On Track Review : Malaysia Qualifying 2013

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Brought to you by TheJudge13 ‘on track correspondent’: James Parker

Heat, humidity and tyre degradation are the three things that look set to dominate tomorrow’s proceedings for the Malaysia Grand Prix. In what was a hugely intriguing Qualifying session today, which saw RedBull struggle, the unpredictable nature of the famous Malaysian weather once again struck to cause some fast and frantic action in Q3 as a sudden downpour turned the track into an ice-rink.

So without further ado, shall we get cracking?

Q1
Up to Qualifying on Saturday, it was generally expected that the shootout for pole position would be a RedBull vs Lotus affair – with both teams dominating all 3 practice sessions.

Under relatively humid (67%) conditions Q1 got underway and immediately teams started going different ways with tyres. With the hard compound tyre considered the optimum race tyre for Sunday’s Grand Prix, RedBull, Lotus and Force India driver – Adrian Sutil decided to bolt on the medium compound for the first session.

Both McLaren’s looked to look a lot more at home at Sepang, with Perez and Button easily solidifying their position in the top 10. Whilst Adrian Sutil, the standout performer from the previous Grand Prix for many, continued his rejuvenated form by topping the Q1 timesheet, a track Force India have always looked strong at.

Williams woes, if they needed any more clarification, were confirmed with Bottas missing the cut and being dropped out at the first hurdle, joining him were Vergne who struggled for pace and the two “new” teams followed with Jules Bianchi leading the way, a second clear of Pic, Chilton and the Caterham of Giedo Van Der Garde.

The big surprise however was the clear lack of pace from the RedBull car. Both Vettel and Webber only just scraped through with seconds to spare in Q1 as the RB9 looked ungainly and a bit of handful with the German only managing 14th, whilst Webber could achieve a more respectable 9th place.

Q2

Qualifying 2 was to be more of an interesting affair, with the storm clouds starting to gather over the Sepang circuit.

The first exchanges looked rather worrying for Lotus, as Grosjean on his first run could only manage 11th place, the Frenchman suffering yet again to find a good balance over the course of a lap. However his team-mate Raikkonen was far more content and sat 4th.

Up front the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg was sitting pretty, the W04 looking rather ominous in the dry conditions, whilst Mark Webber had recovered to sit 2nd in the middle of a Mercedes sandwich due to Hamilton sitting 3rd.

Adrian Sutil continued his strong form in 5th, with the Ferrari’s of Massa and Alonso hot on the German’s heels. McLaren seemed satisfied with both cars in the top 10, and once again Sebastian Vettel didn’t seem a happy chappy as he could only muster 9th on a scrubbed set of the medium tyre – the rain potentially the German’s saviour.

With 10 minutes gone however, the heavens opened around turn 6 and 7 as a heavy shower decided to spice up a hugely intriguing session. Disaster struck Paul Di Resta, trying to save tyres in doing 1 run late on, he could not set a competitive time before the rain hit, leaving him skating around the circuit on slicks, eventually spinning at turn 7 as he ran wide on to the slippery kerbs.

Maldonado also got caught out (who didn’t set a time and sat 16th), as did Grosjean, unable to improve before conditions deteriorated. Joining the above 3 were both Saubers of Hulkenberg and Guttierez who sit 12th and 14th, sandwiching the Torro Rosso of Daniel Ricciardo.

Q3
Conditions for the start of Q3 were extremely difficult, as some parts of the circuit were relatively dry, whilst the back end of the circuit was still feeling the full force of the shower. Intermediates were the only choice for drivers, and it would see the last driver to cross the line, given the best chance of claiming pole as the rain subsided.

Trying to manage the wear rates and heat of the intermediates over the course of the lap were to be crucial to set a competitive time, as drivers didn’t look to take too much out of the tyre in the drier parts of the circuit. After the first set of runs, Hamilton showed his skill in the mixed conditions by topping the timesheet for provisional pole however the joy was short lived thanks to some clever strategy by both Vettel and the Ferraris.

Seeing a potential advantage on fresh intermediates, due to the compounds wearing abnormally fast thanks to the drying track, Vettel and the Ferraris of Massa and Alonso pitted for a fresh set of boots. With a minute to go Hamilton was looking pretty ahead of Webber in 2nd, however the fresh rubber paid off and Vettel drove the “perfect lap“, with a 1min 49.674 to capture his 38th pole position in Formula 1.

It was an incredible performance given the clear lack of pace from the German in both Q1 and Q2 earlier.

Felipe Massa continued his magnificent form by out-qualifying Alonso for the second Grand Prix in a row (and fourth time in succession; Austin and Brazil) to claim his first front row in F1 for over 2 years. Alonso was 3rd, with Hamilton 4th, Webber down in 5th and Rosberg rounding out a frustrating final session for Mercedes.

The most frustrated man on the grid however had to be Raikkonen. Staying out on used Intermediates, the Finn could only manage 7th place, with a Lotus car that really did not possess the same kind of pace as in the dry conditions during the earlier part of the weekend. His problems were further compounded with a 3 place grid penalty post session, with the official statement from the FIA declaring that he had impeded Mercedes driver, Rosberg during Q3 demoting him to 10th.

It means the two McLaren’s of Button and Perez start 7th and 9th, which highlight a generally more positive session for the guys from Woking. Adrian Sutil, like Raikkonen, really could not reproduce his strong dry form in the mixed conditions and could only manage 8th.

Conclusion
It sets up an incredibly interesting Grand Prix, a race in which you would predict rain at some point during the afternoon, creating a potential lottery for anyone in the top 10. Ferrari look to have a stronger race car than qualifying car, and the fast starts they are able to produce will worry Vettel I am sure.

Whether Mercedes have built on their race pace woes from Melbourne has yet to be seen, but they could be outside bets on a podium if rain does hit during the Grand Prix – Rosberg especially, will be doing the rain dance this evening I am sure.

Adrian Sutil looks strong however the big question mark must be over Lotus. Raikkonen is effectively out of position, as is Grosjean, and it will be interesting to see what kind of progress they can make from 10th and 11th respectively – do they possess the same wear rate advantage at Sepang?

What are you most looking forward to tomorrow?

~ by thejudge13 on March 23, 2013.

Posted in F1 Qualifying Review
Tags: adrian sutil, Caterham, Charles Pic, daniel ricciardo, Esteban Gutierrez, F1 Qualifying Review, Felipe Massa, Ferarri, Fernando Alonso, Force India, Giedo van der Garde, Jean eric vergne, Jenson Button, jules bianchi, kimi raikkonen, Lewis Hamitlon, Lotus, Mark Webber, max chilton, McLaren, Mercedes AMG F1, nico hulkenberg, Nico Rosberg, Pastor Maldonado, Paul Di Resta, PETRONAS MALAYSIA GRAND PRIX, red bull racing, Romain Grosjean, sauber, Sebastian Vettel, Sepang, Sergio Perez, Torro Rosso, valtteri bottas

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Malaysia GP 2013 Race Analysis: A Damp Squib Leads to Fireworks

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Contributor: James Parker, TJ13 on track correspondent

Sebastian Vettel has won the Malaysia Grand Prix in controversial style, as he defied RedBull team orders to hold station in the last 10 laps to overtake teammate Mark Webber and therefore claim his first win of 2013. Mercedes also landed themselves in hot water, during a hot and humid afternoon, where on track events, will dominate the following 3 weeks for all the wrong reasons in the lead up to the Chinese Grand Prix.

The Race

For the start of the Grand Prix, conditions, like Qualifying yesterday were incredibly mixed, with the start of the lap drenched in a heavy downpour (turns 3-4) whilst the majority of the circuit was relatively dry. Every driver opted to start on the Pirelli Intermediate compound, before the magic 1min 50 window presented itself during the race to switch to slicks.

Off the line, both Mark Webber (surprisingly) and Fernando Alonso made lightning starts, as the Spaniard found himself leapfrogging his teammate Massa, going around the outside of Turn 1. As the cars swung round for Turn 2, Alonso found himself “rearending” Vettel ever so slightly; causing damage to his front wing and in the chaos he lost out to the opportunist Webber.

At this point Alonso managed to claw 2nd place back, with the front wing now dangling down. It appeared certain he would pit at the end of the lap with the Ferrari mechanics waiting in anticipation. With the track drying however, Ferrari looked to hold out, to coincide the nose change with a stop for slicks as the track appeared to dry rapidly.

That all fell apart though, when at the start of lap 2, Alonso’s front wing disappeared under the Ferrari going into Turn 1, leaving the Spaniard just a passenger and out of the race – a decision I am sure Ferrari lament now.

Vettel gapped the field in all the drama, with the two Mercedes drivers of Hamilton and Rosberg closing following the two RedBulls. Further back a poor start saw Massa settle into 6th, behind a strong showing from the McLaren of Button, who had moved up to a solid 5th.

As the track dried, race leader Vettel made the bold call of bolting on a set of slick tyres, whilst his Webber decided to carry on. As Vettel rejoined he struggled in the traffic getting mugged into Turn 4, by Massa, Hulkenberg, Perez and Grojsean who were fighting in the lower top 10 positions.

It was a move which benefitted the Aussie, as when Webber rejoined 3 laps later, he found that the decision to stay on Inters was correct, coming out ahead of Vettel. The rest of the top 10 stayed pretty much status quo.

Mercedes were showing magnificent pace, even after a rather funny, unfortunate incident which saw Hamilton stop at the McLaren pit garage for his first stop by mistake. The strong lap times caused second place man Vettel, to probe the team, asking if Webber could concede 1st place as he felt he was far faster than his teammate – something which didn’t happen.

Pastor Maldonado’s season turned from bad to worse, as his Williams car was seen exiting the circuit with a KERS problem on lap 14, meaning two retirements from the first two races for the Venezuelan.

