Wrong tyres for Monza and an unlikely winner

What is it about McLaren and tyres? How many times are we going to look back upon a missed opportunity because of the wrong tyre choices or ineptly handled tyre changes? It was tyre problems that did for Lewis Hamilton in Shanghai last year which ended up costing him the world championship. You would have thought he and the team would have learned from the experience but did they? Did they ever!

Monza was Hamilton’s race to lose. The weather conditions were atrocious and the Monza circuit is a very fast one: Hamilton territory! Everything pointed at a resounding McLaren victory. Possibly even a McLaren one-two. Instead we got a result which nobody would have predicted in a month of Sundays. Sebastian Vettel, aged just 21 and driving for the tiniest team in Formula One, won the Italian Grand Prix as commandingly as his fellow German, Michael Schumacher used to in his heyday. Vettel’s team, Toro Rosso, used to be called Minardi until 2005.

From its birth in 1985 Minardi was always the joke team in the paddock. David Coulthard when complaining about the difficulty he was experiencing in lapping slower cars would say things like “there seemed to be 22 Minardis out there today!” You always knew that Minardi would be uncompetitive, so they never posed a threat to anybody. Because of this they were popular and took the jokes on the chin. At the Australian Grand Prix in 2002, Mark Webber driving for Minardi in his home race, managed to finish in fifth place and scored two crucial points for the team. The shrieks of ecstasy and whoops of delight that followed this were as voluble as if Webber had been declared world champion. In other words, Vettel’s win yesterday could well be described as miraculous.

Not only did Vettel achieve victory yesterday but he also took pole position on Saturday. This surely was his weekend. Hamilton by contrast made a meal of Monza. During a wet qualifying session on Saturday, just as the rain was about to come down even more heavily, Hamilton and his race engineer decided that this was the moment for intermediate tyres. This was ridiculous in the extreme and Hamilton was made to pay for it. For the first time this season he was unable to make it into the top ten and effectively relegated himself to fifteenth place. Luckily for him, Sunday was another wet day in Monza and Hamilton’s team wisely chose to put him on a one stop strategy. It was all going swimmingly until the team made yet another poor tyre choice. When Hamilton came in for his one and only scheduled pit-stop, the team chose to do the opposite of what they had done on the previous day. Assuming it was going to rain some more, they sent him out on full wet tyres. As the track began to dry a few laps later, Hamilton was forced to come into the pits for an unscheduled stop so as to replace his full wet tyres for intermediate ones. From then on it was a case of damage limitation. All things considered, Hamilton was very fortunate to have finished in seventh place.

What must have been a relief for Hamilton was the poor form of the Ferraris. Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen also qualified poorly and had a less than impressive race on Sunday. Raikkonen, whose contract with Ferrari has been extended for a further two years, must now know that it is virtually impossible for him to win the championship again this year. He would be most useful if he were to serve the rest of the season protecting Massa from Hamilton – a job he failed to do yesterday by allowing the uncompromising Brit to overtake him in the early laps of yesterday’s race. Nevertheless, Massa still managed to finish ahead of Hamilton – only just. Now only one point separates the two (assuming, of course, that McLaren’s appeal against Hamilton’s Spa penalty is unsuccessful).

The person most humbled by Vettel’s win was Hamilton’s team-mate, Heikki Kovalainen. It is difficult to understand why he was so far behind the young German driving a vastly inferior car to Kovalainen’s McLaren-Mercedes. At one point the lead was more than twenty seconds and Vettel ended up taking the chequered flag at least twelve seconds ahead of Kovalainen. The future looks bright for the young German. As for Hamilton’s team-mate, the only conclusion one can draw is that Kovalainen isn’t terribly good in wet conditions. His face on the second spot on the podium was a curious blend of frustration and embarrassment. Kovalainen’s difficulties won’t be much good to Hamilton because he needs someone to take care of Massa with extreme prejudice. If Kovalainen can crash into Massa a couple of times and cause two retirements, he should be worth an extra few million next year.

