The Racing Blog

Wing Watch

23 June 2006 - 17:50

Welcome to the first in what will likely become a running item here on The Racing Blog: Wing Watch. Actually I'm joking about that, but there's been plenty of talk about wings this season and particularly since the British Grand Prix. I wrote previously about the new rule that has been introduced for the Canadian Grand Prix onwards concerning the support of the rear wing flap. The FIA has not yet released to the public the exact wording of the rule change so all I have to go on so far is a quote from Sam Michael (Williams Tech chief) in that original Autosport article. I'd assumed before that the new rule meant that teams had to use a single central support bracket on the wings, but on re-reading it today I realised that teams running with two brackets at fine also. The wording of the rule apparently says that no part of the wing may be more than 250mm away laterally from a support (that includes the brackets in the centre and the end-plates at either side). I've corrected my original post to reflect this.

Reviewing photographs from the British Grand Prix I note that 8 teams used a single central support bracket on their rear wings: Red Bull, STR, Toyota, Williams, BMW, Super Aguri, Midland and McLaren; A further two teams used two brackets placed about 100mm apart: Renault and Honda. Of course the only team without such a bracket on their wing was Ferrari.

Some of the first photos to come through from Montreal (sorry, I don't have the rights to post any here) were those showing the modified Ferrari rear wing as well as some other team's wings. Ferrari have added a bracket that is actually pretty similar to the design Red Bull have been running all season. Interesting they've stuck with their mainplane and flap designs even though their unusual shape is no longer needed given the (one assumes to be rigid) bracket between them. That could just be due to the time constraints of designing and manufacturing a new wing at short notice had they assumed that this loophole would not be closed mid-season.

There was a somewhat predictable outcry on the forums that these brackets don't stop wing flexing. Because the crescent shape is not the simplest shape that would satisfy the rules, people have asumed that these brackets are designed in some way to circumvent even the new rule. A lot of this suspicion is based on a misunderstanding of wing design and also, I suspect, that people who don't often look closely at the detail design of the cars won't realise that these crescent shaped brackets have been standard practice for years in Formula 1.

Firstly lets talk about the design of the support bracket itself. The root of this where it attaches to the mainplane will be as far forward as possible. The reason is to allow the airflow to recombine behind the support as much as possible before it enters the slot-gap. The FIA could have ruled that teams had to place a solid support actually in the slot-gap, but that would cause a significant disturbance to the flow on the underside of the flap. Additionally, the brackets on a lot of the wings don't attach to the flap any more than half way down. That is so that give the flap enough stiffness in the fore-aft axis to pass the FIA load-test (mentioned previous) without the flap itself having to be very stiff. That's the clever thing about Ferrari's wing - the flap was stiff enough in one axis to pass the FIA load test, but flexible enough in another axis to bend and close the gap to the mainplane. Anyway, with the two ends of the support bracket located where they are, the only logical shape is that crescent design you now see on the Ferrari.

The other point of discussion is: does this design of bracket still allow the wing to flex in a beneficial manner. It's possible there is still some flex in the wings, but I seriously doubt it's sufficient to be have the effect the Ferrari design previously had. The wing element had to bend by 50mm along a 500mm span whereas a vertical support bracket would have to buckle in order to allow the same 50mm of movement. That is far less likely to happen. Also unlikely to happen are any of the other suggestions from the imaginative users of the Atlas-f1 BBS: that the lower half of the flap could twist downwards to close the gap, or that bracket attaches only to the top skin of the mainplane such that the bracket and flap twist backwards to close the gap. The first just isn't mechanically feasible. The second would be very difficult to achieve without placing a question mark over the structural integrity of the mainplane - and we all know how dangerous rear-wing failures are. I don't see Ferrari trying any of those ideas.

As far as I'm concerned, when the speed-traps in Montreal show that the Ferrari isn't the fastest car in a straight line any more, the controversy will be over.

One last thing... It had been widely reported that BMW had developed a flexi-wing approach similar to Ferrari's and that they'd run it at the British Grand Prix. Well, not only did the wing they used at Silverstone have a central support (it could have been fake of course, but why put it there at all if you don't need it, especially since the ruling hadn't been made at that point), but also BMW have come out and publically declared that they didn't have to modify their wing to comply with the new rule.

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Honda "does a Toyota" as Willis leaves

21 June 2006 - 05:38

In a first step to ensuring that they will never win a Formula 1 World Championship, Honda have performed a knee-jerk restructuring, resulting in Technical Chief Geoff Willis leaving the team, Autosport.com reports.

Since the very poor British Grand Prix performance of the team - not only in terms of pace, but also the poor co-ordination and planning resulting in Jenson Button being eliminated in the first qualifying segement - there has been a lot of talk about how Honda would reorganise itself. Honda announced on Tuesday that Shuhei Nakamoto had been promoted from Director of Engineering Development at Honda Racing Developments to be the new Senior Technical Director of the team. Previously it had been declared that Geoff Willis would be relieve of his race weekend duties to spend more time at the factory concentrating on aerodynamic improvements to the car.