The second stops kicked off around lap 20, and it remained “follow the leader” for the top 4. Webber pitted first, switching from the harder compound to the mediums, after a flirtation with the hards in order to help the wear rate on the RedBull. Vettel pitted 2 laps later and rejoined right behind the Aussie once again.

The second stops however, appeared to be a complete disaster for both Force India drivers. Firstly Di Resta came in for his second stop of the day, however was stationary for over a minute in the pit lane as mechanics could simply not attach the front right.  A wheel nut or gun issue seemed to be the case, and he rejoined well down the order in 18th.

His teammate, Sutil came in a lap later to suffer the same problems. Both cars eventually retired a lap down, which seemed to sum up the entire Force India weekend – frustration.

For the third round of pitstops, Hamilton decided to once again try something different in leapfrogging the RedBull’s as the top 4 closed to be within 5 seconds of each other. Whilst Mark responded straight away, and rejoined ahead of Hamilton, Vettel once again tried to run longer, and after his 3rd stop had been completed he found himself the meat in a Mercedes sandwich.

That did not stop Vettel however, after earlier frustration, was in no mood for games. Several laps passed and the RedBull man found himself closing in fast on the Briton – at this point starting to struggle for pace due to fuel and tyre woes.

The German sized up Hamilton down the start-finish straight and breezed past in his pursuit of Webber, with Rosberg next in line to capitalise. For Hamilton’s ex team however, the sky was no brighter, as Jenson came in for his 2nd stop whilst trying to secure a brilliant 5th place. But the team made a catastrophic error, as the McLaren man was released too early for the front left wheel to be tightened, and he found himself going down the pitlane with 3 wheels on his wagon – he too retired.

In a bid to try and stop his drop through the field, Hamilton made an early 4th stop back on to a scrubbed set of medium tyres. Ross Brawn was constantly on the radio to remind Lewis to “lift and coast” as he will was extremely marginal on fuel at this point. Rosberg rejoined behind Hamilton once again in 4th, and was quickly closing in again on his teammate.

Upfront, Vettel took the initiative as he made an earlier pitstop, reacting in most part to the Mercedes cars behind him. When Webber rejoined from his 4th stop, the pair were incredibly close going into turn 1, with both Red Bull drivers fighting all the way up to turns 4 and 5.

At this point it was revealed that both drivers were to follow a “multi 21” code by the team which would see them hold station to the chequered flag. However, 2 laps later, and with Mark Webber into “preservation” mode, the engine turned down on the car and preserving his tyres, found himself under attack by Vettel.

Getting the DRS benefit off the pitstraight, Vettel pulled alongside his teammate on the near side, coming up close and personal with pitwall, before the pair continued to squabble for 4 consecutive corners – with the German coming out on top going round the outside of Turn 4.

It was something that Webber appeared to be extremely unhappy about, gesticulating what he thought of Vettel’s move, as it seemed he had disobeyed direct team orders in passing Webber.

Further down the road, and Mercedes were having their own team problems. Hamilton, who was still struggling with fuel worries, was now evidently holding up Rosberg who passed his teammate going into the final turn, before being repassed on the pit straight.

He immediately went on to the radio, explaining that Hamilton was holding him up. Ross Brawn however repeatedly was heard telling Rosberg to hold station, and for both cars not to be risked in a battle on track – something the German was extremely frustrated about, but had the grace to accept and hold station.

All this meant Vettel crossed the finish line to take his first victory of the season, ahead of a very unhappy Webber, who clearly felt he had been cheated out of a certain victory by Vettel. Hamilton, after slowing hugely in the last 5 laps, as planned, was followed home by Rosberg to take 3rd and 4th – a good result for Mercedes.

Further down, Felipe Massa had a rather anonymous afternoon, not showing the promised Ferrari pace, with a late 4th pitstop allowing him to overtake Hulkenberg, Raikkonen and Grosjean for 5th place and another solid haul of points.

For Lotus it appeared to be a missed opportunity, as the team had the pace during the Grand Prix, however found themselves horribly out of position. Raikkonen had a hugely frustrating afternoon, finding himself tucked up behind, firstly Perez and then Hulkenberg for the majority of the Grand Prix – before passing the Sauber driver late on to claim 7th behind his teammate Grosjean.

It was a very promising afternoon for McLaren at times, as they appear to be getting to grips with the new MP4-28 finally. Button stated he felt a podium might not have been out of reach given Mercedes problems late on, and Perez, with a better qualifying could have achieved perhaps better than 9th.

But let’s not forget both rookies Bottas and Bianchi, who had sterling drivers to 11th and 13th respectively for Williams and Marussia. Both managed to conditions beautifully, and capitalised on others mistakes, Bianchi’s stock is definitely rising race by race, and it will be interesting to see if the Marussia driver can claim the teams first points as the season progresses.

But going into the 3 week break before the Chinese Grand Prix, the headlines solely look set to be dominated by the controversy caused by both Mercedes and RedBull. Team orders are very much still part of Formula 1 and I am sure Sebastian Vettel will have a lot of explaining to do, not only to his team, but also Webber. For the Aussie, it looks set to be the final straw for a team in which his relationship with has been stretched to its limit – has it reached breaking point?

~ by thejudge13 on March 24, 2013.

Posted in F1 Race Reviews

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Malaysia GP 2013 The Verdict: A tale of 2 team mates

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Well, well, well. The prospect of the race in Sepang was truly mouth watering. Usually the threat of rain adds for most fans the prospect of extra excitement and seeing the best driver’s in the world challenged by a slippery surface demonstrates another dimension of their skills.

Yet the current situation with the top teams being either quick over one lap or quick at race pace offered enough intrigue and many possibilities without the need for rain. Okay there was a Red Bull on pole, but analysts within the team were predicting 4 stops would be necessary were the circuit dry from the start to the very end.

And so to the drama. How was this allowed to happen? What on earth was the team thinking? Why did we have a driver apparently not communicate with the pit wall?

It was inevitable eventually. Fernando has been so consistent and played the percentages brilliantly, but today there was driver error from the Spaniard and a collision with the rear of Vettel’s car. Yet why on earth did he not receive the call to come in and change the wing when it was clear on the TV world feed that the wing was at a terminal angle. Other teams could see the big risk as Jenson was told to give Alonso a wide berth on the radio.

Alonso said after the race, “Today, unfortunately, we were very unlucky. After making a good start, I touched with Vettel at the second corner: it was a surprise to find him there, almost stopped and I don’t know what speed he was doing. Despite the fact the car was damaged, it didn’t seem to be too bad and, together with the team, we decided to keep going, because if we’d stopped immediately and then again on lap 3 or 4 to fit dry tyres, we would have dropped too far back and definitely lost the chance to finish up the front. It’s easy to criticise this decision, but at the time it seemed like the right one”.

It may be that Fernando is covering for his team but this was never his call to make. The driver would have no idea the exact extent of the damage and the team were then responsible for a reprehensible decision which created probably the most fearful of dangerous situations a driver can face. Failing to call Alonso in both put him in a great deal of danger and proved to be a delusional assessment of the risk to the points scoring opportunity for the day.

Further, if this is the case then it makes the comments over driver safety from Ferrari in the wake of Grosjean’s ‘reckless’ behaviour in Spa appear to be ‘weasel words’. Stefano has been handed a massive get out of jail free card with the media over this due to other matters developing later in the race.

We then had the entertaining sight of Lewis rocking up for a tyre change at the McLaren pit. Amusing but in fact this was a really big mistake and one which certainly cost Hamilton the opportunity of exiting either in the lead or right behind the leader. McLaren’s twitter account the @thefifthdriver tweeted, “feel free to pop in and say ‘hi’ anytime @lewishamilton”.

The huge surprise is how quickly McLaren appear to be rectifying their problematic car. On the hard tyre the 2 fastest laps of the race were from Sergio Perez 1:39:199 and Jenson Button with a 1:40:556 but once again McLaren shoot themselves in the foot with a calamitous pit stop. There are those back at the MTC who were calculating Jenson had a real chance of beating the Mercedes and getting a podium and fifth place would have been more than achievable. Points thrown away again by McLaren appear this time to have benefited Lewis Hamilton, ironically because he is not driving for them.

Bob builder of fast cars ought to pay attention to building nuts that facilitate a fast pit stop too. Apparently whilst the Silverstone team have a technology sharing arrangement with McLaren they did not run their new McLaren style wheel nut design by the techies at the MTC and this looks a very costly mistake.

Paul Di Resta was most chipper in the media pen, probably because the calamitous pit stops meant he didn’t lose further ground after a tricky weekend to his team mate.

Once again Jules Bianchi is stealing the rookie limelight and he is now 17th in the WDC ahead of Ricciardo and Maldonado. A strong thirteenth place finish may be tough for Caterham to beat in 2013 and thus secure the team the tenth position and the cash from Bernie.

Marrusia say they are expecting to score points this year and were most secretive about their front wing when the SKY camera tried to take a look at it. For Caterham it was another tale of woe and maybe we will see Heikki back in the green goddess and sooner than we think.

Toro Rosso were fined 10,000 euro’s for an unsafe release and Ricciardo’s retirement was as in Australia due to an exhaust issue.

Maldonado lost KERS so he retired the car and Bottas was close to his first point in F1 finishing 11th and is just ahead of Bianchi in the drivers’ standings.

Hulkenberg was indeed quick early in the race and then after dicing with Kimi managed to eventually stumble into his first points.

Romain Grosjean was the highest placed of the 3 stoppers and the car’s easiness on the tyres was evident with Kimi Raikkonen running the longest stint on the hard tyres managing 22 laps.

Mercedes clearly underestimated their fuel consumption as Lewis commented that they were on ‘a knife edge’ from very early in the race. This led to the team ordering Rosberg to hold station over the final 12-13 laps of the race, something he questioned several times yet he complied and duly allowed Lewis to take a podium third.

