Sunday 29 June 2014

Will Fernando Alonso ever win another title?


Fernando Alonso is arguably the best driver currently racing in Formula 1. He’s a two time world champion who has proved his worth in the best cars and most certainly in many poorer cars as he drags them to wins and podiums they shouldn’t be achieving. He’s come so close to adding another title but missed out so often but with Ferrari continuing to squander the talents of their lead driver and the Spaniard certainly in the latter stages of his career will he get another opportunity to secure the third title he so desperately craves? 

Since he won his last world championship all the way back in 2006 for Renault, he has fought for a further three, all of which he perhaps should have won in 2007, 2010 and 2012. Two of which, and one in particular when he was driving a car which just didn’t deserve to be competing at the front, let alone nearly winning the world championship.

After winning for Renault he joined McLaren which was a tumultuous season and which quickly meant an exit back to Renault to have two relatively uncompetitive years where he scored just two wins and failed to win in 2009. But everyone knew he was still fighting as hard as he could mostly, especially when a sniff of a decent result came along.

Ferrari likes to have the best driver available and so rescued him for what would surely become one of the most successful partnerships in the sport. It hasn’t been. Admittedly it should have accrued him at least another two titles but that was more down to the driver than the team. This Alonso-Ferrari combination is now entering its fifth season together and if you go on the Michael Schumacher-Ferrari formula of success, it should be bearing the fruits of countless winners trophies. But it isn’t, it’s probably going to result in Alonso’s first winless season since the dark days of 2009, and that is just unacceptable to a man of Alonso’s quality and drive to succeed.

His lack of winning titles hasn’t done his reputation any harm at all. If anything it’s enhanced it greatly. 2012 should go down as one of the best examples of driving a near perfect season as anyone has ever seen only derailed by others mistakes, and I’m sure it will for the many knowledgeable fans out there, but for the casual fan the name written next to 2012 as the championship winner will be Sebastian Vettel’s and that’s all they’ll know.

I think it would be a tragedy for a driver the calibre of Alonso to end his career without another world title especially because in my opinion he is so much better now than when he won his first two titles. Is Alonso destined to be a driver remembered for just a couple of titles but mainly for outperforming his machinery? 

There’s something heroic about that, but in the end it’s not what gets you recognised as a true great around the world, success is the true barometer of a sportman’s legacy for many, and unfortunately for Fernando that’s been in short supply for too long. He needs another title, as if you cared to you could question his first two championships? When Kimi was a true speed king, he might well have won in 2005 if his McLaren hadn’t have been so unreliable. 2006 too, Schumacher probably should have won if it were not for an engine failure while leading at the penultimate race. 

I do tend to look at it another way though, 2005 he maximised his machinery and as is his way, built a championship, won when he could, maximised the points available if he couldn’t. He took the title with two races left to run. His 2006 title will always remain one which should be highly regarded as he battled an at his peak Schumacher to the last race of the season and beat him in pretty equal machinery. But since then he has played second fiddle to Vettel as the young German has exploited the maximum potential of the Red Bull machinery. Alonso has been the main guy to push Vettel, always the one challenging when perhaps he shouldn’t be. It's caused him much frustration to watch Vettel rack up the wins in a superior car when Alonso believes he's not as good as his four championships suggest.

On the Sky sports website, it was noted that that once again it was Alonso who was mixing it with this year’s dominant power unit Mercedes, but asked if he got much satisfaction from outperforming his car he replied tellingly. ‘"Not much," he sighed. "It's been five years like this. There is always satisfaction that everyone believes you are always performing at your best. There's the respect from drivers, Team Principals and fans for the job that you do. But I prefer to have no respect and to win more trophies."’

And there’s the rub of it. Alonso has made no secret of the fact that he deeply desires a third world title to put him amongst the greats like Ayrton Senna (although there’s plenty of great double world champions too), but as he approaches his 33rd birthday in just a month, time is running out for him to achieve his ambition.

You could say he has at least another four to five seasons but at the moment he is contracted at Ferrari until 2016, a team which should be producing consistently competitive cars but which have now been struggling to do that for over five years. Periodically Ferrari go through fallow periods, I don’t expect this one to last as long as the 21 year wait that Schumacher ended in 2000, but it’s not unreasonable to say it could be longer than four or five years.

