Party like it’s 1998

Right: I promise not to use the word “fairytale” while reviewing the season’s opening grand prix. Button drove brilliantly, very pleased for the team, all of that, yes yes yes.

I will, however, make the comparison to a previous occasion when a team turned up with a totally dominant car at the start of the season: not 2004, as James Allen has been going on about (not without good reason, mind), but 1998. Then as now the rule changes led to a team that had not been a title contender getting a jump on the field: it was a team that had recently brought in one of the paddock’s top technical minds, and had been known to be making changes and improvements over the course of the previous season. In 1998 it was Adrian Newey at McLaren; this year it’s Ross Brawn at, er, Brawn.

Interestingly, when Schumacher took one of his dominant titles and ITV’s reporter grabbed a comment from Brawn in the pitlane, he went out of his way to mention 1998: having turned up expecting to be competitive, Ferrari were stung to be thrashed by McLaren; the experience drove Brawn and the team to pursue the levels of excellence that led to their domination in the early 2000s. Perhaps that spectre also drove him in preparing the Honda team over 2008 for this year.

Honda, incidentally, have been left looking like chumps: they have had to spend almost as much to get rid of the team as they would have done to keep it running, and it has achieved success without their name on the car. They must have anticipated that other manufacturers would also withdraw; given the publicity they should now be getting, it has turned out to be a very expensive error – worst of all, one that Richard “Smugface” Branson has capitalised on. Actually, I don’t mind Branson: he perhaps paints a picture of free-spirited wheeler-dealing that isn’t very representative of the reality of entrepreneurialism, but it’s preferable to the equally imaginary sour-faced bitchiness portrayed by Alan Sugar. But Aye dye cress…

Before returning to the racing, let’s have a look at the TV coverage. The reversion to The Chain as the theme was probably justified: ITV always struggled to find appropriate music in my view. The CGI intro sequence is passable, but no better or worse than ITV’s numerous efforts. Jake Whatsisname was sound, I thought – occasionally prone to terminological errors such as “parade lap” for out lap, but let’s be generous for now and put it down to nerves on live TV.

Coulthard and Jordan were a big step up from Marc Blundell, and I expect DC to come into his own when there is controversial on-track action to assess. Brundle was excellent as ever, although Jonathan Legard – who I thought should have been brought in when Murray Walker retired – disappointed slightly. He was instantly authoritative and listenable, but he messed up the climax of quali very badly: he kept going on about Button while significant changes for third place and below were going on – Brundle evidently felt he had to shout over him just to comment on those; and he didn’t keep track of who was on a hot lap, and Brundle had to tell him it was all over! He would have got away with it on radio, but on TV we could all see his error. I’m sure he and Brundle will gel better over the course of the season.

Ther were some odd things in the build-up, too. The presenting crew were never properly introduced: this might not matter too much for Ted Kravitz, with whom even semi-regular viewers will be familiar, but Lee McKenzie was, I believe, not seen on-screen until her post-race interview with Lewis Hamilton. The build-up material was passable, but the Brundle-voiced technical pieces weren’t properly introduced, and offered the kind of thin explanation that one associates with BBC news.

Spare a thought for TV exile James Allen, who offered a Twitter commentary from Melbourne. Alas I didn’t partake, but that wasn’t because I forgot to put my alarm clock forward and got up too late to watch the race live. Definitely not.

As for the racing: much as the opening round should be the first chance to see who’s quick and who’s not, usually it poses more questions than it answer. This year was no different: the Brawn has an advantage over the rest of the field, but how much? Kubica was, after all, closing Button down towards the end: was that an indication strong BMW race pace, or just down to the peculiar circumstances of the race? Can the other teams develop their way into contention? Can Brawn develop their way into maintaining their advantage? If we look at 1998, McLaren only dominated for one further race: by round 3 in Argentina, Schumacher was able to split the McLarens in qualifying and beat them in the race. Will this happen this year, or will it be more like 2004 when Ferrari won consistently?

Given how tight the field is – unlike 1998, when the teams spread out and outfits like Prost and Stewart that had been coming good in 1997 fell back again – I would expect some of the teams to catch Brawn before we get back to Europe, but not necessarily overtake them. Adrian Newey and Red Bull must feel in with a shout, although their development programme went badly wrong last year. Ferrari seemed well down here, but their race pace should have been OK for some points – but will reliability catch them out this year like it did in 2008? What about Renault? The signs from testing were very mixed, but the more negative ones seem, so far, to have been proved right.

And as for McLaren: Brundle and Coulthard observed consistently that car looked balanced, and just all-round slow: this suggests there is not a huge amount of pace in it, waiting to be unlocked, and a significant overhaul will be needed if it is to become competitive. Handily, most of the teams are looking at significant work anyway in order to incorporate Brawn-style diffusers. But it looks like 2004 all over again for the Woking crew.

