A1GP: South Africa race review

29 January 2006 - 16:37

You can read the offical Sprint Race results and Feature Race results elsewhere.

The Sprint Race:

Team GB's Robbie Kerr had a better than average qualifying session on Saturday and started from 2nd on the grid, predictably beside the French car on pole. The sprint race got off pretty smoothly at first, but then Robbie tried a massive lunge that wasn't on, outbraked himself and ended up in 4th behind France, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, where he stayed for most of the rest of the race. There was a safety car period that seemed to go on forever (bearing in mind the sprint race is limited to 30min). Not much else happened until the last few laps when there were stricken cars seeminly near every corner. One that spun into an awkward sideways position on the exit of a corner was China. Before the marshalls could wave yellow flags, the Lebanese car hit it's rear wing. When the leaders came through there were double waved yellows. Thomas Enge in the Czech Republic's car suffered a puncture on the broken carbon fibre that littered the track by this point and he was passed by several cars but still managed to finish 5th. That took Robbie Kerr up to 3rd.

The best action was yet to happen though. Race leader Premat was slow having passed the wreckage of the China car. Jos Verstappen tried to take advantage and make a pass round the outside of the next corner that just wasn't there. He tagged Premat heavily in the sidepod. Verstappen spun out to be narrowly missed by Kerr who took 2nd place back. Premat amazingly managed to keep control of his car and also avoided a last corner passing attempt by Kerr to take another win for Team France.

What I don't understand though is that the studio pundits for the Sky Sports coverage - Keith Huewen and Andy Priaulx - were both full of praise for Jos "the boss", claiming that it was worth a try and that realy racers were never happy with second place. I'm affraid they were wrong on both counts in my opinion. The pass was never on as anyone could see from the replays. It was hardly worth trying to pass on the outside anyway, but when the cars came together Jos's front wheels where only just ahead of Premat's rear wheels. Jos should have braked before then an accepted 2nd place. Secondly, in A1GP 2nd place is worth 9 points to 10 point for 1st place - hardly any reward for a difficult pass on a street circuit. Not only that, but finishing places in the sprint race define the grid for the feature race. Instead of starting on the front row, Verstappen would be starting 16th.

The Feature Race:

The feature race was extremely eventful with many retirements unfortunately. Both Team GB's Robbie Kerr and Team France's Alexandre Premat had their races ruined by poor pitstops near the start of the race. Premat's right rear wheel wouldn't come off without a lot of difficulty. When he eventually got out of the pits he was black flagged for having two mechanics working on a wheel at the same time. He came in and served a drive-through penalty losing him further time. Eventually clawed his way back to finish 7th, but later had 25 seconds added to his race time for serving his drive-through under yellow flag conditions. That left him 8th which must make this France's worst race in the whole season so far.

Robbie's woes were rather more spectacular as he took off after his pitstop with an airgun trapped under the front of his car and the hose trailing along behind. Fortunately he left the pits under safety car conditions so the other drivers wisely kept their distance and Robbie returned to the pits at the end of the lap. The airgun was removed and Robbie rejoined the race in last position. He managed to pass a few cars before retiring after a spin caused by aerodynamic damage to the car.

Everyone will talk about the last lap where Jos Verstappen passed then leader Neel Jani for the lead, but in actual fact it wasn't a repeat of the sprint race last lap. Jani had a brake problem and Jos passed him easily on the straight before the corner at which he tagged Premat in the sprint race (contrary to some accounts of the race). Jos rightly deserves praise for getting into 2nd place from 16th on the grid to be able to take advantage of Jani's problem though. He certainly went from zero to hero in the feature race.

The local fans also had something to cheer as multiple retirements in the last 10 laps allowed the South African entry to climb to 5th place by the finish. Matt Halliday also had a great drive for New Zealand making many true overtaking manouvres to place 4th.

