The Return of The King

I’ve been blogging on Formula One throughout the season this year. Having come back to F1 after an absence of ten or fifteen years, I’ve enjoyed the racing a great deal. Although it’s fair to say I’ve probably enjoyed the BBC’s coverage just as much. I mock Jake, DC and Eddie, and I ridicule Brundle because I think it’s pretty funny. But secretly, I like what they do.

Mostly though, this year has been a voyage of discovery into the labyrinthine politics and behind-the-scenes shenanigans. It’s this that has kept me fascinated me throughout the last few months.

I had made a formatting decision early on that I would only blog on the subject during Grand Prix weekends, folding in any appropriate fun and games that had happened since the last race, and summarising them neatly before moving on to the day’s events. Unfortunately, it was getting to the point that I would take up my laptop to describe a qualifying session, and knock out a thousand words on Max Mosley and KERS before they’d even started their engines.

So this week I am faced with the problem that there is just so much going on in the world of Formula One, and there are three and a half weeks till the next race. With poor old Felipe Massa still in intensive care, and BMW on their bike, I was already making notes for the next race weekend.

This week though, I simply have to break with my self-imposed tradition and write about the news early. This week, Michael Schumacher came out of retirement.

Firstly, let’s talk about Felipe Massa. After his brush with Rubens Barrichello’s rear suspension last week, he is now out of intensive care and, in the long tradition of medical bulletins, he is reported to be “cracking jokes.” Despite his improving condition, he is to remain in Budapest for the time being. His Brazilian doctor Dino Altmann said that Massa “looks like a boxer,” but the fact the doctor is flying out of Hungary today indicates that Massa is out of danger.

So, with Massa in one piece but unlikely to make the grid for Valencia in three weeks’ time, Ferrari needed a short term replacement to drive their car. I imagine the board meeting where they discussed this was very interesting. Chief engineers and team managers all scratching their heads and tossing around the names of test drivers. In the corner is the glowering “technical adviser,” still very much on the payroll. He coughs gently and silence falls. All heads turn to him.

“Gentlemen. If I might make a suggestion…”

So Schumi is back behind the wheel. The world is sitting up and taking notice. Will he still have it? Will he be struggle with the technology which has advanced so much while he has been away? He probably doesn’t even know what KERS stands for. Actually, nobody else does either.

Is this a step too far for an old champion? He is almost universally acknowledged as the best driver to ever sit in a Formula One car, but I suppose four years in the paddock has to make even the best rusty.

It’s not as dangerous as in boxing – seeing Evander Holyfield coming out of retirement again to take on the enormous Nikolay Valuev was not just sad, but also dangerous. Fortunately, the seven foot monster is a hapless gorilla rather than a boxer, so Holyfield survived to start his latest retirement.

Although F1 is a lot safer these days, Massa’s accident, and Alonso’s flying tyre in Budapest have proved that it is still a contact sport. You have to feel that Schumacher will be okay though – he is so icy cool that he’ll probably end up winning the bloody race.

In the back of my mind, there is the concern that he is pretty much the reason I stopped watching F1 all those years ago. However, it was not him so much as his uncompromising domination of the sport. Even if he were to return to that metronomic form for the next couple of races, it can only ever be a temporary aberration to the status quo, and so I’ve got to appreciate the drama.

Whilst on the subject of Fernando Alonso’s missing wheel, the Renault team have been suspended from the European Grand Prix as a punishment for allowing him out of the pits without securing his the wheel-nut. They are appealing, and the likelihood is they’ll end up with a fine or a points deduction.

Still, a hefty Bridgestone bouncing down the track at 100mph is no laughing matter and there ought to be a significant punishment, although in my heart of hearts, I feel sorry for the poor mechanic who missed his mark and didn’t quite get his spanner in place.

Related Articles:
Felipe Massa’s Accident – The Hungarian Grand Prix, 26th July 2009

Hungarian Grand Prix

Twenty four hours after qualifying, the grid was a little preoccupied with Felipe Massa’s injury. As the session finished yesterday, I was under the impression he was just a little shaken, but in truth, the outcome was worse than first thought. It was, however, far far better than it could have been.

As the drivers assembled on the grid, Massa was still in Intensive Care at a local hospital. The spring which fell off Rubens Barrichello’s car had hit Massa’s helmet above the left eye at around 120mph. The helmet stayed intact but the visor crumbled and Massa had a cut above his left eye, “bone damage” to the skull, and “brain concussion.”

