The Trend Continues

A while ago, Jenson Button was quoted as saying that he didn't think the fact that the first six races of the season brought six different winners was a good thing. In fact, Jenson believed that having such variability was off-putting to us fans. Well, he'd be disappointed with the race we saw in Canada - a race that brought us our seventh different winner of seven different races!

Canada is always an interesting circuit. The infamous 'wall of champions' on the main straight has claimed many victims over the year - last year catching out Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel in the final practice session. Luckily last year this didn't seem to affect Seb too much, as he went on to grab pole position. This year, it was Heikki Kovalainen who suffered during the practices, although this incident happened on Friday practice, and sadly didn't lead to a Caterham pole! Pastor Maldonado however was caught by the wall during qualifying, and although he did his best to try and complete his lap with only three wheels, this was clearly a strategy that didn't pay off.

I think we can say that we had a pretty exciting qualifying session overall. It was a genuine mystery as to who would grab pole position. Red Bull had earlier suffered controversy once again over the holes in their car. Last race, a hole in the floor at the rear of the car was controversial, and between the races was deemed illegal - even though Red Bull had previously asked for clarification and were deemed legal. F1 in the last few years is a bit notorious for its sudden changes of mind on aerodynamics (in fact, I'd argue that this is perhaps the more off-putting to fans, rather than having different winners). So, in Canada another controversy arose with the Red Bull holes. This time, holes in the hub were deemed illegal for providing an aerodynamic advantage, and had to be changed before qualifying on Saturday - but whether this would disadvantage the drivers is another story.

Hamilton was perhaps one of the more favourited drivers for pole position in Canada - the circuit which granted him his first win. Q1 saw the Caterhams of Petrov and Kovalainen out-qualify the Toro Rosso of Jean-Eric Vergne - quite an achievement for the team! Q2 was fairly straightforward, with the usual suspects (McLaren, Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes, the Lotus of Grosjean and the Force India of Paul di Resta) making it through to Q3. So, with the final part of quali to go, we were still no closer to understanding who would be on pole. Vettel set an early time in the low 1:14s, and took pole. However, the McLaren of Hamilton was still in with a good shot, as was the Ferrari of Alonso. Button seemed to opt for a race-strategy, choosing the soft (rather than super-soft) tyres, leading to him finishing in 10th. With the first runs out of the way, the leaders came back out for their final qualifying lap and we got our answer of who was fastest. While fantastic times were set by Alonso and Hamilton, Vettel took his 33rd pole of his career, with a 1:13.7! So, despite the controversy of their car, it looked as though Red Bull had the advantage in Canada.

Race day was another exciting affair - something we're all getting quite used to now. In the early stages of the race, Vettel did his usual trick of flying off into the distance at the start. However, he was swiftly followed by Hamilton and Alonso. When the first round of pit stops came up, there was a lot of switching around at the front. Hamilton took the lead after Vettel pitted, only to be replaced by Alonso after his own pit stop. With the top three still Alonso, Hamilton and Vettel, we could expect a fair amount of close racing. However, the leaders tended to bide their time during the second stint -possibly waiting for clues on each others' strategies. Tyre degradation was such that Hamilton was forced to make a second stop, although on the team radio he did ask whether Alonso and Vettel would also take second stops. As he was assured of the second stops of his rivals, Hamilton pitted. However, it seemed that Alonso and Vettel did not want to stop, having gained the advantage over Hamilton at last.

With this fact in mind, the team were back on the radio to Lewis and asked him to push as much as he could. Of course, the circuit of Montreal is much more suited to the McLaren of Lewis than it is to the Red Bull of Sebastian, and with much fresher tyres the move on Vettel was easily made. This prompted Vettel to pit himself, and eventually Sebastian finished the race in fourth place. With Vettel out of the way, Hamilton only had to pass Alonso - often easier said than done. However, the gamble of Ferrari to only one-stop did not pay off, and the pass was easily done with the aid of newer tyres and DRS. Hamilton thus became our seventh winner.

Things went from bad to worse for Alonso however, as due to his crippled tyres he was passed not only by Hamilton, but by Lotus's Grosjean and Sauber's Perez - people who had otherwise had fairly uneventful races! Now that Vettel was also on fresher tyres, Alonso was easily passed by the Red Bull, and Alonso eventually finished fifth. All of this in the final five laps of the race!

