Rain and tyre choices - Awesome Australia!
I looked at my notepad yesterday afternoon and observed that it had two identical pages. The first, headed “Bahrain”, had nothing on it; the second, headed “Australia” was similarly blank. If you didn’t watch yesterday’s race in Melbourne and had read my harsh words about the sleep-fest in Bahrain a fortnight ago or any of the damning press comment about Formula One in 2010 since Bahrain, you would probably feel vindicated after reading the first sentence of this paragraph. You would feel reassured at not having wasted valuable sleeping time on a Sunday morning to sit through two hours of tedium. You would be hopelessly wrong.
The second page of my notepad is blank because I was unable to tear my eyes away form the television screen for long enough to jot anything down. There was so much intrigue and so much excitement in Melbourne yesterday morning that even the BBC commentary team were taken aback. Seasoned F1 commentator, Martin Brundle, exhaled hard at a manoeuvre where Lewis Hamilton dived on the inside and overtook not one but two cars. “Formula One is really, really boring,” he said sarcastically, “I hate it!”
In the absence of rain, perhaps there is something to be said for installing sprinklers around racing tracks and turning them on without warning to the teams or drivers. As the cars began their preparations at the start of yesterday’s race, the skies over Melbourne opened slightly and mixed everything up. Predictably, a crash at the first corner forced a safety car episode for the first four laps and tip-toe driving until the rain stopped.
Suddenly tyre strategy became absolutely fundamental. Everyone began the race on intermediate tyres – tyres with shallow grooves – but because the light rain only lasted a couple of laps, it then became imperative to select the optimum point at which to switch to slick tyres. Jenson Button came in earlier than most on lap six, taking a chance of a spin-out incident on a still wet track. He, not the team, made the decision to do this with 52 laps remaining and knowing fully well that he would have to make his tyres last for more than three quarters of the race distance until the finish. He did so expertly and, finding himself in second place behind pole-setter Sebastian Vettel, smoothly cruised his way round the circuit. The Gods were smiling on Button because, once again, Vettel suffered a mechanical failure and spun out into retirement. All Button had to do then was keep things steady until the chequered flag and, thus, achieve his second ever win in Australia in only his second racing outing as a McLaren driver. This was an emphatic Button-esque victory and he was delighted by it.
Lewis Hamilton in the second McLaren had a different sort of weekend in Melbourne. He started out having his collar felt by the Victoria police for “hooning” (Australia-speak for raising smoke from one’s back wheels by doing boy-racer spins) in his street Mercedes; a practice which is frowned upon by the cops down there. They impounded his vehicle and will probably charge him with dangerous driving. This would be understandable for any young man sitting in a sports car for the first time but for a Formula One world champion it goes beyond embarrassment. The incident and the subsequent opprobrium in the Aussie media probably upset Hamilton because his performance at qualifying on Saturday was mediocre at best as all he could manage was eleventh place.
Come race day on Sunday, in conditions which suited his driving technique perfectly, Hamilton drove like a man possessed. After a series of daredevil overtaking gambits performed on well nigh everyone who mattered – including world championship leader and arch enemy, Fernando Alonso – Hamilton found himself in a position to win the race by a couple more daredevil moves but was, puzzlingly, called in by his team for a change of tyres. Any chance of victory or even second or third place was thus stymied. Hamilton was furious after the race. He could not understand why the team had made the tyre change call at the time they did. His body language suggested that he wanted to say a lot more than “the team chose the wrong strategy”.
I think at times like these, Hamilton misses the calm guiding influence of his father, Anthony, with whom he has parted ways professionally in 2010. Anthony Hamilton would probably have put an arm round his son and reminded him of two things. First, there is a long way to go this season, so a cool head is better than a hot one. Secondly, Hamilton has bad history with tyre choices. Staying out too long on the wrong tyres cost him the championship in 2007. His team could well have had this in mind when they made the call. At the end of the day, Button made the right tyre call for himself and the team the wrong one for Hamilton. Button emerged victorious and that is all that has to be said about the matter.