Ferrari has been struggling with the calibration of their wind tunnel and even the supposed fix for this season doesn’t seem to be producing. They’ve brought in people like Pat Fry who designed for McLaren before and James Allison who was at Lotus and worked for Ferrari in the latter stages of the Ferrari steamroller of success. After the Schumacher era though, the core group of people that made the team work so harmoniously fell apart gradually, and it hasn’t had that same harmony since. It’s like trying to tape up a cut when it needs stitches; it’s not going to get better quickly. It’s taken Alonso to drag the limping horse to its feet these past few years and he continues to do that this season as he makes a mockery of the excitement that (an admittedly struggling) Kimi Raikkonen would challenge him as his team mate this year. 

Alonso publically maintains belief that Ferrari can step up next season, but it always seems to be next season at the moment with scarlet team. So where could he go? It’s well known his management team did a bit of investigating at Red Bull last season, but the likelihood is that with the immediate success of Daniel Ricciardo partnering Vettel, that driver combination will remain for a few years yet, although if Vettel doesn’t start beating Ricciardo a bit more you never know. 

McLaren have Honda coming on board next year, it’s a partnership that should work but McLaren aren’t exactly producing great chassis at the moment either and it’s bound to take a few years for this partnership to come to fruition. Despite saying things to the contrary I’m not sure Ron Dennis would want Alonso back after the 2007 spy gate affair lead to his acrimonious departure after just one season of a three year contract.

Mercedes? I think they’re quite happy with Nico Rosberg and Hamilton to be honest despite a Mercedes board member heaping praise on the Spaniard. I’m not sure any team would really want to put Alonso and Hamilton together again.  There really doesn’t seem anywhere open to him that would be immediately competitive. I’m afraid also that his reputation of throwing his toys out of his pram on occasion at Renault, the bust up at McLaren and the increasingly frosty relationship he seems to have at Ferrari has put people off him, he could disrupt the team especially if a team mate gets too close for comfort.

Unfortunately for Alonso he looks stuck at Ferrari as his best bet and that might mean he may never win a title again. As the younger generation become more established and he is in the latter years of his career, it becomes increasingly unlikely that a team will look to him to lead them for the future. After this season it will have been eight years since he won the world title. It wouldn’t be right for his career to be defined by early success and then a constant fight with sub-optimal cars that he out drove.

However, I’m not sure it would be right for him to jump into the best car and beat everyone either. No, for a fighter such as Alonso I think it would be far more poetic for him to create the perfect season as his legacy in a car just off the best. To drag and cajole it to perform miracles that no one on the grid (apart from perhaps Lewis when the mood takes him) could do. 

It’s obviously frustrated him to be given substandard machinery, after the epic 2012, last season he seemed subdued sometimes but who can forget that stare after he lost the title in the final round, it spoke of just total amazement and devastation, it was like he couldn’t quite believe that he could have lost after everything he’d done. He had put so much effort into 2012 that I think it was inevitable that after all he had done for Ferrari and they once again failed to keep up their side of the bargain that he would be sometimes below par. 

However he has regained the fight this year despite another poor car. I truly believe he can recreate a 2012 performance again. He might want to do it in the best car, but I’m not sure Ferrari can give him that for a while and there are no openings elsewhere. One more perfect season Fernando, he can be king again and he deserves to be.

all photo's taken from autosport.com

Sunday 22 June 2014

Is Rosberg about to take control of the title race?


The first Austrian Grand Prix since 2003 promised much and delivered plenty. Not quite the spectacular race we hoped for but still a lot to get excited about and plenty of drama for the championship battle.

Nico Rosberg lead a Mercedes 1-2 and now finds himself with a five race buffer, it’s an opportunity for him to control the championship a bit more. If we assume there are no reliability problems then Lewis needs to win five races with Nico finishing second before Lewis Hamilton can retake the championship lead.

Despite the fact Lewis won four races on the trot earlier this year, the likelihood of him repeating it and adding a fifth isn’t great as Rosberg seems to have found a bit more fight to challenge Lewis, while it now seems other teams might be able to get involved at the front a little bit more, which could work out in favour of either driver to be honest. For Lewis at least, he might prefer a bit more competition if he can get a car or two in between himself and Nico.

Mercedes do retain a sizeable advantage though; if qualifying hadn’t have 
gone awry then I’m not sure Williams would have been quite as close as they were.  He no longer needs to take as many risks as Lewis Hamilton does, he can afford to let Lewis win a couple if he is having an off day or his car is developing problems he can nurse it home rather than keeping up the fight.