That sounds like a demotion to me - you get assigned a lesser role and even though they let you keep your Technical Director title, they create a new Senior Technical Director position and promote someone over your head to that position. Japanese corporations are famous for not wanting to fire people, they just relocate you and if you want to quit, that's up to you. That's seemingly what happened with Mike Gascoyne at Toyota and what's happening here with Geoff Willis.

Willis has Chief Aerodynamicist at Williams before being hired by BAR. He brought a lot of overall car design knowlege as well as aerodynamics and Jacques Villeneuve remarked that the first car produced under Willis as Technical Director was "the first proper Formula 1 car I've driven at BAR". Attending races and apparently calling strategy for Honda as well in a Ross Brawn type role, it's possble that Honda top brass think he's overstretched or they just don't think he's good enough at that latter part. They might think that he can still do a good job as aerodynamicist and that's what's behind the earlier announcement, but I don't think anyone is going to be happy about being demoted like that. If Willis has left Honda as the report states, there will be no shortage of teams wanting his services. He'll likely have to serve some gardening leave first though.

To me this raises a question of whether Honda can ever win. Maybe Willis wasn't up to calling strategy on race weekends and it's possible that someone else will do better, but they will struggle to find anyone better on the design side. I don't want to seem too cynical, but it seems to me Shuhei Nakamoto has been put in this Senior Technical Director position because the Honda board wanted a Japanese man in a more senior management position. There is plenty of talk on the forums that Nick Fry will be out of his job soon enough also. I wonder who they'll get to replace him - he's not the most popular guy in the paddock, but he did come highly recommended by Dave Richards and had a good record working on Prodrive's rally programme.

I also wonder how Jensen Button feels about having signed a long contract with BAR as part of his deal to get out of his Williams contract. If he had any sense it would have a "main man" clause in it that allowed him to get out of the contract if certain significant personnel left the team, but given his well-documented lack of finesse in contract negotiations, I doubt it...

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The Asiatech (and Peugeot) story

18 June 2006 - 19:50

Patrick asked in the comments to my previous article on the F1 engine situation: "Don’t suppose you know what on earth the story was behind Asiatech?"

Well firstly I should point out something I missed in my previous article, which is that I'd completey forgotten that Asiatech supplied Minardi after Arrows dumped them, so if you consider Asiatech to be the last privately manufactured engine in F1, then Minardi were the last to run such an engine, not Arrows as I implied.

Issue #4 of Race Engine Technology magazine had an in-depth article on the Asiatech engine. After Asia Motor Technologies (AMT) were wound-up in 2002, a lot of their engines and other moveable assets were bought by a German collector, Harald Fuch, who also happened to own some of the Arrows chassis that ran the engines in 2001. Minardi bought the engines that had been run by them in 2002, although Fuch later acquired those as well. At the time of the article's publication (summer 2004), Fuch had contracted Langford Performance Engines to make these engines runnable and put them up for sale to potential customers. That is why he also allowed Race Engine Technology to examine and photograph the internals of the engine in great detail. It's a very interesting article and in the same issue they have a similar article on the Ferrari F2000's engine, although this is just an excerpt from the Peter Wright book on that car. I'm not sure if back-issues are still available (I'm not even sure if the magazine is still published as there's no up-to-date information on the website, but interested parties can email or phone the publisher, Racecar Graphic)

Anyway, a sidebar in that article goes into some detail on the whole saga. After Peugeot had won Le Mans with the V10 engined 905, the decided to get into Formula 1. Jean Todt had run the sportscar programme for them and he established a factory at Velizy-Villacoublay in France. They were originally to enter Formula 1 and make chassis and engine and when that was stopped, Todt left Peugeot and was promptly hired by Ferrari. We all know what might have happened had things turned out differently :). Anyway, Peugeot went on to make a 72 degree V10 with pneumatic valves and supplied it to McLaren in 1994. That, ironically, was Peugeot's best season in Formula 1. McLaren switched to Mercedes engines in 1995, taking them from Sauber (who had brought Mercedes back into Formula 1 having run their sportscar programme for them). Peugeot were left to supply Jordan from 1995 to 1997. When Alain Prost took over Ligier in 1997 and graciously renamed it after himself, he snatched the Peugeot engine supply from Jordan (handing them the Mugen-Honda that Jordan almost won the championship with in 1999 incidentally) and ran that from 1998. After a rotten 2000 season, Peugeot had enough and decided to pull out of Formula 1 altogether to concentrate of rallying once more. Prost gambled the team's future on a supply of Ferrari engines for 2001. Not the smartest move as it turned out.

With French employment law making it very expensive to lay off staff, Peugeot looked for a buyer for the Velizy-Villacoublay operation. In comes Asia Motor Technologies, a new company headed by Anglo-Japanese investment banker John Gano and funded (as far as anyone knows) by Hideo Morita, son of Sony founder Akio Morita. They had been looking to buy an F1 team originally but then entered negotiations to buy the Peugeot engine programme lock-stock as a precursor to entering as a full team. Staff levels at Velizy-Villacoublay increased from 165 to 221, so you can see this was a pretty expensive operation (as far as I know, no more than that are employed to build Renault's F1 engines even today). The engines were barely modified from the 2000 Peugeot model and supplied to Arrows as "Asiatech" for 2001 at no charge to the team. Arrows decided free wasn't a good enough deal and gave up the supply to pay for Cosworth V10 engines in 2002 (not the martest move as it turned out). A series two engine was designed with a larger bore and some other modifications for 2002, when it was supplied to Minardi, again free of charge.

