The hardest Button to button #f1

The real block on the driver market this season was not, as was widely suggested at one point, Ferrari’s delay in announcing their signing of Alonso: it was the negotiation between Daimler (ie Mercedes-Benz) and McLaren over the terms on which their partnership would end and Mercedes could buy Brawn. Until that was settled, the question of whether Button, Raikkonen or Heidfeld would take the two vacant race seats, one at McLaren, one at Brawn, could not be sorted.

The outcome is in fact still unclear, but the hot rumour currently seems to be that Brawn – or Mercedes, as they will be – will opt for an all-German line-up of Rosberg and Heidfeld, leaving McLaren with an all-English, all-World Champion line-up of Button and Hamilton. Is this wise?

There is potential for this to be a real lose-lose for all parties. While Mercedes might like the idea of an all-German line-up, a driver pairing of the same nationality tends to make sponsors’ lives harder and play less well commercially outside the territory that originated the men in question. For that reason alone I’m surprised to see such an outcome apparently looming; worse still, an England-Germany championship rivalry will be manna from heaven for The Sun, and I really fear for what distasteful guff they are likely to come out with over the course of a season.

But there are racing-related reasons for scepticism as well. From Brawn’s perspective, Rosberg and Heidfeld is surely not as strong a driver line-up as a Rosberg-Button one would have been? Both drivers are well-respected, but neither has yet been able to prove themselves a world-beater; Heidfeld in particular was out-paced by Kubica last year when they were in a car that could challenge for the title. Nor will the team get the nice garages at the end of the pit lane. That said, it could be a line-up that will settle down nicely and provide a platform for a title push by Rosberg.

The McLaren half of the equation looks much dodgier, however. While it would be surprising to see a repeat of the Alonso-Hamilton or Prost-Senna situations, there could still be tensions. The team is built around Hamilton, so how will Jenson play it? He had to win a set of mind-games with Villeneuve when he joined BAR… but then again, Villeneuve was overtly confrontational; Hamilton fils et pere are more subtle, and will more likely just keep Button marginalised by a soft use of their existing relationships at the team. What exactly will Button be able to do about that? Quite possibly nothing, which will place him at a psychological advantage, to compound the very real risk that Hamilton will be plain quicker than him.

Such a scenario could be uncomfotable for McLaren, but perhaps ultimately advantageous. If Hamilton guns for the title and Button can only trail in behind him mopping up points the only loser will be Button’s reputation. Indeed, history strongly suggests, as I’ve said here many times, that a new driver joining an established driver in a team will always be out-paced by the old hand for at least half a season – whether they can actually be quicker or not will not become clear until the second half of the season. Or to put it another way, unless Button races at a surprisingly high level, he cannot reasonably expect to be able to defend his title next year in a McLaren.

There is a danger for McLaren, however: for warnings from the past, they should be looking not to 2007 or 1988, but to 2000, when the team’s policy of not having a preference for either driver cost them the title. Coulthard was stronger in the middle of the season  and was the main challenger to Schumcaher at one point, taking points of Hakkinen; but at either end of the season, Hakkinen was the dominant of the pair. They took points off each other and Ferrari came through the middle to win. See also Vettel and Webber this year, Raikkonen and Massa last year (and in 2007, when Raikkonen only just squeaked through), Raikkonen and Montoya in 2005, Montoya and Ralf in 2003. Having two equally matched drivers and no team orders is a good way to lose titles.

Still, amid all this talk of British drivers, everyone seems to be forgetting to ask whether Anthony Davidson will get a well-deserved race seat; if one of the new teams decides to hire him, it will surely be a more sound decision than any of those apparently taken in Mercedesland recently.

USF1 and Them

Now, I’ll cheerfully admit to being an armchair F1 pundit. I don’t claim any special insight at all; rather, I follow the TV coverage and select online sources, and like to think I’m among the better-informed of the BBC’s viewers – nothing more, nothing less. I blog about it because commenting and speculating on F1 is one of its pleasures.

But one significant story has threatened to slip under my radar. For some time, the prospect of a USF1 team under the aegis of long-standing F1 journalist (his is the voice you usually hear in the post-race press conferences) and also ex-employee of Williams and Ferrari, has been in the offing. At the time of the contest for the new places on the grid, it appeared to be the best-established bidder apart from Dave Richards’ perennially ill-fated Prodrive effort. Its selection for 2010 was unsurprising.