In Conclusion:

Durban got the rewards of a great A1GP race in return for constructing a purpose built street circuit for the series and having the greatest attendance since the first round at Brands Hatch. Many thought the track would be too tight to see any decent racing, but that wasn't the case due to the pro-overtaking design of the A1GP cars and the non-conservative driving of the competitors. It really put a smile on my face to see so much interest from the locals. They haven't had Formula 1 in South Aftica for a long time now and while other countries have dismissed A1, the resident of Durban really got in the spirit. Seeing cars stream round the streets, lined by concrete walls and temporary grandstands and overlooked by appartment blocks and hotels reminded me of Champcar street races in the USA and Canada rather than F1's only street circuit in Monaco. The full grandstands and plentiful overtaking made for a better scene than any Champcar race I've seen lately though. Well done Durban, well done South Africa, well done Jos Verstappen and well done A1GP!

/ two comments / § ¶

The return of the centrally supported wing

27 January 2006 - 17:47

Watching the recent car launches for the 2006 F1 season, I note that the new Renault (R26) and Ferrari (248) cars have central pillars supporting the mainplane of the rear wing. It was done first (in recent times) by BAR on their BAR007 last year and the reason is that it reduces the weight of the entire wing assembly at the cost of a small amount of extra drag.

{ Read More... }

/ No comments / § ¶

A1GP - South Africa preview

27 January 2006 - 16:45

The break since the last A1GP round in Malaysia has been longer than planned due to the postponement of the Indonisia round. It certianly feels like the series has lost momentum. It has also lost another team as Japan will not be competing due to money concerns. Carlin Motorsport run the Japan entry as well as those of Portugal and Lebanon who are still competing. Japan missed the Portugal round at Estoril for the same reason.

Prior to the first practivce today (Friday) there were concerns over the FIA approval of the Durban street circuit, but FIA technical delegate Charlie Whiting OK'd it after advising the organisers to add a couple of extra tyre barriers and first practice went ahead as scheduled. First and second practices were punctuated by several red flags to remove cars that ran into trouble on the initially wet roads.

The best times in practice 2 were set by Australia, Portugal and Czech Republic (full timing here). France were surprisingly only 17th after not setting a time in practice 1. It'll be interesting to see how qualifying goes with this in mind. Qualifying is being shown in the UK on Sky Sports from 12pm GMT.

Even if it's dry I'm expecting a lot of red-flags during qualifying and several full-course-yellow periods during the race given how tight this street circuit is. At the first two meetings of the season (Britiain and Germany) the drivers were very careful, very conservative, but since then they've been contesting almost every corner, right the way down the field for the whole of both races as if they were driving stock cars. This has led some to criticize the standard of driving in the series, but it has also provided more action in each race than a whole season of Formula 1. Don't get me wrong, I still love Formula 1, but not for the action. A1GP makes a good complement.

/ No comments / § ¶

McLaren Staff Wars!

26 January 2006 - 18:30

The good thing about not declaring yourself a news website is that you don't have to keep correcting and altering stories as time goes by. This blog is about analysis and re-capping stories that might have become misunderstood because of all the twists and turns. One such story has been happening this week and although it might take further turns by the end of the week, I'll take my chances and write it up now.

A rumour has been going around for weeks that at least one high-level employee would follow Adiran Newey out of McLaren in the near future. The man most often mentioned was vehicles director (and former Ferrari employee) Nicolas Tombazis. Talking at the Barcelona test this week McLaren CEO Martin Whitmarsh was certain no staff were leaving. Just hours later, Newey's new team Red Bull, announce that they've signed McLaren's head of aerodynamic development Peter Prodromou. This is, well would be, a huge coup for the team. By the end of the day though McLaren hit back with a press release of their own claiming that Prodromou would be staying until the end of his contract and thus will be involved in both the season-long development of the 2006 car and the design of the 2007 car. There is no official word yet about Tombazis except to say that his contract also runs until late in the year. So, in conclusion, nothing has really changed this week.

/ one comment / § ¶

Super Aguri is in for 2006

26 January 2006 - 17:12

News came in today that Super Aguri will be the 11th team in Formula 1 this season and the first to join the sport since Toyota in 2002. More importantly it will be the first true privateer team since Stewart joined in 1997 (I'm not counting BAR because although they were not affiliated to an auto company, they were majority owned by a multinational corporation, British American Tobacco - they were also technically not a new enterant having taken over Tyrrell's entry).