Hamilton was impressive in his podium humility and for giving his team mate the recognition he deserved. “I have to say big congratulations to Nico. He drove a smarter and more controlled race than me this afternoon and deserved to finish where I did”.

Rosberg was asked whether he felt the team owe him and without edge and smiling he replied, “Owe me one? No, I wouldn’t say that because I understand I drive for Mercedes, for all the guys at home who put their lives into building this car over the winter and doing such a fantastic job. So I’m pleased to get a great result for the team.

But of course there is a small side of me who wants to go flat out all the way to the end and be up on the podium myself. But the time will come for that”.

This appears to be one of the best relationships amongst F1 team mates – maybe ever – even Ross Brawn commented on that Lewis and Nico relate to each other more naturally than did Schumacher and Rosberg.

So that’s one team and its team mates but we we have another to discuss – Red Bull. In a way the race had fizzled out so the fuse that Sebastian Vettel chose to light gave us something to talk about instead of a final 15 laps procession. Ignoring team orders he attacked his team mate, giving us a thrilling 1 lap battle before squeezing between Webber and the pit wall using DRS on the pit straight.

Following the cars being shut down in parc ferme, Webber was first to the weigh in but didn’t appear in the drivers’ ready room behind the podium for quite a while. Vettel was in there with a stern faced Newey making small talk about the tyre performance in the early part of the race.

Mark Webber arrived with just around 1 minute to spare before the presentation ceremony began. Stern faced and ignoring Vettel he grabbed a towel and a drink and sat down. He then gave Vettel a withering stare and said “Multi 21 Seb…. Multi 21”. Vettel says nothing and Adrian Newey doesn’t interfere.

Apparently Red Bull sent two of their PR people to meet the driver’s before the podium ceremony, but the FIA doorman refused them entry.

On the podium Vettel claimed that it had been a good battle and his 27th F1 win – matching the record of Jackie Stewart – was because he had more in hand than Webber and indeed it was he who managed go gain the ‘upper hand’. Webber claimed he had been told twice to turn down his engine and that the team wanted to protect the 1-2.
“I won a race as well… but in the end Seb made his own decisions today and will have protection as usual and that’s the way it goes. I was disappointed with the outcome and I did my best”.

Helmut Marko was asked in the pit lane for his views on matters and was pretty forthright saying, “We told the drivers to stay in their positions because we were worried about the tyre wear but at this stage it got out of control I have to say“.

He was then asked was Vettel’s decision to ignore team orders acceptable and responded, “No,  the team will have to have a word because we have to control the drivers. Its not like it is at Mercedes where there is a clear number one and number 2, we basically treat the drivers the same”. Good one Helmut, deflect the attention and stir some grief for Niki and co.

Christian Horner, never one to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ when 10,000 words can be used was asked directly whether Sebastian Vettell had disobeyed team orders had this to say (eventually). “After the final round of pit stops we gave instructions to both cars. Of course Mark’s going to be aggrieved by it but the instructions were clear, they were clear for all to hear”.

This was evident to the world as Horner told Vettel on the radio that he was being ‘silly’ and Rocky commentd following the chequered flag, “you clearly wanted that badly, but you’ll now have to give some explanations”.

The team photograph with the trophies was cancelled. During the FIA drivers’ press conference for the written media, it was reported that Sebastian apoligised to Mark Webber, however the Aussie was in no mood to hear it.

Here’s what the drivers said during the post podium media interviews in the ‘pen’, firstly from Webber.

He was asked whether he accepted Vettel’s apology. “I respect Sebastian, but it is still very raw at the moment because we have a plan before the race how things will be given this scenario”.

The reporter then suggested there was no point to an agreement if both parties don’t adhere to it  and Webber replied, “I was completely reassured twice that we were not going to abuse the cars on each other because it was very easy for us to not get any points. It’s very hard for everybody to understand the whole scenario there’s a lot of people who think they know the whole situation but unfortunately it’s not possible for them to understand everything”.

The next question Webber fielded was regarding team morale going forward and he was coded in his reply. “It puts a lot of heat on certain people for sure – inevitably it does. Unfortunately there is no rewind button now so the scenario is now a bit more challenging for certain people.

Its 3 weeks to the next race, so we are fortunate we have 3 weeks. I will catch some waves in Australia on my board so this will be good medicine for me. But there were a lot of things in my mind during the last 15 laps of the grand prix to be honest but whether the medicine is enough – we’ll see”.

Sebastian was asked how he intended to build bridges with his team mate. “We respect each other so in that regard there is nothing that has to be fixed. We don’t hate each other so there is nothing to worry about for going into the next couple of races. I messed up today and I want to apologise for that but right now I want to tell the truth – I wasn’t aware of it otherwise I wouldn’t take that much risk to pass someone I wasn’t supposed to pass at that moment.

But just before we got out on the podium, I had a very quick word and yeah it was quite a shock and not easy for me to admit but that’s the truth so I want to stick to the truth”.

Sebastian was asked if the victory was a sour one and he responded, “I don’t care about the criticism, I owe an explanation to mark and the team – everyone is entitled to their opinions – but for sure this is not a victory I’m very proud of because it should have been Mark’s”.

Vettel is clearly maintaining he didn’t know he was being told to hold station, despite both Horner and Marko’s crystal clear assertions. In a later interview sebastian appears to modify his position.

“I got the call and I ignored it. Mark and I are used to fighting each other when we’re close, but with the tyres how they are now, and not knowing how long they will last, it was an extremely big risk to ignore the call to stay second”.

The problem for Red Bull is that since team orders have been allowed they claim that the drivers receive equal treatment and it is the interests of the team that come first and the driver is an employee of the team. Well the genie is out of the bottle, and should Vettel find himself in a situation where the WDC is tight and 3 incremental points make all the difference; and should he need those points to be delivered with the co-operation of his team mate – What will Webber do?

I have heard today that there are a number within the team believe that Sebastian today went too far. Ruthless in pursuit of winning is fine, but in taking an unfair advantage of his team mate who had out manouvred him all race, Vettel’s actions are tantamount to cheating.

Webber had turned down the engine as instructed when he was mugged by a dangerous move adjacent to the concrete pit wall. Further, David Coultard commented live at the time of the Vettel ‘pass’ that it Mark could easily have run him wide and defended the  position coming out of turn 4. This analysis was borne out by SKY presenter and racer Anthony Davidson.

Mark Webber is the oldest driver in F1 at present, he has a contract to the end of the year, who knows what he will decide to do when presented with wheel to wheel racing with his team mate.

Vettel was heckled on the podium in Australia and he should be careful because it does matter what people other than Mark and the team think. Today there there are those in the media who shape the news and what F1 fans read that are asking “is Vettel in fact Schumacher in disguise?”

~ by thejudge13 on March 24, 2013.

Posted in F1 Race Reviews

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Daily News and Comment

AppId is over the quota

Massa – part of the strategy

It appears horses heads are aplenty at present. Charles Pic must have received one for almost taking out Alonso in Melbourne and Felipe has been clearly ‘got at’ by Il Padrino and the boys.

Protocol amongst a number of teams is that the leading car on the agreed lap for a planned pitstop get’s the call to come in first – or at least the option, and despite running ahead of Alonso in the Melbourne GP Alonso got the nod for the first stop ahead of Massa.

This appeared to give Fernando the undercut which put him past Massa and Vettel when the round of pit stops had been concluded. Flavio Briatore commented, “Felipe should not be at all happy,” and following the race itself Felipe was clear when he stated, “Yes I was upset when Fernando got ahead of me. That was the only problem of my race, where I lost two positions.”

One week and a horses head later, Felipe is singing a different tune. Speaking to Brazil’s Totalrace he now claims, “I was not penalised or disadvantaged. When we were in a group of cars, Fernando came in earlier … it’s always easier when you take more of a risk.

“It looked like it was going to hurt him, but it ended up working out. Of course, if you’re fighting for the best and that happens, you’re upset, but of course it was not a disadvantage or even team orders. Not at all. I was part of that strategy and it didn’t work out. It was not easy to understand the tyres with such little practice.”

TJ13 is hearing that lovers and friends of the equine fraternity are concerned about their recent rapidly dwindling numbers in the Italian countryside.

UPDATE: Felipe has also been replaced as one of the 2 directors of the Grand Prix Drivers Association (GDPA) today by a vote that has promoted Jenson Button. Pedro De La Rosa, chairman said “”It’s good for the GPDA as we have two world champions as directors now.” The other ‘director’ is Sebastian Vettel.

Matters under discussion included the recent fines handed out by the stewards in Australia. The drivers understood that were they to pay significantly higher fees for their F1 super license that they would not be fined for misdemeanours. Two drivers were fined for pit lane speeding in Melbourne.

The decision was to leave the matter with the FIA for now.

Kubica rejected  DTM

Robert Kubica tested a DTM car in Portugal over the winter break and it was believed that he would race in that series during 2013. However, with little notice Kubica announced he was entering the WRC, in modified class 2 car.

DTM as a circuit racing event may have given some indication as to whether Kubica could realistically expect to return to F1 at all. Following the DTM test and the failure for Kubica to be declared for the series it was presumed in certain quarters that the team had declined to offer Robert a drive.

However, today in Spanish publication AS, Robert informs us “I had an offer to race in DTM, but I chose rally even though it’s a hundred times more difficult. I made the decision late because I wanted it to be right and, hopefully, later this year I will be happy with my choice. DTM is a very difficult championship, with a very high level, and maybe for me it would have been easier to race on circuits, as it’s what I know.”

Dissapointingly for many Kubica confesses, “I don’t think much about Formula One. Definitely the easiest choice would have been to do the DTM. But today my limitations mean I cannot drive Formula One on some of the most physically demanding circuits.

I also have limitations to do the rallies and so I will work hard this year and if I can overcome my limitations, I’ll have time to think about returning to Formula One,” he added hopefully.