But rumours have been circulating for some time that the team is making poor progress. It has trumpeted its novel location – America, plus a European base in Spain – and its supposedly cheap method of meeting in coffee shops and other non-business venues for conferences. And Windsor knows his F1 onions: this has reportedly been his dream for years; and he is joined in the endeavour by Ken Anderson, the technical boss who moved both Jordan and Stewart up the grid in the late 1990s.

So, where is the bad press coming from? Curiously, it has chiefly reached me via the Twitter account of Fake Max Mosley, one of the now too-numerous-to-follow Twitter clan of Fake F1 personalities. Fake Max is easily one of the most amusing, being wonderfully droll and sardonic and, frankly, worryingly plausible. Whoever runs the account also seems to be at least slightly well-connected – I’d be very interested to know who it is.

I’m sure there have been other more mainstream journalistic reports of the USF1 story, but this one caught my eye: it cites Ross Brawn, no less, expressing surprise at the American team’s lack of progress in crash testing so far. Another source quotes the chance of the team being ready to race as ‘zero’ and it is also reported that Windsor apparently wants to keep open the option of selling his entry to someone else.

My more regular F1 news sources have not yet reported this story (as far as I have seen – and I read them fairly thoroughly). It may be a bit speculative for the ’straight’ news websites of the BBC and ITV (full marks to them for keeping their excellent F1 website running), but established journalists and bloggers Joe Saward and James Allen haven’t addressed the story either. And understandably so: as both men’s blogs make plain, the F1 world is small and the world of F1 journalists smaller still. They undoubtedly both know Windsor well, and will not unreasonably be hesitant to piss on his chips in public.

To be fair, the team are adamant that things are progressing as they should, and unless and until there is an announcement to the contrary it’s impossible to gainsay that with confidence. But if it does go wrong for them, it will surely take a lot of explaining.

Let’s face it: F1 will be worse off without the manufacturers

As always, pundits and observers are hailing a the season of Formula 1 just gone as a classic, and the best for many years. It has certainly been an interesting one: the remarkable closeness of the field and development race over the season led to every team bar Toro Rosso being at the front of the field on merit at some point or other, while Jenson Button’s ascent to the championship was a truly great story.

But in truth the racing has usually been dull, certainly compared to 2008 when a boring race was a rarity. The nature of the year has been that it’s been hard to predict which teams will be strong at which circuits; the corollary of this has been that at most weekends only one or two cars have been challenging for the win, with the rest some way behind and a lack of genuine racing for the lead.

Where it has been a vintage year has been in the off-track intrigue. The rise of FOTA, the threatened breakaway and the eventual exit of Max Mosley would have made it remarkable enough on its own, but the hounding of McLaren and Hamilton at the start of the year, the rebirth of Honda as Brawn, the saga of Schumacher, Badoer and Fisichella in the second Ferrari, the exposure of the Singapore race-fix and the banishment of Flav and Pat were all fascinating spectacles. However much their disruptive effect might have been deplored at the time, they were what made the season so fascinating.

The trouble with – or the great benefit of – off-track action, however, is that it doesn’t respect the end of the season. I omitted the saga of the departing manufacturers from my list, as that is what I want to talk about most. Honda’s exit was anomalous in some ways: as a manufacturer, they had been making all the right decisions up to that point, bringing in a top engineer and manager to re-shape the team. How stupid they must now feel, knowing that for the same amount of money as they paid to offload their team, they could have had their brand all over the championship-winning car.

Toyota and BMW, by contrast, were manufacturers whose exits were admissions of disastrous error. Toyota’s lack of racing ethos led it to what was probably the least efficient use of money in Formula 1’s history, with huge amounts spent and no race wins. BMW’s mistakes were not so serial, but their decision not to go all-out for the championship last year when they had the chance has been proved thoroughly wrong; their gamble on getting the new regulations right and their insistence on KERS being used – when all other teams were willing to drop it – compounded the wretchedness of the error.

But with all bar three (possibly two, if Renault clear off) of the manufacturers gone, and three new private teams due to turn up on the grid next season, Formula 1 will have changed far more fundamentally than was achieved by the new rules this season. The resulting formula is likely to be much less close than this year, and potentially even less exciting.