The plan had always been for AMT to build a car in order to run their engines - that was the only reason they were willing to supply the engines to other teams for free in the meantime. They set up a chassis design programme at a former Williams factory in England and had got as far as wind-tunnel testing a design, but they were still looking for a title sponsor to fund the team (I seem to remember from the press at the time, Proton was talked about a lot). Eventually they decided to call it a day and wound up the business. All the assets were sold and a most of the French staff went back to either Peugeot or Renault. I've no idea where the chassis staff came from or went to.

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Audi oil-burner wins Le Mans

18 June 2006 - 18:15

I wasn't too far off in my predictions for the 2006 Le Mans 24 Hours. One of the Audis and one of the Pescarolos hit problems, but the ones that didn't were spaced first and second pretty much the distance you'd expect based on the greater fuel efficiency of the Audi. So the number 8 Audi R10 TDi of Biela, Pirro and Werner goes down in history as the first diesel-powered car to win the ultimate endurance racing title. With the problems suffered by the number 7 Audi, the number 17 Pescarolo Judd was able to take second place overall. I wonder though, considering they were four laps down from the lead and could have been many more if the Audi hadn't controlled the pace later on in the race, how do they feel about coming back for another attempt in 2007, knowing that not only will Peugeot be there with a factory diesel car, but there will also likely be customer Audi R10s to deal with as well. Pescarolo cannot realistically expect to win without diesel power now and their withdrawal from the LMP1 could mean it is contested by just Audi and Peugeot for the next few years.

All the interesting prototype action could occur in LMP2 class where it is not currently contested by works cars. Unfortunately that class could be hit if Porsche decide to enter their Spyder next year. LMP2 was won this year by what is now a very aged and highly modified Lola-MG EXP chassis with 4 cylinder turbo AER engine. That was an awesomely fast car when it was introduced many years ago now, challenging the Audi R8 for outright pace on many test days, if not the actual Le Mans final qualifying session and beating it in ALMS races on slower courses. Now with the modifications to bring it to the LMP2 rule set, including extra weight compared to the old LMP675 class, it's nowhere near as fast as an LMP1 car and was beaten even by the top LMGT1 cars this year. Also, the engine rules for LMP2 are more relaxed than they were for the old LMP675 class, so new cars like the Porsche Spyder have an advantage there being able to run a twin-turbo V6 instead of the old single-turbo straight 4.

One interesting bit of news, curiously released just one day before the start of the race, was that LMP1 cars will be restricted to coupés only from 2010. The reason given was the same as for many of the rules introduced in the current LMP1/2 rulebook - they want the cars to look more like road cars because that is supposedly what the fans want to see. I can't speak for all fans of course, but roadster prototypes are the most attractive of sportscars to me. On the other hand, I have read opinions that range all the way to wanting to get rid of prototypes altogether because they have nothing to do with the roadcars that sportscar racing is supposed to be about. There ought to be some middle ground though and I thought allowing both roadsters and coupés was a sound policy - Bently showed that you could win with a closed-top car in 2003 - it's just a co-incidence that all the current enterants are roadsters.

I don't really agree that any rule changes should have been made on the basis of what cars look like. Some people have described the old LMP900 prototypes as "Formula 1 cars with mudguards" and that is probably what spurred the ACO into action. They have stopped the cars having front-fenders that are adrift from the rest of the bodywork by introducing a rule that bodywork visible from the side must be within a certain distance of the side of the car. Thus a lot of pre-LMP1/2 cars have these extra "shadow-plates" aft of the front wheels that serve no structural or even aerodynamic purpose, they're just there to place a piece of bodywork close to the edge of the car. They also introduced a rule that the pseudo-passenger (there was never any suggestion that the car should actually be able to seat a passenger) should have the same roll-hoop protection as the driver. It was seeing cars with single roll-hoops that upset a lot of sportscar purists.

What gets me though is that even with these changes, the cars don't look that much different. To my mind, if they really wanted to emphasise that sportscar racing is for cars that seat two, then they should have enforced a wider cockpit and made sure the driver was situated entirely to one side of the car's centreline. I mean, theese cars are two metres wide and yet the driver safety-cell is still a little island in the middle of a sea of low-level bodywork. There should be plenty of space for a real passenger seat, even if it isn't fitted. If the ACO enforce that the cars are coupés without changing the rules of the size of the passenger compartment then the cars aren't going to look any more like road-cars than the Bentley Speed 8 did, and that was one weird looking car. Ultimately, if they want the cars to look like road cars, they should ban prototypes altogether and have LMGT1 as the top class. These cars (formerly in the GTS class) are almost as purpose-made as a prototype, but they do have to look like the production car they are based on as well as sharing some components. Much as I love the prototypes, that seems to be more in keeping with what endurance racing is about. Either way, I hate the half-hearted measure that would let teams enter a prototype but tell them it has to have some arbitrary feature that doesn't really make any difference to how much like a road-car it looks.

