F1: Singapore Grand Prix

Good start to the race, fairly clean. Most drivers were using the harder tires. Kimi Raikkonen started setting fast laps within the first 10 laps which was sooner than has been usual.

The race was uneventful until Nelson Piquet’s crash which brought the Safety Car (SC) out, and closing the pits to refueling. The rules stipulate that when the pits are closed cars may not be refueled. If they are refueled, the driver will be assessed a 10 second stop-and-go penalty, which means he will have to come back to the pits and then remain stationary for 10 seconds. In effect, the penalty is more like 25 seconds when accounting for pit entrance/exit time (depending on the track and pitlane layout).

The intent of the rule is to prevent a mass dash for the pits when there is a SC period. But the effect is that it ruins race strategies and artificially shuffles the order of the field. Furthermore, when the SC period occurs during a fuel window (lap 17-ish today) then some drivers are about to run out of fuel, so they have to pit and incur the penalty. Then they have to pit again to serve the penalty, and if this happens to multiple drivers as it did today, has it really cut down the pitlane traffic that much?

This rule does not work well and should be eliminated or changed.

Felipe Massa’s electronic “lollipop” gave him the green light before the fuel hose was removed causing him to leave and rip the hose off the machine. Good thing for the back up hose as Kimi Raikkonen was stacked behind him in the pits and could not have otherwise been refueled. Massa had to stop at the end of the pitlane, losing a lot of time before his crew could come and remove the hose. That effectively ended his race.

To make matters worse, as we’ve seen before, his speed is fragile. By that I mean he is very fast, as evidenced in the first part of the race when he led with a sizeable gap. But once things don’t go well he begins to compound his mistakes and loses pace. Here we saw him start missing chicanes, struggling to pass backmarkers (admittedly this track is not easy to pass on) and then he spun and hit the water barrier.

Adding to the team’s disappointment, Raikkonen launched over a chicane and crashed into the wall so neither car scored any points. McLaren took over the constructor championship lead with Lewis Hamilton’s 3rd place finish.

The way the Ferrari team is performing is not the way of a championship winning team. I will be very surprised if they take the driver’s title this year, though they have a better shot at the constructor’s title.

Renault, on the other hand, have no hope of either title but they showed everyone today how it’s supposed to be done with Fernando Alonso winning from 15th position due to a little bit of luck, good strategy, and a car that seems to be well-suited to this track.

The venue is absolutely fantastic. It looks like something straight out of a movie or video game. The track needs a few revisions to make the racing better such as lower curbing, wider chicanes, shorter configuration, better pit entrance, and smoother pavement in a few spots. Also the marshals in Singapore need better training. One was knocked down by the front wheel while frantically rolling away Rubens Barrichello’s Honda. But overall F1 nailed it. This is a great preview of things to come.

F1: Singapore Qualifying

Neat new circuit. I like the “kart barrier system” of linked barriers that are often found at kart tracks. Unfortunately Giancarlo Fisichella did not get a hot lap as he experienced impact with said barriers pretty much as soon as he left the pits.

This track looks really neat but is a little too slow with an average speed around 110 mph. Because it’s so narrow, there probably won’t be much passing unless it rains.

It looks like the main issues for tomorrow’s race will be weather which will dictate tire choices, as well as visibility due to it also being a night race, brake temperatures (lots of corners), tight chicanes, and the pit entrance which requires cars entering to essentially stay on the racing line and block the cars behind, which will be running at high speed.

But the biggest question to me is the turn 10 chicanes. It looks to me that because it is so narrow there, as well as there being so much run off room (relatively) we’re going to see people going off there while attempting to race side-by-side. That would just lay the ground work for more Spa Francorchamps-like penalties. Let’s hope not.

Lewis Hamilton was lucky to make it into Q1 as he was 10th in Q2 because he waited too long to go out, overdrove by locking his tires frequently, and then ran into some traffic. The harder compound tires don’t seem to suit the McLarens as well as the Ferraris under those conditions. Also, Kimi Raikkonen seems to have a narrow operating window with his setups – maybe the front tires aren’t gripping quickly enough.

Felipe Massa is on pole by 0.6 s, Hamilton second, and followed by Raikkonen. Let’s hope for an exciting race tomorrow with lots of overtaking. No idea what fuel strategy anyone is running.

F1: Italian Grand Prix Qualifying

It was a very wet day at Monza at the start of qualifying. Every driver got on track immediately to minimize the risk of being caught out if the rain were to intensify during the session, or there was a red flag or safety car situation. There’s little doubt that wet conditions typically result in unusual starting grid positions.