Let’s look at the teams. McLaren, Red Bull, Brawn and Ferrari should all be at or near the front, but behind them…? Renault, Toro Rosso, Force India, Williams – who knows what sort of pace they might have, ditto the new teams? New F1 outfits are, after all, not renowned for making fast and reliable cars in their first years. We could have a lot of cars that are there purely to make a noise.

The closeness of the racing this year has been largely down to the presence of the manufacturers: for the first time in many years, perhaps ever, there was not an F1 team on the grid that was poorly funded or under-equipped. Sure, some had more money than others, but the manufacturer teams were well-resourced as ever, Williams had perfected the art of the tight F1 ship, the Red Bull teams were well-funded and had decent current-spec engines from Ferrari and Renault despite being nominally private, and Mercedes was providing close support to Brawn and Force India.

So, while Eddie “The Mouth” Jordan (bless him) and others might go on about how F1 had managed will without the manufacturers before and will do so perfectly well again, let’s remember what that F1 looked like. The gaps from the front to the back of the grid were much bigger, and there were numerous teams unlikely to score points all season. The numbers of blatant pay drivers was higher too – while some drivers relied on patronage and commercial deals in 2009, would an Enrique Bernoldi or Jos Verstappen have got a seat on that grid? Unlikely, surely.

Of course, there are good reasons for wariness around the manufacturers, as the indispensable Joe Saward, among others, has pointed out. They come and go as they please, and may threaten the stability of particular teams, and even the sport in general, as they do so: Honda, BMW and Toyota have all harmed a lot of people’s careers, and the latter two’s involvement in FOTA was not negligible – a set of exclusively privateer teams would no doubt have felt less confident about proposing a breakaway series.

The biggest item on the charge sheet against the manufacturers is of course that they drive up costs. Williams, Jordan, Benetton, Arrows, Tyrrell and Prost were all sent either down the grid or out of the sport as the manufacturers moved in at the start of the decade, or even in the late ’90s – some of them later hooking up with manufacturers to save themselves. But there lies the great irony: the commitment to spending restrictions has finally been made, after a decade of working up to it, and at exactly the point when F1 has found a way to live with the manufacturers, and produce a good show at the same time, the manufacturers go and clear off!

So I seem to be alone in this, but I can’t help but feeling next year’s F1 is likely to be less interesting. F1 is not about to collapse or die by any means, but it may be in for an awkward period of re-adjustment. The off-track shenanigans of this year certainly can’t be topped; fewer teams and drivers seem likely to be challenging for poles and wins; and a higher number of teams trundling round at the back risks undermining F1’s claim to be the pinnacle of motorsport.

Then again, anyone who tries to predict anything in F1 – at least, anyone writing from an armchair perspective like me – will probably be wrong, so I’m happy to wait and see. After all, the situation with Alonso and Massa at Ferrari looks tasty; there are machinations in the driver market to come (will Robert Kubica be unlucky enough to have two successive teams pull out on him? Whither Raikkonen, Kovaleinen, Glock?); we may yet see Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton duking it out for the world title; and at least three impossible things I’ve not even thought of are bound to happen. I’ve long said F1 isn’t often exciting, but it’s always interesting; that seems likely to be the case for some time.

Off the pot

Few sports can deliver such interest and excitement outside their arena of competition as Formula 1 does. Last week, the possibility of BMW quitting the sport or Michael Schumacher racing again would have seemed about as likely as… well, about as likely as McLaren taking a dominant race victory. But all of those things – and, shockingly, F1’s most serious accident for a long time, perhaps since 1995 – have taken place since them.

Today’s developments have made my last F1 blog post hopelessly outdated. Schumacher is putting his life and his reputation at risk… but neither very seriously, probably. It’s great news for Hamilton, Vettel and other new drivers from 2007 onwards, who now have a chance they must never have expected to race against Schumacher; less good for Raikkonen, who will surely be toast in F1 if Schumacher can jump into the car with no testing and beat him. Less good for Nelson Piquet, too: with the possibility of Alonso moving to Ferrari gone, he can surely expect to be sacked.

But the BMW news is in some ways more interesting, as it’s less easy to understand. The need to sign a new Concorde Agreement probably put BMW’s board in an impossible situation: should they commit to F1 for another few years, with their momentum lost and a total lack of results, plus apparent political instability and arguably an image problem after the Mosley spanking scandal, or should they chuck away their investment? Neither option can have seemed very attractive, but the new Concorde Agreement effectively obliged them to go or get off the pot.