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Finally, a resolution to the flexi-wings controversy

16 June 2006 - 18:20

The "Flexi-wing" controversy has been rattling on since the start of the season. It came to head after round two - the Malaysian Grand Prix - when in-car video clearly showed the Ferrari rear wing flapping about like it was about to fall apart at top speed. The allegation was that flap was designed to flex and that at high speeds it would flex enough to close up the slot-gap between it and the wing's mainplane. That would cause the airflow on the underside of the wing to become highly turbulent. Contrary to some reports, it does still generate a considerable amount of drag (equivalent to, say, dragging a box with the same frontal area along), but crucially it generates significantly less drag than in normal operation.

It was that turbulence generated below and behind the wing that caused the end-plates to wobble like a flag in the wind on the straights in Malaysia. After complaints from other teams the FIA reportedly asked Ferrari to "make changes" to their front and rear wings. They also found issues with other team's wings, including those of McLaren. When round three - the Australian Grand Prix - arrived, it was clear that Ferrari had made changes. Viewed from the same rear-facing camera on the roll-hoop you could see that the end-plates were no longer shaking like mad on the straights. Yet Honda and others still complained that Ferrari were allowing the wing to flex (presumably they'd just stiffened up the rest of the wing-box) and speed-trap results backed this up. The FIA had seemly asked Ferrari to look less like they were cheating without actually banning what they were doing. They did though ask the Technical Working Group (TWG) to come up with proposals for how this slot-gap closing technique could be outlawed in the 2007 regulations.

I should note that it's very difficult to determine the size of the slot-gap from the video footage at any given time because (a) both wing elements are painted white, (b) on the Ferrari, they overlap in such a way as you can't see daylight though the gap even when it is at its fullest, and (c) there's a lot of margin for optical illusion in that kind of analysis because the shadow cast by the flap on the mainplane moves as the car changes direction.

Currently the technical regulations only address flexing wing flaps by applying a weight via a clamp and pully system that pulls the trailing edge of the flap backwards and downwards slightly. That is only adequate to test for the most obvious way to gain an advantage from flexible wings - allowing the flap to change it's angle-of-attack under load (something that the Renault front wing clearly does by the way). There is a limit to how many modes of flexation can reasonably be tested for during scrutineering both due to time constraints and the safety implications of applying large loads to bodywork parts that could fail spectacularly in the scrutineering bay. There is additionally a philosopical point of whether the scrutineers should use video evidence gathered on track or whether they should rely solely on measurements made on the "bridge of doom" in the scrutineering bay.

Regardless of the difficulty of proving wrongdoing in the rear wing of the Ferrari 248, it should be clear to all but the most ardent Tifosi that the flap was designed to deflect at speed. Conventional wings include a rigid support brackets at regular intervals between the mainplane and flap. Most Formula 1 rear wings use either one central bracket or two placed symetrically across the span of the wing. The Ferarri 248 wing features no such bracketry. They have made the flap stiff enough to pass the aforementioned deflection test without support from the mainplane while at the same time being able to flex in a different axis. It's really quite ingenious, but clearly against the spirit of the rules.

This is a point I want to get across as clearly as possible: There are a lot of people who don't think that Ferrari did anything wrong. Although the rules state that bodywork must be rigid, it's an unavoidable fact that all materials deflect under load to some degree. Although the rules don't take account of this (except for the two prescribed rear wing tests which have an allowable margin of deflection), the practice of the scrutineers does. Regardless, there is a fundamental difference between something that deflects out of practical necessity and something that is clearly designed to deflect in a way that affords an advantage. Every other wing includes brackets to support the flap mid-span because if you want the wing to work like wings are supposed to work, you need to maintain the slot-gap under load. When someone designs a wing without those brackets we have to assume that they've either discovered a new super-stiff material to make the flap from, or that they want the flap to deflect in some way.

While the FIA dithered over how best to deal with flexi-wings, other teams have either implemented their own version of the concept so as not to be at a disadvantage (BMW supposedly used such a wing at Silverstone) or at least complained vociferously about being at a disadvantage because the FIA won't issue a clear ruling on the matter either allowing them to go ahead without fear of a ban or banning the concept altogether to put them on a level playing field once more.

The TWG 'ummed and ahhed' and this week came up with the simplest possible solution to the problem: There rules will mandate one or more rigid brackets/spacers between the mainplane and flap that must keep the two elements at least 50mm apart at all times. The rule is worded such that no part of the wing may be more than 250mm away from a support bracket, this wings that currently use one or two brackets are OK with the rule. The beauty of this rule is there's no additional burden on the scrutineers other than checking that said bracket is present and correct.