Unless you've been out of the F1 loop completely since the end of the Chinese Grand Prix, you'll know that Aguri Suzuki's efforts to start his eponymous F1 team were leaked ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix - some would say to mollify Takuma Sato fans who were angry at his being dropped by BAR/Honda for 2006. Their application however was rejected by the FIA when they failed to lodge to required $48M deposit with the FIA by the deadline for entries in November. Then followed a long running saga were Super Aguri tried to get the consent of all 10 current teams to re-apply for 2006. They eventually did get that rare thing in Formula 1 right now - a unanimous agreement by all the teams and re-applied.

At least to start with Super Aguri will almost be a re-incarnation of Arrows since they are based in the old Arrows factory in Leafield, will be running modified 2002 Arrows cars for the first few races (along with tons of other equipment they bought from wheeler-dealer and former Minardi owner Paul Stoddart), and are reportedly employing many former Arrows staff as well.

I wish them all the best, although I predict they will be hopelessly off the pace until they can get their own BAR-alike car ready. All the same, it'll be great to have 22 cars on the grid this year and we look forward to many 1st corner pile-ups what with the charging Taku starting from the back frequently. :)

/ No comments / § ¶

Toyota to run in NASCAR Nextel Cup in 2007

23 January 2006 - 17:26

Toyota have announced that they are to enter the NASCAR Nextel Cup in 2007. They have been supplying the Craftsman Truck series for several years. NASCAR is all about marketing for the car manufacturers that supply - I guess that's true for all motor-sport, but what I mean is that Toyota is having to really go out of it's "comfort zone" to compete in a category that has huge marketting potential. While GM and Ford have relevant heritage in producing the carburated, iron, small block V8 engines used in NASCAR, Toyota struggled we are told, to find a supplier in Japan that still made carburettors. That's not to say that NASCAR is low-tech - they use many of the same materials and surface treatments as used in Formula 1 - but they work to a set of restrictions that are somewhat unusual by motor-sports standards.

Those restrictions that are well policed, not only to keep costs down and keep the cars safe, but also to retain the heritage of American stock car racing, are controlled by the French family that owns NASCAR. They are really going to have their work cut out with Toyota joining the show if they are going to avoid having Toyota do what they (in conjunction with Honda) have done to two other US series, Champcar and IRL, and that is to push up costs and drive out domestic manufacturers, before cutting and running themselves.

Long suffering Champcar fans must have viewed Toyota's withdrawal from the IRL, leaving it, like Champcar, effectively a spec-series, with some Schadenfreude given that they have repeated all the mistakes CART were accused of (running too many non-US drivers, running too many non-US races, allowing Japanese engine suppliers to trounce the domestic manufacturers). NASCAR has been by far the most popular motor-sport in the USA for many years now. As far as single seaters are concerned there's only one race that matters - the Indy 500 - and they couldn't even sell out the Brickyard for that last year. Letting Toyota in could be the first big mistake they make.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Toyota won't push GM, Ford and Chrysler out and they'll all happilly co-exist. But I have my doubts. If they start running lots of foreign drivers that'll be warning sign #2. When they start running races in Mexico, Australia and Japan, be affraid, be very affraid.

/ two comments / § ¶

Is the Belgium GP on or off?

21 January 2006 - 16:11

Multiple sources are reporting that the Belgium Grand Prix and Spa is off for 2006 after the facilities improvements Bernie Ecclestone has insisted on could not be completed in time for this year's race. Notably the story isn't anywhere on Autosport.com's news page. It's not even in their Grapevine section which is intended to carry news of the 'credible rumour' type. There is a thread about it on the Atlas-f1 forums (part of Autosport) and staff member bira said that they would not be carrying the story until there was some official word from any of the involved party. According to this story from Pitpass the story originated from a 'unreliable' Belgian politician.

/ No comments / § ¶

Indonisian Round Put Back

13 January 2006 - 16:38

Due to the death of Sheik Maktoum Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Emir of Dubai and the uncle of A1GP founder Sheikh Maktoum Hasher Maktoum Al Maktoum, the Indonisian round of the championship has been put back so as not to take place during the official 40 day period of national mourning. The round has now been re-sceduled to the weekend previously occupied by the cancelled Brazil round on 10-12 of February 2006. The next found is in Durban, South Africa on 27-29 Jabuary 2006.