With that in mind, there was a slightly sober feel to the grid as the party started. For his grid walk, Martin Brundle had Eddie Jordan alongside him. The dynamic didn’t really work as Jordan was far too busy talking to ask any questions. Brundle eventually gave up being polite and walked off, microphone in hand, leaving Jordan trailing behind him, still talking.

At the end of yesterday’s qualifying session, Massa’s accident had distracted from the fact that the timing system had gone down leading to the drivers scratching their heads and exchanging times to establish the pecking order. By the time the official results were announced, Mark Webber had to be pulled out of the shower to attend a press conference.

Speaking of Webber, after his first Grand Prix victory in Germany last time, the BBC had pre-recorded a film which featured Jake Humphrey cycling in the woods with Mark Webber. Bearing in mind that this is how he smashed up his leg over the winter, the beeb were taking a bit of a risk. I had visions of Humphrey ploughing into Webber’s bike and taking them both over a precipice. If it happened, they cut it out.

With the grid having such a diverse range of cars at the front, the start was crucial, and Alonso followed up his victory in qualifying with a terrific start. Behind him, though, Mark Webber and Lewis Hamilton battled through the first two corners to take up the chase. Sebastian Vettel, sitting on the front row on the grid, was seventh after the first two turns – a poor start followed by a bump in the crowd from Raikkonen on the first corner.

After a very fast first few laps, the lighter Alonso started to lose pace. Lewis Hamilton, who had overtaken Webber to seize second, was scorching towards him. On a short strategy, Alonso came in before Hamilton could catch him. Unfortunately, replays showed that the hapless mechanic on the right front tyre had not properly tightened the wheelnut. As Alonso went out, his wheel already looked wobbly, and within a minute, his tyre was bouncing off down the track.

A few laps later, Vettel seemed to suffer a similar problem to Barrichello’s in qualifying, something in his rear suspension failing. Afterwards, he would blame it on the bump from Raikkonen at the start. Whatever caused it, a pit stop failed to put it right and, within twenty laps, the two front row starters were out of the race.

Meanwhile, Lewis Hamilton had snatched the lead after Alonso’s retirement and held it firmly. His first grand prix win since last year demonstrated that the changes McLaren made to their car had been very effective. The near-hysterical clip of his reaction on the in-car radio said everything about how pleased he was.

It was unexpected but it was no fluke. He was consistently the fastest driver on the course, the pit-stops worked perfectly, and he was never under any pressure.

Likewise, Brawn’s deteriorating performance can no longer be put down to misfortune. He may be leading the Championship, but Jenson Button only finished seventh, and Rubens Barrichello scuttled in tenth. It worked in their favour today that Hamilton and Raikkonen as it kept Mark Webber in third. The threat from Red Bull is very real and, with seven races still to go, this championship is far from over.

Related Articles:
Qualifying – Hungarian Grand Prix Qualifying, 25th July 2009.
Last Grand Prix – German Grand Prix, 12th July 2009.

German Grand Prix

Before today’s race, Mark Webber was the star of the show. Despite being a top driver for several years, he has never quite managed to win a race yet. Nor, until yesterday, had he managed a pole position. A personable chap, and the head of the unofficial drivers’ union, he appears to be popular with the other grid regulars. Despite the presence of the two Brits near the front of the grid, there was an almost tangible desire to see him win the race.

As much as Silverstone last time, the Nurburgring is drenched in Grand Prix history, and the BBC used its substantial archive to showcase a retrospective of the track, incorporating the Fangio footage alongside some clips of Nazi parades at the track, all underscored with some Wagner. When it comes to avoiding clichés, we should probably be happy that they didn’t have David Coulthard in lederhosen.

We had the mandatory reference to the “original Nurburgring” which, I must admit, does sound amazing. It was originally a fourteen mile circuit around the mountains of the Eifel Forest which would be a horrendous challenge for the driver, but probably a bigger challenge for the broadcasters.

If you consider how many cameras are studded around the average Grand Prix circuit, it would probably take every lens in Germany to adequately cover fourteen miles. That’s why we keep seeing the same clip of Fangio going round the same corner – they only had one camera back in the fifties.