BMW’s F1 operation has always had a slightly funny character about it, ever since the Williams tie-up. Everyone today has been talking about their targets-driven philosophy: when Williams failed to meet targets the partnership was dissolved. This was in spite of circumstances: two of the three the years when the partnership should have started producing big results – 2002, 2003 and 2004 – were years of Ferrari red-wash; in the other, Williams had a genuine tilt at the title. Mercedes stuck with McLaren for the long-term, despite the latter struggling apparently even more than Williams in 2003 and 2004 with the chassis side. But BMW bailed.

Targets were order of the day in their new team too. They were met up until last year, when Mario Theissen opted to switch the focus to 2009 despite being in with a shout at the 2008 title. If the team could maintain its progress, it would be a clear front-runner by 2009, rather than a close third-place car as in 2008. But it was a colossal “if”: a new set or regulations was bound to make things unpredictable; and even leaving that aside, there is no guarantee that a new car will be fast just because last year’s was – BMW’s slump this year is not unlike Honda’s in 2007, after a strong 2006.

Yet Theissen ignored the tendency of motor racing not to run to script, and gambled it all on heavy development of the 2009 car and the new KERS system – retained only at his insistence against the other teams’ doubts – and lost everything. Theissen’s problem is that he almost certainly didn’t realise he was gambling at all. Nor did he probably realise quite how F1 historians will judge a man who had a chance at a world title and did not pursue it – despite his neat and logical demeanour, in motor racing that decision marks him out as a raving eccentric.

So, will the team survive? It seems quite likely. Peter Sauber might take it over again, though he is not a young man; it’s quite possible that BMW will do a Honda and provide the finance to keep it going for a year. Failing that, one of the failed entrants for the new grid slots, such as Lola or Prodrive, might be interested in some sort of hook-up.

But will it hang on to its drivers? My comment that the driver market looks rather big may be about to be proved wrong: if Renault walk away too (and it’s noteworthy that they have not joined Mercedes and Toyota in reaffirming their commitment), will all the old teams really be kept on the grid as well as all the new ones? We are a long way away from knowing what teams will be racing in 2010.

Missing Massa

The nastiness of Felipe Massa’s accident in qualifying last Saturday is only just becoming clear. The head injury is serious enough – twenty years ago it would most probably have been fatal, and further complications could yet occur – but it is now reported that his eye is damage, which could finish his career. It would be a deeply sad way for Massa to leave the sport, as he is probably one of the most liked and respected drivers on the grid, not just for his apparently effortless cheeriness, but for both the way in which he developed his driving from speedy but erratic to championship-challenging, and the sportsmanship he displayed when he ultimately lost out to Hamilton last year.

Still, life goes on: hopefully, for Felipe Massa, that means a long and happy future whether in or out of the cockpit; for Ferrari, it means they are a driver short. Who will get that seat has become something of a vexed question. The driver market has been near-static in the last year or so, with only David Coulthard and Sebastian Bourdais having left the sport, so there are no obvious drive-less drivers knocking around. Nor are there any obvious up-and-comers to pop in the car… not that Ferrari would be likely to do that.

Test drivers are normally the first port of call in situations like this. Marc Gene and Luca Badoer both had the odd season for Minardi, but both a decade or so ago. Gene filled in at Williams for a few races in the mid-2000s, but he’s not exactly race sharp. Badoer was passed over for the race drive when Michael Schumacher broke his leg in 1999; it’s hard to see him getting the nod now.

So, what are the other options? Well, this is classic F1 off-track intrigue. One theory speculates Michael Schumacher could be invited back. As far as I can see this is pure invention, but it’s a lovely idea: he’s not yet 40, and could surely have a creditable go at it. With Spa and Monza in the offing, slick tyres to play with and a Ferrari team apparently bouncing back, it might just be attractive to him… Then again, we’ve just been reminded that he would be putting his life at risk – is there really that much attraction to it that he would do such a thing? It’s a lovely idea, but it would be pretty astonishing if it were to happen.

The other hot theory is more complicated still. Fernando Alonso’s contract with Ferrari is spoken of as solid gold fact by many people better informed than I; add to that Renault’s suspension from the next race, and perhaps they could get him in the car half a season early, and either retain him alongside Raikkonen next year, or ditch Raikkonen if Massa is sufficiently well to race again…?

