Formula 1 Column

[Gundalgandul]

Thread yang memuat sejumlah feature dari kolomnis dunia tentang Formula 1.
Kebetulan, gue punya akses ke autosport.com, dan menurut gue artikel-artikel di sana selain berita sangat bagus untuk menambah pengetahuan dan wawasan para mupengers yang doyan F1.

Sekedar berbagi...silakan dinikmati...

[Gundalgandul]

Slow Burn: Interview with Nico Rosberg

Lewis Hamilton made his mark on Formula One at his very first race, but for Nico Rosberg, less potent machinery has forced him to wait a little longer. Mark Glendenning spoke with the German about finding his feet - and with Nico's bosses at Williams, about his progress and potential

By Mark Glendenning
autosport.com contributing writer

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/glendenning1.jpg
Nico Rosberg

Five 30-something mums have just appeared on a TV screen, and Nico Rosberg's train of thought derails completely.

"Ooh - who's that?" he asks. "The Spice Girls! Is this a reunion, or what? Are the Spice Girls singing again? No way! All of them? How cool would that be? That would be really cool, wouldn't it? Anyway, sorry, where was I?"

With his impeccable bloodline (son of the 1982 world champion Keke), his privileged upbringing in Monaco, his multilingual fluency, even his immaculate hairdo, few drivers are better qualified than Rosberg to live up to the popular perceptions that surround someone who is trying to establish themselves in Formula One.

But the best thing about public perceptions is when they break down. Rosberg is intelligent, articulate, and despite his best efforts to project the laser-like focus that everyone expects from F1 drivers, he is disarmingly capable of being distracted by a mid-90s pop group.

Rosberg also becomes increasingly genial when interviewed - to the point where, when the recorder is turned off, rather than making a beeline for his private quarters in the Williams motorhome, he sticks around for a couple of extra minutes because he has decided that it is his turn to ask a few questions of his inquisitor.

It's not so much that Rosberg is particularly interested in the background of the person that had just interviewed him, but more that he has a natural curiosity about his surroundings. So it was no great surprise to learn that if F1 hadn't worked out, a career in engineering beckoned.

"I really was good at school and engineering, and I enjoyed it," he says.

"All my school friends kind of went off to do more study; that was the next step in life. And I went a completely different way, which was racing.

"I wanted to keep the university option open, really. I don't know how serious I really was in my mind. But I mean, I went to visit the university [Imperial College in London] and everything.

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/glendenning2.jpg
German Formula BMW champion Nico Rosberg in 2002 © XPB/LAT

"I was going to do aeronautical engineering. It is something that combined maths, physics and racing, so I was looking at that. And also because it was something that ... I think 60 percent of the class went into banking, after that.

"So it was a course that could really have a very widespread outcome. You didn't have to be an engineer. It was a course that prepared you globally. It was a very, very tough course and people who graduate are very competent.

"But we're speaking too much about that, because I don't know how serious I was. In the end I probably wasn't very serious, because I always thought I wanted to be a Formula One driver. And I always thought I would be.

"Would I have enjoyed it? I think so, yeah. I mean, student life is a cool life. If you're in London, studying - because the university would have been in London - that would have been a cool life, definitely. OK, not as cool as this one, but it would have been fun in its own way.

"I would be finished with my studies now, so maybe I would be here anyway as an aerodynamicist or something. Who knows?"

In the end, the decision was made for him. Winning the German Formula BMW championship in 2002 earned him a test in a BMW Williams in Barcelona at the end of the year, making him, at 17 years of age, the youngest driver ever to test a F1 car.

"That was actually the time when I had to make the decision of whether to go to university or not; right at that time when I first drove the Formula One car," he says.

"I sat in the F1 car and it was like, 'Jeeeez! This has got to be what you want to do!'"

More success followed. His move from the F3 Euroseries into the inaugural GP2 series in 2005 ended with Rosberg being crowed champion, and shortly afterwards Williams secured his signature to place him alongside Mark Webber for 2006.

Rosberg announced his arrival into F1 with a couple of points for seventh place on debut in Bahrain, and also posted the fastest lap of the race - again, making him the youngest driver ever to do so.

But since then, his results have not been in line with his effort. Inexperience has certainly played its part, but the fact he spent his rookie year wrestling with the diabolical Williams FW28 didn't help his cause.

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/glendenning3.jpg
Nico Rosberg at speed at the Hungaroring © LAT

"It's nice that you do see that part!" he says with a wry grin.

"Of course I have stepped up this year; I think that's normal after the first year, especially as it was such a difficult situation. But I think we have all stepped up together; the team has given me a much better car, and it is also more reliable. It just goes hand-in-hand."

Williams technical director Sam Michael, who was a driving force in Rosberg's recruitment, agrees that the German has taken a major step forward since last year.

"I think he has come on a lot, over the winter especially," Michael remarks.

"I think that as a rookie year, he had a good year. He only really made mistakes in two races, which was at Hockenheim [where he crashed in the stadium complex], and then he was 50 percent to blame in Brazil [where he tangled with Webber]. So that's not bad.

"But Nico is still learning. He's only 21, but he's learning a lot. He's probably sick of people saying he's only 21, but that's what he is. He can't deny his age. He is getting more and more experienced, but he doesn't have any trouble absorbing things technically."

As with any driver, as Rosberg's technical experience grows, he becomes more confident in offering feedback to his engineers, and the information that he gives becomes more valuable.

He is up against a tough yardstick in that regard - several years as a test driver have given his new teammate Alex Wurz an almost intuitive understanding of how a set-up change will affect the car, as Michael pointed out.

"Every time Nico does a front camber change, Alex has done it 10 times more than that," he says. "Whatever the change is, Alex just has a bigger database."

Rosberg, however, remains fiercely - almost defensively - independent.

"I don't think I have to hide behind Alex," he says flatly. "At the moment my set-up comes from me."

Gradually though, his experience is growing, and with that comes respect within the walls of the garage.

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/glendenning6.jpg
Nico Rosberg and Alex Wurz at the Nurburgring © LAT

"Oh definitely, the respect grows," he agrees. "As you give more and more good information, the respect grows. I think that's normal.

"I'm someone who I think is quite capable. I mean, of course I see that I need to progress a lot, and there are some things that I do well, and some things that I do not so well. I'm aware of that. But there are many things that I can contribute now, and I can have a lot of input on set-up and things like that."

Helping his cause considerably, of course, is that at the end of the day, drivers are judged by what they do on the track. And for much this year Rosberg has kept his more experienced team-mate in the shadows, particularly in qualifying.

It all points to someone who is comfortable in his surroundings, both within the team, and more broadly in Formula One. But achieving the latter, Rosberg admitted, took some time.

"When you first come in, you're not prepared for the whole world," he says. "It's a new world, and that is what you are not really prepared for. You can't prepare for that, you just have to get used to it. There are so many things."

In some areas however, he had a head start - not least in dealing with the media.

"I was lucky - because of my name, I got used to talking to the media pretty early on. I have had many, many interviews over the years thanks to my name, so that helped me a lot," he said.

"Actually, this year is a nice change. [In the past] I was always talking about my Dad, and this year I always have to speak about Lewis Hamilton. So it's a nice transition, really ..."

SIDEBAR: Avoiding the Tennis Trap

Athletes recruiting their fathers as managers have a long and often ugly history in sport - you need look no further than the likes of Mary Pierce and Jelena Dokic in the tennis world for that.

Nico Rosberg's situation was a little different, not least because his father Keke had a history of driver management long before Nico came on to the scene, most notably with Mika Hakkinen.

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/glendenning4.jpg
Nico and Keke Rosberg © LAT

Nevertheless, the decision between Nico and Keke to combine their personal relationship with a business one has not been easy, and Nico admits that the lines between father and manager sometimes become blurred.

"Yeah, it is hard," he says. "Even in normal life, I am sure that there are a lot of people who work for their father in the family company or whatever, and it often is not easy. Especially because my father is a very successful person, and very wise and everything, and he has quite a dominant personality. So it is often not very easy.

"But we have found a good way to do it now, and it really works out well. He helps me a lot with various things, and I have someone close by who is really in between me and my father - someone who gets along well with both sides.

"My father has created a bit more distance this year, too. He doesn't come to all the races, only half the races. So it's nice. And also, I am maturing and I understand more about the way he thinks and the way he goes about things. I understand more how to handle him, because he's a complex person. So it's not easy."

Sidebar: Frank Williams on Nico

Q: Amid all the talk of Lewis Hamilton, do you think Nico is flying under people's radars a bit?

Frank Williams: "I think you're right. Lewis is a big story, and quite rightly, too. Nico's problem is that he is driving an average-to-good car. If his driving is going to be noticed he really needs a winning car, like everyone else does.

"Lewis has got everything going for him, and he is clearly a phenomenon. It's quite remarkable, what he has achieved in such a short space of time.

"As with all drivers, Nico's abilities are coloured, good or bad, by his car; his equipment. Last year, in his first year, our car was really in the rearward third of the field, and now it is generally in the middle pack, behind the first three teams.

"Our target is to make it into the first four teams, or to displace one of the first three teams. It's not impossible, but very, very difficult.

"And then certainly, Nico will become ... not necessarily a superstar, but the next big thing. Which he would have been if he'd been in a Ferrari or a McLaren last year or this year."

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/glendenning5.jpg
Sir Frank Williams and Nico Rosberg © Reuters

MG: Does it make it harder or easier for a young driver like him to come in with an uncompetitive car? In once sense, having a slower car removes some of the pressure.

Williams: "Probably, but to be honest if he'd had a choice when he came into F1 and was asked whether he'd like to drive a Williams or a McLaren, he'd have said a McLaren, because he has got the right attitude. He wants a winner."

MG: There is an element of risk in a sense when you take a young driver on, but does it also give you the opportunity to mould them a bit into your way of doing things?

Williams: "Mould them ... that's kind of fanciful. It's a matter of whether a driver has got it or hasn't got it. If he wants to work very, very hard then he can, like Carlos Reutemann did. I watched him all those years ago, as he hauled himself to the top. He was talented, but it took him a while to find it - and his experience helped him as well.

"Nico and Lewis are very, very gifted, the pair of them. To Ron Dennis's full credit, he spent a lot of money - and I think some of it was his own money, too - on bringing Lewis on for all these years, and now it is payback time.

"Nico has come along a different route, but if we or somebody else can give him a McLaren equivalent, I would think F1 racing would be very interesting.

MG: You said that drivers either have it or they don't, but there is an element of how they fit into the team culture, too. In the past few years Williams has taken on some well-credentialled drivers, and the results have not been what either side would have hoped for.

Williams: "There is a truth in that, yes. But that's because, at the end of the day, they couldn't deliver - and that's assuming that our car could deliver."

MG: People have often spoken in the past about certain guys having particular qualities that make them quintessential 'Williams drivers'; most recently when Mark Webber first joined the team. Is there any such thing as a 'Williams driver'?

Williams: "No such thing at all. All the best drivers have a few things in common - they have the talent, they have a good racing brain and they have the ability, the wish and the desire to work very hard."

[Gundalgandul]

FEATURE
Bye Bye Bourdais

Sebastien Bourdais has dominated the Champ Car World Series for the past few years, all the while looking for his break in Formula One. So how does the North American paddock feel about the Frenchman's departure, now that he's finally got a seat with Toro Rosso next year?

By David Malsher
autosport.com's Champ Car correspondent

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/malsher1.jpg
Sebastien Bourdais

A photographer related a story from the Champ Car event at Portland this year, where he was snapping off shots of the Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing crew in pitlane during Friday morning practice.

Sebastien Bourdais pulled in, lifted his visor and immediately started complaining about his car - it didn't turn in, it drifted away from the apex, couldn't get its power down on exit. In short, it was impossible to drive.

Said photographer looked up at the timing monitors; Bourdais had just set the third fastest lap of the session.

I relayed this anecdote to one of his rivals just this last weekend at Road America, and he chuckled.

"Ha! That's typical Sebastien," he replied. "You listen to him after a race and you'd think his car was broken - and then you remember how he pulled away from you at a second a lap or won by half a minute. It must be really hard to have those kind of problems, huh?"

And it's for this reason that over the last few seasons, it's become a tradition for the regular Champ Car journalists on the Saturday night before a race to click drinks and raise them 'to A-B-B' - Anyone But Bourdais.

