We’re two weeks into the mid-season break, and there’s less than two weeks to go until the Spa-Francorchamps circuit in Belgium opens its gates to commence the second half. Well the last eight races, as we passed the halfway point in Germany.
Formula 1 is a sport that is constantly progressing, but during this gap the teams have been on an enforced lock down, or holiday meaning there hasn’t really been much in the way of news. We’ve had a few sound bites from the likes of Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso saying they’ll never give up and Red Bull saying that of course Sebastian Vettel can handle any pressure that comes his way.
Silverstone have submitted an application for planning permission to turn the circuit into a leisure park, full of hotels, fairgrounds and Kart tracks. As well a business and technology centre, retail facilities there’ll be a museum of motorsport which all sounds very exciting and will keep the circuit moving forward and hopefully make it profitable.
Other than that there hasn’t been a lot to shout about, so I think it’s about time to do a not quite mid-season, mid-season report and see how everyone is getting on. Let’s start with the bottom four teams so far, one of which is a tragic disappointment.
Virgin Racing (0): Timo Glock (0) and Jerome d’Ambrosio (0)
It’s been a disappointment, they’ve fallen further behind fellow newcomers Team Lotus, and are struggling to maintain their pace against HRT, and are even behind them in the constructor’s. A recent decision to part with Nick Wirth and his all computer design philosophy should help them next year, as will a new technical partnership with McLaren, but as for this term, it would be wise not to expect much more.
Timo Glock has not looked a happy bunny this year. He was expecting more in the team’s second year and seemed decidedly unmotivated in early races. He’s turned that around recently, mixing it with the Lotus’ and keeping well ahead of the HRT drivers. I think the McLaren deal has also added an extra spring in his step. d’Ambrosio started off well, but has fallen further behind in recent races, he’ll need to start challenging Glock again if he wants to retain a seat for next year.
HRT: Vitantonio Liuzzi (0), Narain Karthikeyan (0) and Daniel Ricciardo (0)
There hasn’t been a lot of progression from them since last season. If anything they’re even further off the pace. However, Geoff Willis formerly of Red Bull and Honda joined them as Technical Director, although too late to influence the overall design of this year’s car. Despite all this, due to attrition in Canada the team sit just behind Lotus in the constructor’s championship having scored one 13th place to Lotus’ two 13th places.
Liuzzi has been strong and outpaced Karthikeyan all season. He’s also out qualified Ricciardo, Red Bull’s bright new hope, when he took over Karthikeyan’s seat at Silverstone. Ricciardo is looking for a Toro Rosso seat next year and looks to be building up gradually with an impressive drive last time out in Hungary, beating his team mate by two places in 18th.
Team Lotus: Heikki Kovalainen(0), Jarno Trulli (0)and Karun Chandhok (0)
Another team not to make the expect progress this year. It looked exciting early on, they had installed the championship winning Renault engines in the back of the car, they’d had a year to build and learn, they looked the most likely of the three newest teams to break into the midfield and maybe steal a point. Well apart from a few lucky breaks to get them into Q2, they’ve achieved none of those things and don’t look likely too this season but they’re still well ahead of Virgin and HRT though.
Heikki has driven brilliantly this year. He’s outqualifed and outraced Trulli all year, and has even somehow managed to mix it in the midfield on a couple of occasions early in the season. Has driven out of his skin and deserves a step up with the car next year. For a lot of the season Trulli has looked lost at sea, blaming it on dodgy power steering that wasn’t giving him any feel for the car, he has lack paced. Was even replaced by Chandhok in Germany, but a new power steering system in Hungary at least made him a bit more perky.
Williams (4pts): Rubens Barrichello (4) and Pastor Maldonado (0)
What have Williams become? This once great team aren’t even a shadow of their former selves, they’re a dusty smeared reflection on a cracked windscreen. They’ve at least agreed at the end of the season to part with their technical director Sam Michael who is still throwing new parts at the car in the hope it’ll create some sort of pace, although as Barrichello has pointed out, it would be worth understanding the car first before constantly adding things as whatever they do, it still eats its tyres during the race.0
Next year looks more promising, they signed former McLaren man Mike Coughlan, who is available after being banned from the sport following the spy saga with Ferrari in 2008. They’ve also acquired Renault engines for 2012, now they just need to build a decent car.
Barrichello has at times been overtly critical of the team, but has still produced some decent performances, although he would have expected better than just two 9th places. Maldonado came with the reputation of a pay driver despite being 2010 GP2 champion. He has firmly quashed that description, qualifying in the top 10 three times and should have scored a top 6 finish at Monaco if it wasn’t for Lewis Hamilton’s intervention, He’s been more than a match for Barrichello.
That’s it for this segment, part 2 will be up soon where we’ll be taking a look at the core of the midfield in the fight to be best of the rest.
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