Now, Renault might have a thing or two to say about that, of course… But Renault is itself rumoured to be selling up to a Russian oligarch and getting out of F1. Would losing Alonso jeopardise that deal? It would certainly jeopardise some Alonso-dependent sponsorship… Then again, if Ferrari get their chequebook out, all those problems could be made to go away.

In this scenario, what would Renault do for drivers? Other things being equal, they’re about to sack Nelson Piquet and put Romain Grosjean in the car. Finding two new drivers would not be fun; having two drivers to the end of the season who have no experience of the car must seem even worse. Then again, would it be any worse than having the hapless Piquet? As Martin Brundle observed on Sunday, his job isn’t to go quicker than Alonso, but it is to be there when Alonso’s not in a position to score, and he simply hasn’t been able to do that. If Jaime Alguesuari (close enough!) can get on terms with his team-mate in an unfamiliar car, Renault can surely chance it on two newbies and expect at least one to be better than Nelsinho. The only justification for keeping Piquet is probably to avoid a legal dispute with him and his dad.

As an aside, neither Piquet nor Bourdais have necessarily ended their F1 careers, even if neither turns a wheel again all season: there are three new teams due to enter F1 next year, who will need drivers. They might be willing to consider slow but experienced-ish guys like Bourdais and Piquet; even Jacques Villeneuve is apparently hopeful of landing a seat!

So if we look around for drivers who are less recently departed from F1, the obvious names are Takuma Sato and Anthony Davidson. Sato was in the frame for the Toro Rosso drive this year, while Davidson must surely be in with a shout of returning to F1 if his traditional lack of effective management has been solved. If I was running Ferrari, I’d have Ant on my list for if Fernando turns out not to be available.

And what of the current drivers? The great problem at the moment is that it’s not clear who is likely to be quick next year: will McLaren and Ferrari re-emerge? Will Brawn and Red Bull be able to stay at the front? Will Renault get sold, and if so will they be any bloody good? What will happen with the two under-hitting manufacturers BMW and Toyota, who could seemingly line up at the back or front of the grid, or anywhere in between? Can Williams hold it together? With all these questions, it’s hard to know whether Robert Kubica or Nico Rosberg would be wise to seek pastures new or not (if Kubica even can, contractually); Heidfeld’s stock seems to have dropped a bit so it’s not clear he could get a good seat elsewhere; Kovaleinen would surely be looking to hang on at McLaren as his first choice; Vettel and Webber are both tied up for next year… All told, it’s a big driver market with not that many drivers rattling round in it.

So, Alonso to Ferrari, Piquet and Grosjean at Renault looks the most likely of a set of not-very-likely looking scenarios at the moment. But anything could happen. Coulthard in a Ferrari? Well, I’d like to see it.

Never mind the racing, what about the politics?

It has been the right-on thing to say, throughout the British Grand Prix weekend, that we’re here for the racing and that’s the important thing; the politics is an unhappy distraction. I could hardly disagree more: as ever, the dry-weather racing at Silverstone was processional and dull, while the politics has been captivating, and remains a key part of the appeal of the sport to long-term afficionados.

Now, I have no inside knowledge or deep insight, but I have been following websites and blogs by a few people who do, particularly James Allen and Joe Saward (see links right), who between them have put the BBC’s utterly inane F1 website to shame. Most of what follows is a summation of their analyses, though I claim credit for any inaccuracies, wild theories and off-beam interpretation.

This weekend seemed to yield little publicly in terms of developments, other than the teams’ declaration on Thursday night of their intention to form a new series, and the FIA’s response of legal action; neither was especially surprising by that point. Negotiations were clearly ongoing throughout the weekend, and probably will be for some time to come. This is at least promising – in recent weeks, the two sides seem to have been corresponding via published, or leaked, letters, with an apparent eye on leaving a paper trail for subsequent disputes rather than on sorting anything out. Now that a crisis has been well and truly precipitated, they can get on with attempting to find a solution.

So, while we have a bit of breathing space, let’s take a step back: why is this happening, and why now? The estimable Mr Saward’s clear view is that the teams’ ultimate goal is to get rid of Mosley, and that references to “governance” really mean “Max”. Why now? Well, perhaps the other teams are more rattled by the recent beatings dealt out to McLaren than they initially thought to be: after all, if one team can be singled out for unfair treatment, any other team can be (and I doubt anyone in the sport seriously believes that the grossly harsh punishment inflicted on McLaren in 2007 wasn’t at least in part down to Mosley’s deep personal distaste for Ron Dennis). Perhaps after last year’s sex scandal, Max could have been expected to be cowed; but his ambitious budget cap plans and other regulation changes might just have made some teams think he has got too big for his boots.