This is the ancestral home of German Formula One, it now fights Hockenheim for supremacy and has just started an arrangement whereby they will alternate the venue for the German Grand Prix.

Before the race, we had a tetchy interview with Michael Schumacher, with Jake gracelessly bringing up an old incident where Schumacher and David Coulthard had collided on the track and almost come to blows in the pits. We also had Martin Brundle, whose grid walk was most notable for his threat, thankfully unfulfilled, of showing us the drivers’ trackside toilets.

Finally, there was a young German boy band fellow knocking out the German National Anthem like it was a love song – it was like when they get Mariah Carey to do The Star Spangled Banner. Embarrassing and demeaning to everyone involve, but also a little creepy to hear “Deutschland, Deutschland. Uber alles,” rendered with such affectation.

As usual, the start of the race was where the action was. With a hairpin turn at the end of the start straight, it was always likely to produce a bottleneck. Lewis Hamilton made use of his KERS system to pull from fifth on the grid to be first going into the corner. Unfortunately for him, he hit the corner way too fast, overshot, recovered poorly, and emerged from the situation in last place, and with a puncture. After such pre-race optimism, his race was over before the end of the first lap.

Alongside Jenson Button at the entrance to turn one, Webber defended his pole position from the threat of the advancing Rubens Barrichello with a lunge to the right which, in the view of the stewards, was dangerous. Not only that, but it was also unsuccessful so Barrichello had already led Webber for the first few laps of the race, when Webber was given a drive-through penalty.

Unfortunately for Barrichello, this advantage was outweighed by getting stuck behind Felipe Massa after his pit stop. The Red Bull team got the tactics right and Webber worked his way beck to first place, eventually taking his first Grand Prix victory, with Vettel second.

The two drivers who failed to finish this race could, for very different reasons, be coming to the end of their F1 careers.

Despite a good result for one Ferrari driver, with Felipe Massa finishing third – only their second podium of the season – Kimi Raikkonen failed to finish. What’s more, he has continued to display his complete disregard for his employers by announcing he will compete at the Rally of Finland at the end of July.

After the Hungarian Grand Prix on the 26th July, there is a four week break until the exciting street circuit in Valencia hosts the European Grand Prix, so it's to be expected that the drivers will take a small mid-season break. However, I'm not sure Ferrari will be overjoyed to hear Raikkonen is spending his free time screeching around the icy forests of Finland.

It's really quite extraordinary that there is no contractual clause preventing him from doing it. I seem to recall Michael Schumacher had it written into his Ferrari contract that he would be allowed to play football during the winter break. Surely Kimi doesn't have a "rallying clause" in his contract?

The other non-finisher was Torro Rosso’s Sebastian Bourdais. He had qualified slowest, a full second down even on the hapless Timo Glock. Even before qualifying, there was dark talk of him being elbowed aside should he fail to impress this weekend. If that talk is true then we might have seen the Frenchman in his last Grand Prix.

Before the race, the BBC very deliberately interviewed Torro Rosso’s test driver Jaime Alguersuari. By the time we decamp to Budapest, he might be on the grid.

Monaco Grand Prix

The BBC were always going to milk Monte Carlo for all it was worth and, sure enough, the coverage began with a package in which they had put Jake Humphrey in front of a green screen and superimposed him onto some archive footage of great drivers being interviewed. It was a quirky little sequence that made good use of the BBC archive, but in his efforts to make it look realistic, poor old Jake ended up nodding like a dashboard ornament.

We quickly moved onto images of Monte Carlo wealth and opulence juxtaposed with scrabbling fans fighting for a portion of mountainside from which to gawp at the race from a distance. Inadvertent social comment from the BBC – good to see.

There was an all too brief Max Mosley interview where he dropped a very broad hint that the budget cap would be in place by 2011, rather than the original plan of next year. Jake said apologetically that there wasn’t time to cover the potential breakup of the sport, so they cut quickly to a bleating interview with Nigel Mansell.

Brundle was in his element on his grid walk. Because the grid is actually a Monte Carlo street with very little room on either side, the usual engineers and hangers-on were all crushed into a smaller space. Add to that the fact that Monaco brings out the celebrities in their droves, and Brundle doorstepped the most unlikely sequence of people you are ever likely to see in a five minute timespan.

