|
Articles by Darren Galpin
| Red Bull Gives You Wings - Sun 31st Jul 2005 |
|
Red Bull – it gives you wings according to the adverts. Exactly – Klien tried flying and came down to earth with a bump, while Coulthard tried collecting them instead. Neither strategy really worked. Klien proved the strength of the rollbars, while Coulthard found that two sets of wings into one won’t go, and removed his in sympathy, together with his front wheels. And this was just the first lap.
The problems all stemmed from the first corner concertina effect. The Hungaronotsoboringthisyear features a medium length straight leading into what is almost a hairpin, and a variety of starts and fuel strategies meant that there were various cars arriving at various speeds and at various angles of attacks into the first corner. Somehow, for most of this season the drivers haven’t really tripped each other up much at the first corner, but they more than made up for it this time. As all of the cars concertinaed together, Villeneuve’s left front interlocked with the wheels of Klien, who rode up over it, rolling right over. He bounced off the roll-hoop and somehow missed everyone else, shedding bits as he went.
Alonso had made a mistake and was starting well down the grid, so he was trying to make the best of it at the first corner. He dived down the inside of Ralf Schumacher on the edge of the circuit, but Ralf in turn was diving down the inside of someone else. Ralf had to move right to avoid the car to his left, forcing Alonso on to the kerbs. He almost avoided contact, but as he backed off on the kerbs at the apex, Ralf’s right rear brushed the edge of his front wing, breaking the uprights holding it onto the nose. The question was how long would it hold up.
About half a lap. Going down a straight, Alonso’s wing flew up in the air, shattering into many pieces, but with the middle section largely intact. The cars behind dived left and right in avoidance as the remains bounced down the track, but inevitably there was one car that was unsighted, and this was David Coulthard. The car in front of him jinked out of the way at the last moment, and Coulthard had nowhere to go. The wing and nose cone ripped off Coulthard’s front wing and right front tyre, and as he span out, he was lucky not to collect anyone else. Alonso headed to the pits and out of the points. It made the championship look at once a lot more interesting.
Although Michael Schumacher was leading the race, there was a look of inevitability surrounding the following McLaren’s. They looked faster, as if they somehow had something in reserve, and all three were pulling away from the rest of the field. Rather than risk an overtaking manoeuvre, McLaren decided to pull Räikkönen into the pits early, and do it all on strategy. It obviously worked, but it is still an inditement of modern F1. I’d like to see Räikkönen win a race by actually overtaking Michael Schumacher and proving himself to be a superior racer, rather than by simply lapping faster on a clear circuit.
An interesting thing to note was the performance of the Bridgestone tyres again. They seem to have solved their single lap performance issues, so are better in qualifying, but in doing so they seem to have lost their durability. As a result, once the race goes beyond half distance, the Ferrari’s seem to go slower and slower. They still have a lot to work on.
So, with Räikkönen finishing first, and Alonso not scoring, the championship points gap has been closed to 26 points, still a lot, but not the absolute mountain of a gap that there was before. McLaren and Championship watchers might also take heart from the total Renault performance, as Fisichella also showed a tendency to throw it off the road, while Alonso never seemed to have the speed anyway. A momentary aberration, or the start of something more serious? The next race is at the new circuit in Turkey, at which no-one will have any experience, so if it is something bigger, it will be harder to claw it back, as there will be no data to compare it to.
Jenson Button didn’t do too badly with a fifth place, but it was nothing spectacular, and of more interest to the press was his contractual position next year. As far as I can see, the situation is cut and dried – he has a valid contract with Williams, and there is nothing that he can do about it. However, the more Machiavellian amongst you might like to look a little bit deeper into the undercurrents and discern a cunning plan by Williams to extract cash and Honda engines for next year, or at least an effort to unbalance BAR further, removing their focus from the task in hand. This will rumble on for some time to come.
|
|
Other great sites
Search
|
