F1: German Grand Prix

Qualifying

Quite uneventful. The only exciting things were that Sebastian Vettel made it to Q3 and the number of times pole position changed hands in the closing seconds with Lewis Hamilton finally taking it. Oh, and Heikki Kovalainen getting refueled with a sophisticated-looking, yet NASCAR-style fuel can. Never saw that before.

Race

Note: I watched a recording of this on Monday evening having avoided all racing news since Saturday, as I had another appointment on Sunday during the broadcast.

The start was relatively uneventful. Robert Kubica and Vettel made a good start. Hockenheim’s current configuration seems good for passing as there are lots of different lines through many corners.

The Hondas are like moving chicanes this year; slow and obtrusive. Hamilton and Kubica were caught behind Jarno Trulli as they exited the pits. Bad luck or timing. Kimi Raikkonen got by Trulli, Vettel passed Fernando Alonso and then Vettel pulled a nice move to get by Timo Glock as well.

If I ran a team I would want Vettel as one of my drivers. He is doing way more with the Toro Rosso than expected, and he’s only 21 – world champion material. Mark my words. If his Red Bull car is decent next year he’ll become a familiar podium guest.

Glock had a big wreck coming out of a right hand turn after his right rear suspension brokes as he rode the curbing. The safety car was deployed and the pits closed for refueling. This rules needs to be changed as it could easily cause someone to either run out of fuel or suffer time penalty which serves no good purpose.

As soon as the pits reopened most cars came in. The pits were stacked, with drivers having to wait while the crews service their teammates. Clearly Hamilton came in ahead of Heikki Kovalainen but did not stop. It appeared McLaren made an error in their pit strategy.

As they exited the pits Vettel forced Alonso wide over the white line. I don’t think Alonso was penalized, and rightfully so as that was the only way he could avoid a collision.

The Vettel/Raikkonen/Alonso battle was terrific. David Coulthard running into Rubens Barrichello was completely Coulthard’s fault. He’s had his time and it’s a good thing he’s retiring at the end of the year to make room for new blood.

Speaking of new blood, Nelson Piquet managed to get his Renault into the lead because he stopped at just the right moment before the pit lane closed. Since he was on a one stop strategy, he was done with all his stops. So when the safety car pulled in and everyone else either went into the pits or had yet to make their final stop, he assumed the race lead. Pure luck.

When Hamilton finally made his stop it was under full green. He came out right behind his teammate Kovalainen. It seems Ron Dennis used team orders and told Kovalainen to let Hamilton by (it was a pretty clumsy pass). The main reason for this is because Hamilton is leading the championship and it’s a really tight battle. Another reason is probably that the team could not service Hamilton during the safety car period because Kovalainen was probably just about out of fuel.

Rather than hold up Kovalainen they just had Hamilton drive on through so they could get Kovalainen refueled, and Hamilton had to pit under green and make up the time through his own speed. Through a series of fast laps he was able to stay in touch with Massa’s Ferrari which was in second place.

So the team orders were a way to correct the team’s mistake. Shades of McLaren’s pit mix up with Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard in the Australian Grand Prix in 1998.

For all the credit that the broadcasters give Alonso, he has not performed as well as he should. Yes, he is fast and makes the Renault look better than it is. But in a number of races he’s throwing away track position with a string of avoidable errors (Monaco, France, Germany) by spinning, and generally pushing over the limit and ultimately losing time, position and points.

Raikkonen just could not get the performance he needed, and Felipe Massa just about fell off the road trying to stay ahead of Hamilton. He didn’t appear to put up much of a fight. It didn’t seem much different to when Hamilton passed Piquet for the lead. Massa is fast but does not cope well with pressure. It would’ve been the biggest fluke if Piquet won the race. He was gifted second place. For his part Hamilton drove a superb race and earned the win.