Grosjean gets B-spec car again

Many people were not aware that in Melbourne, Romain Grosjean did not have the same specification of car as did his team mate Kimi. Certain parts arrived late on Saturday which meant he had little time to properly set up the car. The result was Grosjean qualified nearly 3/10ths of a second slower than Kimi and finished a disappointing 10th in the race.

Speaking in Sepang today James Allison confirmed this, ”He’s [Grosjean] not had an easy weekend either here or there, because we haven’t been able to provide two cars in exactly the same configuration on either occasion. Here, once again, we only have one set of kit and we’ve chosen to run that with Kimi and Romain is disadvantaged for that.”

TJ13 believes the missing bits are a key aero upgrade and Allison explains, “We will always try to get two sets available but (it’s) not always possible. So he’s had a difficult set of circumstances and he’s also up against a team-mate who is really firing on all cylinders.”

When Eric Boullier answered in the principal’s press meeting last week that the team had the budget for the development fight, I didn’t realise it meant by just planning to do this for just one car. Romain is entitled to expect as many buttons on his steering wheel as Kimi – in my humble opinion’

Hey, but that is the life of a number 2 Formula 1 driver. Unfortunately, this disadvantage will not be reflected in Adam’s adjusted ‘Victim’s of Circumstance’ table for publication next week.

The word is that Lotus will try their passive DRS system this weekend which could make Kimi even quicker. Air is taken in above the driver’s head, either side of the main air intake for the engine – via 2 ‘ear bud’ like slots and piped down the car. The air exists at the rear and is used to reduce drag at the rear of the car when travelling at high speed.

Surprise surprise – not

The worst kept secret in F1 is sneaking out. TJ13 was one of the first to report the Paddy Lowe story and from the moment Toto Wolff bought a share in the AGM F1 team there had to be a question mark over Nick Fry’s position of CEO in Brackley. Whilst Toto has managed to fudge the issue with Ross Brawn nicely and slipped into the FIA press conference last week, “Ross does not report to me”.

Apparently despite stating last week that ”the team has gone through many shareholdings and restructurings. It was BAR, then Honda, then Ross brought the team, it won the world championship and now it is Mercedes. So it is about calming down the situation and giving the long term view and commitment”, the hungry Wolff has decided on his first prey.

Nick Fry will step down quietly as CEO of Mercedes but will retain a consultancy position with the team for the rest of the season. He joined the team in 2002 when the were called BAR and so a 12 year association with Brackley will slowly fizzle out by the end of the year. I wonder if he and Paddy will be ‘consulting’ together over the coming months – on how to make the perfect cup of tea.

~ by thejudge13 on March 22, 2013.

Posted in Daily News and comment

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Ross Brawn: “The pace of progress at the front is ferocious…”

Ross Brawn says he has no regrets about not pitting Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg for fresh intermediates at the end of Q3, a strategy that helped to propel Sebastian Vettel and the two Ferraris to the head of the field.

Hamilton and Rosberg had to settle for fourth and sixth, having looked stronger earlier in the session.

“We’d obviously considered it before the session started,” said Brawn of the alternative strategy. “We’d seen some indications that the intermediate both held on and maybe even improved as it wore down, but I don’t think that seemed to be the case. It was as simple as that.”

Nevertheless Brawn says he’s happy with the way the Malaysian weekend has turned out thus far.

“I don’t think we were able to see the full potential of the cars in the dry, but I think we’re certainly top six in terms of our cars. So I think it’s a measure of where we are right now that we’re disappointed with fourth and sixth. Fourth and sixth would have been very welcome in the second half of last year, this year we’re a bit disappointed.

“We’re in that group. I don’t think we’re the fastest team, but we’ve made some encouraging progress, and we’ve got to keep pushing hard to keep progressing, because the pace of progress at the front is ferocious. We’re going to keep working hard to keep bringing new improvements to the cars.

“What will really count is where everyone is tomorrow, how they’re using their tyres, how they’re getting the most from them, good strategy, so on and so forth. The next measure will be tomorrow.”

Asked if he would be disappointed to still be fourth and sixth on Sunday, Ross said: “It would be OK. There are worse positions, and there are better positions. I think the drivers have worked really well this weekend, and the engineers have worked really well to have the car that we want to have. If that all comes together in the race, then fourth and sixth probably would be a bit of a disappointment.

“It’s difficult to speculate where we will end up, but we’re not in a bad place. We spent a lot of time getting the car dialled in for the race, and if that carries through – and it doesn’t always carry through, you get different conditions on a Sunday, and you suddenly find the car you tuned to heat the sweet spot doesn’t hit the sweet spot on Sunday. If it doesn’t then with these tyres, you can start to struggle. But if we carry that through, we should have a good race.”

View the original article here

Raikkonen lands three-place grid penalty

Kimi Raikkonen has been handed a three-place penalty in Malaysia for impeding Nico Rosberg in qualifying.

Jenson Button now moves up to seventh, ahead of Adrian Sutil and Sergio Perez. Kimi will now start 10th, right in front of team mate Romain Grosjean.

“It got a  bit close in Turn 14,” said Rosberg. “They were on out laps, him and Sutil. So it was a bit close. The stewards have to judge if that was impeding or not.”

View the original article here

Fernando Alonso: “This is a very real test for us”

Fernando Alonso says that another podium finish in Malaysia this weekend will confirm that Ferrari is on target with the F138.

A year ago Alonso won in Malaysia, but only after rain handed him a chance to flatter the troubled F2012.

“There is no comparison with last year, we were coming here out of Q3, and nowhere near where we wanted to be,” he said. “This year is a little bit better in this aspect. We have a more or less competitive car, and in Australia everything worked quite fine for us, and we showed a good potential. It’s true that in Australia strategy was very, very strange, a very unusual circuit, so this weekend for us is a little bit of confirmation.

“We need to confirm that the car is performing well after some positive feelings in the winter, and some positive feelings in Australia. This is a very real test for us, and we want a clear weekend and hopefully a good result. A podium will be again a very good target to achieve, and if we do so, I think we can be very, very happy.”

Alonso has not won a race since Germany in July last year: “It’s not frustrating at the moment. If I have the best car on the grid and I do six pole positions and I finish second every race, it will be frustrating. If we are outside the top five in the qualifying and we finish in the podium always, then I’m very proud.”

He says he was not fazed by Kimi Raikkonen’s performance in Australia.

“I think the pace of the Lotus was very good, but nothing we could not do. I think they had a very clean race, with no traffic, good strategy, but the pace was nothing out of reach. I think here we can fight a little bit closer.”

View the original article here

Sam Michael: “We’ll get on top of the problem…”

Sam Michael says that McLaren has a pretty good idea of what need to be changed on the struggling MP4-28 – but the Aussie admits that the team is still exploring every possible avenue.

“To be honest we’re looking at all fronts at the moment,” said Michael after FP1 in Malaysia today. “We have a pretty good understanding of where we think the issues are, and most of those things are things we have to solve in design back at MTC. However we get more and more confidence in knowing what to concentrate on by doing these track tests, because you can set-up certain tests to give you more information about how sensitive a particular area of the car is.

“And that’s what we’re in the middle of. At this point it’s too early to pinpoint externally that’s exactly what it is, even though we’ve got reasonable confidence of what to work on. Also internally you have to stay very open minded, because it normally comes through a sequence of different areas and gains. We’re open-minded at the moment even if we have a good idea of what it is.”

Michael didn’t want to target China or Bahrain as a venue for a step forward.

“As soon as possible really, it’s difficult to set a time frame. With these type of things you’re working through lots of different areas on the car, and you will inevitably uncover things as you go along, to know whether you can fix it for China or Bahrain, I can’t really say yet. We have a lot of people on it, everyone I should say is on it, and the focus is very much to get it sorted asap. There’s some very detailed understanding work going on on the problem.

“The other thing is that when you come out of the other side of this, although you never plan to have an experience like we’ve had now with this car, normally your understanding gets much deeper when you’ve had these problems, because you’re forced to look up every route to look for issues, and that improves your understanding.

“You normally learn a lot more in the face of adversity, as long as you come out the other side. The work that I’ve seen going on in the last weeks in the MTC it’s quite encouraging that we’ll get on top of the problem. I can’t give it a time frame at this moment.”

Asked by this blog how the team could have been surprised by the depth of its problems in Australia – given the simulation tools available – Michael said that the surprise was more the place in the pecking order.

“To be honest going to Melbourne based on the data we had and the pre-season running of the car, it was pretty close to what we thought it would be. The only thing you don’t know is you don’t know what other teams’ programmes are during the winter.

“You can’t really pinpoint the last few tenths. If you look at how close the grid is now, if you look at the pace of our car, in years gone by in the top three teams you could have the problems we’ve got with our car and you’d still qualify fifth and sixth. You’d get beaten by quite a bit but you’d still pick up a lot of points.

“You can’t do that anymore because the grid is so tight. To know exactly where you are for the those last few positions is not possible before you get to Melbourne. To know that we had an issue – of course we knew that before Melbourne, and that’s why a lot of the management and programmes that we put in place for Melbourne and here and future races was already underway.

“We had enough data to know we had an issue and we were not where we wanted to be, and not where we need to be. Melbourne was just final confirmation of suspicions that we already had.”

View the original article here

Ross Brawn: “The pace of progress at the front is ferocious…”

Ross Brawn says he has no regrets about not pitting Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg for fresh intermediates at the end of Q3, a strategy that helped to propel Sebastian Vettel and the two Ferraris to the head of the field.

Hamilton and Rosberg had to settle for fourth and sixth, having looked stronger earlier in the session.

“We’d obviously considered it before the session started,” said Brawn of the alternative strategy. “We’d seen some indications that the intermediate both held on and maybe even improved as it wore down, but I don’t think that seemed to be the case. It was as simple as that.”

Nevertheless Brawn says he’s happy with the way the Malaysian weekend has turned out thus far.