In that context, Hamilton’s race was impressive: with low expectations, he was able to pick his way through the race and extract probably as much pace as the car has to offer. It’s perhaps as well for Kovaleinen that he got knocked out on the first lap: if he had failed to capitalise in the same way as Hamilton did, it would have made for an even worse start to the season than a retirement!

On that front, a few drivers already look likely to be under pressure for their seats by mid-season unless they can improve. Renault were probably right to give Piquet a  second season: Nico Rosberg has shown that an apparently wayward debut year can be a great learning experience for much better things, and that ditching F1 drivers after one season can be counter-productive. But getting knocked out in Q1 does not repay the team’s faith. Nakajima also needs to be doing better with a good car than making Q2 and crashing in the race. Seasoned racers Anthony Davidson, Takuma Sato and Tonio Liuzzi are all twiddling their thumbs, should a vacancy arise…

Overall, today’s race offers little further clue as to who will emerge to challenge Brawn: Ferrari, Toyota, Williams, Red Bull and Renault are all more or less credible possibilities. McLaren are a big unknown, while Toro Rosso may well come on strong in the second half of the season like they did last year – considering he is a rookie and the team have had very little time with the new car, Buemi’s drive, which you’d call solid in most circumstances, was really very good. Force India need to keep up with the development, but if they do they seem likely to be mixing it in mid-field at least some of the time – which begs the question of who, exactly, will be at the back of the field…

Thank goodness the next race weekend is only five days away!

A final thought: I do not like the new rule of the tyre compounds being two “steps”  apart. It is artificial enough to say that drivers must use both types of compound in the race, but if the two are very different, effectively you are compelling the drivers to compete with unsuitable equipment, which doesn’t seem very F1. The new aerodynamics and KERS seem to be adding sufficient variables and overtaking spectacle: this arbitrary rule seems both unnecessary and potentially unsafe, plus it threatened to be decisive to the outcome of the race, even though a Kubica victory over Button would not have been a fair reflection of their relative strength over the weekend. Let’s hope that rule gets amended back to last year’s iteration, or preferably scrapped, before long.

The loser standing small

I was surprised to find myself feeling disappointed that the scheme to decide the F1 drivers’ title by race wins alone has apparently been deferred until 2010 following today’s statement by FOTA. Perhaps it had sub-consciously dawned on me that, while the rule is unlikely to create many do-or-die lunges in the last laps of a grand prix, it would perhaps affect the way teams approach races overall.

At the moment, a team looking uncompetitive might settle for points or a podium; under the new rule, they might go to greater pains to use innovative strategies or take risks to get the win. It could change teams’ decision-making processes from qualifying onwards for the rest of the weekend: strategies like Schumacher’s 3-stop Hungaroring victory in 1998, or 4-stop Magny Cours win in 2004 might be chanced somewhat more often. Of course, the ban on refuelling from 2010 will remove a variable from pit stops, but even so they will remain important. All told, the “winner takes it all” system could have some positive implications.

Sweet release, slight return

Right, here’s a revised version of the list of albums I’ve yet to obtain in 2009, but intend to (more reviews likely when I have a few more to review…). And a request: bearing the below in mind, what else should I be investigating? There seems to be quite a few female-fronted outfits / oddly-names solo projects going on at the moment: which are worth further attention?

• Bonnie Prince Billy – out now (“Beware”)
• Super Furry Animals – out now (“Dark Days/Light Years”)
• The Decemberists – March 23rd  (“The Hazards Of Love”)
• Noisettes – 30th Mar (“Wild Young Hearts”)
• Doves  – 6th Apr (“Kingdom of Rust”)
• Bat for Lashes – 6th Apr (“Two Suns”)
• Broken Family Band – 20th April (“Please and Thank You”)
• Immaculate Machine – 21st Apr[North American release date], (”High on Jackson Hill”)
• Camera Obscura  – 21st April (“My Maudlin Career”)
• Dear Reader – May 4th (“Replace Why With Funny”)
• MJ Hibbett and the Validators – 11th May (“Regardez, Ecoutez et Repetez”)
• Junior Boys  – 11th May (“Begone Dull Care”) [24th Mar Canadian release]

Brains and Brawn

After a spectacularly exciting season of Formula One, we have had a spectacularly exciting off-season; having endured many a year of processional racing in the early 2000s, I can’t help but feel it’s all going to come to an underwhelming end very soon.

But rationally you’d have to say that looks unlikely. Two big stories emerged from the Barcelona test: McLaren are astonishingly slow; and Brawn GP are astonishingly quick. Or are they?

Well, McLaren are slow: they’ve admitted it. They claim they have a fix on the way, and that’s not implausible: both BMW and, if you recall, Honda, found some significant pace with very late pre-season aero revisions last year. I feel sure I read a column by James Allen late last year in which he extolled McLaren’s engineering prowess and predicted Lewis Hamilton would be well-placed to defend his title. I can’t find it on his blog, however – perhaps he has sensibly removed it. Perhaps my searching skills are inadequate. Or perhaps I’m misremembering – if so, apologies to him.