F1: British Grand Prix

Qualifying

Not too exciting until Q3 where the BMW crew were panicking to get Robert Kubica back out but couldn’t due to a technical problem they couldn’t fix in time. Lewis Hamilton was very fast in the first two sectors but had trouble in the third one, overdriving the car and locking wheels under braking.

At the very end Mark Webber had provisional pole only for McLaren’s Heikki Kovalainen to take it away at the very end and earn his first pole position. McLaren team boss Ron Dennis didn’t look pleased. Hamilton was fourth.

The Ferrari team were struggling and off pace. Kimi Raikkonen was third while Felipe Massa was well back due to the team not being able to change a rear tire for his last qualifying run.


Race

The race was super exciting due to heavy rain and constantly changing conditions. It really highlighted the difference in tire choices. Everyone started on “intermediate” tires but there were a couple of drivers who switched to full wets during the course of the race.

Hamilton made an incredible start going from fourth to second by the first corner, tagging teammate Kovalainen’s right rear wheel and nearly taking him out but for a nice save by Heikki. Raikkonen was boxed in by Mark Webber who left the door open for Hamilton to charge by on the inside.

Webber then spun and was well down the order, while his teammate David Coulthard, who announced he will retire from F1 racing at the end of the season, collided with Sebastian Vettel on the first lap and took them both out.

Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen did not change tires during the first round of pit stops which would cost them dearly in terms of lap times. It appears their teams thought the rain would abate and the already worn intermediate tires would provide a performance advantage.

However, the rain increased and slowed them up considerably while Hamilton had switched to new intermediates and was miles up the road by the end. He also appears to be quite hard on his tires so not changing tires probably wasn’t an option.

Rubens Barrichello made the change to full rain tires and was rewarded handsomely as he drove his Honda, normally one of the slowest cars on the grid, to an unthinkable third place finish.

Hamilton drove a near perfect race and stormed to a dominant win. Nearly everyone else had at least one spin during the event. Sebastian Bourdais probably came as close as possible to being taken out without actually being taken out when Adrian Sutil spun in front of him. Sutil was lucky not to flip as his car went airborne sideways a few times over the wet British countryside.

Quote of the day from Speed TV’s Bob Varsha, “Someone get Matchett a tranquilizer!” Nick Heidfeld drove a great race to finish second. He seems very quick when his job is under threat but otherwise no so much.

So now we have a 3 way tie for the lead in the driver standings. This season will probably go down to the wire, just like last year.

F1: French Grand Prix

Qualifying

Not that interesting of a session other than the unofficial rule (?!) that cars cannot put all 4 wheels onto the green strip approaching the finish line. Apparently drivers (e.g. Bruno Senna in GP2) are using the last lap of their sessions to gain a time advantage by passing the line there without slowing down, and risking impact with the wall.

How silly is this? If it's been a problem for over 15 years then either move the finish line further up or extend the wall back like Montreal's "Wall of Champions" to discourage such driver behavior. It's not that hard to change.

The other item from qualifying is that "Quick" Nick Heidfeld now appears to be just Nick Heidfeld. He didn't do too well and ended up 12th, and has struggled mightily to keep up with his teammate.

Race

The Ferraris were in a league of their own with Kimi Raikkonen leading Felipe Massa from the start, and probably would've finished that way instead of vice versa but for Raikkonen's exhaust breaking, slowing the car.

Jarno Trulli did well to bring the Toyota home 3rd after all the dicing he had throughout the event with Fernando Alonso, Heikki Kovalainen, and Robert Kubica. His race engineer also wins the award for "Most Obvious Advice" over the course of the season thus far, with gems like "Push! Push! Kovalainen is right behind you!"

Nelson Piquet finally started turning his season around. Qualifying wasn't great but he managed to finish the race ahead of his teammate and both were in the points.

Lewis Hamilton started 13th due to his 10 place penalty for causing the pitlane accident in Canada. His driving on this day can best be described as ragged, bumping his teammate in the early laps, missing the chicane when passing Sebastian Vettel (and earning a drive-through penalty for it), consistently locking the left front at the 180 hairpin, and generally sliding all over the road. He's a fast driver with good luck but has a tendency to compound his problems when things aren't going well.

