Hamilton Under Fire

Lewis Hamilton has come under fire for this move in Malaysia:



In my opinion, what he did was perfectly legal. He moved to break the tow and Petrov moved to follow him rather than the other way around.

Had Petrov been in Hamilton's tow and moved out before Hamilton changed his direction, that would have been justifiably penalised.

GP2: A Success Story

Nico Rosberg, Lewis Hamilton, Timo Glock and now Nico Hulkenberg. GP2's success in promoting its champions directly to Formula 1 is proof that the series has been a success.

Today's announcement that Hulkenberg will join Barrichello at Williams for 2010, means that four out of the five GP2 champions have advance directly to F1.

GP2's ancestor, Formula 3000, struggled between the 2000 and 2004 seasons to produce conditions whereby the champion of the series was an instant shoe-in for a Formula 1 seat.

Champions such as Justin Wilson, Sebastien Bourdais and Vitantonio Liuzzi all made it into F1 eventually - usually by testing or racing in other series - but other champions were not so lucky.

The cars were seen as difficult to drive, and the best drivers would generally have to race them for two or three seasons before challenging for the title. Drivers tried to avoid the category if at all possible - preferring to jump straight from F3 to F1.

The perfect example of this is this year's F1 champion, Jenson Button. He says in his autobiography that he and his managers really wanted to miss the championship out.

That is not to say that good drivers did not come from there - Fernando Alonso is an F3000 alumni for example - but the category had become stale and viewed by many as a better feeder series for the American based ChampCar series.

Certainly history would back up that view: Justin Wilson, Bruno Junqueira, Sebastien Bourdais and Juan Pablo Montoya all went on to have successful careers in the United States.

The new GP2 car however, was designed in such a way that makes it closer to F1 and F3 cars so first year drivers can be successful, and also more conducive to good racing. As a result, of the past champions only Giorgio Pantano has not been given a F1 drive as a result of winning the series - and he was returning to the series after a stint in F1.

All that brings me to the following question: If the GP2 series has been so successful at doing what it set-out to achieve, why do we need F2?

Video of the World Champion

Just found this great video of Janson Button [sic] celebrating his world title in Brazil:

... and one showing where it all started:

It's Brawn Over

A big congratulations to Jenson Button and the Brawn GP team on capturing both titles in Brazil today.

Button drove a very accomplished race on the Sao Paulo circuit - a champion's drive as David Coulthard put it - mixing aggressive and conservative approaches appropriately. To pass all those drivers without damaging the car is a very difficult thing to do when fighting for the championship and Button did not put a foot wrong.

There was a point when he was stuck behind Kamui Kobayashi - who perhaps should have been penalised for weaving in the breaking zone - where I thought that Button might struggle to win the championship a round early.

However, as soon as Lewis Hamilton had passed Rubens Barrichello it was clear that baring disaster, Button would become 2009 F1 World Champion before travelling to Abu Dhabi.

It was a great drive from Mark Webber and I expect that he will be a contender next year now that he has won his first and second Grands Prix.

Commiserations to Barrichello as well. At times in the second half of the season he was the in-form man and at one stage appeared to have Button in his pocket.

But his early season performances let him down and overall Jenson was the better driver - as proven by his six victories comparing to Barrichello's two.

Button becomes the first British driver to win the championship the year after a compatriot since Jackie Stewart won his first title in 1969.

After the final race at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi in two weeks' time, I will be blogging on my top 10 drivers of the season.

Todt vs Ari

The elections for the FIA presidency between Jean Todt and Ari Vatanen will take place next Friday.

Jean Todt is the strong favourite having been endorsed by outgoing president Max Mosley and appearing to have the greater popular support.

Todt is also arguably the more well known of the two. This is partly due to the fact that Todt's senior role in Ferrari's Formula 1 team was more visible than Vatanen's exploits as a driver in the World Rally Championship and partly because Todt is engaged to actress Michelle Yeoh.

However, Vatanen has done this:

Equally, Todt ran Ferrari in a very insular and competitive manner during his tenure, in complete contrast with current figurehead Luca di Montezemelo who has taken a very clear role in uniting the Formula 1 constructors.

It is also worth noting that the FIA representatives are not just electing a president on the 23rd of October - they are electing a host of roles.

Before the election, each candidate must present a list of those individuals who will fulfil the 22 roles including Deputy President, seven vice-presidents for Sport and the President and five members of the FIA Senate.

None of these candidates can be present on both lists so when voting for the president, an FIA representative is also assenting to the appointment of all those on the list.

Unfortunately, we are not party to the decision. But we can still listen to what they have to say about themselves:

There does not appear to be any English language videos in the public domain showing an interview with Jean Todt that relates to the FIA presidency

No Donington in 2010

It's looking increasingly unlikely that Donington will be able to hold the British F1 Grand Prix from next summer.