The FIA then promptly changed their mind and declared that the rule will be applied with immediate effect instead of letting this whole thing rumble on until next season. It means that teams which decided to pursue the same concept as Ferrari have wasted their efforts. Some also feel that this decision favours Ferrari because it means they've had the benefit of flexi-wings since the start of the season while other teams have only just got it working. I can see that Ferrari have benefitted most from what's happened, but I still think it's the right thing to ban flexi-wings now that there is a simple way to enforce the rule. Also, it could be argued that this mid-season rule penalises Ferrari most because their overall package was designed with this wing in mind, and considering they were only barely level with Renault in performance terms already, it could put them out of title contention altogether.

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Not the blog for Le Mans coverage, but I'll try...

15 June 2006 - 19:09

With Le Mans rapidly approaching (qualifying was today, well yesterday as I write this), it occured to me that I probably promised some sportscar coverage on this blog when I started it. Apart from a single post about the Audi R10 back in February, I haven't posted any sportscar news. So I'll belatedly mention that Audi's R10 won the Sebring 12hour race which is usually regarded as a representitive test for Le Mans - not that the tracks are similar in any way, but Sebring puts so much stress on the car, if you're going to have reliability problems, you're going to have them there.

There have been a lot of stories in the run up to this year's Le Mans about the Pescarolo LMP1 cars being faster than the factory Audi. I know how much the French motorsport fraternity would love to see Henri Pescarolo's team win the ultimate sportscar prize, but I don't see it happening. In an article on the BBC Sport website, Allan McNish talks up the chances of Audi's competitors saying "I believe the Pescarolo is two seconds quicker than it was last year, and that was five seconds faster than the R8." Yes, but last year the R8 was heavily penalised by the ACO for not complying with current LMP regulations. They had to run a big plank, smaller fuel cells, smaller wing, smaller engine restrictors. And yet they still won because they were more reliable. The R10 is built fully to LMP1 specifications which means it will be fast - maybe not quite as fast as the Pescarolo on a hot lap, but fast enough bearing in mind their fuel efficiency advantage. The R8 won for many years because in all but it's first year at Le Mans it had a one lap per stint advantage in fuel consumption due to it's direct injection engine. Now the R10 has a diesel engine which should be more efficient still, while the Pescarolo is burning gasoline like it's going out of fashion in its Judd engine.

In my opinion the only chance of a non-Audi win this year is if the Audis both retire, or at least spend a long time in the pits. Trouble is, if we know anything about Le Mans, it's the non-Audi cars that are likely to have length stays in the pits, or catch fire out of track, or something else awful happen to them. There is one advantage the R8 had in it's many years that the R10 won't have - the quick-swap rear end. Although it's long been the rules that the engine couldn't be replaced during the race, the gearbox could. That allowed Audi to design the R8 so that the gearbox and rear suspention could be replaced as one unit in an operation that took less than half an hour. This was used to effect quick repairs, not only from failed transmissions, but also major suspension damage. The rules have since been changed so that only gearbox internals can be replaced. Audi will therefore be subject to the same multi-hour garage spells as everyone else if they crash heavily or lose several gears this year.

If they want a French win at Le Mans more realistically they'd be better off hoping Peugot don't balls up their diesel Le Mans prototype for 2007 the way they did with their Formula 1 project. Admittedly they have a far better record in sportscars and as much experience as any company of building diesel engines for road cars. It remails to be seen if that will carry over to prototype endurance racing, but they've picked an almost identical strategy to Audi (a 5.5L V12 twin-turbo diesel powered LMP1 car). By the time the Peugot entry debuts in 2007, Audi will have a years experience and by the time Peugot expect to win - 2008 - Audi will have had two cracks at Le Mans. There will also likely be at least one customer Audi team. So it isn't going to be easy by any means, but there's still more chance of that than there is of a petrol V10 powered car winning this year or any year after - the rules just offer the diesels to big an advantage.

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All of a sudden there's an engine glut in F1

15 June 2006 - 14:51

News broke the week before the British Grand Prix that Williams had done a deal with Toyota to supply engines for the 2007 season. This week Renault has announced that they are willing and able to supply a second team with engines for next season. This article goes over some of the recent history of engine supply in Formula 1 and takes a look at the future with this news in mind.

The Past

It was only a few years ago that there was an engine crisis in Formula 1. Over the years innovations in engine technology had made F1 engines more and more expensive to manufacturer. Only automobile manufacturers could afford to spend the money required to develop fully competitve and reliable engines and they prefered to manufacture the engines themselves rather than contract a specialist engine builder to do the work. Thus the independent enginge manufacturer became a thing of the past in Formula 1. The last year for John Judd's Engine Developments Limited (EDL) in F1 was 1997 when they made an pneumatic-valve V10 that was badged by Yamaha and located in the back of an Arrows, driven at the time by reigning world champion Damon Hill. When Yamaha got out of F1 that was it for EDL. They continue to make V10 engines to a similar design (minus the pneumatic-valves) for sportscars and Euroboss to this day though, so there is a happy ending.