/ No comments / § ¶

A1GP: South Africa race review

29 January 2006 - 16:37

You can read the offical Sprint Race results and Feature Race results elsewhere.

The Sprint Race:

Team GB's Robbie Kerr had a better than average qualifying session on Saturday and started from 2nd on the grid, predictably beside the French car on pole. The sprint race got off pretty smoothly at first, but then Robbie tried a massive lunge that wasn't on, outbraked himself and ended up in 4th behind France, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, where he stayed for most of the rest of the race. There was a safety car period that seemed to go on forever (bearing in mind the sprint race is limited to 30min). Not much else happened until the last few laps when there were stricken cars seeminly near every corner. One that spun into an awkward sideways position on the exit of a corner was China. Before the marshalls could wave yellow flags, the Lebanese car hit it's rear wing. When the leaders came through there were double waved yellows. Thomas Enge in the Czech Republic's car suffered a puncture on the broken carbon fibre that littered the track by this point and he was passed by several cars but still managed to finish 5th. That took Robbie Kerr up to 3rd.

The best action was yet to happen though. Race leader Premat was slow having passed the wreckage of the China car. Jos Verstappen tried to take advantage and make a pass round the outside of the next corner that just wasn't there. He tagged Premat heavily in the sidepod. Verstappen spun out to be narrowly missed by Kerr who took 2nd place back. Premat amazingly managed to keep control of his car and also avoided a last corner passing attempt by Kerr to take another win for Team France.

What I don't understand though is that the studio pundits for the Sky Sports coverage - Keith Huewen and Andy Priaulx - were both full of praise for Jos "the boss", claiming that it was worth a try and that realy racers were never happy with second place. I'm affraid they were wrong on both counts in my opinion. The pass was never on as anyone could see from the replays. It was hardly worth trying to pass on the outside anyway, but when the cars came together Jos's front wheels where only just ahead of Premat's rear wheels. Jos should have braked before then an accepted 2nd place. Secondly, in A1GP 2nd place is worth 9 points to 10 point for 1st place - hardly any reward for a difficult pass on a street circuit. Not only that, but finishing places in the sprint race define the grid for the feature race. Instead of starting on the front row, Verstappen would be starting 16th.

The Feature Race:

The feature race was extremely eventful with many retirements unfortunately. Both Team GB's Robbie Kerr and Team France's Alexandre Premat had their races ruined by poor pitstops near the start of the race. Premat's right rear wheel wouldn't come off without a lot of difficulty. When he eventually got out of the pits he was black flagged for having two mechanics working on a wheel at the same time. He came in and served a drive-through penalty losing him further time. Eventually clawed his way back to finish 7th, but later had 25 seconds added to his race time for serving his drive-through under yellow flag conditions. That left him 8th which must make this France's worst race in the whole season so far.

Robbie's woes were rather more spectacular as he took off after his pitstop with an airgun trapped under the front of his car and the hose trailing along behind. Fortunately he left the pits under safety car conditions so the other drivers wisely kept their distance and Robbie returned to the pits at the end of the lap. The airgun was removed and Robbie rejoined the race in last position. He managed to pass a few cars before retiring after a spin caused by aerodynamic damage to the car.

Everyone will talk about the last lap where Jos Verstappen passed then leader Neel Jani for the lead, but in actual fact it wasn't a repeat of the sprint race last lap. Jani had a brake problem and Jos passed him easily on the straight before the corner at which he tagged Premat in the sprint race (contrary to some accounts of the race). Jos rightly deserves praise for getting into 2nd place from 16th on the grid to be able to take advantage of Jani's problem though. He certainly went from zero to hero in the feature race.

The local fans also had something to cheer as multiple retirements in the last 10 laps allowed the South African entry to climb to 5th place by the finish. Matt Halliday also had a great drive for New Zealand making many true overtaking manouvres to place 4th.

