Tyres Becoming Less Of A Factor

At the start of the 2011 F1 season the new Pirelli tyres were and unknown quantity. Everybody seemed unsure of how long they would last in a race and we looked forward to seeing plenty of overtaking due to different choices of pit strategy. It was expected that some drivers might try to make their tyres go as far as possible and have as few pit stops as possible while others would pit often so they always had fresh rubber on their car.

In China in particular we saw the different strategies play out. Sebastian Vettel chose to make two stops and just before the end of the race he was passed by Lewis Hamilton who had made three stops and was faster as he was on fresher rubber.

Since then the leading teams seem to be taking a more uniform approach to pit strategies with most drivers making their stops at roughly the same time. I think the car designers & engineers are also doing a better job, setting up the cars so they are kinder on their tyres. Admittedly some of the mid-field are still experimenting with contra strategies but this is not having any influence on the top half dozen finishing positions.

Because everybody is doing the same thing it does seem a bit pointless to have these mandatory pit stops and the obligation to use both types of tyre compounds. Lets go back to having no scheduled pit stops, give each driver a set of tyres and a full tank of fuel and let them race out on the track!

A Racing Incident?

I was a little bit surprised that Felipe Massa got a drive through penalty today after the incident with Lewis Hamilton.

Were the stewards just unable to find good enough reason to punish Lewis and thus deducing that if it wasn't his fault then it must be Massa's? Could it not possibly have just been a racing incident?

Why's It Taking The New Teams So Long?

I'm trying to understand why Lotus, Virgin and HRT remain glued to the back of the grid after almost two full seasons? Why is it so difficult for new teams in Formula One to be competitive?

The Jordan team in their maiden season in 1991 almost finished 2nd at Spa. Stewart GP finished 2nd at Monaco in their debut season of 1997 and two years later had won a Grand Prix. Many other teams in their first season have also managed to get amongst the established runners.

One just wonders then why none of the new teams from 2010 can't (under normal conditions) elevate themselves above the bottom six positions on the grid? Okay, it might be expected that one of the teams would continue to have a clear road behind them, but you'd really think though at least one of these three teams would have made some sort of progress and be battling for mid-field placings by now.

Lotus for instance have two top drivers and experienced technical personnel such as Mike Gascoyne. It must be a real concern for them that after three dozen races they can't qualify higher than 18th in normal conditions. It should also be a concern to Formula One fans that any potential future new entries in the series may be discouraged by the seemingly insurmountable challenge of becoming competitive.

My Solution To The Qualifying 3 Dilemma

There is a current problem in qualifying where not all the runners who get through to Q3 are going out and setting competitive lap times. The main reason for this is presumably to save as many new tyres as possible for the race, knowing that once they are through to the final qualifying session they will be no lower than 10th position on the starting grid.

This is not only robbing the paying spectators from seeing all the final 10 drivers having a go for pole position, it is also giving the teams sponsors less exposure than they would probably have hoped for, considering the multi-millions they have inevitably invested in their chosen teams.

My way to fix this is quite simple. Drivers who make it through to Q3 will still have to beat the times set by drivers who went out in Q1 or Q2. For example if Driver A sets a time in Q3 that would have only have given him 15th place in Q2 then 15th place is where he will start the race. The drivers who went out in Q2 but set a faster time in Q2 then Driver A did in Q3 will then gain a position on the grid.

This I think will give all the participants in Q3 an incentive to pull their fingers out and give it a go in those final 10 minutes.

They're Still With Us (The F1 Name Change Game)

Though their names might now be confined to Formula One history, there are several famous teams from the past who carry on in F1 with different owners under a different guise.

The Jordan team was sold by Eddie Jordan to the Midland Group in 2005 and became Midland F1 Racing. A year or so later the team was sold to Spyker Cars and became Spyker F1. Before the start of the 2008 season Vijay Mallya bought the team and gave it the name it retains to this day, Force India.

The current Mercedes GP team can trace their roots back to the legendary Tyrrell team. Ken Tyrrell sold his team to British American Tobacco at the end of 1998. Renamed British American Racing they continued until 2005 when Honda bought the team and they became known as Honda Racing F1. At the end of 2008 Honda decided to pull out of F1 and the team was bought out by team principal Ross Brawn. After a single season as Brawn GP, where they won both drivers and constructors championships, they were sold to Mercedes and took on their current identity.

Toleman, the perennial non qualifiers from their debut season in 1981, became Benetton in 1985. In 1994 and 1995 Benetton won the Drivers World Championship with Michael Schumacher. Shortly after the turn of the Millennium they were bought out by Renault and again won a pair of back to back championships, with Fernando Alonso, in 2005/6. With the involvement of Lotus Cars, the team has become known as Lotus Renault GP in 2011.

In the 80's there were many teams who came, hung around at the back of the grid for a couple of seasons and then disappeared.Most people probably regarded Minardi amongst these teams when they appeared in 1985. In 2001 Paul Stoddart purchased the team and renamed it European Minardi. Red Bull purchased the team and for 2006 they became Scuderia Torro Rosso, principally a junior Red Bull team but retaining a little bit of the Italian heritage. At the 2008 Italian GP Sebastian Vettel gave Torro Rosso it's first, and so far only, victory.