“I don’t think we were able to see the full potential of the cars in the dry, but I think we’re certainly top six in terms of our cars. So I think it’s a measure of where we are right now that we’re disappointed with fourth and sixth. Fourth and sixth would have been very welcome in the second half of last year, this year we’re a bit disappointed.

“We’re in that group. I don’t think we’re the fastest team, but we’ve made some encouraging progress, and we’ve got to keep pushing hard to keep progressing, because the pace of progress at the front is ferocious. We’re going to keep working hard to keep bringing new improvements to the cars.

“What will really count is where everyone is tomorrow, how they’re using their tyres, how they’re getting the most from them, good strategy, so on and so forth. The next measure will be tomorrow.”

Asked if he would be disappointed to still be fourth and sixth on Sunday, Ross said: “It would be OK. There are worse positions, and there are better positions. I think the drivers have worked really well this weekend, and the engineers have worked really well to have the car that we want to have. If that all comes together in the race, then fourth and sixth probably would be a bit of a disappointment.

“It’s difficult to speculate where we will end up, but we’re not in a bad place. We spent a lot of time getting the car dialled in for the race, and if that carries through – and it doesn’t always carry through, you get different conditions on a Sunday, and you suddenly find the car you tuned to heat the sweet spot doesn’t hit the sweet spot on Sunday. If it doesn’t then with these tyres, you can start to struggle. But if we carry that through, we should have a good race.”

View the original article here

Nobody fully understands the tyres, says Horner

Christian Horner says that none of the teams have a proper handle on how to get the best out of Pirelli’s 2013 tyres.

However he says that it’s too early to suggest that the racing is too artificial.

“At the moment we’ve got one race as a reference,” he said. “Let’s see how this weekend pans out, and then we’ll start to get a clearer picture. But for sure you can see the tyres are quite fragile.

“You’ve only got to look at the slow motion shots here to see the amount of rubber that’s coming off them, even in a straight line, which is quite surprising. But then it’s the same tyre for everybody.

“I think the tyres for sure are a key, key role at the moment, and I think they’ll be a decisive factor here this weekend. It’s going to be a matter of finding that operating window that gives them performance and longevity.

“I think what we want to avoid is drivers driving around under the performance of their car, unable to follow another car closely. I think that’s what we desperately need to avoid – otherwise it’s not racing. It’s still early days, so let’s see a sample of two or three races, and we’ll be able to gauge from there. It doesn’t look like the situation is really too much different from the winter testing.”

In Australia Sebastian Vettel suffered greater degradation than team mate Mark Webber, which is not the usual pattern.

“Mark seemed to have better longevity with his tyre,” he said when asked about the race by this writer. “I think looking at Seb’s race, following Sutil did quite a bit of damage to the tyre. We were just not in the right operating window with Sebastian, who’s usually so good at managing the tyres. He was just powerless to be able to extend that stint length, and usually he’s the best in the business at that.”

As to whether it was frustrating to have a potentially fast car but not be able to use its performance, Horner said: “Obviously a quick car puts a little bit more energy into a tyre, you can see that in Melbourne, you can see that a little bit more here. For sure we’ve got a very good car, we’ve just got to work out how best to use these tyres. We’ve just got to work hard to understand that and get on top of it.

“I don’t think anybody up and down this pit lane fully understands these tyres, to be quite honest. I think if you can explain the different performances in different parts of the race, whether it be a Force India which was incredibly soft on a hard tyre and then killed a soft tyre, or the opposite way round for Mercedes, or Toro Rosso setting purple sectors, or Kimi Raikkonen setting fastest lap two laps from the end on a tyre that had done 20 laps… There were so many anomalies. A key aspect of this season is going to be getting on top of those tyre issues, and understanding them.”

View the original article here

Mercedes confirms that Fry is giving up CEO role

Nick Fry will step down from his role as CEO of Mercedes at the beginning of April, the team confirmed today.

Recently Fry has been more focussed on sponsorship activities, and that will continue for the time being. The team says that he will “assist the team’s commercial operations as a consultant until at least the end of 2014,” adding that executive director Toto Wolff will take a greater role in the day-to-day running of the team.

Fry has been involved in the team since the BAR days, through the Honda and Brawn eras.

“I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to work with our team for the last 11 years and remain extremely proud of the fact that we took the team to its first race win and especially the double World Championship in 2009,” said Fry.

“Equally important is the success of our commercial activities as we have managed to gain the support of some of the most important companies in the world, thereby building a strong foundation for the future success of the team.

“I believe that Mercedes AMG Petronas offers the best sponsorship proposition in Formula One and I look forward to continuing to assist the team and its partners over the coming years.”

View the original article here

Sebastian Vettel: “I hope we have enough tyres to survive the race…”

Sebastian Vettel says that Red Bull has to take steps to preserve its tyres after everyone suffered with their hards and mediums in Sepang today.

Vettel finished FP2 in second place, behind Kimi Raikkonen.

“We’ll see,” he said of the team’s prospects for the rest of the weekend. “I hope we have enough tyres to survive the race, tyre wear was obviously quite big today for everyone. Tomorrow is a different day. There could be some rain, and you saw how quickly things can change. It’s Malaysia.

“It’s a different place, different tyres. Today tyre wear was pretty severe for everyone. It’s not a lot of fun, but that’s how it is. We need to try a couple of things to make it better. We tried today. Hopefully we learned the right lessons and can make a step forward.

“This afternoon we couldn’t do that much because of the weather, which was a little bit disappointing.”

Meanwhile regarding the crossover between wet and dry tyres – always a big issue at Sepang – he said: “I think it was very exceptional today, one part was quite soaked, the other one pretty dry, so fairly quickly it dried up again. It was quite hot so it didn’t take a long time, considering the amount of rain. I think we had the number in our heads, but obviously it depends whether the whole circuit is wet, or just some corners.”

View the original article here

Sebastian Vettel: “I think I did a big mistake today…”

Sebastian Vettel admits that he didn’t realise what a stir he’d caused by passing Mark Webber for the lead in Malaysia until he got back to the pits after the race.

Vettel apologised to Webber, but curiously he also claimed that he had not ignored the team orders “deliberately.”

However, team boss Christian Horner made it clear that the German knew exactly what was being asked of him.

“Towards the end I feel I had quite a strong pace,” said Vettel. “And obviously at the very end on a new set of medium tyres I had a bit more speed, and it was a close fight. But as you can see I’m not entirely happy. I think I did a big mistake today. I think we should have stayed in the positions that we were.

“I didn’t ignore it on purpose, but I messed up in that situation and obviously took the lead which, I can see now he’s upset, but yeah, I want to be honest at least and stick to the truth and apologise. I know that it doesn’t really help his feelings right now, but I think other than that, obviously a very good race for the team. We handled the tyres I think pretty well today. To sum it up, apologies to Mark, obviously now the result is there. but all I can say is that I didn’t do it deliberately.

“I think obviously we talk about these kind of things before we go into the race, and it’s not the first time we race each other. I think the difference in pace at the end probably wasn’t fair because he was trying to save the car and the tyres and, as I said, I did not ignore that but I should have been aware, to be honest. Obviously then took quite a lot of risk to pass him and that was the end of the race then.”

Asked to elaborate on how he hadn’t made the pass deliberately, he still didn’t have an adequate answer.

“I think it’s not an easy situation for me. Obviously I’m the black sheep right now. Obviously I put myself in that position so, as I said, all I can say is apologies to Mark. I know that right now, obviously, having just come out of the car, it’s probably difficult to explain everything, but the pass was deliberate. Obviously I wanted to pass him, you could see that, otherwise you wouldn’t even try, but I didn’t mean to ignore the strategy or the call. I made a mistake, simply.”

View the original article here

Christian Horner: “They’ve never been the best of mates…”

Christian Horner says that Sebastian Vettel has apologised to Mark Webber and Red Bull for disobeying team instructions in Malaysia.

Vettel was told to hold station immediately after coming out of the final pit stop behind his team mate, but instead continued to fight for the lead. Horner admitted that the situation was not ideal for the team.

“We’ve conducted a debrief and I’ve spoken to both drivers,” said Horner. “And Sebastian has apologised to both Mark and the team. So we’ve conducted our debrief as we usually do, and now we focus on the next race.

“At the end of the day in a situation like today you have a position from a team, which is clear, which is from our position to maximise the points from a team point of view from that last pit stop to the end of the race. From our point of view as soon as that pit stop was complete, Mark was ahead, it was very close on the pit exit, but as far as we were concerned it was a matter of managing the tyres to the end of the race. The tyres we’ve obviously been marginal with all weekend and last weekend, and the instruction was given to both cars effectively to hold position.

“At that point Sebastian has obviously chose to ignore that. The interests of a driver compared to the interests of a team are different, and he’s focussed on the eight point difference between a win and second, the team is focussed on the 43 points, and for us it didn’t matter which way round it finished, we just want to close the result off.

“Obviously it wasn’t right what he did, he accepts that. I think he’s clearly said if he could wind the clocks back he wouldn’t do it again. That’s the way it is. That’s the way it is. We need to put it behind us, we need to move on, it’s not like it hasn’t happened before, it’s not like it wasn’t happening just behind us.”

Horner has some sympathy with both drivers: “We employ these guys because they are competitive, because they do push each other, because they are very driven individuals. If either one was submissive to the other it’s not part of what we want in a racing driver. So of course it’s uncomfortable for the team, a situation like that. We managed to convert the 43 points, and it shouldn’t mar what was a fantastic team performance today.”

Horner said that Vettel told the team he hadn’t understood the position, although the team boss made it clear that he felt Vettel had chosen not to hear it.

“He felt that he hadn’t heard the call and it was unclear to him what the instruction was. But then again we had just the same in Brazil the other way round so these things happen.

“He’s obviously chosen to hear what he wants to hear. He’s a race driver, he’s hungry, he hasn’t achieved the championships that he has by not pushing the limits. He’s pushed that today with his team mate and his team.