I have wanted Donington to succeed but I'm sure everyone was painfully aware that it would always take a superhuman effort from the management team at the circuit to be able to pull it off.

There have been questions over the suitability of the circuit and its infrastructure, criticisms over the architecture of the new developments and scepticism over the circuit's debenture schemes and ability to pay for everything.


Seeing as the infrastructure will not matter / would not have mattered until the race weekend, and construction on the circuit's new building has still not started, it would therefore be fair to argue that Donington has fallen at the first hurdle.


In the current climate, if Donington don't have an absolutely rock solid business plan, they will find investment hard to come by - as they have done already.


In truth, I didn't believe that Donington should have been awarded the contract in the first place. Silverstone's continued reluctance to spend big on bringing their facilities up to the standard of modern F1 has frustrated me, but the actual ribbon of tarmac at the Northamptonshire circuit is arguably better than Donington and the infrastructure and future potential is massively superior.


I can't help thinking that Bernie Ecclestone has been using Donington as a bargaining chip to kick start the BRDC - who effectively own Silverstone - into action. If that is the case, it is a very disappointing state of affairs for Donington.


I just hope they haven't spent massive amounts of money on the project so far as they could well be deemed unfit to hold the Grand Prix as early as Monday.

Newbies

This is the first news I have read about the new teams for a while.

How long does it take to create a Formula 1 car? I don't just mean create the first rolling chassis, I mean test the car to the point where it is ready to go racing the next day.


My understanding, based on Toyota's protracted and sometimes controversial testing programme before they joined the grid in 2002, is that it takes considerably longer than all the new teams that are due to enter F1 in 2010 have had since their applications were acccepted.


As a result, I am bit confused as to why we are only just now hearing about one of the teams readying their car. I'm glad to see that it is the Manor Motorsport team as in my mind, they are the most deserving of the three new entries because of their extensive and illustrious experience in motorsport. Any team that ran Hamilton and Raikkonen to lower formulae titles surely deserves to join them on the grid.


The doubts over USF1 appear to have been silenced for a while as Autosport reported this week that they have settled on their European base and the BBC reported that the team had impressed FIA inspectors. However, I'm still concerned that there is no official news on Campos; their substandard official website does not even have a news section.


F1's future is no longer in doubt, but I can't help feeling that Prodrive should have been chosen over Campos and that the former BMW team should be in readiness to replace USF1.

Pole Position

Apologies for the awful pun as the title (you'll see what I mean) - it's been a long day.

Robert Kubica, Formula 1's first Polish driver, will join the Renault team for 2010. This brings both good and bad news.

The good news first: This has confirmed that Renault will not be pulling out of F1 at the end of the season which had begun to look almost inevitable after the Singapore-gate. After Honda pulled out at the end of last year and with BMW now following suit, there was a real danger that F1 could have gone the same way as the BTCC did at the end of the 90s when the manufacturers pulled out en masse leaving a weakened series. That now appears to have been averted and hopefully both Renault and Toyota (the other team most likely to leave) will remain commited to the series for a few more years yet.

The bad news however is that, in my opinion, Kubica will have to endure another season where the pace of his car will not match his considerable ability. I just cannot see Renault suddenly turning their car into a potential race winner over the winter. If they couldn't do it with Alonso onboard - ableit an admittedly demotivated Alonso - then I can't see Kubica faring any better.

Kubica was my driver of the year in 2008 and I felt that there had been a real injustice in BMW's decision not to continue developing the car towards the back end of that season so as to be able to concentrate on the 2009 car. A decision made even more painful in hindsight given BMW's woeful display this year. As seen with the career of Jenson Button, in F1 you are only as good as your last race and it's a shame that Kubica has not landed a seat at Ferrari, Red Bull, Brawn or Mclaren - the teams that I believe will be challenging for the honours next year.

Deserving Winner

Jenson Button will be a deserving Champion should he clinch the title this year.

There has been a lot of chatter on blogs and forums that have suggested the contrary.

I do not agree with them for three reasons.

Firstly, Jenson had an absolutely brilliant start to the year. No-one could have asked for any more than what he achieve - and there are a few drivers on the grid that would have been unable to achieve the same level of consistency, pace at timely stages of the Grands Prix and controlled aggression. His team-mate Rubens Barrichello for one.

Secondly, the way that Button has driven since that storming beginning has arguably been just as commendable. He was undoubtedly extracting the maximum performance from his car at Singapore and Hungary when Barrichello was unable to match him during the Grand Prix. Equally, his racecraft and race-pace in Japan this past Sunday was also very impressive, adding vital points to his haul.

Of course his qualifying performances have been suspect at times, but you don't get championship points for pole position.