It only works half the time: Sebastien has won 25 of the last 51 Champ Car races, bringing his total to an astounding 28 in just under five seasons.

I always feel a pang of guilt at this ABB business because I actually think Sebastien is an OK guy.

I like the fact that he always praises his team and acknowledges how good they are. I like the fact that he speaks of his wife Claire with genuine love, not the sappiness that makes listeners feel uncomfortable, nor the pre-programmed 'loyalty' that reeks of insincerity. And I like the fact that he will say what he thinks.

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/malsher2.jpg
Sebastien Bourdais and Robert Doornbos on the podium in Mont-Tremblant © LAT

But there are times and places to say what you think, and Sebastien's not too hot at deciding when's best. To have erupted from his car at Mont-Tremblant and berated Robert Doornbos' 'F1-style' blocking tactics over the public address system only confirmed the image of him being a whinger.

When I asked him why he hadn't just gone to see Tony Cotman [Champ Car's Executive VP of Operations, and decision maker in Race Control] about it, he said: "Because there's no point. If he didn't see it then, there's nothing he can do now to change the result."

But by the same token, nothing Bourdais said in the post-race interview was going to change anything either, so why bother?

That's not to say his opinion was incorrect - Doornbos did edge Bourdais towards the grass on lap 51 of the Canadian race. But why the Frenchman have to express his displeasure so publicly and have the Quebecois jeering him?

He misjudged the mood at Portland last year, too, where AJ Allmendinger dominated to score his first Champ Car victory.

Bourdais, starting third, was wrong-footed by pole-sitting teammate Bruno Junqueira's misunderstanding with the starter, and finished lap one in seventh place.

By the end of the race Sebastien was still furious, but rather than say, 'Well, I was compromised from the start by my teammate falling asleep at the wrong moment', he instead launched into a tirade about Champ Car being anti-Newman/Haas.

Coming off the back of four back-to-back victories, this came across as an extremely petulant over-reaction, which immediately took the shine off his own performance. The way he had channelled his anger in the car had been pretty special to behold, and earned him 'driver of the day' in my book.

But there are many other more obvious examples of him outshining his rivals. There's Denver 2004, where he got knocked into a lap one spin by teammate Junqueira, but came steaming back through the field to win, even having the spare mental capacity to flick Bruno the bird as he went past!

There's the fantastic comeback and pass at Mexico City last year to score Lola's final Champ Car win. And last weekend, of course, he made everyone else look like they were still driving a Lola as he whipped them comprehensively at Road America.

Normally I don't like to see a driver dominate a race, or at least, not when it's a driver who has achieved so much success that you go to a race expecting him to win.

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/malsher3.jpg
Sebastien Bourdais at speed in Toronto © LAT

But last week, I felt exhilarated for Bourdais: he was so clearly the class of the field, and he should have won this race twice before. Anything other than a Bourdais win would have been a miscarriage of justice.

But for the sake of reporting an event, if it's going to be a Bourdais win, I'd far rather tell of how he had to fight for it (Long Beach 2005 or Monterrey '06 are particularly fine examples) rather than 'the best driver is in the best car and night follows day'.

And winning good hard fights tends to bring out the best in Sebastien in post-race press conferences. If he feels he has been robbed by circumstances, though, Bourdais finds it hard to handle.

I have no doubt that this is because he's a perfectionist, and he's well aware that, given the tools he has at his disposal, there is a huge expectation from within the team, the media, the public and himself.

But the foundation of the problem is that he has never, it seems, come to accept that luck plays a huge part in motor racing.

This is not like athletics, or tennis, or golf, where if the star gets it right - or at least does the job better than all rivals - then he or she wins.

In motorsport, a pitstop can go wrong, something on the car can go wrong, a strategy can be ruined by an unfortunately timed full-course caution, an incompetent backmarker can drive into you, and so on.

One understands his frustration, of course. At the two races this year unaffected by full course caution periods - Portland and Elkhart Lake (the latter's yellow period was only the first two laps) - he simply blew everyone away.

But he knows that yellow-free races are rare, and having the best crew and the best car also puts him in the best position to overcome any bad luck that might fall his way.

And that's the point. In a season where he wins 7 out of 15 races, Bourdais can usually point to at least four more that he should have won but for bad luck. Fair enough.

But his payback in good fortune is that he's been with the best team in the paddock since he arrived in Champ Car, he's virtually guaranteed a good car when he hits any given track, and it's rare that he has wring a car by its neck to get a decent lap time.

Put another way, in terms of equipment and environment, Bourdais has never been consistently at a disadvantage to any of his rivals. I'm not saying he doesn't deserve it: the best deserves the best.

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/malsher5.jpg
Sebastien Bourdais and arch-rival Paul Tracy © LAT

But you'd hope that at least in front of the media and public he'd have learned to roll with the punches, even if he went home and kicked the cat.

And the annoying thing is, in private, away from the microphone, he can be charming - and modest.

I ran into him at Cleveland airport this year, and after his bitching about Tracy winning the race despite colliding with two cars (yes, Sebastien still has a blind spot as far as that particular rivalry is concerned!), we got to talking about Formula 1 and how if the STR deal didn't pan out, whether he had a chance at BMW.

That inevitably led onto discussion of Timo Glock, who won Champ Car's rookie of the year title in 2005, but who for the last two seasons has raced in GP2, and is in strong contention for the title this year.

I remarked to Bourdais that I believed Glock was the biggest loss to Champ Car in the last five years, and that had they ever been paired at Newman/Haas/Lanigan, it would have been anyone's guess as to who would have prevailed. "Yeah," said Sebastien. "Actually, I thought the same."

And I recall some four and a half years ago, I asked him the question I like to ask all drivers - 'Have you ever encountered a rival who you had to acknowledge was just that little bit too talented for you to handle?'

And it took him only a few seconds to cite Sebastien Enjolras, the French Formula 3 star who was killed in a sportscar at Le Mans in 1997, as one such. Trust me, it's rare that any driver acknowledges the superiority of another.

Having said that, Tracy, the only driver to have beaten Bourdais to a Champ Car title, is quick to acknowledge his talent as well as his, erm, 'special' personality.

"He's a super talented driver," said PT at Edmonton. "There's no question of his ability to bring his team around him and get the best from them, himself and his car.

"His drawback is his personality. He rubs people up the wrong way, be it fans or competitors - rival drivers, rival team managers. I understand that he's a perfectionist, but you've gotta try and be a good winner and a good loser.

"And he's often not happy even when he wins. He's always got something to complain about. So if he doesn't win it's triple misery!

"That's the only flaw I can see in him, though. His ability to qualify a car, his ability to get the laps out of a car when he needs to in qualifying or race is as good as anyone I've ever seen in this series, so we're talking Mansell, Mears, Montoya, Unser, Andretti.

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/malsher4.jpgSebastien Bourdais and Kenny Siwieck © LAT

"If he had been prepared to take the Renault F1 opportunity and played Flavio Briatore's game, maybe he could have been a double F1 world champion by now."

At the same race I spoke to Kenny Siwieck, assistant team manager at Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing, and the man who talks to Bourdais throughout the race, relaying strategy, lap times, etc, worked out with Bourdais' race engineer Craig Hampson.

I admit, I expected to hear of deep admiration and respect, but not a whole lotta love. I couldn't have been more wrong.

"Sebastien is so talented and it's a pleasure to work with someone like that," said Kenny.

"He is a huge part of the team's success because he is a true champion and a professional, and he appreciates everyone else on the team. He's one of the best I've ever worked with. He's gonna be missed because he makes us look so damn good! He gives 120 per cent and he expects that in return.

"The downside of that is if you let him down, you're disgusted with yourself and he will tell you that you screwed up. And that's the trade-off when you have a team relationship like that: you have to be honest with each other. And then the next win feels sweeter.

"It's like after you and your woman are arguing and scratching each other's eyes out - the 'let's-make-up' sex afterwards is fantastic!

"From the time he came here he was special. He was down at Sebring for his first test with us in the winter of 2002, and we didn't even know who this guy was who was helping us put up our awnings. Turns out he's the guy we're running the test for!

"Fortunately it only took us a year, 2003, to integrate, and then the following year we hit the ground running and we've been winning ever since.

"He is a true gentleman who has always treated me with respect, and you would get the same opinion from every one of our guys in the organisation - from Paul [Newman] and Carl [Haas] to the truck drivers and to the people at the workshop. He's been gracious, open, warm, sincere.

"He'll truly be missed here. Truthfully, I love him like a brother and I wish him the best of luck in F1. That's from the heart... I'm sorry, we better stop the tape. I'm choking up here..."

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/malsher6.jpg
Sebastien Bourdais tests the Toro Rosso at Spa © LAT

That's the legacy Bourdais leaves those in Champ Car who really know him, then, so it's a real regret that that side of him did not shine through more often to inspire the media and the public.

Of course, that dearth of support is partly because of the motorsport world's puerile denigration of all things connected with France, other than its food and its capital city.

But mostly it's because the perception of Sebastien in Champ Car has been a genius badass in the cockpit, while an uncongenial pain in the ass outside it.

The irony, of course, is that everyone involved in Champ Car, from Paul Tracy down, will be rooting for Sebastien Bourdais from round one of the Formula One World Championship next year.

[Gundalgandul]

COLUMN
The Observer

The Champ Cars are about to return to Europe. Pleased as he is to welcome them back, Damien Smith can't help but feel they're visiting the wrong tracks

By Damien Smith
Autosport magazine editor in chief


Welcome back, Champ Car. It'll be good to see you in Europe again. But Zolder and Assen? What are you thinking? Of all the circuits to choose from on this side of the pond, you go for these two.

OK, I admit there is some market forces logic at work here. Both the Belgian and Dutch tracks should draw big crowds. Robert Doornbos and Jan Heylen will boost local interest, while Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais, Simon Pagenaud and Tristan Gommendy, Swiss Neel Jani and Brits Justin Wilson, Ryan Dalziel, Dan Clarke and Katherine Legge make this the most Euro-centric Champ Car field ever.

But still, Zolder and Assen? The Belgian track, which hosts the Champ Car World Series on August 26, has some limited charm if you look beyond the concrete, but it's hardly conducive to classic racing.

As for Assen, it's a bike circuit, isn't it?

Don't get me wrong. I am genuinely delighted that Champ Car is coming back. But just like last time, I fear they've got the wrong tracks.

The most recent visit was to Brands Hatch in 2003, which should have been fantastic. But for safety reasons, it was decided the Champ Car boys should be limited to the pokey Indy Circuit rather than the glorious Grand Prix loop.

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/damien1.jpg
The first turn at Assen © DPPI

Sure, it was fitting given that the Indy circuit gained its name from the USAC races held as a double-header with Silverstone back in 1978. But Formula Renaults can't overtake on the short circuit at Brands, never mind big, fat Champ Cars.

The race was a dull Bank Holiday procession, made worse by fuel restrictions that never allowed the drivers to really go full-pelt at Brands. It was a terrible waste of a great opportunity.

Will this time be as disappointing? No, I'm sure it won't. The Champ Car circus will put on a show and the races should at least be interesting. But will they be truly memorable, events that will be looked back on in years to come as something special? I doubt it.

What Champ Car should be doing on its European return is racing at the two tracks it visited in September 2001: the Euro Speedway Lausitz in Germany and Rockingham in England. Now, those back-to-back weekends are unforgettable - for the best and worst reasons.

Sorry, for a second there I forgot. Champ Car has given up racing on ovals to concentrate purely on road and street courses. It has forsaken the great diversity that made it stand apart from anything else in the world of racing to apparently work to its own strengths. Eh?

Now, given that the previously all-oval IRL IndyCar Series has now embraced road and street tracks, the arch rival has taken over Champ Car's old unique mantle. Funny world.

Champ Car still has a lot going for it, but the loss of ovals from its schedule is sad - particularly when you look back at those Euro oval races in '01.

That first Lausitz race will forever be remembered for the awful accident that cost Alex Zanardi his legs, of course. Coming just four days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US, the series was enveloped in a dark gloom that did not lift when the series turned up in the UK for the following week's race at Rockingham.

But that week in Northamptonshire between September 20-22 was so memorable - eventually for the right reasons.