“They’ve never been the best of mates, they’re never going to spend Christmas together, but there is a respect between the two of them, and I’m sure with a little bit of time to reflect, we’ll quickly move on from this.”

Asked if the team could have told Vettel to give the lead back, he said: “Do you honestly think if we’d told him to slow down and give the place back he would have slowed down and given it back? There’s no point. He’d made it quite clear what his intention was by making the move. He knew what the communication was, he had the communication, he chose to ignore it.

“He put his own interests beyond what the team’s position was, he was focussed on those eight points difference between second and first place. It was wrong and he’s accepted it was wrong.”

View the original article here

Jenson Button: “We’ve improved the car in the dry…”

After getting comfortably into the top 1o in Malaysia Jenson Button says that McLaren has made progress with the MP4-28.

Button, who was as high as sixth in Q1, finished the damp Q3 session in eighth.

“Forgetting the wet conditions, I think we’ve improved from Australia,” he insisted. “I said yesterday that we’re competitive in these conditions, but today that wasn’t the case! I couldn’t find the balance in the wet.

“But anyway if you look through qualifying, in Q1 and Q2 on dry tyres, we were more competitive. Still nowhere near the top, but we were more competitive, and we should be very happy with what we’ve achieved so far this weekend. It’s only five days after a pretty tough race for us, so we’re making progress. And that’s very positive.”

Button has been saying he wanted a wet race, but he admits he’s changed his mind.

“After this, no I’m not. I couldn’t find a balance out there, and I struggled with lack of grip in high speed at the rear, lots of rear movement. Most of the time our car has been very good in the wet, but today it isn’t. I’d take that any day of the week for a better car in the dry.

“We’ve improved the car in the dry, which is good. It’s getting there. We’ve got a bit of work to do, and we lucked in with the rain in Q2 at the end, but tomorrow we’re looking forward to the race. I wasn’t really looking forward to the race in Melbourne.”

View the original article here

Raikkonen in rude health

AppId is over the quota

Kimi Raikkonen already had a bottle of beer in his hand by the time he joined his Lotus team for the now-traditional group photo following a grand prix victory.

Knowing Raikkonen's reputation, it will almost certainly not have been the last drink that passed his lips in Abu Dhabi on Sunday night as he celebrated his first win since returning to Formula 1 this year after two years in rallying.

"For sure we're going to have a good party today," the sport's most famous hedonist said on he podium, "and hopefully tomorrow, when we are feeling bad after a long night, we will remember how we feel."

How long will you celebrate for, he was asked.

"I have almost two weeks," he said. "As long as I manage to get myself to the next race I think the team is happy. I try to get home at some point."

The party is well deserved. Raikkonen's comeback year has had its ups and downs, but a win has looked a probability since the start of the season, and in many ways the big surprise has been that it has taken so long.

Raikkonen has been remarkably strong and consistent in races this season, but until Abu Dhabi his best chances of victory had been squandered by starting too far down the grid.

Raikkonen has now taken 37% of his career victories after starting from outside the top three on the grid. Photo: Getty

He is the first to admit that he has made too many mistakes in qualifying. Indeed, for the first half of the season he was generally being out-paced over one lap on Saturdays by his novice team-mate Romain Grosjean.

But in the second half of the season his qualifying pace has edged forward, the mistakes have dried up, and this weekend everything came together to produce the result the team and he undoubtedly deserve.

Out of the car, Raikkonen is about as uncommunicative as they come. He simply refuses to engage in the media game. That can be frustrating for journalists who are searching for insight from an undoubtedly great driver, but still there is no mystery about his true character.

The radio messages that caused such amusement during the race sum him up.

His poor race engineer was only doing his job when he informed him of the gap to Fernando Alonso's Ferrari behind him, and some may find it rude that Raikkonen would respond by asking him to "leave me alone, I know what I'm doing".

But that is Raikkonen all over. He's a no-nonsense character, and he just wants things the way he wants them. And if he is not comfortable in the spotlight, he was born to be in a Formula 1 car at the front of a grand prix.

"Kimi is a man of few words but he's all about racing," McLaren driver Jenson Button said, summing up the Finn's unique appeal.

"It's good to see him have a good race here and collect the victory. He does deserve it. He is back for the racing. That's what he loves and it's good to see that."

For all his impressive performance, Raikkonen owed his win to Lewis Hamilton's wretched fortune at McLaren.

Yet another failure - this one in a fuel pump on the McLaren's Mercedes engine - cost Hamilton another victory. It's the second time it has happened in five races and it is the story of his season.

Hamilton said on Sunday that he had "been at my best this year" and so it has looked, but he also made a pointed reference to McLaren's myriad problems throughout the season: "We have not done a good enough job to win this championship."

For the men who can win it, it was a weekend of wildly fluctuating fortunes.

Following Sebastian Vettel's exclusion from qualifying because not enough fuel had been put in his Red Bull to provide the requisite one-litre sample, it appeared that Alonso had a golden opportunity to close down some of the advantage the German had eked out with his four consecutive wins through Singapore, Japan, Korea and India.

But after a wildly topsy-turvy race and an impressive drive by Vettel, the German joined his Spanish rival on the podium.

All three podium finishers gave an object lesson in racing to the many drivers who crash-banged into each other behind them, including each of their team-mates, and while Vettel's drive quite rightly stood out, so too was a little luck involved.

Vettel damaged his front wing against Bruno Senna's Williams on the first lap, but was able to continue and overtake the rabbits at the back of the field.

Then, not for the first time in his career, he made a mistake behind the safety car, misjudging the pace of Daniel Ricciardo's Toro Rosso as the Australian warmed his brakes, veering to avoid him, and finishing off the front wing against a marker board.

The mistake forced Red Bull to pit Vettel when they were not going to and the fresh tyres he fitted at the stop meant he had a grip advantage over the drivers he now had to pass.

Again, he sliced rapidly through the backmarkers - this time without incident - so that he was up to seventh by the time the pit-stop period started for those in front of him.

By the time the leaders had all stopped, Vettel was in second place, and suddenly it looked like he might have a chance of pulling off a sensational victory.

Raikkonen's Lotus team, for one, thought Vettel would not be stopping again, but Red Bull were concerned enough about tyre wear to want to play safe, and the 20 seconds he lost in his second pit stop were then wiped out by another safety car.

Fourth at the re-start, the fastest car in the field and on fresher tyres than Raikkonen, Alonso and Button ahead of him, it again looked like he might win.

In the end, though, Button's clever defence kept him behind long enough to ensure that although he could pass the McLaren, third was as far as he was going to go.

BBC F1 chief analyst Eddie Jordan said Vettel's ability to salvage a podium finish from a pit-lane start must feel like a "dagger in the heart for Ferrari" but if Alonso was disappointed you would not want to play poker with him.

He talked about his pride at finishing second in a race Ferrari had expected to deliver a fifth or sixth place - and as Red Bull team boss Christian Horner pointed out, Alonso celebrated on the podium as if he had won the race.

For a while now, Alonso has been saying Red Bull's winning run would end, that eventually they would have some bad luck.

Well, in Abu Dhabi they had it, and still Alonso could gain only three points on Vettel, and it was noticeable that the tone of his remarks after the race shifted slightly.

In India two weeks ago, he said he was still "100% confident" of winning the title. After Abu Dhabi, though, he did not repeat that remark.

"Without the problem for Sebastian we were thinking we would exit Abu Dhabi with 20 points deficit or something and we are 10 (behind)," Alonso said. "In the end it was a good weekend for us.

"They will have the fastest car in the last two races. There is no magic part that will come for Austin or Brazil. But as I said a couple of races ago, they have the fastest car, we have the best team. So we see who wins."

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Never forget how great Michael Schumacher was

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Michael Schumacher was given a round of applause by the assembled media after he finished the prepared statement with which he announced his second retirement from Formula 1 at the Japanese Grand Prix on Thursday.

It was a mark of the respect still held for Schumacher and a reflection of the appreciation for what was clearly an emotional moment for the man whose seven world titles re-wrote the sport's history books.

Schumacher stumbled a couple of times as he read off the paper in front of him and once, as he mentioned the support of his wife Corinna, his voice almost cracked.

Once through the statement and on to a question-and-answer session with the journalists, he was more comfortable, relaxed in a way he has so often been since his comeback, and so rarely was in the first stint of his career.

Schumacher's retirement from the Singapore Grand Prix had a familiar look to it. Photo: Getty

The Schumacher who returned to Formula 1 in 2010 with Mercedes was quite different from the one who finished his first career with Ferrari in 2006.

The new Schumacher was more human, more open and more likeable.

As he put it himself on Thursday: "In the past six years I have learned a lot about myself, for example that you can open yourself without losing focus, that losing can be both more difficult and more instructive than winning. Sometimes I lost this out of sight in the earlier years."

Most importantly, though, the new Schumacher was nowhere near as good.

In every way possible, there is no other way to view his return to F1 than as a failure.

When he announced his comeback back in December 2009, he talked about winning the world title. Instead, he has scored one podium in three years, and in that period as a whole he has been trounced by team-mate Nico Rosberg in terms of raw pace. In their 52 races together, Schumacher has out-qualified his younger compatriot only 15 times.

It is ironic, then, that there have been marked signs of improvement from Schumacher this season. In 14 races so far, he has actually out-qualified Rosberg eight-six.

And although Rosberg has taken the team's only win - in China earlier this year, when he was demonstrably superior all weekend - arguably Schumacher has been the better Mercedes driver this year.

Schumacher has suffered by far the worst of the team's frankly unacceptable reliability record and would almost certainly have been ahead of Rosberg in the championship had that not been the case. And he might even have won in Monaco had not a five-place grid penalty demoted him from pole position.

That penalty, though, was given to Schumacher for an accident he caused at the previous race in Spain, when he rammed into the back of Williams driver Bruno Senna having misjudged his rival's actions.