Between the struggles of the two McLarens today, team principal Ron Dennis was sweating like a SWAT team bomb technician on the job.

Kovalainen also made a great move by going around Piquet at the pit exit. Surprisingly, he wasn't penalized for it as he crossed the white line to the right of the lane. This is something that has been enforced further up the exit "ramp" let's call it, but circumstances might have required such a move.

Honda has had the same story every year for about the past 2 years, no improvement. Ferrari is now well clear of its rivals in the Constructors Championship and Massa leads the Drivers Championship, with Raikkonen third.

Turkish Grand Prix

It was kind of a snoozer. The most interesting thing so far is that Super Aguri went out of business, which leads to the debate about the health of F1. Peter Windsor interviewed Bernie Ecclestone on Speed TV and he said the sport is healthy and growing with new events being added to the calendar. I disagree.

There are now only 20 cars. It is simply too expensive and consequently there are fewer cars now. There even used to be pre-qualifying because there were only a maximum of 26 (?) slots on the grid.

Governments can and will subsidize races for a multitude of reasons. Not all of them are for sporting purposes. But industry has to fund the teams and you can see there’s not enough funding to go around in the current sports climate.

Anyway, the start of the race was a downer. The safety car has been getting a lot of use this season. Both Heikki Kovalainen and Kimi Raikkonen made poor starts. Lewis Hamilton, Robert Kubica, and Fernando Alonso made up places at the start.

Is Kovalainen generally unlucky? He qualified well but between losing out to the safety car period in Australia, the massive accident in Spain when his wheel failed, and today’s extra pit stop, I’m wondering how well he’ll turn his season around. Still he provided some great racing dicing with Timo Glock and Nico Rosberg further down the grid today.

Another driver having a tough time is Nelson Piquet. While he had a nice scrap with Jenson Button, his driving has been ragged and he’s made a lot of mistakes.

Don’t know what happened to Vettel, but at least he survived the first lap and finished the race but had to make 4 stops which is why he finished last.

Raikkonen’s race was essentially blown at the start and when he lost 1.2 seconds to Hamilton during the last round of pit stops (7.1 seconds vs 5.9 seconds), finishing 0.5 seconds adrift.

Jarno Trulli’s race engineer often gives him comically obvious motivational advice via radio to catch up to the drivers ahead. Trulli’s response today was “Don’t worry, I’m already pushing like hell”.

On to the technical details, the items of interest this time around were the thermal imaging cameras of the cars as they pitted. Interesting to note how white hot the exhaust, transmissions, and rear brakes were. I’d like to see a side profile of the cars and the front brakes with these cameras.

Also, Steve Matchett had some insightful comments on McLaren’s struggles running with the soft compound tires. Finally, there was talk about the margin of safety of the cars and the weight of various components. It seems like if the FIA wants to improve safety, they should specify minimum weights for certain components such as wheels, in addition to the overall minimum weight of car and driver.

Oh, and Felipe Massa won the race for Ferrari. The next race is Monaco in two weeks.

Flywheels As Bridges

I’ve been wondering lately if a mechanical flywheel could be a means to bridge the gap between battery and supercapacitors for on-board vehicle energy storage. Supercaps can be charged and discharged quickly, and their high bursts of power are good for acceleration but not so much for constant power.

On the other hand, batteries are slow to charge and discharge but are good for sustained cruising. Using supercaps and batteries together could provide for a wide range of power needs. Except thus far it doesn’t seem there’s any way to charge batteries quickly and maintain their service lifespans.

Possibly then a mechanical flywheel could be used as a bridge between the two in the sense that an on-board supercapacitor could be quickly charged and enable a vehicle to get back on the road. The supercap quickly charges the flywheel, and then the flywheel slowly charges the batteries.