For the opening two days, it looked like Britain's first major oval race since Brooklands shut in 1939 was going to descend into farce. Cancellation was on the cards.

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/damien2.jpg
Alex Tagliani (Forsythe), Michel Jourdain Jr (Herdez), and Mauricio Gugelmin (PacWest) in the 2001 Rockingham 500 © LAT

But on the Saturday afternoon Champ Car delivered exactly what we had all anticipated: a great, colourful, super-fast oval race.

Rockingham was the dream of one man. Peter Davies first began work on bringing US oval racing to the UK in 1990. It took him 10 years, but he realised his ambition - and right up to that first Champ Car race in '01 it was hard to believe it was real.

When I first met Davies, I wasn't sure. He had the gift of the gab, was great company and clearly had a vision. But this was a huge project with all the obvious pitfalls of planning permission, logistics, black-hole expenses and so on.

But it was real. He had the city investors, everything was costed, and on the site of an old quarry near unfashionable Corby, ground was broken.

Davies gave me a guided tour around the building site on a cold, wet day in 2000. Everything was a mess of sticky clay mud, with the oddly familiar concrete walls giving a hint of an oval track in-build.

I was writing an article on the project and typically, he had a 'great idea' for a photo. We climbed into a huge piece of piping wearing hard hats. I ripped the buttons off my shirt climbing in and wondered what the hell I was doing here.

But the dream did not fade. The speedbowl began to take shape, and then CART announced that it was coming to England for a race the following year. It was really going to happen. Wasn't it?

Sadly, by September '01 Davies and his equally ebullient marketing man Christopher Tate were out of the Rockingham picture. Main investor Guy Hands wanted a management reshuffle and the man who had dreamt up this crazy idea in the first place was elbowed out. Rockingham lost a bit of its charm before it was even finished.

But CART was still coming and we prepared for something we never thought was possible. Autosport editor Laurence Foster agreed to provide a team of pitlane reporters for the circuit commentary, and suddenly friend and colleague Tim Scott and I found ourselves under a bit of pressure ...

We turned up at Rockingham on the Wednesday night. We were amazed. The Champ Car clan had decamped and we found ourselves transported to an oval that just had to be somewhere in the American mid-west, not an industrial wasteland in middle England. This couldn't be Northamptonshire, surely. We pinched ourselves. It was real.

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/damien3.jpg
Moisture weeping through the track surface © LAT

What really brought us down to earth was the familiar weather. Holding an oval race in the UK always carried the risk of being hit by rain. Deciding to run it in September was asking for trouble - and that's exactly what CART got.

The Thursday and Friday practice days were dry and clear, but the rain from earlier in the week had caused a major headache. We were introduced to the term 'weepers', when the water table is so high it begins to seep through the asphalt of a race circuit.

You can't run on ovals when it is damp. Michael Andretti likened the patches that appeared to black ice.

For two days the teams and drivers sat around, slowly losing their patience with this place. After the horrors of 9/11 and Lausitz, all they wanted to do was go home.

But for the crowds that turned up, the time had to be filled by something. That's where Foster, Scott and Smith came in.

We interviewed everything and everyone that moved in the open paddock during those two days - at least twice. Being from US racing, the drivers and team owners were polite, friendly and happy to talk (they didn't have much else to do).

The only dissenter was Paul Tracy. Tim and I had always admired this feisty Canadian, but approached him for an interview over the PA with some trepidation - for good reason.

Can we ask a few questions for the fans, we asked? "No," he replied. Oh. We froze. He was smaller than we had expected, but his piercing eyes cut right through us.

"Nothing against you guys, but this place is f****** shit. If you interview me, I'll say nothing good and that won't be good for anyone."

He smiled apologetically and walked away. We breathed a sigh of relief and laughed. Brilliant.

We weren't laughing at night though. Laurence had got us one of those big US motorhomes to stay in to really live the full experience - and we were parked up next to some of the drivers on the infield.

Great - until CART's jet driers set to work to dry out the 'weepers'. They had to do it, of course, and they blasted away around the track all night. We didn't get a wink of sleep.

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/damien4.jpg
The command to start engines © LAT

Foster got more than Tim and I because, being the boss, he had blagged the only proper bed. But he had bought us and other members of the Autosport crew the second largest order of KFC Corby had ever seen. The biggest order had been for a wedding, apparently ...

By Saturday, we were tired and nervous, wondering whether this race was ever going to happen. But suddenly it emerged that the track had dried enough for practice. The cars were heading out!

All the anxiety was replaced by sheer excitement. The Champ Cars' 2.65-litre turbo engines wailed around the 1.5-mile speedbowl, averaging over 210mph. Incredible! We pinched ourselves again.

Then Foster pulled another great stroke. He'd lined Tim up to be the master of ceremonies for race day! Tim, a humble journo, with just a bit of TV and radio work behind him and no formal training in talking to 45,000 people ...

Poor Tim. He was a bundle of nerves. But he almost carried it off until the final moments before the race.

He was cued in to say "And now for the most famous words in racing ..." It was down to Mrs Hands, wife of owner Guy, to say "Gentleman, start your engines".

It was all choreographed so that the teams would fire up the cars as soon as the words had passed Mrs Hands's lips. Except CART's timing was out.

Tim did his stuff: "Now for the most famous words in racing." And ... silence. He'd been cued in a full 10 seconds too early. Afterwards he was a crumpled, humiliated shadow of himself. I made him feel better by silently giggling.

As for the race, well, after everything Rockingham and CART had been through, it finally lived up to expectations. It was a cracker.

And what a quality field. Here's a rundown of some of the drivers who went into battle that day: de Ferran, Brack, da Matta, Castroneves, Andretti, Tracy, Vasser, Kanaan, Franchitti, Servia, Papis, Moreno, Tagliani, Herta, Carpentier, Gugelmin, Dixon, Fernandez, Fittipaldi, Junqueira ...

Real quality. The series had yet to feel the force of decline, and the lure of the IRL that would weaken it so dramatically in the coming years.

Overtaking was tough that day because three of the four corners were flat-chat, but it didn't stop title protagonists Kenny Brack and Gil de Ferran putting on one hell of a show.

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/damien5.jpg
CART at Rockingham in 2002 © LAT

It was only decided at the last corner of the last lap as de Ferran's Penske Reynard-Honda swept around Brack's Rahal Lola-Ford to steal a fabulous victory in the country so close to his heart.

ROCKINGHAM CAN RIVAL BRITISH GP, Autosport proclaimed the following Thursday. We were all still on such a high.

But even though CART returned in 2002 for another race, and the Autosport pitlane crew came back for more, it would prove to be the swansong for high-level oval racing in the UK.

Dario Franchitti delivered a home win for the enthusiastic crowd, his first on an oval - but it wasn't enough to convince CART to come back.

The series was in the throes of major financial trouble at this time and Rockingham was losing money. Without a man like Davies to fire the place with passion, Champ Car at 'The Rock' was history.

Lausitz did hold another race after the Brands disappointment in '03, but that was it for Champ Car in Europe.

So it is great that they are back this year. It's not the Champ Car World Series we all knew and loved back in '01, but these are still big, exciting, hairy single-seaters. There's plenty to look forward to.

It just that they should just be racing on Europe's ovals, that's all.

[Gundalgandul]

COLUMN
Dodgy Business

Two weeks on from the firestorm in Hungary, Tony Dodgins wonders whether the drama could have unexpected ramifications for McLaren's driver pairing...

By Tony Dodgins
autosport.com columnist


I have to confess to be still wondering about what I witnessed in Budapest. All season Ron Dennis has played down any hint of a feud between his two drivers. In Hungary, it boiled over in the most spectacular way.

"There just isn't an issue," Ron said at Indianapolis, when all the evidence suggested that there was.

Alonso, at that stage, was still doing his best to disguise any problems. As we celebrated the 60th birthday of long-serving British journalist Alan Henry with a piece of Mercedes cream cake (for breakfast!) on Friday morning, Ron came across to share some friendly banter with Alan, a long-time friend.

Sat at the next table was Fernando and his manager, Luis Garcia. Ron wasted little time in going over to sit and have what looked like a friendly chat. Whether there was a problem or not, relations had clearly not broken down totally. They were still speaking at that stage.

It no longer appears to be the case. When Alonso won brilliantly at Nurburgring, Dennis was seen congratulating Alonso and speaking to him in the immediate post-race moments, both before and after Fernando got verbally stuck into Massa.

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/dodgins1.jpg
Fernando Alonso and Ron Dennis in parc ferme at the Nurburgring © LAT

I was hardly alone in noticing that Alonso appeared to totally blank his team boss.

This came just a day after Dennis had again tried to convince everyone that all in the garden was rosy. In Germany he did this by showing everyone the latest Mercedes-Benz TV advert, featuring Lewis and Fernando.

Alonso had apparently gotten a little grumpy over the amount of time it took to shoot, but the end result was good.

The two drivers are shown in various humorous situations - eyeing up a girl, checking into a hotel, trying to be first to the room, outdoing each other in the gym, lasting longest in the sauna, etc.

It is all played out to the 'anything you can do, I can do better' theme. I'd quietly suggest that it has probably been wasted money or at least a sizeable outlay for a very limited shelf life...

If Senna and Prost was tempestuous, McLaren at least got two years out of the sport's most volatile pairing. It would astonish me if Ron got two years of Fernando and Lewis, contracts or no.

Dennis looked like a man badly in need of his impending holiday during the Budapest weekend. He was probably only half joking when he threw up his hands in the midst of the qualifying furore and said, 'anybody want this job?'

Who knows what is truly going on behind the scenes. I have my suspicions and, if they are confirmed, the road could get an awful lot rockier for Dennis before it smoothes out.

The first thing that was odd in that seismic Budapest four days was Alonso not appearing as scheduled in the Thursday press conference.

Considering that the FIA has not long since asked teams to ensure that their drivers and personnel respect the timings on pain of fines, it was a surprise to find the world champion missing entirely - specially in view of the announcement that the Stepneygate saga was going to an FIA court of appeal.

A lot of hacks wanted to know what Fernando thought about that.

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/dodgins4.jpg
Fernando Alonso in the post-qualifying FIA press conference © XPB/LAT

The governing body put out a release saying that it had agreed to a team request that Alonso be excused. Which, of course, fanned the fire. Why? What was the problem?

It was assumed that this was McLaren doing the professional thing - sparing Fernando more tedious questioning on an issue that was distracting and in no way under his control.

But Kimi was there to put the Ferrari viewpoint even if, as usual, he was less than effusive. The general feeling was that McLaren had gone OTT.

Later, it was suggested to me that the reason the team did not want Alonso to attend ran much deeper than that. Communications had totally broken down, Dennis had no control over the world champion, and who knows what he was planning to say.

The inference was that Fernando might have said something prejudicial to McLaren's case in the FIA Court of Appeal hearing.

At first I didn't buy into that. Even supposing there was something he could say that might be damaging to the team, why would he?

But, Friday morning, I wondered about it again when Flavio Briatore entertained the Italian media for more than an hour in the middle of practice. Flavio stirred the pot with his biggest available spoon, and all the Italian Saturday papers were full of stories about how he thought McLaren should be punished.

If you're wondering why, it's to do with Ferrari's experience of optimising Bridgestone tyre usage without going down blind alleys.

Briatore's timing was a little suspicious. The Renault team have been making noises about how much they would like to have Alonso back, and they are unlikely to be the only ones in the paddock deeply interested by the world champion being totally at odds with his current employer.

My mind went back to 1994 when Michael Schumacher, tainted by Benetton cheating allegations (launch/traction control, missing fuel filters) used the situation to negotiate release from his contract a year early to join Ferrari. Alonso allegedly spoke with Briatore more than once over the Hungarian weekend.

McLaren, certainly, had the appearance of a team bending over backwards to help Fernando. Whatever the rights and wrongs of Hamilton failing to allow Alonso past at the start of Q3, Dennis still publicly defended Alonso in front of the media after a blatant professional foul that hurt his own team.

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/dodgins2.jpg
Flavio Briatore © LAT

In among it all, cleverly, without accusing McLaren directly of any wrongdoing, was the observation that if Renault had known the size of Ferrari's fuel tank and it's weight distribution - just those two details - it could have built a much more competitive car, much more quickly.