1997 was the maiden season of Stewart Grand Prix. They continued until 1999, managing a victory that year at the Nurburgring. After that season they were bought out by Ford who entered them as Jaguars for 2000. After several fruitless seasons Ford sold the team on to Red Bull and since 2005 they have been known as Red Bull Racing.

Sauber should also get an honorary mention as they were originally Sauber, they became BMW and are now back as Sauber.

F1 2011 (PC Game)

Codemasters F1 2011 is the first Formula One sim/game I have bought since I think F1 2002. Despite being a keen sim racer in the years prior to and preceding the turn of the millennium, I have in recent years failed to keep up with developments in the racing simulator world.

A recent PC upgrade tempted me to get my old Logitech Momo steering wheel out of the cupboard and reinstall some old racing titles. In-particular  GT Legends, a game I've had for a number of years but never had the hardware to run it properly.

As my interest in sims was re-ignited, I became aware of the impending release of F1 2011 by Codemasters. I was familiar with Codemaster titles from the 90's such as TOCA and Colin Mcrae Rally, which were fun if not totally accurate simulations.

Unfortunately Codemasters in the past decade or so seem to have come not very far at all in the realism stakes. F1 2011 is quite a fun game (sometimes), it can at other times be rather annoying. For a start there are only two axis of motion available, left and right and forward and backwards. Even if you hit the back wheel of another car with your front wheel, you stay firmly on the ground, where as in real life your car would be launched into the air. There has been the ability to roll your car in racing sims going back to Grand Prix Legends in 1998 and possibly before that. I know it's not what you're meant to do in a Formula One car but the fact that the car doesn't behave as it should in those situations does spoil it a bit.

The speed of the computer controlled cars, the AI, is also a bit woeful. At some tracks they will be several seconds faster per lap than what I am able to achieve while at other circuits I will be as fast or faster than them. When it rains I am usually many seconds slower per lap on tracks I was competitive on in the dry. Strangely I was horribly slow at Valencia in the dry yet when it rained I was dominantly quick. It's a bit disheartening when your speed is good enough for pole position on one track but only 18th on the grid on another.

Despite these and many other gripes, it can be a fun game. It's by far the best contemporary F1 racing game since 1996's GP2 for giving you a feeling that you're in an actual Formula One race. The AI despite their inconsistent performances are probably the best silicon heads I've raced against. Codemasters, unlike other games developers, obviously realise that not everyone wants to/or can race on-line. I have had several cracking races against the AI where the excitement of the race and the chase has helped me forget about any of the games inadequacies.

So, yes, a not bad racing game, for the realism fans though there is rFactor 2 just around the corner.

The New York GP That Never Was

The announcement this week of plans for a New Jersey/New York GP in 2013 reminded me of the proposed 1983 New York Grand Prix. This event I seem to remember being on that seasons calendar but never actually going ahead. In a F1 season preview aired on the BBC in early 1983, there were actually snippets in that program of New Yorkers opinions to the race. One man, possibly a taxi cab driver, jokingly described everyday motoring in New York as like being in a Grand Prix.

The race was going to be at Flushing Meadows. There was a CART race there in later years, whether it was the same circuit the F1 cars would have used, I am not sure?

The New York race would have been the third US GP of the season, with the other two races being around the streets of Long Beach and Detroit. Whether it would have established itself as a regular event carried on as an F1 venue after these and other US circuits fell away we will never know.

The cancelled 1983 F1 race was replaced on the calender by the European GP at Brands Hatch, an event this author attended.

Sebs Not A Bad Sort

There are many Grand Prix drivers over the years who have quite frankly bored me to tears with their domination of races and seasons, it's alright if your driver is out in front but when it's not your favourite who is miles ahead in seemingly every race you soon begin to start disliking that particular driver. In the past these drivers for me have included Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna & Michael Schumacher. Recently I was beginning to count another driver in this group, I think I might not now though.

After seeing Sebastian Vettel on Top Gear (it was probably shown a few months ago in the UK) last night my opinion of him has greatly improved. He seems to have a genuine sense of humour and remains remarkably down to earth.  His impersonation of Nigel Mansell was hilarious. It was also very sporting of him to have a go and set a lap time in the 'Old' reasonably priced car, something a compatriot of his didn't attempt in a previous episode.

So we can conclude that Seb's not really a bad bloke after all. This weekend I'll be cheering him on, hopefully to a fifth place finish!

Pitting Under Safety Car

I find the current rules for cars pitting during a safety car period very confusing. As I understand it when the Safety Car is deployed each driver has a Delta, or target lap time he must keep to until he catches up with the Safety Car. This I feel favours some drivers more than others as often drivers don't lose, or don't lose as many positions during a safety car period as you'd have expected they would under normal racing conditions. It's also difficult for the casual viewer (or in my case a viewer of 30 years) to understand.

There are two better options as far as I'm concerned. The first would be to do like they do in NASCAR and Indy Car and close the pitlane once the safety car comes out until the whole field is all queued closely behind the safety car. Once everybody is lined up behind the safety car then re-open the pit lane so anyone who wishes can make their pitstops.  This would make things much more exciting as drivers and teams would have to decide if they want to get new tyres but lose track position or stay out and hope they can build a gap on old tyres before making a stop later on. Most importantly it will make much more sense to the viewer who will be able to see clearly what is going on. The second option would be to just keep the pitlane closed for the duration of any safety car period, any car who stops in the pits during that time would have to go to the back of the field before the restart.

I'll post my other ideas for the safety car rules sometime soon.