Firstly, he chatted to former driver Jacques Villeneuve, looking as happy as a kid who’d won the lottery; then he grabbed Prince Michael of Kent, a man who has won the lottery of life. Apparently the Prince’s status as patron of the RAC is enough to earn him the chance to strut around the grid – I’ll bet he isn’t camping on the side of a mountain.

From his Highness, Brundle moved onto Michael Johnson, a man who has an air of expertise when talking about anything at all. You get the impression you could ask him about the impact of the Wars of The Roses on Britain’s sixteenth century internationalism, and he would have an opinion, which he would deliver with all the authority of an Emeritus Professor of History. Next was Geri Halliwell, who was predictably chatting to the richest man in the city, Bernie Ecclestone. She seemed to phase even Brundle with her relentless banality.

The race started well for Brawn with Button holding his first position, and Barrichello overtaking Raikkonen going into the first bend. After that, it seemed to be a formality. In a great phrase from Brundle, he was toying with them like a cat with a ball of string. Barrichello lived a little more dangerously, with Raikkonen nibbling at him throughout, but another Brawn one-two was almost inevitable.

This might have been the race where Ferrari rescued their reputation. From Raikkonen’s front row qualification, they showed they were in the race and, aside from the Brawns, Raikkonen and Massa were by far the best on the track.

Another title contender Sebastian Vettel was running well until he went into the barrier in an almost identical slide to Hamilton’s in qualifying. Oddly, it wasn’t quite as funny when he did it.

Spanish Grand Prix

As the circus moves to Spain, there was much talk of Alonso mania in Barcelona, and we were duly shown pictures of autograph hunters and flag-waving supporters. I’m not sure how big an influence this really is on a Formula One driver. Nigel Mansell always used to say the crowd at the British Grand Prix gave him an extra second per lap, but it’s hardly the same as the Gallowgate End when you are in a deafening car and your ears are securely plugged.

A realistic Fernando Alonso wasn’t playing the game. “Will you give your fans something to cheer today?”

“Well, we’ll do our best, but it’s going to be very difficult.”

Some of the Spanish fans were too busy poking fun once more at Lewis Hamilton. This is an interesting cultural difference between Spain and Britain. There are very few black people in Spain, so they still see it as a bit of wacky knockabout fun to black up and pretend to be Lewis Hamilton, whereas in Britain, we prefer our racism to be a little more subtle.

Following up on the Ferrari team’s travails, the BBC had a filmed interview with Kimi Raikonnen which had been recorded earlier in the week. Raikonnen is never overflowing with charisma, but I thought he was about to lapse into a coma during one answer. He seems to have applied the same level of enthusiasm to yesterday’s qualifying, finishing in sixteenth place.

Eddie Jordan was incandescent, advocating his immediate suspension. Michael Schumacher should take his place, apparently.

Martin Brundle, sick of being blanked by the top drivers on his pit walk, decided to go to the back of the grid where he presumed the also-rans would be delighted with the publicity. So who did he interview? Lewis Hamilton’s girlfriend.

He moved on to Sebastian Bourdais and led with, “anything you can do from back here?” He might as well say, “You’re a bit crap really aren’t you?” Incidentally, whenever I hear Sebastian’s surname, I start singing “On a Ragga Tip” by SL2. That’s a pretty obscure reference unless you are almost precisely the same age as me.

He then interviewed the two Force India drivers who had qualified in the last two positions on the grid and actually led into Adrian Sutil with this question: “How do you cope with waking up in the morning, brushing your teeth, and knowing you don’t have a prayer?” I’m surprised he didn’t get a punch in the teeth.

The start of the race was one of those belters that I enjoy where there is complete mayhem as Jarno Trulli’s Toyota went off the road, then speared back across the field, taking out both Torro Rosso cars and Adrian Sutil. Looks like Brundle was right about his chances.

The race was again dominated by Brawn with Button eventually coming out ahead of Barrichello, but their lead over the rest of the field is now huge – they have 68 points in the constructors’ championship, with Red Bull trailing in second on 38.5

Felipe Massa was having a good race in fourth place with five laps to go but rather farcically ran out of fuel, and had to allow Vettel and Alonso past him so he could coast home. Coupled with the fact that Raikonnen failed to finish once again, Ferrari are becoming a laughing stock. Eddie Jordan is probably hiring hitmen as we speak.