Knowing Ron at all, you knew how much that would grate, and yet he made noises about the team doing a bad job.

As many suspected, Fernando did seem to be totally out of control and you thought back to the missed Thursday conference.

When Dennis had finished explaining away the reasons that the double world champion was hacked off with Hamilton/the team, he turned to Alonso and asked if that had been an accurate rendition of events. Alonso, chewing a pear, did not even afford his team boss the courtesy of eye contact, nodded his head and gave a thumbs-up. It came across as disrespectful and a bit churlish.

At any time in the F1 paddock there is information and disinformation by the bucket load.

One tidbit put about by the Italian media was that Alonso was seeking to leave McLaren because one of the reasons he joined in the first place was supposed to be an assurance that Renault would not be continuing.

He was also allegedly led to believe that the team would be centred around him, within their usual parameters of operation.

I put the question of whether Alonso had gone to McLaren under false pretences to the Spaniard's management and I did not get a direct response, which led me to believe that he had not.

While the Alonso camp is not slow to point out that their man could be harmed by any anti-McLaren verdict from the FIA Court of Appeal, I do not believe that they are seeking to leave McLaren. Given the machinery at Fernando's disposal, after all, it would not be an obvious strategy.

What I believe is that they are much more interested in being at McLaren without Lewis Hamilton, and would like to engineer that situation if at all possible.

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/dodgins3.jpg
Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton celebrate their 1-2 in the Monaco Grand Prix © LAT

Someone close to it all told me not to assume that it is Fernando who might be in a Renault in 2007. The implication was that it could be Lewis. I find that entirely fanciful, but Alonso takes absolutely no prisoners on the track and you do wonder to what lengths he may go to serve his own ends off it.

Alonso's unhappiness was kicked off by Monaco, where Hamilton's post-race reaction led to an FIA enquiry. It was compounded by the team's insistence on equal strategy which, the Alonso camp maintains, means that you are only effectively racing your teammate and not optimising your chances against Ferrari.

Alonso, as a double reigning champion, feels he deserves better than that. Then there is the reverence with which Hamilton is regarded at Woking which, it is said, sometimes causes Fernando to feel that he is Public Enemy Number One, if not team number one.

What you do ponder is whether Dennis, if he fails to commit to one of them, stands to lose both Alonso and Hamilton. The laws of supply and demand, and the fact that a driver needs a car more than vice versa, would tend to militate against that, but you do wonder.

And what about Ferrari, one of the catalysts in all this? Is their line-up secure? Over breakfast in Budapest, someone who professed to have a good inside line told me that Luca di Montezemolo, tiring of wider politics in Italy, might soon prefer to concentrate more of his personal attentions on Ferrari now that it is once again more 'Italian' in structure.

And Luca's dream team, it is said, is Raikkonen and Alonso...

[Gundalgandul]

Ini kolomnis favorit gue. Orang pintar yang ramah dan bersahabat. Gue pernah ngobrol sama dia, hanya ngomongin masalah ban sampe satu jam lebih...

FIFTH COLUMN by Nigel Roebuck
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/fifth_top.gif


Recently I talked to someone who has known the Hamiltons, pere et fils, for many years. "I like them," he said. "They've worked hard to get where they are, and they're unfailingly polite. But don't make the mistake of thinking they're softies..."

I wasn't surprised by what he said, not because I've seen either Anthony or his son behaving uncharacteristically, but because without a steel core you don't get to the top of anything as competitive as Formula 1. And that, in the space of a few months, is what Lewis has done.

We all know what happened in the closing minutes of qualifying at the Hungaroring, in the sense that we know what we saw. When the lollipop in front of Alonso's car was raised, 10 seconds went by before Fernando moved off, and the McLaren mechanics could get to work on Hamilton's car - by which point Lewis didn't have quite enough time to get through his 'out' lap, preparatory to a final banzai run. Alonso, meantime, took the pole.

Wherein lies the truth of why this situation arose?

Did Alonso wait those 10 extra seconds simply to screw Hamilton, or was he being held by the team (despite the lollipop being raised) until the moment was right for him to go back out, in terms of traffic?

Given that Hamilton was waiting behind, and that time was extremely short, the latter explanation took a bit of believing - particularly since Alonso, as evident from his agitation in his previous stop, was already livid about something.

That turned out to be the fact that, at the start of the last segment of qualifying, Hamilton had agreed to let him by, so as to allow him an extra 'fuel burning' lap, but then, despite repeated requests, declined to do so. Lewis later explained that his decision was taken because he was afraid that, in allowing his team-mate by at the first corner, he would also let Raikkonen's Ferrari through.

He said it like an altar boy, smiling and wide-eyed, but Lewis can do disingenuous at least as well as Fernando. Raikkonen was nowhere near the McLarens when they got to the first corner, and there was anyway ample opportunity for the McLarens to swap places all the way round the lap - and the next one, too.

When Alonso waited those 10 seconds in the pits, with Hamilton delayed, I didn't like what I saw - and liked it even less when it became clear that Lewis had lost what would have been his last quick lap.

At the time I immediately thought of Schumacher's contemptible 'parking' ploy at the end of Monaco qualifying last year, but at the time I didn't have all the facts - didn't know of the disregarded agreement by Hamilton to let Alonso through. Not quite the same as Michael at Rascasse.

This is not to suggest that what Alonso did was acceptable, of course. But racing drivers sometimes act in hot blood, and Hamilton must have been aware that, whatever else, his team-mate was hardly going to be thrilled by not being allowed by.

F1 is not like other sports. A footballer can have an off day, or even several, and it's the same with cricket or golf or whatever. Just one of those things - it'll come right. But although there are 22 drivers in F1, in the end the one that matters most is your team-mate, because he alone has the same car, and he alone is the driver by which you will be precisely judged. F1 is all about fragile egos and the merciless clock - every single day.

Team principals always say they employ the two best drivers available to them, and you can't take issue with the theory - logically, you want a pair of potential race winners. In practice, however, it's rather less simple than that. Run two absolutely top rank drivers in today's ultra-complicated F1, where nuance is all, and any deviation from 'procedure' is likely to lead to a full-scale punch-up.

These days Frank Williams is rather more politically correct than he used to be - or, at least, more circumspect when speaking on the record - but, 15 years ago, he was much to the point when I asked him about the pitfalls of running two top drivers. Was it asking for trouble?

"Up to a point, yes - it's bound to be, putting two bulls in a field, isn't it? And if I've learned one thing about racing drivers, Nigel, it's that the great ones are bastards!"

All said without a hint of malice. Frank was merely stating the bleedin' obvious. The late Colin Chapman put it another way: "I put drivers into two groups: those who want to win - and those who have to win. And usually it works best when you have one of each..."

I remember once suggesting to Ken Tyrrell that there had been superstar team-mates who worked well together - even became friends: Mario Andretti and Ronnie Peterson at Lotus, for example. "Yes," he laughed, "but they were adults..."

You can go too far down that path. Roy Salvadori has suggested that, in the 1950s, the friendship between Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins actually worked against the interests of their team, Ferrari: "Neither seemed to mind if he had a bad race, so long as the other did well..."

My feelings about the events of last Saturday are that neither McLaren driver served his team well, and that is really the whole point. At this stage, it seems unlikely that the Alonso-Hamilton pairing will continue in 2008, which is another way of saying that I doubt that Fernando will continue with McLaren, however much the hierarchy would hate to lose a driver of such immense talent.

That said, what I really cannot understand is how the FIA stewards came to be involved in what seemed to me purely an intra-team dispute. The actions of Alonso and Hamilton hurt no one outside McLaren, after all, and quite why it became a 'police' matter is a mystery to me. Nanny's fingers are exceeding long in the 21st century.

Only one of the two drivers was punished - and yet, most iniquitous of all, the entire team was robbed of the opportunity of scoring constructors' points. If McLaren ultimately lose the constructors' championship by fewer than the 15 points Lewis and Fernando earned on Sunday, I shall find it difficult to take the result seriously. And if I were a McLaren employee, dependent for my bonus on constructors' points, I just might be a touch miffed, with the powers-that-be - and Hamilton and Alonso.

As far as the mere fans were concerned, of course, the action of the stewards robbed us of what could have been an unforgettable contest between the McLaren drivers. As it was, Alonso got predictably trapped at this silly little circuit, and it was left to Raikkonen to pressure Hamilton, albeit without any realistic possibility of overtaking him. No wonder Kimi described the afternoon as 'boring'.

In many ways, Raikkonen and McLaren couldn't wait to part at the end of last season, but perhaps, with hindsight, the team might have had an easier time if they had kept him, as team-mate to this whirlwind called Hamilton.

Kimi the party animal may not be easy to control, but Raikkonen the racing driver is the most insouciant God has yet put on earth. Doesn't give a bugger what his team-mate's doing. McLaren could use a bit of that just now.

[Gundalgandul]

F1'S INSIDE LINE by Mark Hughes

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/inside_top.gif

A sport as technologically complex as Formula 1 doesn't always lend itself well to a mass audience. But the human drama of Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton and 'Pitlanegate' in the McLaren pits on Saturday was very easy for even a casually watching audience to understand.

The explosive element was the madly intensive dynamic between two of the most hotly competitive souls on the planet. But its detonator was a technological one. And, if you followed that, the story acquired a deeper fascination.

The relevant technological detail in this instance was about the work that's been done to ensure the McLarens get to the end of the pitlane before the others prior to the fuel-burning laps in qualifying's top 10 run-off.

You need to know also why being first and second in the queue there is so advantageous. You need to know about the way the engine-cooling systems of the McLarens have been configured to enable them to do this.

You need to know about fuel consumption of these engines at this track at different lap speeds - and the implication this has on whether it is possible to give both your drivers an equal number of laps, and why that's important.

You need to understand why it is an advantage to run as many fuel-burn laps as possible as opposed to simply not putting as much fuel in the tank in the first place.

Only then can you even begin to understand how the pitlane incident was triggered. The incident itself was just the final playing out of these factors. But the human story was actually very significant indeed in terms of the dynamic between not only the two drivers, but also the relationship of each of them to the team boss.

Back before the big money came in, before team owners stayed around in the sport long enough to get rich and old, the drivers were the dominant part of the partnership. They risked their necks in a brutally explicit way - and once they were established they answered to no one.

Think Jackie Stewart, Niki Lauda, James Hunt, Alan Jones, Jody Scheckter. They could never be considered employees. They were way more than that. They'd operate on mutually beneficial terms with team owners but were certainly not beholden to them.

Then the really serious money came and team owners became very, very rich. So they stayed around longer, their average age went up, their experience increased - and the balance of power between them and the younger generation of drivers began to swing towards the bosses. Combine this with telemetry - giving the team bosses a tool for analysing every aspect of his driver's performance, invading his professional privacy - and the process took a very significant further step forward.

Next, the average age of drivers graduating to F1 began to fall as karting became forever more successful in producing race car drivers. Furthermore, their car racing careers were accelerated by manufacturer junior driver programmes, whereas previously they'd been left to find their own way up the nursery slopes. Before anyone had quite realised, the driver was no more than an employee.

Ron Dennis has always been very much at the vanguard of this. Because he is a man who above all else must have control. He struggled to have it when his driver was Lauda - a man not much younger than Dennis and from a more swashbuckling era. He struggled when he paired Prost with Senna, the two greatest drivers in the world.

But since then, with more compliant characters, he's got on top of the situation - though Kimi Raikkonen's disengaged personality irritated him. But then he took on Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton. They are not in any way disengaged, but neither are they up for being treated like employees. These are two warrior characters, with the supreme skills to go with it.

Make them team-mates and put them in cars good enough for a championship and there are going to be competitive fireworks. They are not going to be controllable - not to the extent that Dennis needs. This is further complicated in Hamilton's case by him having to make the transition from being Dennis's protege.

After the reported frank radio exchange between Dennis and Hamilton on Saturday, we can now take it that transition has been made. Lewis is there on his own terms and the fact that his career has been backed by Dennis is now irrelevant. Dennis and McLaren are benefiting from his supreme skills. His performance level demands respect.

"I think something seismic happened there today," said a delighted Damon Hill in the paddock afterwards. "The drivers are the stars of the show and that really sticks in the throats of their bosses. The public aren't interested in the team boss. Who cares about them?