In Conclusion:

Durban got the rewards of a great A1GP race in return for constructing a purpose built street circuit for the series and having the greatest attendance since the first round at Brands Hatch. Many thought the track would be too tight to see any decent racing, but that wasn't the case due to the pro-overtaking design of the A1GP cars and the non-conservative driving of the competitors. It really put a smile on my face to see so much interest from the locals. They haven't had Formula 1 in South Aftica for a long time now and while other countries have dismissed A1, the resident of Durban really got in the spirit. Seeing cars stream round the streets, lined by concrete walls and temporary grandstands and overlooked by appartment blocks and hotels reminded me of Champcar street races in the USA and Canada rather than F1's only street circuit in Monaco. The full grandstands and plentiful overtaking made for a better scene than any Champcar race I've seen lately though. Well done Durban, well done South Africa, well done Jos Verstappen and well done A1GP!

/ two comments / § ¶

The return of the centrally supported wing

27 January 2006 - 17:47

Watching the recent car launches for the 2006 F1 season, I note that the new Renault (R26) and Ferrari (248) cars have central pillars supporting the mainplane of the rear wing. It was done first (in recent times) by BAR on their BAR007 last year and the reason is that it reduces the weight of the entire wing assembly at the cost of a small amount of extra drag.

{ Read More... }

/ No comments / § ¶

A1GP - South Africa preview

27 January 2006 - 16:45

The break since the last A1GP round in Malaysia has been longer than planned due to the postponement of the Indonisia round. It certianly feels like the series has lost momentum. It has also lost another team as Japan will not be competing due to money concerns. Carlin Motorsport run the Japan entry as well as those of Portugal and Lebanon who are still competing. Japan missed the Portugal round at Estoril for the same reason.

Prior to the first practivce today (Friday) there were concerns over the FIA approval of the Durban street circuit, but FIA technical delegate Charlie Whiting OK'd it after advising the organisers to add a couple of extra tyre barriers and first practice went ahead as scheduled. First and second practices were punctuated by several red flags to remove cars that ran into trouble on the initially wet roads.

The best times in practice 2 were set by Australia, Portugal and Czech Republic (full timing here). France were surprisingly only 17th after not setting a time in practice 1. It'll be interesting to see how qualifying goes with this in mind. Qualifying is being shown in the UK on Sky Sports from 12pm GMT.

Even if it's dry I'm expecting a lot of red-flags during qualifying and several full-course-yellow periods during the race given how tight this street circuit is. At the first two meetings of the season (Britiain and Germany) the drivers were very careful, very conservative, but since then they've been contesting almost every corner, right the way down the field for the whole of both races as if they were driving stock cars. This has led some to criticize the standard of driving in the series, but it has also provided more action in each race than a whole season of Formula 1. Don't get me wrong, I still love Formula 1, but not for the action. A1GP makes a good complement.

/ No comments / § ¶

McLaren Staff Wars!

26 January 2006 - 18:30

The good thing about not declaring yourself a news website is that you don't have to keep correcting and altering stories as time goes by. This blog is about analysis and re-capping stories that might have become misunderstood because of all the twists and turns. One such story has been happening this week and although it might take further turns by the end of the week, I'll take my chances and write it up now.

A rumour has been going around for weeks that at least one high-level employee would follow Adiran Newey out of McLaren in the near future. The man most often mentioned was vehicles director (and former Ferrari employee) Nicolas Tombazis. Talking at the Barcelona test this week McLaren CEO Martin Whitmarsh was certain no staff were leaving. Just hours later, Newey's new team Red Bull, announce that they've signed McLaren's head of aerodynamic development Peter Prodromou. This is, well would be, a huge coup for the team. By the end of the day though McLaren hit back with a press release of their own claiming that Prodromou would be staying until the end of his contract and thus will be involved in both the season-long development of the 2006 car and the design of the 2007 car. There is no official word yet about Tombazis except to say that his contract also runs until late in the year. So, in conclusion, nothing has really changed this week.

/ one comment / § ¶

Super Aguri is in for 2006

26 January 2006 - 17:12

News came in today that Super Aguri will be the 11th team in Formula 1 this season and the first to join the sport since Toyota in 2002. More importantly it will be the first true privateer team since Stewart joined in 1997 (I'm not counting BAR because although they were not affiliated to an auto company, they were majority owned by a multinational corporation, British American Tobacco - they were also technically not a new enterant having taken over Tyrrell's entry).

