After scanning the Formula 1 press and the general motor
racing press I thought I would offer a few thoughts.
First of all I’d like to wish Sky pundit Anthony Davidson a swift
recovery after a major crash at the Le Man 24 hours in his LMP1 class Toyota.
He got a fair bit of air after he made contact with a GTam Ferrari and managed
to break two vertebrae.
Thankfully he should make a full recovery. Le Mans is quite
a hypnotic race to watch, with so many elements coming at you in the space of a
day, it’s certainly something I’d love to attend in the future. Audi have
dominated over the last decade and they won again but it was also the first win
for their hybrid car of a diesel engine and flywheel technology driven by Andre
Lotterer, Benoit Treluyer and Marcel Fassler, something Formula 1 will be increasingly
going down the road of over the coming years although not with diesel, that
would be silly.
New Engines
There’s been a lot of talk about the Formula 1 regulations
for the coming years. The new V6 Turbo
engines fully equipped with more
powerful hybrid technology are due to be introduced in 2014 having already been
delayed by a year.
There’s still debate about whether this will go ahead with
Bernie Ecclestone known to be against it, while some of the smaller teams are
worried about how much these new engines will cost them. Mercedes boss Norbert
Haug has admitted that initially they’ll cost more as they develop the new
technology having run the current engines for seven years.
At the moment customer teams pay around 15million Euros for
their power plants, this could more than double in 2014, although Mercedes have
said that over a five period the initial costs would average the same as today.
This new Formula will be about fuel efficiency and is more relevant
to the road car industry which manufacturers like Mercedes and Renault are keen
for. Formula 1 has to adapt and I certainly see this as a step forward.
Natural resources are not finite, and for Formula 1 to
continue guzzling gas and not to at least be seen to be developing towards a
greener future would eventually make the sport unsustainable.
Standardisation would
cost too
Of course this is going to cost money, and there has been a
lot of further debate about cost reduction, with the resource restriction
agreement possibly being officially written into the rules. I’m all for
bringing costs down, but I hope this doesn’t create a raft of changes that
force upon the teams more standard parts.
Formula 1 is the top tier of motor sport and it should be
allowed to develop and express itself with not too many restrictions.
Standardisation of more and more elements would make it a GP2 equivalent which
is not what I think the fans would want to see.
I read an interesting article by former Jordan designer and
now BBC analyst Gary Anderson
here, where he suggests you regulate how many
updates a team can bring during the season, thereby limiting wastage of parts
that they discard if they don’t work properly. It’s certainly a simple proposal
and I think would be quite effective.
Valencia
Practice around the streets of Valencia starts on Friday,
the wall lined track is actually pretty quick, although traditionally not that
exciting with little room to pass, not even last year with the DRS did the
heart beat much faster.
It should be quite hot in Spain, which would look to favour
Lotus, who seem to use the Pirelli’s that bit better in the heat. They’re
looking for their first win of the year, but who would get it? On current form,
as long as he gets through the first lap, you’ve got to go with Romain
Grosjean. He’s certainly a much improved version than the one from 2009, where
he was thrown unexpectedly in the deep end after replacing Nelson Piquet Jnr half
way through the year.
He’s out qualified Kimi Raikkonen six times already, and has
been getting increasingly stronger in the races, well like I said, once he’s
through the first few corners.
Michael Schumacher is optimistic too. How he can be I don’t
know? Maybe it’s because he knows he has nothing to prove and he’s still just
continuing to enjoy being in the F1 bubble, or maybe he knows that at some
point luck has to change.
Well it didn’t change much in his first career, where he had
an awful lot of good luck, but certainly he is due a good result, it can’t go
wrong all the time can it? Mercedes are assuring him they will get to the
bottom of his reliability problems and you only hope that at least once it
comes together for him.
Those are the options for eight winners out of eight races,
but I think we might finally get our first double race winner with my options
coming from our championship leaders, Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and
Sebastian Vettel.
I think many are assuming the title fight will boil down to
these three, I’m not jumping off the fence on that one quite yet, but it’s time
someone stole a march and took a grip on the title. Vettel is looking for the
hat trick, having won the last two years, while Hamilton has finished second
twice.
Ferrari have improved a lot since the start of the year, and
Alonso will be a contender for a podium, but I can see this one being a
Hamilton and Vettel showdown for the victory. Although that might lead you to
believe it’ll be a predictable race with the top contenders fighting it out at
the front, Valencia isn’t known for excitement generally either, but this year
you can never know for sure.
So in that case, Kamui Kobayashi will be standing atop the
podium! Which actually Sauber are still quick in the races, if they can qualify
that bit better, they shouldn’t be ruled out, and after Perez’s exploits it’s
about time Kobayashi had a podium too. As ever though only tyres will tell.
Silverstone
I received my British Grand Prix tickets a few weeks ago,
they are secured away nicely. Route is already planned, new camera is about to
be bought, can’t wait!