"Here we saw two guys not prepared to be dictated to by a team. Yes, it's about team work, but there's an area of competitiveness that is not the territory of the team boss. But Ron wants to control everything - and it's driving them nuts. I know it would drive me nuts.

"We discussed me going there once but it would never have worked. For that reason. He's 60 years old and sees these guys as young. But in career terms they're not. They have years of experience in racing, thousands of races, know the world of racing intimately. They're not going to be condescended to."

It was interesting that after Hamilton had told Dennis over the radio not ever to do that to him again, Dennis's response wasn't about the incident, it was to tell Hamilton not to ever speak to him like that again. The first response was about control, in other words, rather than the incident itself.

After the race Hamilton was asked about it all. "Well, Ron was obviously angry. And I thought that after the argument over the radio he was teaching me a lesson.

"So I just took it on the chin and that's why when I went to the press conference I said I wouldn't have thought Fernando would have deliberately done something like that. But I have reasons to believe otherwise."

Meantime, post-race, Dennis said: "We will continue to function as a grand prix team with specific values, and if anybody does not want to be part of those values - irrespective of where they sit in the organisation - ultimately they all have a choice. But we will not deviate away from our values."

He still doesn't get it.

[Gundalgandul]

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/quali_hun.gif
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/quali_top.jpg
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/quali_top.gif

The circuit's sinuous layout looked likely to favour the British team, but no one could have foreseen just how the grid was settled. By MARK HUGHES

Fernando Alonso's lap was a beauty, but given 'Pitlanegate' that had just played out, few were paying attention to it. The delaying of Lewis Hamilton's final out-lap by Alonso's stationary car in the pitlane was the overriding story.

Alonso got to the start/finish line before the session closed with 1.32sec to spare, and with the pressure on and the championship fight taking on a new dimension, now was the time to produce an exquisite pressure lap. That is exactly what he did.

Unlike Hamilton, Alonso couldn't get the super-soft tyres to work for him, couldn't keep the graining at bay long enough not to lose more time in the final sector than he gained in the first.

So, his task now that Hamilton had been denied a second new-tyre lap was to use a scrubbed set of the harder tyres to beat Lewis's provisional pole - set on the super-softs. That time was 1m19.781s...

Upon completion of the middle sector, Fernando can see he is on-course to do it. Just the hairpin and the final turn to go: brake late, a little too late. He has to wait to get the entry speed down and is late into the turn, misses the apex, running him out wide, but still with good momentum. Keep it going, this is still on. Good front-end bite into the final turn, lots of momentum, race to the line and he shades the thwarted Hamilton by just over a tenth. Pole position, but in his wake a storm.

The time he had been sitting stationary in his pit came under far more scrutiny than the 1m19.674s it took to complete the lap.

Hamilton, forced to rely on his first new-tyre run, was left fuming, his pitlane delay meaning he missed the timing beam by around 3sec.

Just as at Monaco, his way of using a more oversteery balance to get his direction change meant he was giving the front tyres an easier time than his team-mate and, as a consequence, was one of very few drivers who could make the Bridgestone super-soft last long enough to make it a faster tyre over one lap than the soft. But he wasn't being asked many questions about his tyre choice - there was a bigger news story than that.

The stewards would punish Alonso by relegating him five grid places, leaving Hamilton on pole. The controversy in the McLaren pits overshadowed the dramas that unfolded at Ferrari, where Felipe Massa, after messing up his first new-tyre lap in Q2 with a big moment at the final turn, came in for a fresh set but was sent out without having been refuelled.

The team - unused to having to make a second run in Q2 - simply forgot! They realised their mistake before he'd got out of the pitlane and called on him to stop. Ferrari mechanics rushed up to the end to push their man back.

The time lost doing this meant the tyres had been out of their blanket heaters for too long to give him the necessary temperature - and he struggled to find a single apex on the lap that followed, leaving him in a disastrous 14th.

But even with the correct tyre temperatures the Ferrari generally lagged a couple of tenths behind the McLaren through the practices, bugged by excessive understeer, particularly at the end of the lap.

"We sort of expected this at this track," said Raikkonen. "We just can't get the front tyres working properly in the early laps." This left him vulnerable to the light BMW of Nick Heidfeld, which duly pipped him for third.

Extreme graining of the front super-softs in Q2 led Nick to opt for the harder tyres in Q3, and on these he found the balance he needed, though even with a comparable fuel load, he was 0.5sec off the McLaren pace.

Robert Kubica wasn't in a position to fight with his team-mate, a sensor problem in the gearbox robbing him of full acceleration, most noticeably on the upshifts. With an extra 4.2kg of fuel (worth only around 0.15sec over Heidfeld) he was over 0.6sec slower and back in seventh place.

Nico Rosberg was in flying form in the Williams. With a similar fuel load to Heidfeld and Alonso, he was fifth fastest, albeit 0.4sec off the BMW.

The car's natural slow-corner oversteer balance actually seemed to help it here over one lap, where it was vital to keep front-tyre graining at bay for as long as possible. He set his time on the super-softs. Team-mate Alex Wurz was around 0.7sec slower in Q2 and failed to make it through to the run-off.

Toyota enjoyed its best qualifying of the year, with Ralf Schumacher achieving sixth on the grid, Jarno Trulli ninth.

"For the first time with one of our cars we needed just one flying lap to get into Q3," said chassis chief Pascal Vasselon. Trulli was the one who achieved this feat and so was somewhat disappointed with his lap in the run-off. It was still a net 0.35sec slower than Ralf's once account was taken of a slightly higher fuel load. He was puzzled: "The car just felt somehow heavier to drive."

Splitting the Toyotas was Giancarlo Fisichella's Renault, which was a good save after almost falling foul of traffic at the first hurdle of Q1. He was happy to have found a set-up that allowed more consistency from the new front wing introduced at the last race. But much less happy to be demoted five places to 13th as a penalty for impeding Sakon Yamamoto in Q1 - this triggered by his own avoidance of Mark Webber at the time.

Team-mate Heikki Kovalainen suddenly lost the balance of his car at the critical moment in Q2 and was left back in 12th. "I don't know what happened," he reported.

"We put on the super-soft for my first run in Q2 but there was too much understeer. So we went back to the harder tyre on which I'd had a good balance before. It seemed a logical decision at the time but I just couldn't find the same feeling."

His time in Q1 would have been good for sixth in Q2.

Webber again got the Red Bull through to Q3 but was then slowest in the run-off. "Yeah, it almost seems a bit pointless getting into the run-off when you don't have the pace to get very far up in it," he rued of being committed to his fuel load while team-mate David Coulthard, 0.3sec slower in Q2 and 11th, was of course free to fuel optimally.

[Gundalgandul]

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/race_hun.gif
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/race_top.jpg
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/aug15/race_top.gif

Lewis Hamilton won, but he’s now in open conflict with McLaren team-mate Fernando Alonso. By MARK HUGHES

There can come a time when a driver's and his team's aspirations conflict. And if that driver has the right stuff, the warrior qualities of a true champion, he won't even blink in deciding which priority to serve.

It's not pretty. In fact, it's brutal. But Fernando Alonso has this quality. This much we have known for some time. But we now also know for certain what we thought we detected in Monaco - that Lewis Hamilton has it in equal measure. Which has left McLaren and Ron Dennis with a major-league headache that threatens to eclipse even the one they suffered at the hands of the Senna/Prost combination.

Hamilton delivered a technically perfect drive on Sunday at the Hungaroring to take his third grand prix victory under the biggest pressure imaginable. It was a pressure greater even than that of Kimi Raikkonen filling his mirrors with flying scarlet for almost the entire distance.

It was the pressure of delivering while in the very midst of falling out with Dennis in the horrible, awkward crossover moment where the team protege had, if necessary, to show he was prepared to go to war with the team that made him.

Alonso reached a similar state of non-compliance for different reasons - back around Monaco time, in fact. When is a driver more than an employee? Very rarely. He needs to be good enough - and very few are. Beyond that, his competitive desire needs to be so overwhelming that he risks alienation in the team unless he's given his way and treated as a partner.

"We are totally committed to equality, and this team will never operate in any other way," said Dennis, painting himself into a corner. Because, with the ruthless competitive intensity - not to mention awesome ability - of Alonso and Hamilton in the same team, there can never be equilibrium.

The only equality they'll accept is with the team, not a team-mate. Operating out there on the edge, where there is peace there is no truth, where there's truth there is no peace.

"I went into the race with a big cloud in my mind," Lewis admitted. "You don't know whether the team hates you or who they blamed in the situation. I just tried to keep smiling and remain positive, to keep the same as always. I went round the whole team.

"I apologised if they felt I'd done something against them and they all said good luck. There was only one person who didn't. Ron wasn't happy yesterday, but I told him my views and he respected them. 'It's part of your personality,' he said. We came to a mutual understanding and started with a clean slate today."

In his reaction against the punishment his team had tried to mete out to him for refusing to obey an instruction during qualifying, Hamilton had helped trigger the situation that led the race stewards to penalise Alonso five grid places - and deprive McLaren of any constructors' points. At the most horribly awkward time for the team too, with the spectre of the FIA court of appeal hearing about Stepneygate hanging over their heads.

But that wasn't Hamilton's problem. And if that attitude infuriated Dennis - the man largely responsible for Hamilton's career - then so be it. Hamilton couldn't let any debt of gratitude stand in his way; he has a world championship to win.

Just as in Monaco, he felt he was the faster man and was damned if he wasn't going to prove that. But this time he was no longer a sparkling rookie looking for his first race win. He was an established winner looking to protect his recently-narrowed world championship lead at a critical stage in the season.

Alonso had ruthlessly used Dennis's stated commitment to equality to insist he got his way on Saturday, knowing that would hinder Hamilton. Lewis in turn was more than prepared to react to that to get what he needed - though in the event the stewards did it on his behalf.

So Alonso started sixth and, at a dry Hungaroring, that was always going to define his chances as limited, and allow Hamilton to escape out of his reach.

Hamilton sprang to an immediate lead, with Raikkonen using the cleaner side of the grid in his Ferrari to out-accelerate Nick Heidfeld's BMW for second. Alonso, meanwhile, was cautious after his initially fast start was baulked aggressively by Nico Rosberg in the Williams, leaving him sixth into the first corner.

Anxious not to tag Ralf Schumacher's Toyota, Alonso was then passed around the outside by Robert Kubica's BMW.

Hamilton had already crossed the line 1.6sec clear - ahead of Raikkonen, Heidfeld, Rosberg and Schumacher at the end of the first lap - as Alonso was trying to tuck tight up to Kubica through the final turn. But he ran out wide onto the dust, obliging him to lift and allowing Mark Webber's Red Bull to nip by.

Compromised onto the pit straight, it was all Alonso could do to ruthlessly keep Heikki Kovalainen at bay into the first turn. Kovalainen nudged him up the rear, punching a small hole in the nose of the Renault.

The Renault's grip was enhanced by the team's choice to start with the super-soft Bridgestones on both cars, in contrast to everyone else.

It seemed a brave choice after these tyres had grained spectacularly on the green track of Friday and Saturday. But with a track temperature in the high 30s and blue skies beyond even the distant mountains, there was every chance the track would come to them.

By the fifth lap Hamilton had built up his lead over Raikkonen to 3.5sec, but that was as big as the gap would get before Kimi was able to peg it, these two pulling easily clear of Heidfeld and the rest. As it turned out, Lewis and Kimi were carrying the same amount of fuel, so demonstrating that, once into its stride, with the front tyres fully warmed, the Ferrari was genuinely McLaren-quick.

It was only its inability to use those tyres hard enough in qualifying that had left it trailing. "It's a problem we have seen before on this type of [tight] track," said Raikkonen, in reference to Monaco, "but I expect we will hit back on the more normal tracks."

The other Ferrari of Felipe Massa was in no position to help, mired in the midfield where it had qualified after the team's non-refuelling error. To compound matters Felipe, in attempting to pass Alex Wurz's Williams, had run wide and clattered over the turn four kerbs on the opening lap, this allowing Takuma Sato to demote him down to 16th.

Massa would be stuck behind the Super Aguri for the rest of the first stint. Loaded to the gills with fuel, he had no way of making progress. "It was the worst race of my career," he lamented after trailing home a dejected 13th. His world title hopes now look slim.