{ Read More... }

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Fisichella gets another year with Renault

15 June 2006 - 09:35

Picture of Giancarlo Fisichella So much for all that silly-season stuff I posted yesterday. Right on cue Renault have announced that they've agreed a one year extension to Giancarlo Fisichella's contract. I should have seen this coming when Flavio bid £25,000 for an oil painting of Fissi at a recent charity auction in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. I mean you don't buy a painting of a driver you're about to sack, however generous you are.

That narrows things down a bit in the driver market. I still expect Renault to give Heikki Kovalainen the other seat for 2007. That gives Kimi Raikkonen the choice of moving to Ferrari or staying at McLaren alongside Fernando Alonso. Then again, Renault could prove me completely wrong again tomorrow :)

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Silly season roundup

14 June 2006 - 13:44

Since I posted about McLaren driver options for next season, I figure I might as well try and get all the silly-season stories out of the way in one go:

Mark Webber: He has stated time and time again that he wants to stick with Williams. I'm not really sure why he's so keen to stay at Williams. I mean it's a team with a great herritage and outside the manufacturer-backed teams it's the best place to be right now. But if you had the chance to join Renault next year, surely you'd take that wouldn't you? OK, there's some romance for Webber at Williams because Alan Jones won his World Championship there and it also has a fellow Aussie as Technical Director in Sam Michael. But compared to the team that has all the momentum right now? All the more strange is that Webber is managed by Flavio Briatore and had a testing role at Renault before his Minardi->Janguar->Williams adventure.

Finnish driver Heikki Kovalainen seems almost certain to get one of the seats at Renault in 2007. He was runner up to Nico Rosberg in the 2005 GP2 season and is currently the team's 3rd driver. That leaves the other seat - Renault could extend Fisichella's contract or hire a current driver - it seems unlikely they'd run another rookie alongside Kovalainen. Possible signings include Webber (as mentioned above) and Kimi Raikkonen. A few months ago Flavio dismissed the chances of Renault signing Raikkonen in what would be a straight swap for Alonso with McLaren. Since then though senior figures at the Renault parent company have said that they are willing to pay to sign a "top driver". Well there's no chance of Michael Schumacher effectively returning to his old team, so that only really leaves Raikkonen, unless you have a relaxed definition of "top driver".

The speculation of the last week has been that Ferrari are in talks to sign David Coulthard for 2007. What was originally just paddock talk became full-on rumour-mill material when DC refused to discuss it in a press conference at the British Grand Prix. At first sight it seems pretty fanciful that the driver who looked like he might be out of the sport altogether after McLaren dropped him, would now be in line for a seat at Ferrari. But he has done a solid job for Red Bull and without Klien or Liuzzi scoring many points, they must be glad they signed him. He has experience with the Ferrari engine this year (not that I think that really counts for much) and seems to get along well with Schumacher these days (taking the heat off him with the GPDA for example). If Ferrari can't get the signature of Kimi Raikkonen for 2007 or if Schumacher retires, they could certainly do a lot worse (by retaining Felipe Massa for example).

Then there is the thorny subject of Jacques Villeneuve... In an in-depth interview with Autosport.com, Dave Richards rehashes the whole Villeneuve debacle for the umpteenth time (and yes, he's as bored of telling the story as we are of hearing it). Richards claims that with JV's contract accounting for such a large percentage of BAR's budget and the BAT directors wanting him to get the team in order ahead of a possible sale, he made JV an offer that he could refuse: Stay a BAR driver in 2004 but we won't pay you any more than what we're already paying your for the years up to 2004. He was effectively asking JV to drive for free (plus some expenses and bonuses). Unsurprisingly JV refused, thinking he'd easily get a better offer elsewhere. History records of course that not only did he not get a drive elsewhere, but he also as a result missed out of the change to take many podiums (and collect the bonuses for them) in what would be BAR/Honda's best year to date.

Peter Sauber signed JV to a two-year contract for start of 2005 and then sold his team to BMW at the end of that year. There was plenty of talk before the start of the season about whether BMW would honor the contract and keep JV this year. In the end it doesn't look like they had much choice and it's just as well - after enduring a tough 2005, JV has done an excellent job in the BMW-Sauber this year. There remains every possibility that BMW will sign JV for an additional year even though they seem keen to promote current 3rd driveer Robert Kubica to the main place alongside Nick Heidfeld (who's already under contract for 2007). If JV doesn't stay at BMW, there is a lot of speculation that he will go to Toyota to replace a retiring Jarno Trulli. Ralf Schumacher is still on a long-term contract there.

Juan-Pablo Montoya's manager has, we are told, been frantically looking for a full-time drive for him next year. McLaren are almost certain to drop him even if Kimi does leave as expected. Renault don't seem particularly interested. Ferrari likewise. BMW already have drivers vying for seats. Williams are sorted unless Webber decides to leave, but they won't take Montoya back and Montoya wouldn't crawl back to Williams as long as Sam Michael is still employed by them. Red Bull and STR have their own stable of drivers. Honda have two drivers under contract. MF1 and Super Aguri are a fate worse than death. That just leaves Toyota which would leave JV and Montoya fighting for the seat alongside Ralf Schumacher. I'm not sure which one I'd pick out of those two personally.