Of course he is a racing driver and he won’t want to do that at all but there are options available to him. On the other hand, we saw when Rosberg had a 25 point lead after the Australian Grand Prix that Lewis went out to dominate, and he did so for a while. 

It could happen again, and I feel sure if Lewis’ pit stops had been a bit quicker (he lost nearly two seconds compared to Rosberg) and he’d come out that much closer to his team mate and not had Valtteri Bottas’ Williams in the way during the second stint he might have mounted a more consistent challenge, a ninth to second is good, but I think the win was definitely on.

Lewis has had a few reliability retirements while Rosberg has had none. In fairness to the title battle I hope Rosberg has a couple of his own to even it up and then we can see if Lewis will take as full advantage as Rosberg has. On the other hand as Lewis said himself in his BBC sport column if he has another failure then Rosberg's lead could be too big.

It’s perfectly possible that reliability problems could strike the silver arrows again too. For the second consecutive race they struggled with cooling which affected the energy recovery and the brakes again. It wasn’t so bad this time as they eventually stretched their lead, but it raises concerns especially as it was the same sort of problem. Hot weather does not appear to be their friend at the moment.

It all looked a lot friendlier after the race between the two, but it’s obvious that it could all explode again as it did in Monaco. Hamilton has to strike back quickly, and ideally for him he needs to take a large chunk of points off Rosberg in one race, not just have a Mercedes 1-2.

It’s the small things that make up the whole and at the moment Rosberg is grabbing every little thing he can, and he’s making it work. There’s been speculation that he’s quite adept at grabbing things to make things better such as copying Lewis’ setup or searching the telemetry for where Lewis is quicker and then copying it, something that apparently annoys Hamilton. In the end why should his main competitor steal his advantage, surely he should find it for himself?

Whatever the situation though, Hamilton is so far keeping a cool head even if the championship fight momentum is not with him right now. Both could crack under the pressure, even in this race on the last lap Rosberg ran wide which could have given Hamilton a dramatic last lap victory if he hadn’t then done the exact same thing.

It is of course still too early to determine the outcome of the title race but the next race is Silverstone and Hamilton needs to impress in front of his home crowd. The momentum swing has to start there otherwise Rosberg will begin to be in control of this championship and Lewis can’t let that happen.

all photo's taken from autosport.com

Rosberg holds off Hamilton but could Williams have won in Austria?


Nico Rosberg took his third victory of the year, heading a Mercedes 1-2 for the sixth time this season. This means he now heads the championship by 29 points, that’s over a race wins worth of points if you don’t count the final race double point gimmick but which could prove crucial.

It was all excitement at the start, for the first time this season there wasn’t a Mercedes in sight on the front row of the grid. The Williams cars, with Felipe Massa taking pole position ahead of Valtteri Bottas locked out the front row with their beautiful Martini Colours.

Hamilton looked the man for pole position, consistently quick throughout practice and the first two quali sessions, but whether it was pressure or just a simple mistake he blew it. His first lap time was deleted for exceeding track limits while his second run came to an end when he locked the rear into turn five and spun. Rosberg wasn’t far behind him, the yellow flags came out for the #44 Mercedes so Nico’s lap was compromised leaving him third and Hamilton a lowly ninth.

By then Bottas hadn’t improved on his provisional pole lap, leaving Felipe Massa to take the top spot with a fine lap, but one where it was evident he could have gone quicker still. The Williams cars were very effective around the Red Bull Ring, it’s full of long straights with little in the way of meaningful corners which suits them fine just like Canada did.

Massa got a great start and took an easy lead. It was a bit more difficult for Bottas as Rosberg leapt ahead, but after turn one Bottas got a great exit and swept around the Mercedes to be second. Behind Hamilton launched brilliantly between Daniil Kvyat and Kevin Magnussen. Canada winner Daniel Ricciardo in the Red Bull started fifth but got hung out wide in turn one to lose a lot of places, Hamilton was up to fifth. Behind Alonso, he made a great pass into turn 8 and so a Williams 1-2 headed a Mercedes 3-4 at the end of the first lap.

It looked like the Mercedes cars were ready to pounce immediately, with Lewis looking particularly fast today. But it just didn’t happen for the first stint. Williams were too fast down the straights for the Mercedes to attack, so mostly covered by around two seconds, they all circulated for the opening short stint on their super-soft tyres.