Finally however, and perhaps most importantly, if Button doesn't deserve the championship then who does?

Of the four contenders this year, Button has made the least mistakes while under the most amount of pressure. His only DNF at Spa-Francorchamps was due to another driver.

However, Vettel made a critical error in Melbourne when he could have let Kubica past instead of trying to finish ahead in a car that was shod with failing tyres. At Monaco, he was on for a good points finish when he binned it at St. Devote.

Webber made less mistakes than Vettel, but quite often found himself just fractionally behind Vettel on pace, such as at Silverstone and in China.

Barrichello was poor at the start of the season. He could have won the championship this year had he done better earlier on, but he played bumper cars in Melbourne, and avoided the podium for the next three races while the Button was racking up the points.

Of the other drivers we would normally expect to be at the front, only Lewis Hamilton looked sufficiently motivated over the entire season - but he threw away too many points and brought the sport into disrepute in Australia. Kimi Raikkonen, Fernando Alonso and Robert Kubica at times looked despondent and uninterested, perhaps with some justification.

But Button should not be judged on the mistakes of the drivers he was competing against. If that was the case, then we would have to re-evaluate numerous champions past.

Button has been the best driver over the course of the season and he would be a deserving champion.

Come on Jenson!

I have normally prided myself on my lack of partisan supporting in Formula 1.

I have tended to support drivers that I like - sometimes because of their off-track personality rather than their on-track ability.

That's why I was less fussed than I perhaps should have been as a Brit when Lewis won the title last year. I supported Hamilton because of his on-track flamboyance and the way he has rejuvenated interest in Formula 1. I supported Massa because of his pleasant off-track persona.

My (perhaps bizarre) reasons for supporting drivers has meant that up into this weekend I have supported Jenson Button more because of his back story rather than because of his nationality.

When I started to seriously watch motorsport back in 1998, Jenson was one of the most promising British youngsters coming through the ranks and I have kept an eye on his career ever since. I always felt he deserved a better chance to show the ability that he so clearly has and first displayed to the world way back in 2000.

The fact that he now has that chance has perked up my interest and I gladly threw myself headlong into becoming a Jenson fan-boy for the races in Melbourne and Malaysia. After his win this weekend however, I am finding myself shift the reasons for my support.

I know there is a long to go, but wouldn't it be great to have the first back-to-back British champions since the late 1960s?

Old Things to Begin With

I am going to try and migrate some of my older articles over from the previous blog. It might be a bit difficult though and things will probably end up in the wrong order, but keep with me.

Here's some articles from my last blog:

Bernies' Medallions (original Feb 2, 2009)

The story that held the most interest for me today was that the FIA has 'revealed' that 13 Formula 1 championships since 1950 would have ended differently had Bernie's medal system been in force since the championship's inception.

Firstly, lets ignore the fact that I would argue a new system of classification should not really be assessed based on the impact it would have previous championships. Lets also ignore the fact that the biggest gainers would have been Nigel Mansell and Jim Clark which would have been nice.

What has interested me about this story is Bernie's claim that a new system would create more excitement for the viewers. He said, in an article published on crash.net, that the championship would have a much greater entertainment value if drivers were forced to fight each other tooth and nail for wins rather than tour round collecting points.

It appears that Bernie is none too happy about the fact that Lewis Hamilton won the 2008 championship. He used the example of the Brazillian Grand Prix last year, when Lewis settled into cruise and collect mode while an inspired Massa drove away from the rest of field, as proof that a radical shakeup is needed.

I believe that Bernie has missed three vital points when taking this stance:

1. The climax of this year's championship was probably the most dramatic of all time. The medal system would have confined Hamilton's incredible pass on Timo Glock at the second last corner of the race as all but academic. As such, I don't understand how fans, other than those who support Ferrari, would have been better served by a medal system.

2. A medal system would either amount to a confusing double tiered points system or a removal of all incentives for those teams not capable of fighting for victory. With Honda already gone, and Toyota and others pondering their future, this is clearly not the best plan in the current climate.

3. The consistency versus race wins formula is what makes motor racing so great. The age old dilemma, for both team and driver, of deciding between a conservative approach or balls out racing has been the cornerstone of competition since racing began. Without trying to undermine my own point about the irrelevance of past championships when assessing a new system - imagine a world without Prost vs Senna, Mansell vs Piquet, perhaps even Massa vs Hamilton. None of these fantastic duels would have been quite what they were if both drivers had always been pushing for the win in every race.

So please Bernie, stop changing the rules every season. Apart from the fact that it devalues the sport and adds to its inaccessibility for those who are new to Formula 1, they are often not brilliant ideas. Let us have our dramatic and championship deciding final lap passes - even if they are for just 5th place.