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Articles by Darren Galpin
| No Testing Limits, So No Problem - Sun 24th Apr 2005 |
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The San Marino Grand Prix highlighted a couple of things. Firstly, why Ferrari won’t agree to testing limits, and secondly, what a threat Ferrari will be once they sort out their reliability.
According to Autosport magazine, Ferrari spent around £11 million over the past three weeks in testing, completing some 5000 miles of testing to try and sort out their reliability issues from Bahrain. That is a third of the total annual budget of Minardi in just 5.7% of a year. No wonder Ferrari don’t want to limit testing as part of the cost cutting exercises when they can spend money like that – I doubt that any of the other teams could marshal such resources. However, they didn’t cure everything – Barrichello suffered a gearbox failure on Friday according to Italian press sources, and he retired from the race with an electronic problem.
But what the testing does seem to have done is to teach the Ferrari team how to set up their car correctly, as manifested by Michael Schumacher when he was in clear air. He may have started in thirteenth after a mistake in qualifying, but he was fuel heavy, and when those in front of him peeled into the pits, he was reeling off laps some two seconds a lap faster than those around him. This is somewhat ominous for the rest of the season, for if Michael hadn’t made his qualifying mistake, he would probably have been far enough up the field to disappear into the distance at the pit-stops, rather than just reeling in the top two of Alonso and Button.
As a result it looks like we may be back to service as usual from the Spanish Grand Prix onwards, with Ferrari ahead of the rest, and three or four teams scrapping behind them. McLaren might take issue with this assessment, as Kimi Räikönen qualified on pole and went into the lead at the start of the race, pulling away by up to two seconds a lap at one point. However, we was out within six laps due to a mechanical failure, so we never got to see whether the rumour that he was fuel light or not was correct. Perhaps Alexander Wurz, who was standing in for Juan Pablo Montoya, is a good barometer of McLaren’s status, as he finished in a solid fourth behind the BAR of Button. They are almost there, but not quite.
BAR though do seem to have made a big step forward, both in reliability and speed. One of the problems that they had been facing was that under certain situations, the air over the front wing would stall, losing downforce. So they went back to the wind-tunnel, and whatever they came up with seemed to work, as he could at least maintain a similar pace to the Renault of Alonso. This was also reflected by the pace of Sato, who finished a combative fifth. Sato is definitely the best Formula 1 driver to come out of Japan, and his pass on Mark Webber was an absolute gem, firm but fair. However, this year he has been consistently slower than Button, so he needs to take care of his future – if Button doesn’t leave BAR, then they might consider taking a punt on the next new thing, as they wouldn’t have that much to lose.
One curious thing this year is how in each team the bad luck seems to always strike the same driver. Take Renault for instance – Alonso has now won three races in a row, and finished second in the first race, but Fisichella has had two mechanical failures in a row. It’s the same at McLaren – whoever they have partnering Räikönen, it is always him who has the failure. At Ferrari, it is always Barrichello who suffers with the gearbox. The cars are always supposedly identical within a team, but you can’t help but wonder sometimes if the same degree of thoroughness is always used – perhaps there is some unintentional bias in the preparation of the cars at Renault and Ferrari? I don’t mention McLaren in this, as Räikönen is probably their preferred number 1 – perhaps he drives his car harder than the others?
Although the race was exciting to watch due to the closeness of the finish, it again has to be highlighted the general lack of overtaking, and how track design contributes towards this. Since the rules raised the height of the front wing, the cars have become very nervous when following cars through corners, which makes it even more difficult to try and close up and out-drag down the next straight. Tracks such as Imola contribute towards this – lots of medium to slow speed corners without that much in the way of long straights to catch up in, and when there are long straights, they aren’t followed by slow speed corners where downforce doesn’t matter much. All of the revisions to Imola have simply made it worse. Yes, the circuit may have history, but history alone doesn’t give it the automatic right to a place on the calendar. It’s not even as though the circuit is in San Marino, as the principality is some 50 kilometres away at least. So, given the fact that the precedence that has been set, why not have a second Grand Prix in Britain at Brands Hatch, and lets call it the Welsh Grand Prix. Can’t be any worse than the Grand Prix of Luxembourg at the Nürburgring……..
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