It was immediately obvious they were graining quite badly, but still it wasn’t until lap 11 that Rosberg dived into the pit lane for his first stop. If Williams truly believed they had an opportunity for the win I think they would have pitted Massa or Bottas next time around to try and maintain position but they didn’t.

It was two laps later before it was Hamilton who pitted, suffering a pit stop nine tenths of a second longer than his team mate. Massa came in next time round, losing out to Rosberg, but exiting ahead of Hamilton who simply dived down the inside of the Williams into turn two. Bottas looked like he might have been able to go quicker than his team mate and had a great in-lap coming out between the two Mercedes after a superb 2.1 second pit stop by the Williams crew. Massa’s stop had been over a second slower which lost him a podium opportunity.

So the four of them ran Rosberg, Bottas, Hamilton, Massa behind the long first stinting Sergio Perez in the Force India. He didn’t appear to be holding them up too much either as he made his tyres last until lap 30, Rosberg and Bottas only getting ahead a few laps earlier, with Hamilton not long after.
Massa didn’t have to make the pass before Perez pitted, probably much to his relief after the controversial last lap clash in Canada which had resulted in Perez collecting a five place grid penalty which meant he started only 16th, so to lead the race was quite impressive.

Once Perez was out the way, the expected Mercedes pace wasn’t unleashed. Rosberg couldn’t get away from Bottas. In fact he ran wide and struggled to get his pace back for a few laps, Bottas even had a vague attempt to pass but wasn’t quite close enough and he also had to be mindful of the fact that Hamilton was extremely close behind too and wanting to attack his team mate. Mercedes were suffering similar cooling issues as in Canada and were not able to attack as much as they would have liked, something that again held both drivers back, this time the situation didn't get critical though.

Lap 39 and Lewis pitted, with Rosberg following a lap later. By now Rosberg had eked out a two second lead, so Mercedes felt it safe to bring in Lewis first to enable him to jump ahead of Bottas. It worked well, although he did suffer another slow stop which meant Rosberg got away from him a bit more. Now the chase was on, he immediately set fastest lap and charged after his team mate.

This wasn’t just about a race win, this was about stopping the momentum Rosberg has been building for the past two races. He needed to charge him down. Hamilton had looked the quicker driver all weekend but he didn’t close Rosberg down as quickly as he might have done. It wasn’t until the final lap when he was within DRS range.

Then there was a moment, turn two Rosberg ran wide. If Hamilton could take the corner right he might be lined up ready to attack into the second DRS zone on the run to turn three. But as if to exemplify just how hard both were pushing, he too ran wide. It was game over. He backed off and crossed the line 1.9 seconds back.

It was a valiant charge from ninth to second, but I think it could have been the win. More significantly, it gave Rosberg a win he possibly shouldn’t have had. Hamilton was quicker, but like in Bahrain and Spain when Rosberg himself had been the quicker driver but lost out, it was his turn to demonstrate he could win like that too.

As the season develops Rosberg is becoming more and more a formidable opponent for Lewis. I think a lot of people assumed that there would be a fight for the title but that in the end Lewis’ sheer speed would tell and he’d come out on top. That might still happen but Rosberg today laid down a marker that he will not be a push over and he is just as hungry for the fight as Hamilton is.


Could Williams have won?

The Williams boys finished in third and fourth. At the second round of stops they again pitted a few laps later rather than covering the Mercedes stops or even setting the agenda themselves. After the race they acknowledged they didn’t think they could fight the Mercedes so just ran to what they thought was their optimum strategy. Given how they’re hard on their tyres and they didn’t want to waste this opportunity to get their first 2014 podium, one they should have had races ago, perhaps it was a wise choice.

Having said that Mercedes although on lap time were quicker, didn’t seem to have an answer for their straight line speed, I think if they could have tried to maintain track position they might have had a fighting chance of getting second or even the win, particularly as it seemed the Mercedes were suffering a milder form of their Canada troubles. 

As the track temperature had got hotter it became more apparent that most teams were rejecting the one stop option, something Williams wouldn’t have been able to do anyway, so there was an opportunity to perhaps get something more simply by reacting to Mercedes pit stops or just by taking the initiative. Just as Canada should have been theirs, perhaps Austria should have been the double. However, they have lost a lot of points this year, so to finally get whole heap of points that’s lifted them to fifth in the constructors maybe was the best option.