At this point flywheel capability in a vehicle application is relatively unknown but it’s a potentially useful technology path. And with Formula 1 featuring KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems) next year, this is a great opportunity for technology transfer from racing to the street.

F1 Notes – Spanish Grand Prix

Some observations of today’s event:

Fernando Alonso did a great job in qualifying, almost got pole. He was lucky to get away with his off during the warm up lap when he nearly hit a wall. Good start from the Ferraris.

Lewis Hamilton probably made the best one, certainly the decisive one of the race when he jumped Robert Kubica. He’s done this on more than one occasion at the start where he’ll go to the outside approaching the first turn and then dart inside to take the position from the car ahead as it tries to defend the mid-outside line. It often pays off.

Not a good day if your name was Sebastian. Vettel was taken out by Adrian Sutil’s failed move on someone else ahead of him. More reason to qualify further ahead.

Speaking of Sutil I don’t see him lasting the rest of the year unless he really improves his performance. Teammate Giancarlo Fisichella outqualified him by about 0.7 of a second which seems like somewhere between a kilometer and a mile.

Then Sebastian Bourdais had the accident with Nelson Piquet which eventually took them both out.

Couldn’t believe there was an audience of 132,000 people. Huge turnout for Fernando Alonso.

Then Heikki Kovalainen has a massive accident due to mechanical failure. It looked awful as the car wedged itself under the tire barrier having impacted it nearly straight on at high speed. When the car was finally extricated there was visible daylight in the cockpit, not a good sign at all. Heikki was taken away on a stretcher but appeared to be mostly ok. Hopefully he’ll be fine and his promising career won’t be adversely affected.

Hard to imagine the consequences of such an impact if the wall was concrete as they likely were in the recent past.

Steve Matchett on Speed TV really knows his stuff. Always fascinating to hear him speak about strategy and the many considerations that go into running the cars.

The rule prohibiting refueling in the pitlane when it’s closed due to a safety car period is both confusing and cumbersome. Totally ruined Nick Heidfeld’s race. A 10 second penalty for refueling when you had to? Utterly ridiculous.

It’s time for David Coulthard to hang up his F1 gloves. He’s become an obstinate curmudgeon, party to too many accidents when getting passed, and today’s result was he was lapped by his teammate Mark Webber who actually finished, and in the points to boot.

If Red Bull are to win they need to replace Coulthard.

In the end Jackie Stewart’s pre-race prediction was right on the mark no one would challenge Kimi Raikkonen for the win. Raikkonen gets criticized unfairly for his perceived lack of emotion. But he gets my vote for not only being the best driver on the grid, he doesn’t complain and gets the job done without drama. That is a mark of a true champion.

F1 Notes – Bahrain

What’s this have to do with future transportation? There’ll be more relevant technology transfer between racing and road vehicles (both ways) as we go forward toward new generation vehicles. Besides, I just plain like racing and analyzing drivers. Here are some observations of today’s event:

Adrian Sutil has not done much with his time in F1, and I think it’s about to come to a close.

Sebastian Vettel has had some phenomenal races. So far this year he seems to have had a string of bad luck. Hopefully he’ll return to form soon.

When things are good he’s great. But Lewis Hamilton cracks under pressure. He had a rough day of his own making. We’ve seen on several occasions now when one thing goes wrong, whether it’s his fault or not, he falls down like a row of dominoes. Don’t know if his botched start was a technical issue or his fault but it wasn’t that bad until he rear ended Alonso. Then he almost fell off the road passing Fisichella’s Force India and had the temerity to gesture at him for holding him up even though they were, how do you say, racing for position. He needs to calm down. Especially in light of making a McLaren look like a Super Aguri today. The second year is often not as stellar as the first.

Of course, Alonso wasn’t exactly polite while racing Timo Glock for position either.

From the on-board camera, Jenson Button’s steering wheel was turned on way while his front wheels were pointed the other after the collision with David Coulthard. It was almost certain he wouldn’t make it out of the pits after.