Now that the speculation about Kimi Raikkonen’s future has been settled by the Ferrari announcement on Friday about his immediate future, Fernando Alonso’s petulance last year looks all the more foolish. It is no secret that he was angling for a Ferrari drive. He made that sufficiently clear in interview after interview. But that won’t now be possible for two years (Massa also has the luxury of a copper-bottomed contract with Ferrari until the end of 2010). I think it is safe to say that Alonso’s chances of getting a top drive are now very poor. There is no doubting the man’s talent – he has plenty of it – it is the lack of loyalty which puts people off. He would be best off doing a Schumacher and modelling the Renault team around him and then patiently striving to get to the top again. That would make him a legendary driver. Now he just looks like a whinger.

There are only four races to go and the championship is far from safe for either Massa or Hamilton. So then fingers crossed and belts buckled – it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

Gitau
15 September 2008

Will Ferrari's invisible hand work in Monza?

When an Italian motor vehicle designer sits down to sketch his vision of a new supercar, he thinks first of the most beautiful woman he could possibly imagine walking into his studio at that very moment, slowly peeling her clothes off and then passionately kissing him. A German designer by contrast thinks first of strength: rippling muscles, firm jaws, large fists and a booming voice. While an M5 in your rear view mirror looks like it may swallow you whole if you do not do as it commands and move over, a Ferrari brings tears of love into your eyes and implores you to move over, the better to watch it glide swiftly by. The BMW will roar when you press the throttle and declare “Du solltert dich besser nicht mit mir anlegen!” (“I will thump you if you mess with me!”). The Ferrari will do nothing of the kind. Instead she will purr and sweetly say “Ciao! Ti piace quello che sto indossando?” (“Hi! Do you like what I am wearing?”) Is it any surprise then that Italy is the home of the supercar?

Before her mother tried to kill me with Emiliano-Romagnolo cooking [I wrote about this last year], Bianca was explaining the passion Italians feel for cars, motor racing and Ferrari. She relayed a tale which I found fascinating. In the 1960s, the Lamborghini car company commissioned design work for a successor to the legendary Lamborghini Miura. When the chief designer saw the designs for the new car, he was so taken by its beauty and elegance that he exclaimed “Countach!”. And that is how the Lamborghini Countach earned its extraordinary name.

“But what does ‘Countach’ mean?” I asked Bianca.
“It is slang from Piedmont in the north west of Italy where I am from. It’s an expression of extreme appreciation or astonishment at the sight of a gorgeous woman,” she said.
“You mean like the British football hooligan yelp of ‘Phwoahhhhr!’?
Bianca blushed. “Exactly,” she said quietly.

Beauty and racing go together in Italy. It is for this reason that Ferrari began life not as a car company but as a racing team. Enzo Ferrari loathed selling cars but he needed to do so to raise the finances for his racing team’s survival. It is from these roots that Ferrari has grown to be more than just a well recognised vehicle. Ferrari is almost a religion around the world. More fans are attracted to Formula One by the spirit of Ferrari than anything else. Go to any Formula One circuit anywhere in the world and you will encounter a sea of red in the terraces. For the Ferrari fan base it’s more than a racing thing, it’s a love thing.

This goes a long way to explaining why it is obvious that the powers that be in Formula One never want to upset Ferrari. Upsetting Ferrari would for them be akin to killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. It is, therefore, a crude sense of survival that causes decision makers to stretch every sinew to assist Ferrari when things are not going the way Ferrari want them to go. If a loophole can be found within the rules to assist Ferrari in avoiding censure, it will be found. If by bashing a team – even unfairly if necessary – Ferrari will gain a useful advantage, that team will surely be soundly bashed. If there is a driver from any team impeding the progress of a Ferrari driver, that driver will be hobbled. The objective is to have the speakers ringing out “Tantarara, tantarara, tantarara tantarara!” throughout the circuit at the end of every racing afternoon. Questions will be asked if the self same speakers are playing “God save the Queen” when something could have been found within the FIA rule book which could have prevented it. This is the philosophy which informed the madness we saw last Sunday. One of the best finishes to a Grand Prix was ruined by three spineless stewards hoping to be invited to a cosy dinner in Maranello.