Red Bull Ring hurts Red Bull

The Red Bull Ring was a disaster for Red Bull. Poor qualifying, although Ricciardo scraped a fifth, Vettel only managed 12th. Vettel struck reliability issues again as his car lost drive and stopped on the first lap before regaining drive. He retired at half distance when a lap down and losing his front wing after a clash with Esteban Gutierrez’s Sauber, enough was enough. Ricciardo battled on after a poor start left him 10th at the end of the first lap. He ended up eighth after a fantastic last lap move around the outside of Nico Hulkenberg’s Force India into turn five.

Other than that it was a pretty dismal weekend for the team. Christian Horner chose this time to launch an attack on their power unit suppliers Renault. He said the situation was completely unacceptable and that changes needed to be made fast. Red Bull are committed to Renault for 2015 but after that their options are open with rumours increasing about the team making their own engines. Renault do need to continue to improve a lot to match Mercedes, but there has been progress.

Mostly this season it has been Red Bull who have been the second best team. I do expect that be the case again when they come to Silverstone which is less about straight line speed and more about the chassis and aerodynamics. This track was about power and with their current straight line speed issues it wasn’t going to be easy. But what is worse is that another problem with the power unit destroyed Vettel’s race, while Ricciardo was also restricted on how much power he could use from the Renault.


The scraps for points

Fernando Alonso battled hard as he always does. It looked like he might have a sniff of a podium but despite catching Massa a little towards the end he eventually dropped back to come home fifth in another race where Ferrari just didn’t look to have much improvement at all. Still Alonso shows how good he is by always exceeding expectations. In contrast Kimi Raikkonen could only bring the car home tenth in what is continuing to be an awful campaign for the Finn. He did have a nice moment with his engineer when he was asked to find a couple of more tenths per lap, he responded with ‘give me more power’.

Sergio Perez used his long first stint on the softs to end up on the super-softs for a short final stint which elevated him to sixth after a pass on Kevin Magnussen. He was 16 seconds ahead of his team mate Hulkenberg in ninth who seemed very disappointed to be beaten by Perez who had started six places behind him. Perez should have been ahead in Canada too, so Hulkenberg’s high regard in the paddock could be shaken a little bit if this continues to happen after Perez was rejected by McLaren.

Magnussen kept McLaren in the points with seventh while Button was disappointed to only get 11th. Toro Rosso had a poor race after Kvyat had qualified a brilliant seventh, but retired with suspension failure while team mate Jean-Eric Vergne retired too with brake problems. Lotus, Sauber, Marussia and Caterham all brought their cars home. On the Red Bull Ring the only retirements were Red Bull cars, I guess that’s ironic.

So on to Silverstone where Lewis finds himself with a battle on his hands. He was leading strongly last year before a puncture ruined his race. Rosberg was there to pick up the pieces that time, he can’t afford for that to happen again.

all photo's taken from autosport.com

Wednesday 18 June 2014

Austrian Forecast


Apparently there’s some Football tournament going on at the moment that has the distinct possibility of grabbing a lot of attention. That’s all well and good, but don’t let it get in the way of the next instalment of the fight to be Formula 1 world champion. It’s been an intense season so far in terms of the title battle which Nico Rosberg currently leads by 22 points from his Mercedes team mate Lewis Hamilton.

The all powerful Mercedes team struck problems though last time out in Canada allowing Red Bull to get in on the winning action and claim their first victory of the season. Don’t let that result lull you into thinking Mercedes are under threat; they were well clear of the field before both cars suffered a loss of power from their energy recovery systems with Hamilton retiring and Rosberg managing to keep the car on the podium with second. There’s still a long way to go before any team will be able to truly race them wheel to wheel but Red Bull look to be the team pushing the hardest to get back on terms.

So round eight sees the Formula 1 circus return to Austria and the now renamed Red Bull Ring for the first time since 2003. I always remember it producing a pretty decent race, with lots of straights into slow corners encouraging overtaking. In a way it doesn’t need any DRS zones for the easier push to pass scenario’s that we have now but still it’s got a couple of zones anyway. Hopefully it won’t be made too easy.

Pirelli are bringing the super-soft and soft compound of tyres. Expect a super-soft opening stint followed by two soft compound stints. With such a short lap time of only around a minute and ten seconds, minimising pit stop time might be an idea so it might not be a surprise to see a team like Force India repeat what they did in Canada and try a one stop strategy and get in the way of two stoppers.