Often this is a result of car set up. One of the challenges for the teams is that the rules require the rear wing position used for qualifying to also be used in the race. So if the conditions change by race day, the teams and drivers are stuck with those settings.

Not only is the rear wing a major factor in overall downforce levels, but it greatly affects the aero balance of the car. The level of downforce dictates to a large extent the level of suspension stiffness needed to help control the attitude of the car. At a place like Monza (the fastest track on the calendar) a stiff ride height seems crucial, but at the same time rain will require compliance in order to improve mechanical grip in the turns. The curbing also requires compliance to help the cars ride over them.

Effectively the further ahead the settings have to be decided, the more of a role luck will play. It might (or not) spice up the action but it is artificial and arbitrary.

Another tidbit of interest mentioned by the crew of SpeedTV is that some drivers now use a heated helmet visor that reduces fogging in moist conditions. Hopefully they’ll talk more about it during tomorrow’s race.

During Q2 Kimi Raikkonen, Lewis Hamilton, and Robert Kubica all spun but none suffered any damage. Hamilton was the first (and perhaps only) driver to switch to intermediate tires from full wets and promptly came back in. It was too rainy for those tires.

Both he and Raikkonen missed the window of opportunity to advance to Q3 when they were unable to post faster times toward the end of the session as the rain intensified. As a result, they ended up 15th and 14th respectively. A bad day for those two.

Felipe Massa and Heikki Kovalainen were able to advance. Massa took the 6th starting spot while Kovalainen will start 2nd. But the big news was that Sebastian Vettel took his first pole position. He’s also the youngest driver to do so, at the age of 21 years and 70-some days. Great stuff.

The Toro Rosso cars, and Red Bull teams in general, have been doing very well with Mark Webber 3rd (Red Bull), and Sebastian Bourdais 5th in the other Toro Rosso. David Coulthard, driving in his final Italian Grand Prix was a distant 13th.

Tomorrow’s race will be decided in large part by set ups already on the cars. It’s going to be a lottery and the outcome is probably going to surprise.

Amazingly no one crashed in qualifying. There were several spins but overall the drivers did an amazing job.

Monaco Grand Prix Qualifying

Always fascinating to watch Monaco.

It’s hard to draw conclusions from looking at the final times. This is because they are set in different sessions depending on a driver’s final qualifying position. We’re not comparing times from the same event.

On the surface the final times show that Fernando Alonso out-qualified his teammate by a mere 0.081 seconds. But the true gap is whatever Alonso’s time from Q1 was compared to Nelson Piquet’s final time, which was set in Q1 since he did not advance beyond that. Everyone remaining had a different fuel load in Q3 than they did in Q1 (and the track conditions also likely changed), so the times are not comparable. It’s not as close as it looks.

In other words, the final qualifying results do not accurately show the performance of the drivers. The first session is better for that.

The best driver in today’s event was Nico Rosberg, 0.8 seconds off the pole time but only trailing the Ferraris, McLarens, and one BMW which are currently the cars to beat.

Felipe Massa is possibly the strongest qualifier in F1 over the last two seasons, though he’s hot and cold. Kimi Raikkonen is more consistent in race performance. Ferrari’s line up is superb.

Lewis Hamilton might’ve been on pole considering his speed in the first sector but he struggled a little in the other two sectors. There’s something about the way he drives that is fast yet different from most of the others. Supposedly he is much harder on the front tires. Not sure how this will affect his race tomorrow, but I’m guessing he’ll have to make more than one pitstop, though that’s probably the faster strategy any way. McLaren’s drivers are quite strong but it’s too early to tell as they’re both only in their second year of F1.

David Coulthard had a big crash coming out of the tunnel though it looked like it may not have been driver error. Luckily he had more run off room there than anywhere else. The Red Bull doesn’t hang on to its wheels very well after impact.

Nick Heidfeld and Piquet were way off the pace, outqualified by their teammates by 8 and 10 positions, respectively. It seems Nick Heidfeld has all the speed needed but lacked motivation. Then when Robert Kubica joined the team it lit a fire under him but now he’s starting to accept that Kubica is faster and hasn’t done well lately. As for Piquet, he’s just not ready for F1. Renault should try to sign Vitantonio Luizzi for the rest of the year and put him in the car immediately.

The fact that positions 5 through 9 on the grid are occupied by different teams means that F1 is extremely competitive and the driver makes a big difference now that driver-aids have been eliminated, especially at Monaco. It will be a surprise to get through tomorrow’s race without a safety car period.