The perplexing irony of this is what I mentioned earlier: Ferrari is primarily a racing team. Racing is part of its DNA. Mercedes, BMW, Renault, Honda and Toyota are all volume manufacturers of road cars who use Formula One as the ultimate means of advertising their normal cars. Ferrari does not need to do this. You can’t just walk into a shop and buy a Ferrari. No way! The best you could hope for if you wanted a brand new Ferrari F430 today and had sufficient funds at your disposal would be to persuade a person near the top of the long waiting list to sell you his slot. So, if Ferrari is all about racing why the devil does it need assistance from the FIA?

I have puzzled over this for some time. The answer came to me as I was leafing through an old copy of the ultimate Economics text book The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith the other day. Smith spoke of an invisible hand guiding society towards an end which was never the intention of the individuals living within the society. For much of the time Ferrari do not consciously seek the assistance of others; it just comes their way as if by magic! Ferrari did not protest Lewis Hamilton’s overtaking manoeuvre on Kimi Raikkonen on Sunday. And anyway, since Raikkonen crashed out of the race shortly after the incident, no harm was caused to him or to anyone. Nevertheless, the stewards of their own volition, without prompting and having consumed no whisky, chose to examine the incident repeatedly hours after the race was over and the Ferrari lorries were pulling out of Spa. What inspired them? Was it the fear of Hamilton getting too far ahead of Massa? Was it a desire to piss McLaren off so much that they would still be off-colour a week later and Ferrari could then enjoy a one-two finish at their home Grand Prix? Was it visceral hatred of the English? What?

What has happened as we prepare ourselves for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, the fastest circuit on the calendar, is that the world championship is now within the grasp of an erratic Brazilian man called Felipe Massa. The chap has sometimes demonstrated flashes of brilliance but I do not think he is world championship material. Reigning world champion, Kimi Raikkonen, is a far better rounded driver but he has lost interest in this year’s championship and looks like he would much rather it were over. If the six points the FIA robbed Hamilton of and gifted Massa with end up handing the championship to the Brazilian, Formula One will look extremely ridiculous and will, undoubtedly, lose a lot of fans. Is this really what the FIA wants?

Let us hope we have a repeat of Monza 2007. Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton managed a superb one-two for McLaren with Hamilton humiliatingly overtaking both Ferraris in the race. Lewis, the only way you’re going to win this thing is by making sure the bastards can’t catch you!

Enjoy Monza!

Gitau
11 September 2008

Theft at Spa

I tend to recoil from conspiracy theories and urban myths. They usually tend to be a little too convenient or far-fetched to be believable. The truth, however, humdrum, usually makes more sense. There has long been a belief among the non-Ferrari supporting world that the FIA was part of team-Ferrari. This was born out by the curious fact that if ever there has been a rule capable of being interpreted in more than one way, the FIA have invariably interpreted it in the manner most favourable to Ferrari.

A particularly blatant example of this was seen at the Malaysian Grand Prix in 1999. The Ferraris were nearly a whole lap ahead of everybody else but were disqualified for cheating. The team had allegedly fitted illegal barge boards – an aerodynamic device – which gave them an unfair advantage over every other team. The race stewards disqualified both Michael Schumacher and Eddie Irvine but team Ferrari chose to appeal to the FIA in Paris. The FIA chose to exonerate the drivers but punish the team. The drivers’ points were reinstated because they themselves were not to blame for the incident. This seemed very odd and caused a massive furore. Still, the FIA remained unrepentant. I bit my lip then and shrugged the affair off as “one of these things”. I cannot do this any more after the travesty of a decision we saw yesterday.