Someone else who has been suffering with a bout of bad luck is Michael Schumacher. Although he managed to qualify in the top 10 once again, SchumacherDRS failed in the open position - something which isn't meant to happen at all! I'm really hoping that Schumi's luck starts to pick up, as he has been showing more promise lately after his pole position a few races back.

Massa was driving an amazing race at the start, however a spin on lap six meant that his amazing form wasn't continued into a higher result. He did, however, recover from his spin to finish 10th. It seems as though Massa is having a second chance at the season, and hopefully we'll see more improvements from him as the season goes on.

So, overall another fantastic race. The next time out is at Valencia - surprisingly one of the races I rarely look forward to, largely because nothing ever really happens. However, the way the season's been going we could see a change in this trend, and maybe we'll end up with an eighth winner! The week after Valencia I am also happy to report that I will be attending the Goodwood Festival of Speed! So, expect a very long update when I return.

Predict Unpredictability

This morning I saw an article on the Sky Sports website in which Jenson Button claimed this year's unpredictability in the 2012 F1 season is bad for the sport, and will ultimately drive fans away. This was somewhat of a surprise to me, as personally this unpredictability is making the sport more - not less - exciting for most of us fans out here.

The 2012 F1 season has thus far seen 6 different winners in the six races. Jenson Button claimed the first win in Australia back in March, followed by Fernando Alonso in Malaysia, Nico Rosberg in China, Sebastian Vettel in Bahrain, Pastor Maldonado in Spain and Mark Webber in Monaco this weekend. This is the first time that we've seen such an opening to the season in F1 history - and yet Jenson believes this is a bad thing?

Admittedly, Jenson did have a point in saying that we couldn't see who had the best car this year. But, I disagree that this is bad for the sport. In having such variability, we might get a chance at seeing whose driving skill is better at any particular race. Maldonado's win in Spain highlighted that even if you don't have a dominant car, you can still win a race. Whether this is also down to the variability of the tracks suiting different cars is another point, but all of these factors together mean that the races are not a foregone conclusion.

If we think back to 2011, when Sebastian was so dominant, I recall seeing much more complaining that Red Bull were destroying the unknown element to the championship. We all knew that Red Bull and Sebastian would win the championship. This year, there are six drivers within one race win of each other, with Button one win and a 7th place just behind. So, when you have seven drivers in contention for the world championship, surely this is better than having a one-horse race. Admittedly, I loved the 2011 season - I am somewhat biased as Vettel is my favourite driver. Plus, the racing last year arguably made up for the fact that we often knew who was going to win before the race even started. So, having the racing of 2011 plus the unpredictability would surely bring more fans to the sport, rather than driving them away?

Further in the Sky article, Martin Whitmarsh also disagreed with Button and spoke of opinion a few years ago when the racing was seen as processional. Indeed, when Schumacher was so dominant, winning seven world titles, many fans were put off, as it was clear who would win without even watching.

So, while it may be annoying for drivers to not know where they stand race by race, and while it's also annoying for statisticians and betting companies, who would like at least a partial element of predictability; unpredictability is not a bad thing for the fans. I say let the championship continue as it is, and bring the question of who wins the titles down to the very last race. How can anyone fail to be hooked on this year? If you want to know who's going to win, you have to watch the races! Thus, we should expect the unexpected, predict the unpredictable and let the races play out as they will. Who knows what we'll see in the rest of the season?

Qualifying Surprises of a Different Sort

Once again it's a grand prix weekend, with this week's action coming from China. Qualifying took place at 7 this morning, and it definitely held a few surprises which should make for an intriguing race tomorrow. This season, McLaren have been confident in all the race weekends so far - despite Lewis Hamilton's sometimes grumpy demeanour. While 2011 was Red Bull's qualifying season, this year it looks as though McLaren have the advantage, securing a front-row lock out in Australia and a third place slot for Lewis in Malaysia. However, this weekend the team have had a few hurdles, with Lewis having to take a 5-place grid drop due to a gearbox change, meaning that his second position on the grid actually translates into seventh. Jenson Button also had a somewhat disappointing session, only qualifying sixth (translating into fifth after Lewis's penalty).