The weather is currently looking nice and warm for Saturday and Sunday but rain is forecast for Friday practice at the time of writing which might make setting the cars up for dry conditions a bit tricky what with no past experience of the track for 11 years although I’m sure simulators will give them a ball park. It’s a shame rain isn’t around for Sunday, it’s been a long time since we had a good wet race, not at all this year so far or last. Although the British Grand Prix comes after Austria so you never know.

The Austria track is a similar layout to Canada, lots of full throttle and slow corners so you have to wonder if the problems that struck the Mercedes team might be repeated this weekend? As much as other teams might like another opportunity to taste glory this year I think Mercedes will have gone in-depth on that particular problem and have rectified it as best they can, which means very well indeed.

I think this race will be back to the Silver Arrows at the front and another head to head confrontation between Rosberg and Hamilton. Lewis needs to get back to the front after being out done in Monaco by Rosberg and out qualified in Canada on a track he usually owns. Admittedly he had managed to get in front of Rosberg before the power problems and his brake failure left him with his second retirement of the season while Rosberg has none. Rosberg believes he holds the psychological edge by being nearly a race victory up in points and Lewis is prone to sometimes letting his head get the better of him.

But tensions cooled over Canada after the Monaco furore and I think Lewis is in a good place right now. He knows reliability tends to even itself out over the course of the season and he also knows that more often than not he is the quicker of the two drivers. He’s just got to hope that if he goes on a run of victories Rosberg isn’t finishing second all the time again, otherwise it’s going to take four races to be back in the championship lead. I think we’re going to see a demonstration by Lewis of how to dominate a Grand Prix weekend.

Red Bull will continue to be the second best team in my opinion even if it is another power circuit that their Renault engine won’t be able let them keep up with the Mercedes top speeds. However they have such a good car they will still be up there.

Sebastian Vettel is showing signs of returning to form, he could just have easily won the last race but Ricciardo’s debut win is likely to give him a further push in confidence so how easy it will be for Vettel to start beating his Australian team mate is hard to say especially when he makes no secret he has not come to terms with these regulations just yet, or perhaps with not having a regular winning car for the first time since 2008.  Vettel is all smiles and happy for the team at the moment with Ricciardo’s performances but there has to come a time when a four time world champion will unleash his frustration with being out done, if it continues to happen.

Williams missed out again in Canada. Felipe Massa really could have won that race but yet again the opportunity got away from them; with this being a fairly similar track, look to Williams to show strongly again with both drivers, definite podium contenders.

Ferrari and McLaren both looked out of sorts last time out, although both teams had both cars in the points it was only because of a late race accident wiping out two cars that allowed them to have respectable results although Button’s charge to an eventual fourth was pretty impressive. Fernando Alonso isn’t happy but at least he can drive the car while Kimi Raikkonen is still struggling to come to terms with it. I think Alonso wants out of the team unless there’s significant improvement but I think Ferrari will probably be thinking the same about Kimi too.

Force India could be dark horses again, Sergio Perez looked like the winner in Canada at one point while their Mercedes engines will ensure that Nico Hulkenberg continues to pick up decent points. He’ll be wanting to be the one fighting for the podiums this time out though.

Toro Rosso weren’t great in Canada and I don’t think they’ll be much better this weekend although Daniil Kvyat says this is his type of circuit. Lotus and Sauber will continue their struggle this weekend while Marussia aren’t quite there yet to genuinely challenge for a Q2 place. Caterham are lagging behind their main rivals this year.

Also on the agenda is talk of how to make Formula 1 more relevant to younger viewers and how to stop a decline in viewing figures. One way to embrace younger fans is to make the sport more accessible on social media sites, something Bernie Ecclestone seems to think is pretty irrelevant. Another thing regarding viewing figures is perhaps keep it free to air instead of transferring it to pay TV and that statistic might stop and sponsors will get more for their money. Ecclestone has been brilliant for the sport but right now he seems to be losing his way a bit which I’ll write about another time.