There is a deeper struggle at work here, though. Formula 1 is not a poor sport: OK, times are tough in the short term, but by most people’s standards there is still plenty of money sloshing about, and there is clearly enough sponsorship for several new teams to have put together credible entry bids. With this in mind, a 40 million Euro (or whatever currency it was – I forget) budget cap seems very low, perhaps to the point of being tin-pot or Mickey Mouse – F1 types who glance across to football will see, after all, that it equates to about half a Cristiano Ronaldo. This might not be such a problem if the teams actually saw much of that money… but another way of looking at the need to reduce costs is that it shows how difficult it is to run an F1 team as a profitable business, and by extension, how little prize money they get.

Bernie’s deal to sell F1’s commercial rights in the early 2000s remains significant: CVC borrowed a lot of money to pay for the deal, and are taking a lot of money out of the sport to finance the loan. There was talk of a breakaway championship under the auspices of the Grand Prix Manufacturers Association in the years after this, which died a death when Berni splintered Ferrari off from the other group and got them to sign up to F1. By comparison, this present storm under FOTA has taken a lot less time to brew up – FOTA has existed for less than a year.

So it’s not totally clear what will satisfy FOTA: governance changes to remove an over-mighty Max; or a realignment of the commercial structure of F1. Or both. Or neither.

Given where we are, let’s look at some possible scenarios. One is that FOTA unity splinters: Mosley has talked up the differences of opinion in the FOTA camp, and the perspectives of Brawn and McLaren, who exist primarily or principally to race in F1, are different from those of global motor manufacturers like Toyota or Fiat (Ferrari). Until Thursday, it looked posisble that Brawn and McLaren could be enticed back into the F1 fold – but they have stuck very firmly indeed with FOTA.

So, let’s look at another scenario: FOTA unity remains, but Ferrari and the Red Bull teams lose the legal battle, and are obliged to race in F1 next year. That would probably be curtains for the breakaway series, which would not be so credible without Ferrari. And the reason Williams and Force India left FOTA is that they already had contracts in place to race in F1: Mosley claims Ferrari signed just such a contract when they split from the GPMA back in 2005 – if he is right, Ferrari will either be obliged to race in F1 or compensate the FIA for their absence.

In this scenario, Mosley had left enough spaces on the grid for Brawn, McLaren, the Red Bull teams and Ferrari; the three new teams announced last week, plus Williams and Force India, would have left insufficient spaces on the grid IF the FIA also granted entries to two or three credible bidders who had surprisingly failed to make the cut in the provisional entry list – particularly Lola and ProDrive. So, it seemed, the provisional entry list had been carefully balanced to squeeze out some of the existing manufacturers if they were too slow in coming to heel.

But this scenario now looks unlikely, as Prodrive and Lola, plus N Technology, seem to be sticking with the FOTA teams and their supposed new series – they will, after all, be very reliant on manufacturer support to get up and running. So that strategy by Mosley seems not to be a good prospect: without th FOTA teams, he will be unable to fill the F1 grid next year, still less fill it with credible teams. At the moment, he only has Williams, Force India and the three new entrants.

Nightmare scenario: F1 continues with the above teams plus some other small newcomers, as a pale parody of itself, while the new series presses ahead with the manufacturers, Prodrive et al, and picks up F1’s still-credible cast-off venues like Montreal, Silverstone, Adelaide, Buenos Aires and so on. If this happens, or looks likely to happen, either the split will be protracted or the FIA will co-opt the new series as the official Formula One. What would happen to the teams in the “old” F1 would be hard to say, as there would be two series’ worth of teams vying for space on one grid. But if this even begins to look likely, surely either the FIA will ditch Max or Max will give in.

The most likely scenario is that the budget cap plan is dropped in favour of some other “resource control” regime and F1 continues as normal, but with the three “unexpected” new teams instead of Lola and Prodrive, who will have been left out in the cold by the shenanigans. Trouble is, to achieve this, the teams will have to climb down. A long way. Will they be able to do it?