With the McLarens further down, you'd expect the other two big teams to be ahead. Well, this also prompted suprise this morning. Despite Alonso's promising win in Malaysia, Ferrari this week could only manage 9th and 12th, with Alonso out-qualifying Massa once again. Whether the team can turn this around in the race is a question to be answered tomorrow. So what of the Red Bulls? Well, this was perhaps the biggest surprise of all, with Webber no higher than 7th and Vettel not making Q3 for the first time since 2009, instead only managing 11th place.

Now, you should all be aware that I'm a Red Bull girl anyway, and Vettel is without doubt my favourite driver, so I'm leading on to a slight rant here. After Q2 with Vettel out of Q3, Twitter was awash with what I can only describe as childish tweets. Some people were simply laughing at the driver's misfortune, others were making sarcastic comments, and still more were questioning Vettel's ability in F1. While I understand that we all have our own favourites and not all drivers are to all tastes, the frankly low comments I saw on Twitter were embarrassing. I know for example that I'm not the biggest fan of Lewis Hamilton (largely for the fact that his personality has shifted since he first started driving and since he won the 2008 championship - that and the earrings), however I don't ever mock him if he gets a bad result. I certainly don't question his ability in an F1 car either. I recall a comment by Martin Brundle that there are seven billion people in the world, and only 24 F1 drivers in the sport right now. Surely then we should all have respect for every one of those drivers on that grid, as they've proven their talent throughout their careers? Thus, one bad result doesn't mean that the competitor isn't a good driver, and we have to examine other aspects to the session which could contribute to a poor result (for example, Vettel running an old spec exhaust while Webber ran the newer spec).

I think the Vettel-hate on Twitter is largely to do with the success of the driver, and from reading comments (and through personal experience in my academic career) I've noticed that people generally don't like successful people and rejoice when they fall. It seems silly to question Vettel's ability as a result of one bad qualifying session. The guy's won two world championships and was absolutely dominant throughout last year. Before you utter the age old cry 'but it was the car!', I'd ask you to consider that Webber could not match Vettel's performance in the identical Red Bull, so I think that this is a point which is null and void. This year, Red Bull clearly haven't got the dominance with the car, hence the poorer results for both drivers. A similar thing happened after Brawn became Mercedes - the car which dominated 2009 just dropped away in 2010. These things happen, even if the ability of the driver stays the same.

Another case in point is the performance of Alonso. Ferrari have obviously been having issues in the past couple of years, and yet I don't see anyone questioning whether Alonso is a good driver or not. So why the target on Vettel? Like I said before, all 24 of these drivers have exceptional talent to make it this far, and to post childish comments on a social networking site is just petty to me and I'm urging fans to grow up just a little, and at least form some coherent arguments! With any luck, as the season progresses we'll be able to see an improvement for the Red Bull guys, and hopefully the petty comments will stop so we can all go back to watching races and appreciating them no matter who is driving.

So, with the top three teams suffering in China's qualifying session, who took the top slots? Well, after Hamilton's penalty we've got an all Silver Arrows front row, with the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg occupying the first slot (a career first for Rosberg) and Schumacher following close behind. This is a phenomenal achievement, and Mercedes are proving that their car has the pace in qualifying. It could be argued that the aerodynamic system on the rear wing of the car is helping a lot during qualifying (as use of DRS is pretty much unlimited during quali and practice sessions), however we've yet to see this sort of advantage during the race itself. Again, tomorrow will tell us exactly what Mercedes can do.

The third and fourth slots on the grid are also occupied by some surprising drivers. Third place went to Kamui Kobayashi, which is promising for Sauber considering their excellent achievements in Malaysia. Fourth place went to Lotus Renault's Kimi Raikkonen

Rain, Heat, and The Ice Man Melteth

For the second weekend in a row I'm having a break from university work having dedicated a few days to F1. This week's action came from Malaysia, a race known for its extremes of weather. After the spectacular race in Melbourne, Malaysia held high hopes for us race fans, to see whether the racing in 2012 would be staying exciting or whether Australia was a fluke. As it turns out, if these two races are anything to go by then we're in for one hell of a season.