Spa tends to produce great races - and yesterday’s was no exception – because of the unpredictability of the weather up in the Ardennes where the circuit is located. Lewis Hamilton, after qualifying superbly on pole, made an error on the second lap and found himself sitting behind Kimi Raikkonen for the bulk of the race With three laps to go to the chequered flag, the heavens opened. Hamilton, in his element in such conditions, managed to get himself up to the backside of Raikkonen and attempted an overtaking manoeuvre. Raikkonen went defensive and – unfairly in my view – squeezed out Hamilton. So much so that Hamilton was forced off the circuit and he unwittingly cut across the chicane to get ahead of Raikkonen. Had he remained in first position he would have been guilty of gaining an unfair advantage. Instead, Hamilton did as he was required to do by the rules and gave the place back to Raikkonen. He then lunged after the Ferrari and overtook Raikkonen fairly and squarely. Raikkonen then proceeded to spin his Ferrari off the circuit and into a concrete wall.

This was not what the stewards thought of the incident. Not even scarcely. Hours after celebrating a brilliant win, Hamilton was deemed to have gained an unfair advantage by “taking a short cut”. Were the stewards watching a different race or what? Fortunately for them they had a Ferrari behind Hamilton driven by his Brazilian nemesis, Felipe Massa. So determined were the stewards to assist Ferrari that, once they saw the world champion wreck his car against a wall, they chose to award the victory to a chap who had qualified poorly, overtaken nobody throughout the race and driven what one can only charitably call a lacklustre race. I mean to say, if you are going to take the piss do it with a bit of subtlety for pity’s sake. Felipe Massa did not win the Belgian Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton did. This is beyond a joke.

If you recall the European Grand Prix in Valencia, Ferrari released Felipe Massa from the pits dangerously into the path of another car. Massa himself was not penalised (and kept his full allocation of winner’s points) but the team was fined. In the GP2 race on Saturday, Bruno Senna did exactly the same thing and was awarded a drive-through penalty which destroyed his race. Where is the consistency?

Lewis Hamilton is, therefore, fighting Ferrari and the FIA for the world championship. Charming. Absobloodylutely charming! I am seething as I write this.

Did someone say that Raikkonen was the new master of Spa? Well, the two previous “owners” of the circuit, Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher, were geniuses in the wet. A few drops of rain and the Finnish ice man is guaranteed to fall to pieces.

All is not lost. Two points separate Hamilton and Massa. But who is now more fired up?

Perhaps there is some poetic element to this fiasco. The events did take place in Belgium after all. After the horror of the Napoleonic wars, Britain and France decided they needed a new neutral zone in Western Europe. They cobbled together a country from bits of Netherlands to its north and bits of France and installed a monarch related to senior European royalty like Queen Victoria. Thus was born the tiny lowland kingdom of Belgium in 1831. It didn’t really seem to stand for an awful lot or do anything at all until the son of the first Belgian king came on the scene. Leopold II was a right bastard. Had it not been for his exploits, Belgium would probably have disappeared into obscurity but King Leopold II was having none of it. Instead he claimed for himself an enormous chunk of territory in central Africa and called it the Congo Free State. He then proceeded to pillage the country on a more massive scale than has ever been seen anywhere else on the continent. The murder, savagery and senseless violence meted out on the hapless slaves who had the misery to labour on King Leopold’s rubber plantations will forever remain a grisly reminder of the barbarity of the European in Africa.

Belgium’s reputation has never fully recovered from this ghastly period. Not a lot else springs to memory when one thinks of Belgium’s contribution to the world: the saxophone, frites, Tintin and my favourite surrealist artist, Rene Magritte. In more recent times, however, Belgium’s capital, Brussels, has distinguished itself by being the home of the headquarters of both the European Union and NATO. From my blinkered perspective Belgium is an incredibly important country. For it is the home of quite easily the best motor racing circuit in Europe: Spa-Francorchamps. Famous for its impossible to predict weather and death defying corners, Spa is a true driver’s circuit. Everybody used to love Spa. Now it stands as another monument to theft.

I am not quite sure what I will remember Spa most for after yesterday.


Gitau
8 September 2008