James has undeniably, however, made an extremely bold prediction for Melbourne: the race victory, he suggests, will be between the two Brawn drivers, Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello. And he gives a credible analysis of the test data to argue that the Brawn car is indeed faster over a race distance than the Ferrari – something that Felipe Massa seems also to have said, in an interesting bit of expectations-management.

Allen deserves credit for sticking his neck out so firmly: we will know in a few weeks whether this is a canny prediction by an authoritative watcher of the sport, or the kind of hyperbole that occasionally grated when he was a commentator. Either way, I maintain that his presence in the F1 blogosphere is an extremely welcome development. (And as an aside: Ross Brawn’s name will be indelibly etched into F1’s Hall of Fame if he turns up and blitzes the field with a team that was nowhere in the previous season – it would be an astounding astonishment, and justify Honda’s decision to hire him every bit as it would make their decision to give the team away for nothing deeply foolish.)

But let’s not get carried away (is it my imagination, or do I use that phrase on blog posts rather a lot?). We can attach several significant caveats to this apparent picture of Brawn dominance. The first one is that the field has nine other teams, and it looks tight. Ferrari, BMW and Toyota all evidently fancy a shot at race wins; Renault’s form remains enigmatic, but some commentators are tipping them to be close to the pace; and the two Red Bull teams have been quick too. It’s only Force India and McLaren that look like they should be ruled out of contention totally for Melbourne, and the former seem to be having a decent shot at sticking with the mid-field, which will itself be a fair achievement.

And, as Joe Saward has put it, “remember the Prost!” The former World Champion’s team showboated shamelessly prior to what turned out to be its last season in 2001: they had a tidy car that was much better than the previous year’s utter disaster, but underweight running in testing gave a false impression of its potential. But would a team helmed by Ross Brawn waste their time with that kind of antics, even if they do need to attract sponsors? Can any amount of underweight showboating account for the utter consistency of the car’s speed? Perhaps not.

And finally, as James Allen has also pointed out, most teams will have an update ready for Melbourne; Brawn’s package is already finalised. So if there is indeed a gap between Brawn and the rest of the field, one can expect it to shrink and perhaps close. But even with all of these caveats, it would be deeply surprising if Brawn do not at least take points away from Melbourne. And it would, after all, stand to reason, that the team that started working in earnest on its 2009 machinery at the earliest point last year would find the best solutions.

And before I go, a quick word on the BBC’s F1 website: rubbish.

Back on The Chain gang

If you’re a careful watcher of the links side bar on the right-hand side of this blog (and I don’t know why you should be), you’ll see I’ve added a link to the BBC’s new F1 website. It will have to go some to beat ITV’s effort, which has long been good and has certainly kept up its standards over the close season, with regular updates and some very well-considered analysis. The BBC’s isn’t that good yet, but presumably it will really ramp up when the season starts.

That’s only a few weeks away now, and it’s very exciting. I’ve been following the winter dramas on the ITV site, plus the slightly more cutting-edge Autosport F1 reporting, the more editorially-styled blog by James Allen and GrandPrix.com, which combines many of the strengths of the two. [Edited to add: I shouldn't have forgotten to put Joe Saward's blog in that list, where he offers the views he perhaps can't put on GrandPrix.com]

The business with Honda, Brawn GP and the cost-cutting drive has been remarkable enough, but the amazing thing is how close the field is looking. In past posts I have confidently predicted that it would spread out due to the regulation changes; this could still happen, but there is no sign of it yet. Perhaps Renault, Williams, Toyota and Red Bull have made some progress; perhaps McLaren are a little behind where they would like to be; and perhaps BMW have been sandbagging shamelessly and have stolen a march on the whole field. But even though making predictions at this stage of the pre-season is a mug’s game (but still fun), it’s usually at least possible. From testing so far I’m not sure any conclusions can be drawn at all.

On the TV coverage front, the pre-race / pre-qualifying programme segments look like they’re going to offer much the same as ITV’s did, with Brundle grid-walks as before, but Coulthard and Eddie Jordan likely providing some rather more articulate punditry than the unintentionally hilarious Marc Blundell. The fact is that ITV were doing a good job, and in this department there is little the BBC look like being able to add. Their more extensive range of platforms will allow for all sessions to be broadcast, with 5Live commentators providing interactive commentaries (ie you can send emails and texts) on the practice sessions; that, and the availability of a full on-board camera shot via the red button at some races, seem to be the extent of the innovations. But it still looks like being an excellent package – I only hope the website can live up to ITV’s standards.

I will, however, mourn the loss of the ad breaks in some ways. I always rather liked the shock and excitement of coming back to the action to be presented with a replay of some key development, which required you to play catch-up and work out the consequences for yourself. It added an element of suspense.

I’m very much looking forward to it all starting in three weeks’ time.