I'm not sure what will happen to Giancarlo Fisichella if Renault drop him as I expect. There seems to be a dichotomy in modern F1 where there are a few drivers the teams would pay millions to have and then the rest of the seats are filled by "the next big thing". There aren't many seats available for journeymen like Fisichella anymore. It's hard to feel sorry for him - he will have had a championship winning car for two seasons at the end of this year and if he's only won a few races, well, he can't blame it all on bad luck. He seems too young to retire (although now I look it up, he is a year older than me!), so maybe he'll get a 3rd driver role somewhere, but my personal feeling is that he won't be racing next season.

Speaking of Fisichella, this isn't really silly-season news, but I'll stick it here as it doesn't really deserve a post all of it's own: He has today started a legal action against Eddie Jordan over money he claims he was owed from his time there in the 2003 and 2004 seasons. It's interesting that he's sueing Jordan the man instead of Jordan the team, now Midland F1 of course. I don't think anyone needs reminding that Eddie was on the plaintiff side the last time he visited the high courts where his case against Vodafone was thrown out, but not before he received a verbal dressing down from the judge.

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Whitmash: Hamilton could win before Button

12 June 2006 - 15:58

Talking after the British Grand Prix, McLaren CEO Martin Whitmarsh has claimed that McLaren protégé Lewis Hamilton could win a Formula 1 race before compatriot Jensen Button. This could be more Whitmarsh-waffle or it could be the clearest sign yet that McLaren are considering putting Hamilton in the 2nd McLaren seat for 2007 because that's the only way you could believe this prediction coming true: If McLaren make a decent car next year there's just as much chance of Hamilton winning races as there is Alonso, meanwhile Jensen Button is committed long-term to Honda who don't seem to know their arse from their elbow at the moment.

The subject of who will race alongside Fernando Alonso at McLaren in 2007 has been debated ever since McLaren made the shock announcement in the off-season that they'd signed Alonso for 2007. Personally I'd like to see Kimi stay because as a McLaren fan I think that would give them the strongest line-up possible, but it seems Kimi has had enough of his cars either breaking down, not being fast enough or both over the past four seasons. Coming into this season he must have thought he would have another chance to challenge for the World Championship like he did in 2005, but it hasn't turned out that way with Ferrari now the only realistic competition for Renault. He looked thoroughly disgruntled when his car stopped with an electrical failure in Monaco and didn't even look too impressed at his 3rd place finish at Silverstone. At this stage in his career it might be better for him to move to Ferrari or Renault if either option is available. And although I think Kimi can be trusted to put his maximum in every race (because obviously he wants to win just as much as the team does), it might still do the team good to have a complete change of drivers.

It seems almost certain that Juan-Pablo Montoya will be looking elsewhere for employment next season. It's not that he's a bad driver, but he just hasn't been at the sharp-end of the action nearly as often as Kimi and I doubt he'd be a match for Alonso either. It doesn't seem to me like there are any other current F1 drivers especially worth signing if you've got one of the three best drivers in F1, you're losing one of the others and the third is forever tied to Ferrari. When it comes to giving someone completely new a chance, I'd like to see Gary Paffet in the car ahead of Lewis Hamilton, but I fear that he's going to end up like Pedro de la Rosa at McLaren. It'll be a shame if that happens because he's got serious tallent, but the momentum is with Hamilton right now.

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Engine homologation is now a reality in F1

12 June 2006 - 06:15

There's not much to say about the British Grand Prix, so I'll continue with the usual technical/political wrangling sideshow...

Last week saw negotion between the FIA and the engine manufacturers over the introduction of engine homologation come to an end without any compromise being reached. As a result the FIA will press ahead with a three year freeze on engine specifications from 2008 to 2010 inclusive. The really strange thing about these plans though is that the FIA has set a deadline of about now for manufacturer's to supply them with a spec engine that they will make all their engines the same as for those three seasons starting 2008. Engine manufacturers then have to decide whether to continue developing their current engines throughout 2006 and 2007, knowing that they will have to revert to a mid-2006 specification from 2008, or fall behind others that do so while they save their money.

I have no idea what the FIA's rationale is for this. Why not have them submit their spec engine one month prior to the start of the 2008 season, or bring forward the homologation period to the 2007 season? The former was proposed and passed by the new Sporting Working Group which can pass resolutions by a simple majority. They also proposed that the whole homologation idea be scrapped. In any case the FIA rejected both decisions even though the majority of teams agreed to them, because they did not fit in with the rules framework everyone had already signed up to for 2008 onwards.

I've written before about how engine homologation is not the best idea for the sport. I don't think it makes sense to have seven or eight different manufacturers making engines to almost exactly the same specification with the same power outputs but with different designs and using the most expensive materials and manufacturing techniques available. The high-tech nature of F1 engines only makes sense when the manufacturers are actively competing against each other to develop the most powerful engine possible within the rules. If this is no longer the case you might as well have everyone run the same spec engine, make it to a simpler lower-cost design and save even more money. All the current auto-manufacturers currently in F1 have their own cars and with Petronas no longer sponsoring the Ferrari engines that were in the back of the Sauber until this year, there are no engine-badging deals currently active either. Therefore nobody has anything to lose from the introduction of a spec engine versus Max's homologation plan.

