button and Vettel. And on the last stint when both the BGP001 and RB5 change to the prime tyres, it is simply too far a distance for Vettel to catch the leading Brawn.

Alex Yoong, supported by Steve Slater in his blog, stated that the win is clearly a win for Jenson Button and not Brawn. They simply concluded that the Brawn is not that competitive as indicated by Barichello, sidelining the fact that Barichello was held up not only by Trulli, but Timo Glock as well in the earlier part of the race. The only thing right Jenson Button had done is to wrestle the third place with Hamilton earlier. He passed the McLaren on the very second round, on the first corner. Had Hamilton maintain the position, Button may have one hell of a difficult time to overtake the KERS-equipped MP4-24. When the Toyotas pit, earlier than others as expected, Jenson assumes the lead.

And thus, marking the first win in normal race condition for Jenson Button. The first win is in the wet in Hungary 2006; the second is under the safety car in Albert Park; and the third is sitting still on the starting grid as the race got red flagged in Sepang.



Hamilton made a superb run to third upon starting the race and ended up in fourth. On the option super-soft, he nearly challenge for the podium. After changing to the prime medium-hard tyres, the McLaren simply went off pace as Hamilton went further and further away from Rubens Barichello.

Raikkonen scores the first three points for Ferrari this season, thus not making history as the worst season ever for Ferrari. The crucial moment for Raikkonen was when he wrestle back the seventh place he lost to Timo Glock when the Ferrari driver comes out of the pit lane. A few laps later Nico Rosberg makes his last pit stop and comes out ninth, just behind the last point scorer Fernando Alonso.

Felipe Massa meanwhile have issues with his ECU and had to turn off his KERS device, making him stopped earlier and thus losing precious place in the race. The earlier stop for the KERS saw him fuelled and made his F60 heavier than the rest of the field. And the extra 30kg without the precious 80bhp, making him seem very burdened to monster the car. As suspicious as it could be, Ferrari has been having problems with the ECU misfiring a lot and at the same time damaged the KERS device from functioning in normal parameters. Note that the ECU is a standard unit produced by McLaren.

Ferrari did not install any new parts on the F60, but they focused on fine-tuning the car - and in some way it paid off. Compared to McLaren that has been spotting interim parts on Hamilton's MP4-24, the Scarlett Car is not that far off.

Nelson Piquet made quite an improvement as he secure tenth, closing the performance gap to his teammate. Piquet has been consistently out-qualified by Alonso 4-0 this season. If we take it from last season, Sakhir mark the 20th back-to-back race where Alonso has out-qualified his teammate.

Alonso's drinking water pump malfunctioned early in the race, he virtually dehidrated when the race finishes. He brave the car to secure eight place although at the time, he was probably on the brink of losing conciousness. When he parked his car on the parc ferme, he fell down and has to be attended by the medical team. Luckily there's no permanent damage.

Mark Webber, impeded by Sutil in qualifying and started 18th on the grid, manage to finish 11th. Has he started further up the grid, we might see some drivers losing their points.

The worst qualifying turns out to be the worst ever race result for the BMWs. Both BMWs are forced to pit early to change their front wing assembly as they damaged their nose cones. The fact that they already opted for a one-stop strategy when the race started made them almost three seconds off the pace of the front-runners and they have no way defending against the rest of the field. Their strategy, is definitely a one-stop although they eventually forced to do a two-stop, the first one being only for front nose change. A two-stop strategy might see them secure better results as they are running on KERS and lighter on fuel. This is simply because on the long run, the Force India and Toro Rosso will definitely left behind; the KERS will make the difference. Furthermore, Sakhir featured three long straights.

The run-in with Kazuki Nakajima didn't do any help for Kubica, who in pre-season was aiming for the championship. Nakajima later retired from the race. It nearly became a rare event where all the car made it to the chequered flag.

Sakhir mark the last of the first flyaway races. When the Formula One circus comes back to Europe, we might see a different pecking order. And most probably the order that will last until the end of the season.

The circuit of Catalunya bears hope for teams like McLaren, Ferrari, Renault and BMW that their upgrades will translate into a better performance. It is time for them to take back the lead, to claim what they know to be theirs - glory.