Alonso repassed Webber into turn one at the beginning of the third lap and picked off Kubica there a lap later to go sixth. But he was already 11sec away from the lead, and falling, as Schumacher defended fifth hard. This lost Alonso around 1.5sec per lap to the Hamilton/Raikkonen fight.

From the sixth lap Raikkonen began to gradually nibble into Hamilton's lead, the pair stretching themselves, Kimi usually fastest in sector one, Lewis with the edge in the middle sector, generally equal in the final one. They were each pushing like crazy as the first stops loomed, Hamilton determined to break Raikkonen's challenge.

On lap 13 he upped his pace by over 0.5sec to set the fastest lap of the race so far. Raikkonen was desperate to stay with him, to be within range and ready to take advantage of what he hoped would be a later stop, but as he tried to go with the McLaren he ran wide at the penultimate turn and out onto the dust.

His tyre grip thus compromised, he suffered a further moment at the final turn, and a 3sec gap was suddenly back out to 4.6sec. For now, Hamilton had reasserted his authority on this race.

The only hope for Raikkonen was that he was going to run longer than Hamilton to the first stop: although the McLaren's hard working of its tyres had helped give the team a qualifying and early-race advantage, Kimi was hoping that late in the stint it would mean a drop-off in performance.

It was a forlorn hope on both counts. The McLaren was fuelled just as long, and its pace didn't really drop off. They each pitted at the end of lap 19. Without the option of being able to respond to how long Hamilton was refuelled, Ferrari was committed to its planned second-stint duration - and it turned out to be shorter than Hamilton's.

The McLaren was stationary for 9.7sec (enough for 30 laps), the Ferrari for 8.6sec (enough for 26). There was now no chance of Raikkonen ?leapfrogging ahead at the final stops. All Ferrari could do was hope Hamilton encountered some sort of problem. Actually, he did. Meantime, Alonso had pitted at the end of lap 17, still having been unable to breach the defences of Schumacher's Toyota.

Ralf stopped a lap later and emerged still ahead of the McLaren, consigning Alonso to another trapped stint. In fact, these two were effectively racing Heidfeld too, but the BMW was on a three-stopper to their two - the two strategies were very evenly matched if you could run up front and find the right gap.

It turned out that Heidfeld's crew was only just able to do this. Had Ralf been able to run just one lap longer to the first stops, he would have cleared Nick and spoiled the BMW's strategy. The threat to Heidfeld's third then became Alonso, because the McLaren had been fuelled longer than Schumacher to the second stops - and BMW therefore knew the champion would leapfrog the Toyota.

The challenge was then for Nick to build up a big enough gap to allow him to exit his third stop still in front of the group. "It wasn't easy racing a ghost," said Heidfeld, who had also lost sight of the two leaders ahead of him. "I knew we were racing Fernando, but because of the different strategies he wasn't visible."

BMW's choice of running three stops for both its cars was based on difficulties with the softer tyre in practice. The team wanted therefore to minimise time spent on it, with its use limited to a short final stint.

Williams had opted for a similar strategy for Rosberg, as had Red Bull for Webber. Rosberg, Kubica and Webber were effectively racing each other just behind the Heidfeld/Schumacher/Alonso group. The three-stoppers stayed in this order through their second stints, but Rosberg's short middle stint dropped him behind Kubica after each had stopped a second time.

This sprang Kubica free to attack the two-stopping Ralf, an attack that was ultimately (just) successful and netted the Pole fifth place. This was a good recovery from Kubica after his qualifying difficulties, especially so as he kept the same set of front tyres on for the first two stints. Webber would be left to be leapfrogged by the two-stopping Kovalainen for the final point, Heikki driving another impressive race in the Renault, its super-softs holding up well enough for Renault to use a set in the middle stint too.

"Yes, the track conditions and the temperatures came to the super-soft perfectly," said Bridgestone's Kees van der Grint. "Looking at it afterwards, it's clear that it was actually a quicker tyre even over a stint. I'm surprised more teams didn't use it for their middle stint once they'd seen how consistent the Renault had been."

Up at the front, the Hamilton/Raikkonen battle continued. Into the second stint Kimi was quicker. Some of the margin was to be expected given that he was four laps lighter, but it was more than that. "Yes, early in the second stint my steering wheel suddenly was offset to the right," reported Hamilton.

"It wasn't a comfortable feeling as it felt a bit like [in qualifying] at the Nurburgring. I decided to stay off the kerbs just in case. It was very hard work, especially in right-handers. Eventually the team came on the radio and said it wasn't really a problem, that it wasn't going to break. But still it affected me."

The car's front brakes also began locking up much more readily than before: "The whole front end just felt very different to what it was in the first stint and it became extremely difficult to drive." And so Raikkonen closed in until, by the 28th lap, the gap was almost gone.

Catching was one thing, passing something else. At no stage did Kimi look like trying to put a move on the McLaren: "We were just too close in performance. I wasn't going to try anything risky. I just pushed hard to try to make him make a mistake but nothing happened. Because our car only really started working properly three or four laps into a stint, it meant we were not where we needed to be.

"The only chance was to have been able to have run longer to the first stops, but it's just guessing what the other team will do, and we didn't guess right. That's the only way we might have been able to win."

Hamilton went into safe mode, just played defensive, ignored the red thing that would be big in his mirrors for pretty much the rest of the race: "I just concentrated on managing my tyres. We knew we were running longer to the second stops, so it was important that I still had the performance in my tyres after he pitted, so that I could take advantage of stopping later."

He'd kept calm, contained the damage, established that this was still a winnable race. And thanked his lucky stars that passing at the Hungaroring is next to impossible in the dry. Raikkonen pitted on lap 45, giving him a final stint of 25 laps.

Hamilton used his four low-fuel laps to good effect, the last of them just a tenth slower than his best, set when the car was fully healthy. He rejoined over 4sec in front, but again Kimi was quickly able to close that down, both cars now on the super-soft tyres.

"I just concentrated on getting good exits," explained Hamilton on the art of soaking up the pressure and not leaving any gaps in the defences. Hamilton had not long left the McLaren pits when Alonso arrived there for his final stop, his extra low-fuel lap over Schumacher's Toyota finally getting him ahead.

Heidfeld made his third and final stop five laps later, and exited just ahead of the champion's visibly faster McLaren. No longer was Nick racing a ghost. It was there, real as silver-and-red, all over his rear wing.

Alonso was not up for accepting that passing was nearly impossible, and suffered several trips across the asphalt run-offs as he desperately tried to get a run on the BMW.

"He had better pace and I decided not to push too hard on the super-soft tyres," explained Nick, "just to be kind to them, knowing that it's hard for him to overtake here. He pushed pretty hard for a couple of laps, then backed off, then tried again. You can never be sure with him, but I was fairly sure I had him covered."

He did indeed, and took his second podium of the year.Raikkonen set fastest lap of the race on his final tour - but it wasn't enough. In taking win number three Hamilton extended his lead over Alonso to seven points - and over Raikkonen to 20.

"That was one of the hardest races of my career," he claimed. It was also quite possibly his coolest.

[Gundalgandul]

TRACKSIDE VIEW by Mark Hughes

A snapsnot. Friday afternoon, halfway through the second practice session, turn 13, the penultimate one, the long, long hairpin. For the driver, different each lap. The track is still evolving, the line of rubber build-up increasing the track's grip level at the same time as the graining rubber is decreasing that of the tyres. The two are as awkward as a pair of contrary toddlers.

In an ideal world, the driver wants to carry in a lot of momentum, either braking late like Robert Kubica, or braking early but coming off early too, like Lewis Hamilton. From there it's a balancing game up to the apex, trying to carry that momentum without over-stressing the front-right, trying to get the whole car to pivot on that little contact patch.

So that, as the front bites into the turn, the load shifts to the right-rear. This should coincide approximately with the apex, and from there the driver wants to get as much acceleration load into the rear, but doesn't want the traction to be too good initially - because that just leads to the front running wide.

So, paradoxically, he doesn't want too much traction control dialled in here, wants a little bit of spin to lock the car into a slight oversteer balance that will allow him to accelerate hard but still keep away from that exit kerb.

Except this is compromise time. Only a few drivers on new tyres manage this - Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button notably - and thereafter tyre degradation forces improvisation. On new rubber Kubica is almost binary in his inputs, brilliant in how he brakes late without ever taking off a fraction too much speed.

From turn-in he carries that speed up to the apex, off the throttle, then once there buries his right foot, no melding between the two states. As he piles on the laps and the tyre grip fades, so he gets more lurid on entry. Giancarlo Fisichella is the opposite: chivvying it through almost the whole turn, ahead of the traction control, busy on the throttle, papering over the cracks of grip with a right-foot dance.

The car is in the corner a long time here, giving the driver much more of a feel than normal. Such is the duration and the ever-changing variables that you see all the different ways the drivers have of expressing themselves in the car:

Heikki Kovalainen neat, simple and committed, just like him; Fisi more expressive but still controlled; Kubica a free spirit. In time the track grip will increase enough to meet the tyre in a place of mutually accepted performance and they will stop graining. But it won't be today.

[Gundalgandul]

ON THE LIMIT by Steve Cooper

McLaren's new paddock Brand Centre isn't universally loved. Big and imposing, it hardly exudes familiarity. So, while a neat, stencilled message on the front doors bids you welcome, you feel precisely the opposite as you ascend the steep staircase and enter the inner sanctum.

Inside, an impatient crowd surges and pulses around the tables and chairs, waiting for the team's Saturday afternoon media session to kick off. People want answers. And their presence makes the tight confines of the motorhome feel angular and difficult, turning the atmosphere prickly and defiant.

"We've got to practise what we preach," says team boss Ron Dennis, imperiously taking the microphone and attempting to defuse the righteous indignation. "So we're giving you the exact truth of the situation."

Ron then launches into a lengthy analysis of that controversial Q3 session - but while his summary is typically wordy and precise, it doesn't really cut it.

The journalists who like to get their heads around the tricky mathematics of the sport feel that Ron's explanation is clunky and missing several precise details. The tabloid journalists, who can sniff a story at 50 yards, can't reconcile Ron's words to what they've just seen on the media centre's TV screens. There's a growing feeling of discontent bubbling under.

"Have I explained it accurately, Fernando?" concludes Ron, turning to the uninterested Spaniard sitting alongside him. Alonso bites into a piece of fruit and lazily gives a thumbs-up. He doesn't divert his gaze; certainly doesn't even bother to open his mouth to speak. It's a distilled moment of studied insolence towards his boss.

The crowd doesn't buy it, there's a scrabble for a microphone and several angry journalists start to press Dennis for a more lucid explanation. Dennis and Alonso bat back increasingly agitated responses. But then there's a sudden scraping of furniture, Ron stands up and informs the audience that he must hurriedly leave the room to visit the stewards' office.

Almost simultaneously, Lewis Hamilton strides in. It's the first time most of us have ever seen a McLaren driver arrive late for the team's press meeting, so rigorously scheduled is McLaren's weekend timetable. "Sorry I'm late," he smiles, a little sheepishly. "I was watching GP2. I didn't realise we had this."

With Ron now gone, the Fleet Street pack quickly repositions itself, adopting a pincer movement in order to simultaneously grill both Lewis and Fernando. The questions come thick and fast - and they're indignant, angry and self-righteous. It's an impressive tirade at two drivers who are sat without the defence of their team boss.

Only Mercedes motorsport director Norbert Haug sits between the pair. But, rather than trying to redress the balance, he merely sits silently, sheepishly prodding at his Blackberry, uninterested in the mess going on around him. It's a shocking episode of mismanagement.

Without the unifying steer of their team boss, both drivers resort to fighting - and defending - their own battles. They blank each other and rebuff the other's answers without so much as an exchange of glances.

At one point, Hamilton - still well-drilled in McLaren's principles of equality - offers the slightly risible justification: "We're not disagreeing. I just told you my side, he's telling you his. I'm not disagreeing with him: that's just his opinion."

A group of McLaren's senior management, looking down from the motorhome's mezzanine, looks increasingly worried. Maybe that last comment is the straw that breaks the camel's back, for team COO Martin Whitmarsh is quickly on the floor, brandishing a microphone and breaking up the press conference, calling a truce to this mini-war.