Having said that, I have to say I back the FIA versus the manufacturers on this issue. If the relevant parties view a spec engine as unacceptable for F1, the current homologation plan is the only other route to save serious money. Spending as much as $100M a year (according to Max's sources) to find the tiny increments in performance that are possible under the current rules seems mad. Especially as the engine plays such a small part in the performance of a modern F1 car. The homologation plan doesn't do anything about the cost of actually manufacturing the engines the teams will use in race weekends and test days, but it does provide a huge incentive to not burn hundreds of engines on the dynos in developing new designs.

The manufacturer's counter-proposals were to allow development of certain components within the engine from year to year. It's pretty obvious that teams with money to burn would just spend it on developing smaller and small parts of the engine as the rules restrict them. It wouldn't reduce costs except for those that were happy to fall behind (albeit by a small amount) those that continued to spend $100M a year.

The indenpendant teams that are left in F1 and those that considered joining for 2008 expect the FIA to provide a situation where they can buy a supply of competitive engines without blowing half their budget. In recent years teams had to make a decision whereby they would spend a realistic amount of money on engines and get something that was rather less than competitive (the route taken by Minardi), or blow their wad on a super engine and suffer potential bankrupcy as a result (Prost GP). At least with the FIA's new rules, indepedant teams now only have to worry about competing on aero and dynamic fronts.

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The tail-end of Schumi-gate (I hope)

10 June 2006 - 18:36

Just about everyone has had their say on Schumi-gate by now. A thread on the Autosport-Atlasf1 forums was started by a user soon after the end of Monaco qualifying. By the time I first saw it a couple of hours later it already had over 300 messages. By the end of the race it had over 1500. At the time I write this it has almost 2600 follow-up postings.

Autosport.com even dedicated most of their weekly journal to the subject the following week. Bernie was annoyed because he was looking forward to a close contest between Shumacher and Alonso during the race, but he was happy with the decisiveness of the new permanent stewards. Max Mosley couldn't say much because he didn't want to risk calling into question the FIA-appointed stewards. Autosport editor Damien Smith laments the amount of time it took to get the decision out. Writers Adam Cooper, Richard Barnes and Dieter Rencken lay into to Schumacher to a greater or lesser degree. Certainly it's was hard to find anyone who had a good word to say until Riccardo Patrese popped up last Wednesday to say that Michael Schumacher had been "witch hunted" by his collegues.

In his Weekly Grapevine column, Dieter Rencken makes a good point that if he was guilty of deliberately stopping his car on track to block his rivals, Schumacher got away pretty lightly. He relates the case of Max Angelelli at the 1997 Macau F3 race where he was found by the stewards to have deliberately blocked the course during the race. His case was referred to an FIA court in Paris and he was banned for 3 months on less evidence than the Monaco stewards had available. Guilty or not, I don't think it's really in the interests of the sport to have Michael Schumacher banned for 3 months, even if only because he's the only serious challenger to Alonso in their years championship, but it makes you think.

Although there were a few anti-Schumacher banners at Silverstone for qualifying today, the drama has been more-or-less absent. There was a meeting of the Grand Prix Drivers Association where Mark Webber and particularly Jacques Villeneuve wanted an explanation from Schumacher of what really happened. David Coulthard had already said in Monaco that the GPDA was really concerned with track and car safety rather than the behaviour of drivers, but there were still plenty of drivers who thought even then that it's not reasonable to have your president found guilty of cheating. The drivers promised to give him a fair hearing and keep what they heard private, but apparently Schumacher just retold what he's been telling everyone since the incident happened and with no appology or better explanation from Schumacher forthcoming and no chance of censure from the GPDA, Villeneuve has decided to resign instead.

Villeneuve's resignation will probably be seen as sour grapes or just a temper tantrum by Schumacher's fiercest critic, but I think he has a point. If the GPDA asks for an honest explanation because it's members demand one by a majority (regardless of the association's mandate), and Schumacher refuses to give that explanation, and the GPDA then considers the matter closed without offering any censure at all, surely the GPDA is nothing more than a useless talking shop.

Just one more observation from me because I haven't seen it posted anywhere else. I don't think the stewards in Monaco consulted any body-language experts or psychologists, but if they did, there was one part of the post-qualifying press conference that would have interested them particularly. When asked to explain what happened on his final lap, Schumacher said something like "As I approached the second-to-last corner, err Rascasse I think they call it, I locked up..." I don't have a recording of that press conference and I can't be 100% sure of the rest of that quote, but I'm sure he actually said "Rascasse I think they call it". You think they call it, Michael? Aside from perhaps David Coulthard, Michael Schumacher knows Monaco better than any other driver out there. I'm pretty sure he knows not only the name of every corner, but where every escape lane, crane, fire-marshall and flag-man is positioned around the course. That press conference gaffe was a classic example of someone fumbling their words when they're trying to hide something. To Schumacher's credit, people who are usually very honest are more prone to fumble their words like this, but still, it wasn't a good sign.