Coulthard’s suspension held together better than the last race.

Force India color scheme looks a lot like McLaren’s. Hard to tell the two apart unless up close.

Speed’s Bob Varsha says Nick Heidfeld is “Mr. Under-the-Radar this year”. Could probably expand that to include his whole F1 career.

Kovalainen might outdo Hamilton this year. He’s fast and consistent. Seems low key too.

Mark Webber finished the race. Guess I’m used to his 2006 season when he only finished 7 of 18 races, or his 10 out of 17 last year. A lot were not his fault but he’s got a knack for driving for teams when they’re really unreliable.

Felipe Massa made good on the first 2 races. He’s very fast. Needs more consistency. Wonder what advice Michael Schumacher is giving him.

Kubica did very well to secure his and BMW’s first pole position, great finish.

Kimi not so much into pomegranate fruit drink as a Champaign substitute on the podium, as expressionless finishing second as he is when he wins - my pick for the title again this year.

F1 Wheel Cover

One of the finer points of last weekend’s F1 race in Malaysia was the front wheel covers on the McLaren team cars. Instead of rotating with the wheels they remain stationary while the car is in motion (click here for picture).

There is a brake duct on the inside of the assembly which channels air over and around the disc and caliper. It appears the vent in the wheel cover allows airflow from the interior of the wheel to exit more efficiently.

This enables greater temperature reduction by allowing more air to flow through the wheel and brake than with a rotating cover. On a rotating cover a vent or opening would probably only be effective for a portion of each revolution of the wheel, thus requiring more openings and inducing more aerodynamic drag.

Budget Capping In Formula 1

There’s broad recognition that unless costs are reigned in, escalating costs in any racing series will eventually lead to a bust once the benefits of racing (PR, promotion, technology improvements, etc) are outweighed by the cost.

Typically at that point the rulemakers go back to the proverbial drawing board and come up with a new version that’s less cost intensive, and often more technically limited (e.g. IMSA GTP, German Touring Cars in the ‘90s, and CART/IRL/Champcar).

The problem is each time there is a bust, the disruption causes a major loss of interest from fans and participants. So when the new version comes out, not only are the cars often emaciated, so is the series – just a shadow of its former self.

Formula 1 has implemented a number of ideas over the last few years with the intention of reducing costs, but it seems budgets are no less these days – part of the reason being that teams will spend as much as they can, to be as competitive as they can be.

If one portion of the car becomes limited for development, such as using standard engine control units (ECU) or tires, the money the teams would have spent on these areas would simply diverted to other areas of research and development. Even if the cars were ‘spec’ (all identical to one another) there would still be competitive differences among team through testing and simulation.

Now F1 is thinking about budget caps to restrict spending, though from what I’ve seen it won’t include driver salaries or engine costs. I find the concept of regulating racing through accounting controls unpalatable. There are many ways to skirt the regulations when it comes to money.

Teams will use all resources their budgets allow. Limiting that with accounting controls isn’t going to cut costs. My guess is if a budget cap goes into effect, the probability that 5 years later the same teams that are winning now are winning then is quite high.

A budget cap will require total transparency in addition to watertight rules. The way the FIA went about last season’s hearings and scandals, the one thing that is completely obvious is that they haven’t quite gotten the grasp of operating transparently. So a budget cap is even less likely to work.

What F1 needs to do is cut down force dramatically (make the wings standard and smaller), reduce the turbulent air behind the cars so they can race closer, and bring back slick tires. Finally, they need to tighten up the rules so we don’t have everyone waiting a month after the last race of the year to have a championship decision made in a faux court – it should be decided on track.

If F1 keeps going the way it’s going with all these shenanigans that have nothing to do with racing action, it will find itself in a bust sooner or later as the manufacturers outspend the smaller teams into oblivion and then pull out. It’s time for a change but budget caps will neither limit spending nor improve the racing.