In 10 shocking minutes, the team's solidarity has just crumbled before everybody's eyes.

[Gundalgandul]

OFFLINE by Damien Smith

Two weeks earlier he had been hanging around the Nurburgring paddock wearing BMW team gear, at a bit of a loose end. We'd asked him what he reckoned he'd be up to next year. "I don't know," he shrugged with a smile.

With BMW apparently in no hurry to re-sign Nick Heidfeld, he was still hopeful of landing one of the best race drives on the grid, but he also knew it was more realistic to expect his Red Bull ties to pay dividends.

And so it proved, only much earlier than Sebastian Vettel could possibly have predicted in that paddock in Germany. In the days after the European Grand Prix, it became obvious that Scott Speed's position at Scuderia Toro Rosso had become untenable.

The row with team boss Franz Tost after his race retirement, the peculiar 'Nothing to report' press release on Sunday afternoon - all the signs read that Speed had raced in his last grand prix for STR, and probably for anyone.

And so it proved. Vettel was the obvious man to step in, so BMW released him, he was duly announced as the new STR driver and then, on Thursday at the Hungaroring, was confirmed as a full-time race driver for 2008. No more hanging around grand prix paddocks at a loose end for this young driver.

Vettel, who leads this year's Renault World Series, has already proved a hit in Formula 1 because of his laid-back personality and sense of humour - and it doesn't hurt that this highly-rated man became the youngest-ever F1 points scorer when he subbed for Robert Kubica at the US GP. It was quite a debut.

But in Hungary he knew it would be a different story. This would be a tougher prospect, one in which he would be stepping into a team he had never even tested for, in a car that often fails to get out of Q1 on Saturday afternoons, against a team-mate who is under considerable pressure himself.

Tonio Liuzzi will know that, if he can put Vettel in his place, it will be a timely reminder that the Italian should still be a target for better teams. Up against all that, Vettel was destined to play a bit-part in the drama that was the 2007 Hungarian GP.

And so it proved. All credit is due for matching Liuzzi for pace on Friday, his first day as an STR driver, but a mistake in qualifying left him stranded in the depths of Q1 as Liuzzi made it through to the second round.

"It is not easy to get adapted, but I think I will manage that quickly," Vettel said. "In the first laps we were a bit lost, but you adapt quite quickly and in the end you feel okay. It's an F1 car, and it's bloody quick.

"For sure, it's not on the same level [as the BMW Sauber], but as a driver you don't really care. You just try to get the maximum out of the car, give 100 per cent, and if that is not enough then you work a bit harder to do better. So it was fun, and I think that was the most important thing."

Vettel could have only one realistic aim from raceday. To make it to the finish would be an achievement in itself.

And so it proved: a hard slog to 16th at a physically demanding track on a very hot day. "It felt like a long race, but the main thing is that I finished," he said. "Over a race distance, the car changes a lot and you have to adapt, which is not easy when you don't know the car."

Out of the limelight, simply learning about his new team and his new challenge, with no chance of gaining big headlines no matter how good he drove. Reality bites, Sebastian. Welcome to life at the other end of F1.

[Ethuang]

nice thread bro GG ;)
kancutttt...eh lanjut bro

[Gundalgandul]

Ini juga kolumnis F1 favorit gue. Artikelnya selalu tajam dan agak nyeleneh dengan bahasa yang ringan, tipikal orang yang sudah menguasai dunianya.
Gue juga pernah ketemu orang ini. Orangnya baik dan tipikal English Gentlemen, sangat menghargai lawan bicara. Tau gue ngefans sama dia lewat tulisan-tulisannya, bahu gue ditepuk-tepuk, "If I can read your articles, I will be your fans too". Really nice...

COLUMN http://www.autosport.com/images/space.gif
From the Pulpit http://www.autosport.com/images/space.gif
http://www.autosport.com/images/bishop150x150.jpg

By Matt Bishop autosport.com special columnist

Championship-contending teams have rarely succeeded in running joint number-one drivers. Matt Bishop reckons McLaren could be facing some tough decisions at the end of the year...

Whatever outcome eventuates from McLaren's twin forthcoming FIA Court of Appeal appearances (September 13 and September 19), most observers now reckon that the team are unlikely to field the same driver line-up in 2008 as they have this year.
If, indeed, events transpire that way, and McLaren's Ron Dennis is forced to relinquish one of his newly-signed dream duo, then he will of course be absolutely gutted, and understandably so. But I expect it to happen.
The fact is that, although Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton haven't always enjoyed explicit number-one status in their teams (of the kind that Michael Schumacher always insisted on, for example), they've always been primus inter pares, or first among equals, simply by virtue of their evident superiority over their teammates.
Usually, joint number-one status isn't a problem for Formula One teams - as, indeed, it isn't currently an issue at Renault, Ferrari, Honda, BMW Sauber, Toyota, Red Bull Racing, Williams, etc. And that's because, for joint number-one status to be a problem, three specific conditions must be met:
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/bishop1.jpg
Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton © LAT
Both drivers must be exceptionally capable and utterly self-obsessed;
Both drivers must be extremely well-matched in terms of qualifying and racing speed;
Their cars must be of regular race-winning quality;And those three conditions are met quite rarely, in fact. Discounting Schumi - whose magnum opus was achieved in part as a result of his having insisted on unequivocal number-one status over less capable teammates whose appointments he had personally authorised - most world championships have been won by drivers whose teammates were less able than they.
In fact, not since the Ayrton Senna/Alain Prost era have two teammates of equal brilliance and equal status fought for a drivers' championship together, and that was at McLaren, too. And it ended in tears.
(And before any fools out there hurry to berate me with foul-mouthed nonsense about Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve in 1996, attempting to discredit my thesis as a result, re-read the first condition. Thank you.)
Should McLaren's solution therefore be to dispense with the policy of equal number-ones and adopt Ferrari's tried and tested policy of hiring an ace and a good number-two instead?
In my view, yes, they should. Too many times (e.g. in 1986, when Williams's warring duo, Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell, both failed to become champion because one took points off the other throughout the year; and in 1973, when Lotus's Emerson Fittipaldi and Ronnie Peterson did the same thing) have teams chucked away drivers' championships by running equal number-ones.
(And, while we're on the subject, don't talk to me about the constructors' championship, which Williams duly won in 1986 and Lotus also won in 1973.
Why not? Because no one gives a damn about it, that's why not. Put it this way: when, in 2000, Schumacher won the drivers' championship for Ferrari, there was an enormous hue and cry about his having ended Ferrari's 21-year drought since Jody Scheckter's 1979 drivers' championship.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/bishop2.jpg
The Ferrari mechanics celebrate their 1999 Constructors Championship © LAT

Little mention was ever made of the fact that Ferrari's 'drought' had in fact ended when the team won the constructors' championship in 1999, and the reason for that was that the only championship that anyone gives a tinker's cuss about was won that year by Mika Hakkinen, for McLaren.
Equally, Ferrari's 'drought' should by rights have been backdated only to 1983, in which year Ferrari won the constructors' championship - a victory eclipsed entirely by their drivers' failure, for various reasons including injury, to prevent Nelson Piquet winning the only championship that anyone gives a tinker's cuss about for Brabham. Thank you again.)
Anyway, as things pan out, the decision may well be made for McLaren, for the simple reason that Alonso may vote with his feet - and, contractual obligations notwithstanding, McLaren may not seek to prevent him from so doing.
Why not? Because Dennis surely now knows that the only way to retain the biggest prize in 21st century F1 - i.e. Lewis Hamilton - is to give him exactly what he wants, just as Ferrari gave Michael exactly what he wanted, and for the same reason.
The most urgent task now facing Ron, in fact, Court of Appeal hearings included, is to prevent Ferrari, and more particularly Philip Morris (Marlboro), from poaching Hamilton from under his nose.
McLaren's partners - and especially their title partner, Vodafone, whose marketers now intend their company's global advertising efforts to be centred around Hamilton (replacing David Beckham) for years to come - are depending on the McLaren chairman to succeed in that endeavour.
Surely, however, Ferrari's Jean Todt must already have begun his 'get Lewis' campaign, albeit covertly.
Put it this way: how could a team whose success has been more driver-focused than that of any other in recent F1 history not now be gunning hell-for-leather for Hamilton?
Do you honestly think that, quick and hard-working lad though he is, Felipe Massa is discharging Schumacher's job description to the satisfaction of those at the Scuderia who remember what it was like to work with - and, yes, be inspired by - the maestro himself?
Do you seriously believe that, however freakishly talented he may be, the hard-drinking and monosyllabic Kimi Raikkonen is still Ferrari's long-term idea of 'the new Schumi'?
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/bishop3.jpg
Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa © LAT

And do you think Philip Morris regard either of them as the megastar they need?
No, no and no again. And 'no' a fourth time, for the stark reason that, staring Ferrari and Philip Morris in the face, Hamilton is everything that Massa and Raikkonen are not.
Make no mistake: Lewis is as hard-working as Massa, as talented as Raikkonen, and an infinitely bigger star, already, than either of them.
And think of this: Philip Morris's current US$1.1 billion Marlboro title sponsorship of Ferrari runs until the end of 2011. It may not be able for legal reasons - and/or reasons of corporate social responsibility, which amorphous attribute all tobacco companies are having to take increasingly seriously these days - to extend beyond that date.
Do not therefore underestimate the efforts that Philip Morris's marketers will make in order to maximise their enormous investment in Ferrari (and in F1) for what may well be their last big marketing push.
And, lest we forget, Lewis is black. And if Philip Morris can use his ethnicity to open up markets that have previously been effectively closed to Marlboro, which has always been seen as a white man's cigarette, then they will move heaven and earth to do so.
And who pays the drivers' salaries at Ferrari? Philip Morris, that's who. Go figure.
So, bearing all that in mind, the only way for McLaren to retain Hamilton, which they must, is to allow Alonso to slide gracefully away. Now.
Where to? To Enstone (Oxfordshire) perhaps. For if McLaren block his return to Renault's still-not-to-be-underestimated F1 operation, then Ferrari and Philip Morris will only redouble their efforts to bag Hamilton, certain in the knowledge that he (Hamilton) will get ever-itchier feet at McLaren as 2008 wears on, alongside the equally uncompromising, unremittingly competitive and increasingly liverish Alonso.
The phrase "this town ain't big enough for the two of us" was never more apt, in F1 circles, than when used to describe Hamilton, Alonso and McLaren.

[Gundalgandul]