Perhaps ultimately the Boards of the major motor manufacturers will lose patience with their motorsport people and just tell them to get on with it, even if they have to make an embarrassing U-turn. But here’s something I don’t understand: reports a few weeks ago suggested Toyota might use this hoo-ha as an excus to pull out of F1, while it’s known that Renault have lost their title sponsor and speculated that they may just sell the team to Flav when that deal runs out. Yet Renault and Toyota appear to be the hard-liners within FOTA, and John Howett from Toyota stated today that Toyota is committed to F1 until 2012. How all these things square up I have no idea.

The only thing I’d be seriously worried about if there is a new series is the danger of Sky getting the broadcast rights, which means I’d be unable to watch it. Which begs the biggest question of all: in such a scenario, will Martin Brundle stick with F1 or defect to the new series? Now that really does get me worried.

Thoughts for the losers

Reflections on the F1 diffuser appeal. Firstly: phew! Not just for avoiding a debacle for F1 generally, but for finally confirming that Jenson Button has a long-deserved proper tilt at the world title on his hands. Much as I admire 6Music’s Jon Richardson, he recently made a snide remark about F1 “showing itself up” because “bad drivers are suddenly good drivers now they’ve got a good car”; look in the dictionary for “doesn’t understand F1 properly” and you’ll find “someone who suggests Jenson Button isn’t any good.” First race in a car capable of winning on merit, and he wins on merit – what more can you ask?

But I’m more interested in the losers of the diffuser appeal. It’s especially unfortunate for Red Bull, who seem to have produced the fastest chassis not to use a “trick diffuser” – but also the one that has the concept furthest removed from that diffuser style, and which will seemingly require the most modification. Red Bull were touted as a team that could make a big leap forward thanks to Adrian Newey’s knack at interpreting new regulations: make a leap they have, but Newey now claims he ran a doubel-deck diffuser concept past Charlie Whiting and had it rejected on grounds of illegality. One must now presume the design was out by a matter of small details; Newey seems to have taken it to mean that in fact the whole concept was out. Unlucky. Then again, in a pre-season Q&A, I think it was Newey who, when asked about whether the new Red Bull adhered to the spirit of the regulations, replied, “happily, there’s no such thing.”

Over at BMW, Mario Theissen seems to be particularly sour about the situation. There may be an internal-facing reason for his comments: last year, he deliberately held back the development of the 2008 BMW, which was unexpectedly in with a chance of letting Kubica take the title. The gamble was that by focusing early on 2009, BMW would be best-placed to mount a title challenge: with such a big change of regulations it was a massive gamble, and it has failed. Kubica’s grousing about not being allowed to make a title run when he had the chance now, albeit with hindsight, looks fully justified: it was a bird in the hand, after all. Theissen may well have some explaining to do to his bosses, and be seeking to pin the blame on an unfair decision on diffusers rather than his own conservatism. Then again, that conservatism has led to a lot of progress and success for the team – Theissen should not be taking too much flak for getting one very difficult call wrong.

Finally, I was amused by the crassness of Ferrari’s lawyer, with his personal insults towards Ross Brawn and Charlie Whiting. It seemed positively Berlusconi-esque; but I wonder if there is a greater acceptance in Italy for embellishing an argument with gross personal insult than is the case in most countries. Tozzi by name, Tozzer by nature?

Limited appeal

Tomorrow comes the appeal over the diffusers. If it is upheld, it scarcely bears thinking about. Would the cars with “trick diffusers” be excluded from the results of the first two race? Would points be re-allocated? Can they do that?

Never mind for a moment how ridiculous this would make Formula 1 would look, and how damaging this would be at a time when it needs to shore up its remaining sponsors and attract new teams. What would the revised standings actually look like, without the Brawns, Toyotas and Williamses? Here’s what.

Australia

1. Alonso
2. Buemi
3. Bourdais
4. Sutil
5. Heidfeld
6. Fisichella
7. Webber
8. Vettel

Malaysia

1. Heidfeld
2. Webber
3. Hamilton
4. Massa
5. Bourdais
6. Alonso
7. Piquet
8. Raikkonen

Championship standings would be (bearing in mind the half-points awarded in Malaysia):

1. Alonso (11.5 points)
2. Heidfeld (9)
3. Bourdais = Buemi (8)
4. Webber (6)
5. Sutil (5)
6. Fisichella = Hamilton (3)
7. Massa (2.5)
8. Vettel = Piquet (1)
9. Raikkonen (0.5)

What a bloody mess that would be.