In qualifying it was the McLarens who were the big winners once again, with Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button locking out the front row. The surprises started with the occupation of the third grid slot. Red Bull? No. Lotus? No. A silver Mercedes. However, this wasn't the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg, but rather Michael Schumacher; a man who many in the media have criticised since his comeback. I was delighted that Schumi managed to get this grid slot; I've always been an advocate of Schumacher's return, as is highlighted in a previous blog post of mine (as discussed on 5 Live F1 too I believe). It's nice to see that Schumacher still has the ability to drive these cars. So with the Red Bulls losing out again and the Mercedes powered cars at the front after qualifying, today's race was set to be an interesting one.

As Malaysia is another early race, I set my alarm for 7:30 (the start time of Sky's F1 coverage) after moving the clock forwards an hour due to British Summer Time. I'd thus prepared to get up that extra hour earlier - I often sacrifice my sleep for motorsport. Sadly, my phone decided that it would add an extra hour advance to my phone's clock, so I ended up getting up even earlier than planned... Something I feel I will probably pay for when at uni tomorrow. No matter, eventually the race coverage began and I can safely say that this one was a treat, and worth the sleep deprivation.

The Malaysia weather wasn't disappointing, with a shower 5 minutes before the start of the race. This brought back memories of 2009's race - yep, the one where Kimi Raikkonen abandoned his car during the red flag to wander off and have an ice cream. While rainy races are always exciting, there's a fine line between the weather making things interesting and making things dangerous. At the start of the race things weren't so bad, and so the race started as normal. However, the safety car soon came out and 9 laps in the race was stopped. For those of you who aren't so clued up on the rules of F1, when red flags are given the cars line up on the grid in race order. At this point of the race, we had a couple of surprises in the top 10: the Sauber of Sergio Perez and - please believe me when I say this - the Hispania of Narain Karthekeyan. After half an hour of halted running, the race finally resumed under the safety car, and it was from there on that things got really interesting.

Fairly soon after resuming, the track had dried sufficiently to move back on to intermediate tyres. The pit stops led to a lot of confusion on the timing screens, but when things eventually settled down we had our leaders: Fernando Alonso, Sergio Perez and Lewis Hamilton. Honestly, I knew we would have a surprising race, but this was completely unexpected! Perez's pace in the Sauber had to be a highlight of the race for me - at one point it looked as though he was going to take the race lead. No doubt Perez would have won the race had he not gone wide in the closing stages of the race.

Sadly, the races of the Mercedes cars didn't turn out as promised, with Schumacher claiming the last point and Rosberg finishing behind in 13th. To my disappointment, the Red Bulls also had a bit of a poor race, with Webber finishing fourth (ok, not so bad but considering last year's performance it could have been better) and Vettel finishing 12th after sustaining a puncture when lapping the HRT of Karthekeyan (yes, he sadly lost his 10th place). To be honest, Vettel was lucky to finish the race at all: radio messages from his engineer in the last couple of laps told him first to retire, then stay out, then retire again due to a serious problem. I can only hope that Red Bull work out where their problems are for the next race in China. Jenson Button also finished outside of the points, after again colliding with another car and having to have a front wing change. After this change, he couldn't get the intermediate tyres to work, and suffered through the remainder of the race.

There's no way I can do justice to the entire race here, you'll just have to go and watch it. It was one of the best I've seen in a while. After the chequered flag fell, we had the most surprising podium for a long time: Alonso, Perez and Hamilton (ok, the last one isn't so surprising). So, despite the speculation of the pace of the Ferrari, Alonso didn't get a bad result at all. In fact, he was probably as surprised as we were. However, I don't think anyone can argue that the driver of the day is Perez, and there are a lot of us who eagerly await to see what he can do in the future.

blogs. Until next time...

And we're back!

It's 8 in the morning, and I've been awake for 3 and a half hours already. The weekend's race in Australia has just ended and marked the start of the season. I have to say, it was worth sacrificing the weekend's sleep!