That was only one of four similar incidents in the last 18 months that have crystallised the impression that the time was approaching where Schumacher should call it a day.

It is unfortunate timing, to say the least, that the last of those incidents happened less than two weeks ago in Singapore, almost as if it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

That was not the case, of course. Schumacher has been vacillating on his future for months and in the end his hand was forced. Mercedes signed Lewis Hamilton and Schumacher was left with the decision of trying to get a drive with a lesser team or quitting. He made the right call.

His struggles since his return have had an unfortunate effect on Schumacher's legacy. People within F1 - people with the highest regard for his achievements - have begun to question what went before.

There have always been question marks over his first title with Benetton in 1994, given the highly controversial nature of that year. Illegal driver aids were found in the car, but Benetton were not punished because governing body the FIA said they could find no proof they had been used.

But since 2010 people have begun to look back at the dominant Ferrari era of the early 2000s, when Schumacher won five titles in a row, and begun to wonder aloud just how much of an advantage he had.

It was the richest team, they had unlimited testing and bespoke tyres. Did this, people have said, mean Schumacher was not as good as he had looked?

If you watched him during his first career, though, you know how ridiculous an assertion this is. Schumacher in his pomp was undoubtedly one of the very greatest racing drivers there has ever been, a man who was routinely, on every lap, able to dance on a limit accessible to almost no-one else.

Sure, the competition in his heyday was not as deep as it is now, but Schumacher performed miracles with a racing car that stands comparison with the greatest drives of any era.

Victories such as his wet-weather domination of Spain in 1996, his incredible fightback in Hungary in 1998, his on-the-limit battle with Mika Hakkinen at Suzuka that clinched his first title in 2000 were tours de force. And there were many more among that astonishing total of 91 victories.

So too, as has been well documented, was there a dark side to Schumacher, and it was never far away through his first career.

Most notoriously, he won his first world title after driving Damon Hill off the road. He failed to pull off a similar stunt in 1997 with Jacques Villeneuve. And perhaps most pernicious of all, he deliberately parked his car in Monaco qualifying in 2006 to stop Fernando Alonso taking pole position from him.

Those were just the most extreme examples of a modus operandi in which Schumacher seemed often to act without morals, a man who was prepared to do literally anything to win, the sporting personification of Machiavelli's prince, for whom the ends justified the means.

Those acts continue to haunt Schumacher today, and even now he still refuses to discuss them, won't entertain the prospect of saying sorry.

"We are all humans and we all make mistakes," he said at Suzuka on Thursday. "And with hindsight you would probably do it differently if you had a second opportunity, but that's life."

He was given a second opportunity at F1, and he took it because in three years he had found nothing to replace it in his life.

His self-belief persuaded him that he could come back as good as he had been when he went away, but he learnt that time stands still for no man.

He has finally been washed aside by the tide of youth that with the arrival of Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen towards the end of his first career already seemed to be replacing one generation with the next.

It seems appropriate in many ways that the agent for that was Hamilton, the man who many regard as the fastest driver of his generation.

That, after all, is what Schumacher was, as well as one of the very greatest there has ever been. And nothing that has happened in the last three years can take that away.

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Hamilton saga nearing endgame

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Hamilton has two competing offers on the table for his future - one to stay at McLaren and one to move to Mercedes.

The word at the Singapore Grand Prix - for what it's worth - was that he is leaning towards staying where he is; one McLaren insider even suggested that a deal could be inked within days.

At the same time, there may be a complication. There are suggestions that earlier this year Hamilton signed something with Mercedes - a letter of intent, a memorandum of understanding, perhaps - that he would need to get out of before he could commit to McLaren. His current team have heard talk of this, too. Hamilton's management deny this.

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The conventional wisdom is that Mercedes are offering Hamilton more money and that the deal is sweetened further by greater freedom over personal sponsorship deals. Those are highly restricted at McLaren because of the team's breadth of marketing tie-ups.

But BBC Sport understands it is not quite as simple as that.

For one thing, some sources say the figures quoted for the Mercedes offer in the media so far - of £60m over three years - are significantly larger than what is actually on the table.

Of course, in theory, as one of the largest car companies in the world, Mercedes can afford to pay almost any figure it wants.

But the board's commitment to Formula 1 has been in question all year. While it is understood that the company has now reached an agreement with the sport's commercial rights holders defining the financial terms under which they have committed for the next few years, F1 is not a money-no-object exercise for them.

McLaren believe their offer to Hamilton is broadly similar to Mercedes', and that in terms of total remuneration he could actually end up earning more money if he stays where is.

How so? Well, it seems the headline salary figures may not differ that much - although I understand Mercedes' offer is larger.

Mercedes offer greater freedom in terms of new sponsorship deals with which Hamilton can top up his income, and out of which his management group - music industry mogul Simon Fuller's XIX - would take a cut that some sources say is as great as 50%, a figure XIX say is wildly exaggerated.

McLaren, by contrast, have strict rules around their driver contracts - they do not allow any personal sponsorship deal that clashes with any brand owned by a company on their car.

So deals with mobile, fashion, household products, perfumes, oil and so on are all out. Jenson Button is allowed to have his deal to endorse shampoo because it was signed before McLaren had GlaxoSmithKline as a partner.

McLaren, I'm told, have loosened some of their restrictions in an attempt to give Hamilton more freedom.

And in their favour is that all contracts contain clauses that define bonuses for success; in McLaren's case for wins and championships. These amount to significant amounts of money and on current form Hamilton would earn more in bonuses with McLaren than with Mercedes.

Financially, it is in XIX's interests for Hamilton to move to Mercedes - that is where they will earn most money.

But that may not be the case for Hamilton, which of course begs the question of whether the driver and his management group actually have conflicting interests.

While Hamilton has steadfastly refused to discuss his future with the media, he has been consistent in one thing. As he put it at the Italian Grand Prix earlier this month: "I want to win."

He knows exactly how good he is and it rankles with him that he has so far won only one world title.

In which case, the last few races will have given him pause for thought.

McLaren started this season with the fastest car in F1, the first time they have done that since at least 2008 and arguably 2005.

But Hamilton's title bid was hampered by a series of early season operational problems that prevented him winning until the seventh race of the season in Canada. Was it during this period that he signed that "something" with Mercedes?

After a slight mid-season wobble through the European and British Grands Prix in late June and early July, though, McLaren have come on strongly.

Upgrades introduced at the German Grand Prix gave them a big step forward, making the McLaren once again the fastest car.

Progress was disguised in Hockenheim by a wet qualifying session, which allowed Alonso to take the pole position from which he controlled the race.

Even then, though, with Hamilton out of the reckoning after an early puncture, Button ran the Spaniard close.

Since then, it has been all McLaren. Hamilton won from pole in Hungary and Italy; Button the same in Belgium. Then in Singapore Hamilton lost an almost certain victory, also from pole, with a gearbox failure.

Meanwhile, Mercedes have floundered. And while rival teams agreed that a big upgrade to the silver cars in Singapore did move them forward a little, Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher only just scraped into the top 10 in qualifying and were anonymous in the race until Schumacher's embarrassing crash with Toro Rosso's Jean-Eric Vergne.

Undoubtedly, Mercedes will have given Hamilton the hard sell.

They'll have pointed out that they have won the world title more recently than McLaren - in their previous guise of Brawn in 2009.

They'll have said they are a true works team backed by a huge car company, whereas McLaren are from next year paying for their "customer" Mercedes engines.

They'll have argued that, in team boss Ross Brawn, Mercedes have the architect of the most dominant dynasty in F1 history - the Ferrari team of the early 2000s - who is determined to do it again. Triple world champion Niki Lauda, who is expected to be given a senior management role at the Mercedes team, has also been involved in trying to persuade Hamilton to join the team.

And they'll have said Hamilton has relative commercial freedom with them to make as much money as he wants.

What they won't have said is that the 2009 world title came about in rather exceptional circumstances and that at no other time has the team looked remotely like consistently challenging the best - whether as BAR, Honda or Mercedes.

And they won't have said that McLaren - for all Hamilton's frustrations over the cars he has had since 2009 and the mistakes that have been made in 2012 - have a winning record over the past 30 years that is the envy of every team in F1.

Of course, the past does not define the future, but the future is built on the past.

It's possible that the near future of F1 is one of Mercedes hegemony, but it would be a hell of a gamble to take for a man who professes he just "wants to win".

If the latest indications about his mind-set are correct, perhaps that is what Hamilton has now realised.

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Vettel takes over at the top

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As Sebastian Vettel put down his winner’s trophy after holding it up in celebration on the Korean Grand Prix podium, Fernando Alonso tapped him on the back and reached out to shake his hand. It was a symbolic reflection of the championship lead being handed from one to the other.

After three consecutive victories for Vettel and Red Bull, the last two of which have been utterly dominant, it does not look as though Alonso is going to be getting it back.

Alonso will push to the end, of course, and he made all the right noises after the race, talking about Ferrari “moving in the right direction” and only needing “a little step to compete with Red Bull”.

“Four beautiful races to come with good possibilities for us to fight for the championship,” he said, adding: “Now we need to score seven points more than Sebastian. That will be extremely tough but we believe we can do it.”

Sebastian Vettel won the Korean GP by finishing ahead of team-mate Mark Webber and Ferrari's Fernando Alonso (left). Photo: Reuters

Indeed, a couple of hours after the race, Alonso was quoting samurai warrior-philosophy again on his Twitter account, just as he had in Japan a week before.

"I've never been able to win from start to finish,” he wrote. “I only learned not to be left behind in any situation."

Fighting against the seemingly inevitable is his only option. The facts are that the Ferrari has been slower than the Red Bull in terms of outright pace all year, and there is no reason to suspect anything different in the final four races of the season.

Vettel’s victory in Korea was utterly crushing in the manner of so many of his 11 wins in his dominant 2011 season. The Red Bull has moved on to another level since Singapore and Vettel, as he always does in that position, has gone with it.