We now have the makings of a championship battle-royal between two English team-mates. Button’s confidence will be significantly improved at having got a win under his belt so early while driving for McLaren - a team which he was accused of being insane for having joined as world champion. Hamilton now knows he has a real challenger in the garage adjacent to his.
There is a lot more to come this year. One can only hope that Australia and not Bahrain is indicative of what to expect.
Gitau
29 March 2010
The second page of my notepad is blank because I was unable to tear my eyes away form the television screen for long enough to jot anything down. There was so much intrigue and so much excitement in Melbourne yesterday morning that even the BBC commentary team were taken aback. Seasoned F1 commentator, Martin Brundle, exhaled hard at a manoeuvre where Lewis Hamilton dived on the inside and overtook not one but two cars. “Formula One is really, really boring,” he said sarcastically, “I hate it!”
In the absence of rain, perhaps there is something to be said for installing sprinklers around racing tracks and turning them on without warning to the teams or drivers. As the cars began their preparations at the start of yesterday’s race, the skies over Melbourne opened slightly and mixed everything up. Predictably, a crash at the first corner forced a safety car episode for the first four laps and tip-toe driving until the rain stopped.
Suddenly tyre strategy became absolutely fundamental. Everyone began the race on intermediate tyres – tyres with shallow grooves – but because the light rain only lasted a couple of laps, it then became imperative to select the optimum point at which to switch to slick tyres. Jenson Button came in earlier than most on lap six, taking a chance of a spin-out incident on a still wet track. He, not the team, made the decision to do this with 52 laps remaining and knowing fully well that he would have to make his tyres last for more than three quarters of the race distance until the finish. He did so expertly and, finding himself in second place behind pole-setter Sebastian Vettel, smoothly cruised his way round the circuit. The Gods were smiling on Button because, once again, Vettel suffered a mechanical failure and spun out into retirement. All Button had to do then was keep things steady until the chequered flag and, thus, achieve his second ever win in Australia in only his second racing outing as a McLaren driver. This was an emphatic Button-esque victory and he was delighted by it.
Lewis Hamilton in the second McLaren had a different sort of weekend in Melbourne. He started out having his collar felt by the Victoria police for “hooning” (Australia-speak for raising smoke from one’s back wheels by doing boy-racer spins) in his street Mercedes; a practice which is frowned upon by the cops down there. They impounded his vehicle and will probably charge him with dangerous driving. This would be understandable for any young man sitting in a sports car for the first time but for a Formula One world champion it goes beyond embarrassment. The incident and the subsequent opprobrium in the Aussie media probably upset Hamilton because his performance at qualifying on Saturday was mediocre at best as all he could manage was eleventh place.
Come race day on Sunday, in conditions which suited his driving technique perfectly, Hamilton drove like a man possessed. After a series of daredevil overtaking gambits performed on well nigh everyone who mattered – including world championship leader and arch enemy, Fernando Alonso – Hamilton found himself in a position to win the race by a couple more daredevil moves but was, puzzlingly, called in by his team for a change of tyres. Any chance of victory or even second or third place was thus stymied. Hamilton was furious after the race. He could not understand why the team had made the tyre change call at the time they did. His body language suggested that he wanted to say a lot more than “the team chose the wrong strategy”.
I think at times like these, Hamilton misses the calm guiding influence of his father, Anthony, with whom he has parted ways professionally in 2010. Anthony Hamilton would probably have put an arm round his son and reminded him of two things. First, there is a long way to go this season, so a cool head is better than a hot one. Secondly, Hamilton has bad history with tyre choices. Staying out too long on the wrong tyres cost him the championship in 2007. His team could well have had this in mind when they made the call. At the end of the day, Button made the right tyre call for himself and the team the wrong one for Hamilton. Button emerged victorious and that is all that has to be said about the matter.
We now have the makings of a championship battle-royal between two English team-mates. Button’s confidence will be significantly improved at having got a win under his belt so early while driving for McLaren - a team which he was accused of being insane for having joined as world champion. Hamilton now knows he has a real challenger in the garage adjacent to his.
There is a lot more to come this year. One can only hope that Australia and not Bahrain is indicative of what to expect.
Gitau
29 March 2010
posted by Gitau at 12:11 pm
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