For now though it’s the Austrian Grand Prix this weekend and it promises to be another thrilling spectacle which might just take your mind off the World Cup for a couple of hours.

all photo's taken from autosport.com

Sunday 8 June 2014

Ricciardo scores debut win to break Mercedes domination


Canada never fails to produce a fantastic race. With just five laps to go anyone of five drivers could have taken the win. The down on power Nico Rosberg continued to head the field as he had done for most of the day ahead of the Force India of Sergio Perez bravely trying to go through the race on a one stop strategy. The Red Bulls were climbing all over the back of Perez with Daniel Ricciardo heading Sebastian Vettel. Behind Williams’ Felipe Massa was on substantially fresher tyres and had caught them at up to a second per lap. It was anyone’s race.

It all started out much like we’ve seen so far this year. The Mercedes duo of Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton had locked out the front row with Rosberg grabbing his second consecutive pole position. That was actually quite a significant moment. As the F1 circus arrived in Montreal it was expected that Lewis would stamp his authority on the race. He’s a three time winner here and has always excelled around this circuit.

That Rosberg managed to outpace him despite being slower in practice and in the first two qualifying sessions showed at least that the Monaco win has given him added impetus in this title battle with his team mate and at most showed that he is quite as capable as Lewis at pulling a lap out of the bag. So far this championship has seemed to me at least that it’s Lewis’ for the taking. He was only behind because of mechanical failure in Australia and after rolling out four consecutive victories it looked like Rosberg was going to eventually be crushed. Monaco and Canada have changed all that.

For now at least tensions between the two drivers look to have reduced. The events of this race might change that again going forward as it was every bit as significant as what took place two weeks previously.

From the start Rosberg was determined to keep control. Lewis got the better getaway but Rosberg held the inside line and simply ran Lewis out of road which was slightly rude but certainly something that many drivers would have done given the opportunity, this allowed Vettel to sneak through into second. The field was held by the safety car for several laps as marshals cleared a first lap accident between the Marussia’s, Max Chilton clattered into Monaco hero Jules Bianchi to end their day early.  

After the restart Hamilton was soon ahead of Vettel and chased after Rosberg. Yet again the two Mercedes cars were joined in battle, Lewis hunting Nico down quickly before the gap ebbed and flowed through the first stops until about half distance. The fight wasn’t without controversy, Rosberg straight-lined the final chicane after locking up as Hamilton charged at him in the DRS zone. He had been just half a second behind but ended up over a second back. Rosberg didn’t slow but the stewards issued a warning to not exceed track limits again. Suddenly both Silver Arrows were running two seconds a lap slower, both drivers reporting power loss. The Kinetic part of the energy recovery system had failed losing them over 160hp and leaving their top speed reduced for the rest of the race.

Still the battle continued, but the rest of the field behind suddenly sensed an opportunity and they were catching quickly. After the Mercedes cars both stopped for a second time they exited behind Massa who the Williams team attempted to stop only once. Lewis had come out ahead of Nico after the German had a slow stop but immediately gave up the place as his brakes began to fail. He went off a couple more times before having to retire the car for the second time this year on lap 48 and with Massa needing to pit again in the end it left Rosberg leading and staring at over a race victory worth of points in the championship.

The MGU-K, the Kinetic part of the energy recovery gets its energy harvested 
from the rear braking system. It helps to slow the car down, so this year the teams are using smaller brake discs. When it’s not working though, it puts a lot of pressure on the brakes and this could well have contributed to Lewis eventual retirement from the race. Rosberg put his brake bias forward and hoped.

Perez with the Red Bulls just behind closed on the stricken Mercedes quickly and with 20 laps left it seemed as if Rosberg would be picked off quickly and a non-Mercedes scrap for the win would break out. But they haven’t been winning everything this year without their car being simply exceptional. Even with the loss of power Rosberg drove superbly, with just a few laps to go he still held the lead. Across the finishing line Perez would be as little as four tenths behind but Rosberg used the Mercedes brilliantly in the first two sectors pulling out a second gap before the DRS zone. It left Perez unable to activate his wing, if he had he would have flown past as he closed quickly even without DRS.

However, the Red Bulls were snapping at the gearbox of Perez, the Force India had only stopped once and couldn’t keep up the pace with his less than fresh rubber. His Mercedes engine though was running fine and kept him out of reach. With just five laps left Daniel Ricciardo who had got ahead of Vettel in the second pit stops after the world champion had been held up by Hulkenberg in the middle of the race made a sublime move which risked all.

The outcome was worth it though. Into the first corner he dived through, trimming the grass as he just scraped to the apex. He disappeared fast after Rosberg, hunting the ailing Mercedes down. The Red Bull is just as good a chassis as the Mercedes and he had no problem cutting his lead in the first few sectors to deploy his DRS with three laps left to run and take the lead.