On Saturday, the qualifying session presented us with the first opportunity in which to see what teams had the edge. People who aren't so experienced in F1 might wonder why we had to wait until qualifying to see who was fastest what with the weekend's three practice sessions and the preseason testing. Well, testing is notoriously unreliable for predicting who will be the fastest, and so there is very little that anyone can glean from these sessions. In practice sessions, it's often unclear as to who is sandbagging and hiding their pace. So, it's on the qualifying sessions that we can see who is genuinely fast.

After Red Bull's dominance of 2011, a lot of people were wondering whether they could do it again. As the three quali sessions progressed, it looked increasingly like this wasn't the case. Q3 sadly confirmed that the massive gap of Red Bull had diminished over the break, and we didn't see Sebastian's perfect lap. Instead, the McLarens appeared to have the edge over the rest of the field, with Hamilton getting pole and Button second, locking out the front row for the first time in a few seasons. You might expect Red Bull to be just behind this, however you'd be surprised. Romain Grosjean instead took the third spot in the Lotus. So, where were Red Bull? Fourth? Nope. That spot went to none other than Michael Schumacher, suggesting that the experienced racer might be returning to his old form. Of course, it's early in the season so this is a question which may remain unanswered. Finally, in fifth and sixth positions we found the Red Bulls, with Webber out qualifying Vettel. Rosberg followed the two Red Bulls, himself followed by the Williams of Pastor Maldonado, again suggesting that this team might be having a much better season than in 2011. The Force India of Nico Hulkenberg and the Toro Rosso of Daniel Ricciardo made up the last of those in Q3, and I think this year the mid-field battles will be much close than last year. You might have noticed that I haven't mentioned the Ferrari drivers. Well, qualifying for the red cars was a bit of a let down, with Alonso beaching himself in the gravel in Q2, and Massa just not getting up to speed in the session. They eventually qualified 12th and 16th. The final surprise of the first 2012 quali session was Raikkonen's inability to get out of Q3, qualifying 18th.

So, with a fairly jumbled grid set up all we had to do was get up at 6am to watch how the race would unfold. The McLaren of Jenson Button made a fantastic start, overtaking Lewis to take 1st. To my delight, Vettel also had a brilliant start, getting behind Schumacher and Nico Rosberg after another good start for the Mercedes. Alonso also appeared to come from nowhere and managed to get himself in the top 10. The race unfolded fairly eventfully, with a lot of overtaking (not least from Vettel, prompting me to ask whether we can leave behind the argument that Seb can't race - I think he's proven himself as a racer for quite some time now) and one safety car after the Caterham of Petrov pulled over on the pit straight. While the safety car was out, Seb pitted the Red Bull (named Abbey this year, following on from Luscious Liz, Kinky Kylie, Kate's Dirty Sister and Kate) and managed to leapfrog Hamilton's McLaren. From there on, there was a lot of close racing between second, third and fourth places, however eventually this resolved into a train of Vettel, Hamilton and Webber (Webber's best finish in his home race). Jenson Button ultimately won the first race of the season.

Further back in the field, there were a lot of surprises and disappointments. Schumacher's car broke down, so sadly we didn't get to see whether he had returned to his old ways. After Maldonado's close racing with the double world champion Alonso, he dipped a wheel on the grass and crashed into a barrier on the last few laps of the race. Despite Grosjean's amazing qualifying position, the race wasn't quite as favourable after he ended up in the gravel having almost lost a wheel. Raikkonen's fate, however, was much better. Even though he had an abysmal qualifying session, he eventually ended up in 7th place, securing six championship points on his return. Honestly, I think that Lotus will be a team to watch this season, providing their races go without incident and they have decent qualifying sessions. Again, it's early in the season so watch this space!

Overall, it looks as though the season will be a close fight between McLaren and Red Bull, with Ferrari having some catching up to do like last season. Sauber also appeared to be moving up the mid-field, with (the remarkably entertaining) Kobayashi ending up just behind Alonso in 6th place, and Perez finishing 8th. Williams appear to be having a better season than last year, however some bad luck during the race meant that they couldn't reap the rewards this time round.

2012 then looks like a good one. With 19 races left to go, the championship is far from decided and anything can yet happen. I can definitely say that the sleep deprivation was worth it, but if you weren't as keen on getting up a stupid o'clock then go watch