Up and down the pit lane, people are questioning how Red Bull have done it, and a lot of attention has fallen on the team’s new ‘double DRS’ system.

This takes an idea introduced in different form by Mercedes at the start the season and, typically of Red Bull’s design genius Adrian Newey, applies it in a more elegant and effective way.

It means that when the DRS overtaking aid is activated – and its use is free in practice and qualifying – the car benefits from a greater drag reduction, and therefore more straight-line speed than its rivals.

Vettel has been at pains to emphasise that this does not help Red Bull in the race, when they can only use the DRS in a specified zone when overtaking other cars. But that’s not the whole story.

The greater drag reduction in qualifying means that the team can run the car with more downforce than they would otherwise be able to – because the ‘double DRS’ means they do not suffer the normal straight-line speed deficit of doing so.

That means the car’s overall lap time is quicker, whether in race or qualifying. So although the Red Bull drivers can’t use the ‘double DRS’ as a lap-time aid in the actual grands prix, they are still benefiting from having it on the car.

And they are not at risk on straights in the race because the extra overall pace, from the greater downforce, means they are far enough ahead of their rivals for them not to be able to challenge them, let alone overtake them. As long as they qualify at the front, anyway.

It’s not all down to the ‘double DRS’, though. McLaren technical director Paddy Lowe said in Korea: “They appear to have made a good step on their car. I doubt that is all down to that system. I doubt if a lot of it is down to that system, actually. You’ll probably find it’s just general development.”

BBC F1 technical analyst Gary Anderson will go into more details on this in his column on Monday. Whatever the reasons for it, though, Red Bull’s rediscovered dominant form means Alonso is in trouble.

While Red Bull have been adding great chunks of performance to their car, Ferrari have been fiddling around with rear-wing design, a relatively small factor in overall car performance.

They have admitted they are struggling with inconsistency between the results they are getting in testing new parts in their wind tunnel and their performance on the track, so it is hard to see how they will close the gap on a Red Bull team still working flat out on their own updates.

The Ferrari has proved adaptable and consistent, delivering strong performances at every race since a major upgrade after the first four grands prix of the year.

But the only time Alonso has had definitively the quickest car is when it has been raining. It is in the wet that he took one of his three wins, and both his poles.

But he cannot realistically expect it to rain in the next three races in Delhi, Abu Dhabi and Austin, Texas. And after that only Brazil remains. So Alonso is effectively hoping for Vettel to hit problems, as he more or less admitted himself on Sunday.

How he must be ruing the bad breaks of those first-corner retirements in Belgium and Japan – even if they did effectively only cancel out Vettel’s two alternator failures in Valencia and Monza.

If anyone had reason on Sunday to regret what might have been, though, it was Lewis Hamilton, who has driven fantastically well all season only to be let down by his McLaren team in one way or another.

Hamilton, his title hopes over, wasted no time in pointing out after the race in Korea that the broken anti-roll bar that dropped him from fourth to 10th was the second suspension failure in as many races, and a broken gearbox robbed him of victory at the previous race in Singapore.

Operational problems in the early races of the season also cost him a big chunk of points.

Hamilton wears his heart on his sleeve, and in one off-the-cuff remark to Finnish television after the race, he revealed a great deal about why he has decided to move to Mercedes next year.

“It’s a day to forget,” Hamilton said. “A year to forget as well. I’m looking forward to a fresh start next year.”

In other words, I’ve had enough of four years of not being good enough, for various reasons, and I might as well try my luck elsewhere.

There was another post-race comment from Hamilton, too, that said an awful lot. “I hope Fernando keeps pushing,” he said.

Hamilton did not reply when asked directly whether that meant he wanted Alonso to win the title. But you can be sure that remark is a reflection of Hamilton’s belief that he is better than Vettel, that only Alonso is his equal.

Whether that is a correct interpretation of the standing of the three best drivers in the world, it will take more than this season to tell.

In the meantime, if Alonso and Ferrari are not to be mistaken in their belief that they still have a chance, “keeping pushing” is exactly what they must do. Like never before.

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Hamilton looks for long-term success at Mercedes

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Lewis Hamilton's move to Mercedes is the biggest development in the Formula 1 driver market for three years.

Ahead of the 2010 season, Fernando Alonso moved to Ferrari, world champion Jenson Button switched from world champions Brawn (soon to become Mercedes) to McLaren and Michael Schumacher came out of retirement to replace Button.

Now, the man who most consider to be the fastest driver in the world has taken a huge gamble by switching from McLaren, who have the best car this year and have won five races this season alone, to Mercedes, who have won one race in three years.

Schumacher's return at the wheel of a Mercedes 'Silver Arrow' was billed as a dream for all concerned, but with one podium finish in three years the German marque have abandoned the project.

Hamilton leaves a team that has won more races in the last 30 years than anyone else. Photo: Getty

That the announcement was made just five days after the latest in a series of collisions in which Schumacher rammed into the back of another driver after misjudging his closing speed simply rubs salt into the wound.

Hamilton will be replaced at McLaren by one of F1's most promising rising stars - Sauber's Mexican driver Sergio Perez, who has taken three excellent podium finishes this year.

That's quite a shake-up, and it raises any number of fascinating questions, the first and most obvious of which is why Hamilton would leave a team that has won more races in the last 30 years than anyone else - even Ferrari - for one that has won one in the last three.

The explanation for that lies both at his new and current teams.

Mercedes sold the drive to Hamilton on the basis that they were in the best position to deliver him long-term success. In this, there are echoes of Schumacher's move to Ferrari in 1996.

Back then, the Italian team were in the doldrums, having won just one race the previous year. But Schumacher fancied a project, and saw potential. It took time, but by 1997 he was competing for the title, and from 2000 he won five in a row.

The architect of that success was Ross Brawn, then Ferrari's technical director and now Mercedes' team boss. Brawn is one of the most respected figures in F1, and Hamilton is banking on him being able to transform Mercedes in the same way as he did Ferrari.

Undoubtedly, Brawn will have made a convincing case to Hamilton; he is a very persuasive and credible man. It is also worth pointing out that Mercedes - in their former guise of Brawn - have won the world title more recently than McLaren. Button succeeded Hamilton as world champion in 2009.

Mercedes believe that the new regulations for 2014, when both the cars and engines will be significantly changed, will play into their hands.

They are devoting a lot of resources towards that year, and are optimistic they will be in good shape - just as Brawn were, in fact, when the last big rule change happened for 2009.

And Mercedes have a technical team that, on paper, is immensely strong. In Bob Bell, Aldo Costa and Geoff Willis, they have three men who have been technical directors in their own right at other top teams all working under Brawn.

Part of this argument is predicated on the fact that new engine regulations always favour teams run or directly supported by engine manufacturers, on the basis that they are best placed to benefit from developments, and to integrate the car with the engine.

But this is where that argument falls down a little - McLaren may be a mere 'customer' of Mercedes for the first time next year, but they are still going to be using Mercedes engines in 2014, and on the basis of parity of performance.

The love affair with McLaren, who took him on as a 13-year-old karting prodigy, ended some time ago.

Since 2010, Hamilton has been complaining from time to time about the McLaren's lack of aerodynamic downforce compared to the best car of the time.

Through 2009-11, he grew increasingly frustrated at his team's apparent inability to challenge Red Bull. Hamilton is well aware of how good he is, and it hurt to watch Sebastian Vettel win two titles on the trot and not be able to challenge him.

That explains his ill-advised - and dangerously public - approach to Red Bull team boss Christian Horner at the 2011 Canadian Grand Prix.

This year, McLaren started the season with the fastest car for the first time since, arguably, 2005. But again they could not get out of their own way.

Pit-stop blunders affected Hamilton's races in Malaysia and China early in the season, and then a terrible mistake in not putting enough fuel in Hamilton's car in qualifying in Spain turned an almost certain win into a battle for minor points.

These errors badly affected his title charge and in early summer his management started approaching other teams.

His favoured choice was almost certainly Red Bull, but they weren't interested. They also approached Ferrari, where Alonso vetoed Hamilton. That left Mercedes.

It is ironic that his decision to move teams has been announced on the back of four races that McLaren have dominated.

Meanwhile, Hamilton's relationship with McLaren Group chairman Ron Dennis, the man who signed him up and who promoted him to the F1 team in 2007, has collapsed.

It was noticeable that after Hamilton's win in Italy earlier this month Dennis stood, arms-folded and stoney-faced, beneath the podium, not applauding once. Nor did Dennis don one of McLaren's 'rocket-red' victory T-shirts, or join in the champagne celebrations with the team once Hamilton had completed his media duties.

In Singapore last weekend, it seemed that McLaren still believed they had a chance of keeping Hamilton; at least that was the impression from talking to the team.

But did Dennis already know in Monza of Hamilton's decision to defect? Was Hamilton's sombre mood after that win a reflection of his wondering whether he had made the right decision?

Was Hamilton's ill-advised decision to post a picture of confidential McLaren telemetry on the social networking site Twitter on the morning of the Belgian Grand Prix, the weekend before Italy, the action of a man who had had enough and didn't care any more because he knew he was leaving?

When was the Mercedes deal actually finally signed?

Was it done before BBC Sport broke the story of it being imminent in the week leading up to the Italian race?

Or was it not inked, finally, until this week, on the basis that only now has the Mercedes board committed to new commercial terms with F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone?

In which case, was the gearbox failure that cost Hamilton a certain victory in Singapore, and effectively extinguished his title hopes for good, the straw that broke the camel's back?

In short, was Hamilton's decision based on cold, hard logic, rooted primarily in performance, in making more money, or founded on emotion as much as calculation. Or was it a combination of all those factors?

All these questions will be answered in time. Whatever led to Hamilton's decision, it is fair to say that it is an enormous gamble, one on which the next phase of his career hangs.

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