On the penultimate lap Vettel attacked Perez in the DRS zone passing him into the final chicane, it gave Massa the opportunity to attack as well. He’d fought back brilliant after his late second stop, passing Bottas and Hulkenberg in quick succession. With eight laps left he’d caught the leading four and if he’d managed to pass them straight away I think he would have won the race such was his pace.

But he had managed to make a move stick but he was clambering all over them, so when Vettel made his move on Perez, Massa grasped at an opening, he charged down the inside into turn one but clattered in to the Force India’s left rear wheel ending both their races and almost taking out Vettel as well. Watch the in car footage from Vettel’s car, it’s heart in the mouth stuff.

Perez was judged to have caused the accident by moving his line to the left and will suffer a five place grid penalty for the next race in Austria. It brought out the safety car for the final lap, clinching a debut win for the brilliant Daniel Ricciardo. Rosberg held on for second with an equally great drive. If the Mercedes can still get on the podium with their problems then lets not get carried away with any thinking that this result might see a tide change. Vettel completed the podium and was extremely sporting with his actions toward Ricciardo who at this moment is leading what was once Vettel’s team.

Jenson Button had a great last charge picking off Jean-Eric Vergne, Valtteri Bottas, Fernando Alonso and Nico Hulkenberg in the dying laps to finish fourth. Normally in a race like this you’d expect to see Alonso up their looking to capitalise on any misfortune for the front running team, but it seems Ferrari can’t even do that at the moment as he spent most of his day fighting with Force India’s and Toro Rosso’s, in the end he finished behind Hulkenberg in sixth, with Bottas and Vergne behind. Kevin Magnussen gave McLaren their second consecutive double points finish with ninth while Kimi Raikkonen suffered another wretched day which encompassed a spin to at least grap a point.

There were two big disappointments for me today. One was that Hamilton retired and Rosberg didn’t. I don’t mean that in bad way either, I just want to see this championship won on the track not by retirements, and at the moment its 2-0 to Hamilton on that front. In seven races Rosberg has only beaten Hamilton properly once which should at least give Lewis a positive attitude as he fights to get back the 22 point deficit over the next 12 races.

The other is that Williams once again flattered to deceive. They really looked like they had the pace to challenge for a podium and so consequently the victory. Massa is driving pretty nicely this year but he’s been unfortunate to be involved with a number of incidents which haven’t been of his own making. Race winning opportunities won’t come for many this year and this was a golden one that got dropped.

But let’s not dwell on that, someone who is taking all their opportunities at the moment is Ricciardo. If you had to name a driver coming into this race who you thought could take advantage Mercedes troubles you’d have had to go with him. He’s been driving sublimely, is prepared to take risks as demonstrated by his move on Perez, he knew he had to make it stick as the tantalising prospect of a win was just a few seconds away. He’s grasped his chance at Red Bull and he did the same when the first genuine prospect of a win came his way. He’s going to win many more without the dose of luck he got in Canada and is surely a future world champion. Vettel is certainly going to have to go some to re-establish himself as the man of Red Bull.


He won’t be world champion this year though. That honour falls to Rosberg or Hamilton. It’s advantage Rosberg at the moment, but Lewis won’t be broken this year, he’ll be back stronger. If everything had played out as normal I think he’d have had the win in Canada. After two winless races when Formula 1 returns to Austria we’re going to see Lewis take this fight up a notch.

Final Result:

1. Ricciardo - Red Bull
2. Rosberg - Mercedes
3. Vettel - Red Bull
4. Button - McLaren
5. Hulkenberg - Force India
6. Alonso - Ferrari
7. Bottas - Williams
8. Vergne - Toro Rosso
9. Magnussen - McLaren
10. Raikkonen - Ferrari
11. Perez - Force India - Accident
12. Massa - Williams - Accident
13. Sutil - Sauber
14. Gutierrez - Sauber
R. Grosjean - Lotus - Rear wing
R. Kvyat - Toro Rosso - Drive train
R. Hamilton - Mercedes - Brakes
R. Kobayashi - Caterham - Suspension
R. Maldonado - Lotus - Power Unit
R. Ericsson - Caterham - Turbo
R. Chilton - Marussia - Accident
R. Bianchi - Marussia - Accident

all photo's taken from autosport.com