So Vettel is back to the top and Alonso was livid

The European race was nothing that spectacular really, dry, an accident – more on that later, a safety car and some racing. The end result wasn’t really that interesting given the form of the teams so far this season. What was apparent was how frustrated Alonso is getting inside that Ferrari and that a Lotus and Red Bull have very different braking points. Oh and that 5sec penalties actually exist.

The race itself wasn’t actually that great once the first few corners were done. Each of the cars was just slightly faster than the ones behind and it was spreading out, except that it for Mark Webber who had managed to find himself in ninth at one point. A few laps down the road Red Bull brought him in for his stop so that he could run in clear air and make up some time of the cars around him. That however put him behind Heikki Kovalainen’s Lotus. What on earth was going through both their heads given the context of the 2010 season I don’t know but it was soon Webber going through the air. It is an amazing statement for F1 safety that both of them were able to get out of the cars and put their points across to the media. Kovalainen stated on the radio that he was defending, defending what exactly? The Red Bull is easily much much faster than the Lotus. Don’t get me wrong here I think that drivers should be able to defend their position and had it been a Sauber or a Torro Rosso I wouldn’t be saying that but the new teams are just too slow to be given the same status. Having said that what Mark Webber was doing 3 inches of the back of the Lotus he alone knows. Just as Vettel won the race, at least Red Bull have something to celebrate.

Someone else who won’t be happy is Alonso, he was showing that Ferrari have improved their car drastically but was unable to prove it in the results because of what happened behind the safety car. Hamilton was past before the safety car picked them up, which meant that Hamilton came out of the whole thing in second and Alonso in ninth even though he was running about a second down on Hamilton beforehand. The quote of the weekend has to be (I may not have the exact phrasing);

Alonso: What was his position before the penalty and what is it after..

Engineer: He was in second and he’s still in second

Alonso also hoped to gain from a bunch of the cars in front of him having gone too fast during the safety car period but that was also cut short as they were handed 5s penalties, where they came from I don’t know.

Anyway a race with little action, some technical infringements and a lot of politics…

Popularity: 13%

Next year heralds more tech changes

So 2011 won’t only include a new tyre supplier, it will have new technical regulations because of the F-duct. McLaren’s innovation of the F-duct seems to have caught a lot of the other teams on the back foot and has given them a huge advantage in terms of development time this year and from the results it looks like they’ve put it to good use. This new device although banned for next year is surely behind the new regulation that the drivers will be able to adjust the top flap of the rear wing.

With a similar effect to the F-duct a movable rear wing will effectively be a boost button on long straights and will enable the cars to run with more down-force at places like Canada and Silverstone. It will come down to who can design the best system but I’m not sure that I like the whole idea. It means that the drivers have another thing to think about, it means that the cars can effectively have a low and high down-force setup completely bypassing the trade-offs of the two. It is also another thing that can go wrong with the cars.Despite the fact that the regulation is intended to increase overtaking it seems that they will just spend the race trading places and give the following driver a huge advantage.

The money to be spent on developing it would be much better spent on the new teams and getting them upto speed if it were really all about the show.Though the reintroduction of the 107% rule will have the new teams concerned at they may end up simply contesting a 15min qualifying session if they can’t get up to speed next year. I wonder how this affects cars that get eliminated before they can set a fast lap…

Along with all of that we should see the return of KERS, which coupled with the new wing regulations might make for a confusing mix. Next year could make things a lot more random, of course the cars need to be on the same piece of tarmac for any of that to matter and that it the team’s job, to build cars that will compete with each other.

Popularity: 5%

How can all of the teams improve so much?

It seems that nearly every team in the paddock has come out over the past few weeks and said that they have massive improvements for Valencia and that they’re now going to be much faster. While all very well in itself, it doesn’t really mean much unless your improvement is faster than the other teams around you. Since the start of the season all of the teams, even the new ones, have made massive strides forward in pace. It’s just that so have all the other teams and the status quo remains about the same.

The fight at the front seems the closest out and out battle but even there the track conditions and drivers seem to make more of a difference than the car – which is arguably what should be happening. It’s not that the teams are making progress, that’s great, it’s that they should make a noise about when it shows on the track. If Sauber are suddenly getting their cars into Q3 and beating the Force Indias then by all means tell us about the upgrade package that went on the car. It makes you look silly when you come out with statements about your upgrades and then it turns out you needed that performance just to remain where you were.

I guess some of it is the media machine that always needs something to write about but if the teams kept quiet and concentrated on making their cars better we might have some more racing to watch. McLaren seem to be the masters of the upgrade package with Red Bull coming in second but Ferrari really need to get on with it to have a chance – they are lucky that they are still there with a chance, for Alonso anyway, I can’t see how they are going to grab the constructors.

Popularity: 5%

Amazing Canadian race sees Red Bull knocked off their perch by McLaren

The Canadian GP normally serves up a good race but this year was a special one with non stop action from the first corner until the end. It was the first time that the tyre rules really worked as they were planned to, coupled with the endless capacity that the Gilles Villeneuve track has for incidents and F1 sprang to life.

It was the first race of the year that has started without a Red Bull on pole and with the leading cars split on tyre choice the start looked exciting. It played out that way too with passing in the first few laps. Then by the time that the race had just begun to stabilise the soft tyres started to go off – this was only a few laps into the race. Hamilton and the others on the softer compound pitting to change and the Red Bulls (on the harder tyres) stayed out. The story of the race though was that the hard tyres couldn’t cope either and it wasn’t too long before the Red Bulls had to take on new tyres too. As the track rubbered in the tyres held out better and those that managed to last until the final laps managed to make their soft tyres work – unlike the luckless Michael Schumacher whose tyres were almost non existent by the end was overtaken by both Force India’s on the final lap.

Schumacher has somehow managed to avoid any penalties by the stewards given the way he was defending some of the positions he had but then I imagine that, a) he didn’t score anyway, and b) we need hard racing to make it worth watching. Kubica also avoided a penalty for his wild pit lane entry, it seems he had to do it to avoid the other car – I’m sorry he didn’t, it was dangerous and he should have had something, even if it was just a fine.

In the closing stages the McLaren’s had the race sewn up but Alonso will be pleased to have got on the podium and Vettel and Webber are probably glad to finish at all. Two more laps and we’d have seen more fireworks as Webber was catching Vettel at the end. All in all a great race.

Popularity: 6%