Unless you've been out of the F1 loop completely since the end of the Chinese Grand Prix, you'll know that Aguri Suzuki's efforts to start his eponymous F1 team were leaked ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix - some would say to mollify Takuma Sato fans who were angry at his being dropped by BAR/Honda for 2006. Their application however was rejected by the FIA when they failed to lodge to required $48M deposit with the FIA by the deadline for entries in November. Then followed a long running saga were Super Aguri tried to get the consent of all 10 current teams to re-apply for 2006. They eventually did get that rare thing in Formula 1 right now - a unanimous agreement by all the teams and re-applied.

At least to start with Super Aguri will almost be a re-incarnation of Arrows since they are based in the old Arrows factory in Leafield, will be running modified 2002 Arrows cars for the first few races (along with tons of other equipment they bought from wheeler-dealer and former Minardi owner Paul Stoddart), and are reportedly employing many former Arrows staff as well.

I wish them all the best, although I predict they will be hopelessly off the pace until they can get their own BAR-alike car ready. All the same, it'll be great to have 22 cars on the grid this year and we look forward to many 1st corner pile-ups what with the charging Taku starting from the back frequently. :)

/ No comments / § ¶

Toyota to run in NASCAR Nextel Cup in 2007

23 January 2006 - 17:26

Toyota have announced that they are to enter the NASCAR Nextel Cup in 2007. They have been supplying the Craftsman Truck series for several years. NASCAR is all about marketing for the car manufacturers that supply - I guess that's true for all motor-sport, but what I mean is that Toyota is having to really go out of it's "comfort zone" to compete in a category that has huge marketting potential. While GM and Ford have relevant heritage in producing the carburated, iron, small block V8 engines used in NASCAR, Toyota struggled we are told, to find a supplier in Japan that still made carburettors. That's not to say that NASCAR is low-tech - they use many of the same materials and surface treatments as used in Formula 1 - but they work to a set of restrictions that are somewhat unusual by motor-sports standards.

Those restrictions that are well policed, not only to keep costs down and keep the cars safe, but also to retain the heritage of American stock car racing, are controlled by the French family that owns NASCAR. They are really going to have their work cut out with Toyota joining the show if they are going to avoid having Toyota do what they (in conjunction with Honda) have done to two other US series, Champcar and IRL, and that is to push up costs and drive out domestic manufacturers, before cutting and running themselves.

Long suffering Champcar fans must have viewed Toyota's withdrawal from the IRL, leaving it, like Champcar, effectively a spec-series, with some Schadenfreude given that they have repeated all the mistakes CART were accused of (running too many non-US drivers, running too many non-US races, allowing Japanese engine suppliers to trounce the domestic manufacturers). NASCAR has been by far the most popular motor-sport in the USA for many years now. As far as single seaters are concerned there's only one race that matters - the Indy 500 - and they couldn't even sell out the Brickyard for that last year. Letting Toyota in could be the first big mistake they make.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Toyota won't push GM, Ford and Chrysler out and they'll all happilly co-exist. But I have my doubts. If they start running lots of foreign drivers that'll be warning sign #2. When they start running races in Mexico, Australia and Japan, be affraid, be very affraid.

/ two comments / § ¶

Is the Belgium GP on or off?

21 January 2006 - 16:11

Multiple sources are reporting that the Belgium Grand Prix and Spa is off for 2006 after the facilities improvements Bernie Ecclestone has insisted on could not be completed in time for this year's race. Notably the story isn't anywhere on Autosport.com's news page. It's not even in their Grapevine section which is intended to carry news of the 'credible rumour' type. There is a thread about it on the Atlas-f1 forums (part of Autosport) and staff member bira said that they would not be carrying the story until there was some official word from any of the involved party. According to this story from Pitpass the story originated from a 'unreliable' Belgian politician.

/ No comments / § ¶

Indonisian Round Put Back

13 January 2006 - 16:38

Due to the death of Sheik Maktoum Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Emir of Dubai and the uncle of A1GP founder Sheikh Maktoum Hasher Maktoum Al Maktoum, the Indonisian round of the championship has been put back so as not to take place during the official 40 day period of national mourning. The round has now been re-sceduled to the weekend previously occupied by the cancelled Brazil round on 10-12 of February 2006. The next found is in Durban, South Africa on 27-29 Jabuary 2006.

/ No comments / § ¶