What a shower

Let’s pick the bones out of the Malaysian grand prix. The first talking point has to be the circumstances in which the race was red-flagged: this outcome was down entirely to the time at which the race was started. Not only did such a late start mean that there would be insufficient light if the race went on much beyond 90 minutes, but the climate around the circuit is such that early evening is, as I understand it, a time of day at which rain is particularly likely. For the sake of a slightly earlier start – even an hour would be sufficient to address these problems – it is surely worth jeopardising viewing figures in Europe slightly. The alternative is what we had today: the viewers don’t get a full race. All told, the extended period of drivers and teams fannying around on the pitlane, with nobody having any idea what was going on, made F1 look like a total shambles. Fascinating though it was for the dedicated viewer – and watching a global conversation via Twitter as it all unfolded on TV certainly added an interesting new dimension to F1 – to the casual viewer it must have seemed inexplicable and stupid. It should not be allowed to happen again.

The other conclusions we can draw from the race seem to be much more positive. There certainly seems to be more overtaking this year: whether this is because of the new aero regs making it easier, or because the cars are so close together anyway, is hard to tell. The former must be playing a part, as is the variety of KERS and non-KERS cars through the field.

KERS itself seems to be a decidedly mixed blessing: while Ferrari claim it gives a two-tenths advantage over a single lap, it seems not to be benefiting them in qualifying: presumably it must be very precisely used to get this time boost. It also seems that KERS cars’ extra weight makes them awkward when braking: Ted Kravitz identified this in relation to Alonso, who several times lost places because he got his braking wrong, but it also seemed to apply to Nick Heidfeld in the BMW and to Raikkonen in the Ferrari. That said, it does seem to allow drivers to defend against, or power past, non-KERS cars very effectively: I believe Brawn are the only team with no plans to run KERS at all this year, so could this leave them with a problem by the end of the season, assuming other teams catch up to their pace more generally in that time?

Alonso seems to be slipping into a Trulli or Webber role this year: he’s quick enough to muscle the car further up the grid than it should be, but in the races he ends up having a train behind him. Meanwhile his team-mate Piquet is undoubtedly being made to look even worse by having such a strong team-mate, but even so I wasn’t surprised to hear Eddie Jordan repeating my speculation that he might be replaced mid-season (hi Eddie!).

Jenson’s race was once again highly accomplished: he has the fastest car, but he is able to pump in fast laps when necessary, can take places to make up for an iffy start, and retains his composure in the most difficult of circumstances. The received wisdom from many pundits that he’s “not quite in the top class” of F1 drivers is, in my view, extremely harsh: the attributes above can equally be applied to Michael Schumacher.

The Brawn car, however, does seem to have some niggly problems, most notably the gearbox: Barrichello has needed a replacement, and Button had an iffy start this weekend and a dodgy pitstop last weekend, apparently for the same reason. And the reliability fears expressed ahead of this weekend didn’t emerge, but only because  we didn’t get a full race distance. Still, Ross Brawn will no doubt ensure the team is well across these minor concerns.

Meanwhile, Heikki Kovaleinen needs to start having a good season: two first-lap exits is not good, particularly when the second was wholly self-inflicted. Nick Heidfeld’s lucky podium also belies what may be the start of a difficult season for him, as his qualifying wobble from the middle of last year seemed to reappear. Both drivers may need to make shoring up their positions within their respective teams their main priorities this season; the fact that neither team seems to be mounting the championship challenge they had anticipated may just take the pressure off slightly.

Two races in, we now have a slightly better view of the relative paces of the teams. Toyota, Red Bull and perhaps BMW will be disappointed if they don’t take race wins this year; Ferrari may also be able to do it, although they seem to be making some wayward calls just now. I was also intrigued to notice that their “traffic light” system for pit stops has been reinstated, which I actually think makes sense; mistakes can happen with lollipops as well as with automated systems, so it never struck me as right to blame that system alone for Ferrari’s late-summer difficulties last year.

It has been a breathless start to the season, with F1 alternately providing high class drama and low-rent farce. Let’s hope the diffuser row does not provide more of the latter by banning the “trick diffuser” solution, and that we will have chance to get our breath back befoe China in two weeks’ time.

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.