http://www.autosport.com/magazine/fifthcolumn.jpg

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/fifth_top.gif

When I read last week's statement from McLaren, wishing to stress that at no stage, in the course of their heated radio debate during qualifying in Hungary, did Lewis Hamilton use the F-word in his remarks to Ron Dennis, I wondered facetiously if the word in question was 'Ferrari'. At the moment, after all, relations between Woking and Maranello are about as warm as Gordon Brown's smile. Then I thought again, about what the coy F-word used to stand for in the days before you heard it on TV 10 times a night. Today, after all, it is words like 'difficult' and 'problem' which must on no account be uttered - instead we are subjected to 'challenging' and 'issue', and, as with so much else, we have our politicians to thank for that.
What struck me last week was the extent to which 'image' has become all-consuming in the 21st century. The 'I' word, one might say. At one point the McLaren statement said that 'Lewis has asked us to correct one important matter of untrue critical commentary. The team has reviewed the radio transmission, and can categorically confirm that Lewis did not use the F-word at any time during conversation with the team.'
Time was, before the teams got wise, that you could buy a scanner and listen in on conversations between drivers and teams. I had one myself, and programmed it so that the number on the screen matched that of a driver. Thus, if you wanted to listen to Nigel Mansell moaning to Patrick Head, you simply pressed '5' and waited for someone to speak, which usually took no time at all, and not infrequently entailed use of the F-word.
Go to a NASCAR race, and you can hire a scanner for the weekend, with a list of frequencies for every team and driver. Given the masonic secrecy of F1, however, it was no more than inevitable that pit-to-car conversations would be scrambled. A pity, though, because it added a lot to one's understanding of what was happening, and there was of course the occasionally delicious pleasure of hearing things said that those involved would rather you had not heard. Couldn't last.
You needed a certain amount of patience and dedication, for many of the conversations were pretty bland, and many more almost unintelligible, but once in a while you came across something to tingle the spine. Mid-race at Monza in 1987, for example, Ayrton Senna was discussing tyre wear with Lotus's Peter Warr.
The intention had been to stop for a new set, at half-distance, and Senna's main rival, Nelson Piquet, had already done that. Given that Piquet's Williams-Honda was way quicker than Senna's similarly-powered Lotus, Ayrton's only hope of winning was to stay out - but, he wanted to know, would his tyres go the distance?
After a short period of radio silence, Warr was back on the line: "Ayrton, we've spoken to Goodyear, and they say it's possible - but very marginal..." Silence from Senna, for a good 15 seconds or so. Then, "Okay, we go for it..."
Listening to this added so much to my appreciation of what was going on out there. Time after time, the yellow Lotus hammered by, with Piquet closing, but apparently not quickly enough. Then, with seven laps to go, Senna got off-line at Parabolica, lapping a backmarker, and the Williams snatched the lead.
Ayrton being Ayrton, he gave immediate chase, and even - on his rooted tyres - set a new lap record right at the end. He failed to catch Nelson by a second or so, but that afternoon was for ever coloured for me by that snatch of conversation: even as he was pounding round, I knew what he had to work with, and what he was doing with it.
As I recall, at no stage did Senna use the F-word during his discussions with Warr, but I can't say I'd have thought less of him if he had - there was, after all, a good deal of tension implicit in the situation.
That said, I can remember his using it, more than once, in a press conference - and on that occasion his ire was directed at a recently departed FIA president! I have no memory, I must say, of feeling shocked, or of any ladies reaching for the smelling salts. Ayrton, be it noted, was a McLaren driver at the time.
Ironically, it was a radio conversation between a driver and his team, at the French Grand Prix in 2003, which led indirectly to Juan Pablo Montoya's joining McLaren.
Incensed at what he saw as Williams manipulation in favour of his team-mate, Ralf Schumacher, JPM got into a colourful exchange with technical director Sam Michael, in which insults were freely traded, and the F-word used with some vigour. Other words, too.
A couple of days later, Montoya received a letter from his employers, in which his attitude, rather than his language, was heavily criticised. First, Juan Pablo said, it made him feel like a schoolboy, and then it made him extremely angry. When Ron Dennis, noting his discomfort, came calling, Montoya was all ears.
Anyway, Lewis may have disobeyed Ron's instructions, but he didn't swear at him, so we can rest easy. One would have thought that of greater consequence to McLaren folk might have been that their drivers, at a time of intense upheaval for the team, did not complement Ferrari's destabilisation campaign by falling out between themselves. It made me think of Indycar racing splitting in two, and the gentlemen of NASCAR rubbing their hands.
As it was, Hamilton and Fernando Alonso came away from Budapest with a first and a fourth place, but it could have been a one-two, were it not for the nature of the Hungaroring, which might have been designed to prevent racing. At a time when worthwhile circuits are being scythed from the championship, the inclusion of this antidote to excitement is a mystery. Location, I suppose.
Whenever I've asked Bernie Ecclestone how he can justify keeping Interlagos on the schedule, while endlessly criticising the facilities at Silverstone, he has always replied it's vital we have a race in South America. Wish he felt the same about North America.
The evolving shape of the world championship seems to me a touch convoluted, in the sense that we appear to be dropping European races to make way for more and more Asian events - which in turn are going to have to start at a time reasonably acceptable for European TV viewers. I think I've got that right. Hence, the 'night race' in Singapore next year, the eventual possibility of an early evening race in Melbourne, and so on.
In the meantime, it's off to Istanbul and the resumption of hostilities - on and off the track, presumably - between McLaren and the F-word in what is proving the most closely fought championship in a generation. The Turkish GP is now in the firm control of BCE, so its long-term survival is assured, and that's good, for the circuit is sensational.
As for the Hungaroring, perhaps thought should be given to the installation of sprinklers, for a reduction in grip tends to lead to motor racing, as last year's race demonstrated. If we can have grands prix with artificial light, it's surely a short step to artificial weather.

[Gundalgandul]

http://www.autosport.com/magazine/insideline.jpg
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/inside_top.gif

These are critical days in the Formula 1 future of Vitantonio Liuzzi. At the Hungaroring, with new and highly rated long-term signing Sebastian Vettel alongside, he was fighting for his career. With confirmation that Sebastien Bourdais has now been signed to drive alongside Vettel next year, the pressure for Liuzzi in the remaining races will be yet more intense.
But these seven races alongside the highly rated German are a great opportunity for him to change perceptions - and Liuzzi needs to do that because the perception of his ability probably falls some way short of the reality.
Perception is all in the F1 driver market and very little analysis seems to be applied by most of the teams. That perception is invariably linked with the quality of machinery and the Toro Rosso he's been driving for the last couple of years hasn't been great.
Similarly, it would be fair to say that as a result of jumping straight into a BMW as a third driver last year, the perception of Vettel's level is way higher than that of Liuzzi's. As Hungary suggested, however, it ain't necessarily so.
As Vettel was welcomed to Toro Rosso in Budapest, Gerhard Berger made the point that contrary to what might be imagined for a 20-year-old beginning his first full-time grand prix ride without ever having driven the car, there was actually no pressure.
He'd been signed for the balance of this season and throughout 2008, so there was time to build the relationship, to progress together. Sebastian could relax in the knowledge that he was considered very much as part of the team's future.
What was left unsaid was how much this contrasted with Liuzzi's position. Given that his team-mate Scott Speed had just been unceremoniously sacked for claimed lack of performance and that Berger had repeatedly bunched Speed and Liuzzi together when he spoke of his disappointment in driver performance, the signs were clear. Although Berger then said that nothing was decided and that Tonio still possibly had a future with the team, Bourdais had already tested for Toro Rosso at Spa the previous week.
That Spa test illustrated just how important perceptions are. The headline lap time figures showed that Bourdais lapped a few tenths faster than Liuzzi. What they do not show was that a mix-up in the garage resulted in Liuzzi running with 20kg more fuel than was intended when that time was set. Making the appropriate corrections for the respective weight of the cars, Liuzzi was actually around 0.6 seconds faster than Bourdais.
No disgrace in that for Bourdais, straight from Champ Car. But the true picture of that test is now irrelevant. Because the perception is that Bourdais was the quicker guy, thereby just adding to the perception that Liuzzi wasn't doing the job - how could he be when someone could come straight in from another category and be instantly quicker in the same car?
Another perception is that Liuzzi crashes a lot, something that Berger has repeatedly laid at his door. Well, let's have a look at that. He's crashed this year at Monaco, Canada, France and the Nurburgring. At Monaco it was as a result of being hit from behind by David Coulthard on the opening lap at Massanet.
In Canada he caused one of the race's four safety cars when he hit 'champions wall' when running in the points - something for which he was badly berated by the team. This one is disputed. Tonio is adamant that the suspension broke - probably as a result of the Kubica accident debris that had been lodged in there for many laps - and caused the accident.
The team are equally adamant the only suspension breakage on the car was impact damage. In France he was hit from behind at the first corner by Anthony Davidson. At the Nurburgring he was one of the five cars stuck in the turn one gravel as the storm hit - but it has been established beyond dispute that the off was caused by a failure of the diff and traction control.
But in issuing a press release afterwards with only the words 'Nothing To Say', the team helped cement the impression that it was simply 'another of Tonio's accidents'. Hardly fair, or accurate.
How good is he really? I honestly don't know. But for sure he's better than his F1 reputation and I'm quite intrigued by how he will stack up against Vettel. Hungary was hardly a fair comparison from Vettel's perspective, because it was literally the first time he'd ever driven the car. But for the record, Liuzzi was decisively faster.
In the first Friday practice Vettel was quickly down to a time and Liuzzi came out for his first run as a man on a mission. He made an over-commitment into a corner on his first flying lap, had a big moment, and the resultant lap was 0.4sec slower than Vettel's. But then he strung a more representative lap together - one that was 0.5sec faster than Vettel's.
He then suffered a transmission glitch that consigned him to the garage for the rest of the session, but Vettel never did beat his time. Into the second session Liuzzi was ahead by just hundredths, on Saturday morning he was faster by 0.5sec again. Into qualifying Vettel made a critical mistake on his lap and didn't graduate from Q1.
Liuzzi was 0.4sec quicker and made it into Q2. In the race Liuzzi retired with electronics failure, having been stuck the whole time in a queue behind the heavy cars of Takuma Sato and Felipe Massa. He didn't get a single lap in clear air so no significance can be attached to his fastest race lap - which was 0.5sec slower than Vettel's. Vettel ran a couple of cars behind but made it to the finish.
With more time in the car Vettel will for sure find more speed in the remaining races. Then we can make a fuller analysis of just where Liuzzi stacks up, can make a call on whether the devastating kartist and dominant Formula 3000 champion has really translated those skills to F1.
And whether the perception the F1 world has had of him these past couple of years is in fact completely wrong. If he can change that, might he find himself in one of several F1 seats that are still open for next year? There's almost as much intrigue down this end of the grid as up the front. Almost.

[Gundalgandul]

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/tech_fer.jpg
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/tech_top.gif
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/tech_mcl.jpg

With the world championship fight closely poised into the second half of the season, the intensity of the technical battle between the teams is full-on. Because the technical regulations are so limiting, the biggest single factor driving developments has been the move to Bridgestone as a single tyre supplier. With most of the field previously on Michelins, it's had some profound effects on the how teams have adapted, and which technical directions they have pursued, in turn has affected the competitive state of play. Gary Anderson and Giorgio Piola report
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/tyre_changes.gif
The big challenge this year has been adapting to the Bridgestone tyre. Most teams felt that Ferrari would have a bit of an advantage because of its experience of this year's Bridgestone, which is different from the '06 tyre and comes from the same family as the '05 rubber.
The Michelin and the Bridgestone are very different in their construction. The Michelin had a very stiff tread and soft sidewall. The Bridgestone is nearer to crossply in its characteristics with stiffness all the way through it. The teams will have received information from Bridgestone on the tyre and compared it to the Michelin. But some teams got it right and some got it wrong.
Surprisingly, McLaren seemed to get it near enough right immediately, whereas Renault got it badly wrong.
Aero Implications
There are two tyre-related areas you need to get right: the aerodynamics and the weight distribution. From what we heard at the start of the year people were suffering big aerodynamic losses because of the different tyre profile.
The Michelin had a different straight-on profile anyway, but the difference becomes really big when you compare the profiles under load and this has serious implication on the aero. Move a tyre 20mm and you could easily lose five per cent of your downforce.
It's very difficult to simulate a loaded tyre profile in the windtunnel. You can change the tyre profile in the tunnel and change your aero quite dramatically as a result, but you still have to question if that is the profile you're actually getting on the track.
You sort it through correlation with time as you go from track to track, but it's not yet a full science because the simulation isn't really there yet.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/tech_1.jpgWeight Distribution Implications
The tyre also works differently from a Michelin; it moves differently, mid-corner in particular. Weight distribution is crucial in getting the best from it, regardless of aero. And this is where most teams seem to have struggled. Plus or minus five per cent downforce can still be a good car, but of those teams that have lost their way with their designs, it's typically been about weight distribution rather than downforce.
With this year's tyre your car concept needs the weight forward compared to a Michelin. You then need to have the aero balance forward with it, and a car concept that doesn't allow you to bring the weight forward will make it even tougher to get the aero forward because the whole reasoning behind your package has been in a different direction.
Making the underfloor, bargeboards, front wing and chassis front work harder to make the front wing work harder is a tough task. Unless you're starting in a position where you can get most of that, you are fighting with it. Renault has shown that - it recognised the problem a while ago but is struggling to correct it because it started from the wrong place.
The Michelin rear concept was better for taking longitudinal acceleration. So when you went on the power the tyre had more capacity, so in order to fully use that capability you wanted the weight distribution rearwards.
The Bridgestone rear is not as good for longitudinal forces; its performance between longitudinal and lateral is more balanced. You therefore need a more forward distribution than the Michelin. This takes some of the load away from the rear tyre, making it feel as if it's bigger and as a consequence you abuse the front tyre a little bit.
With the Bridgestone you need to minimise the weight transfer in braking and acceleration. With the Michelin you didn't because of its longitudinal capability, so when you braked or accelerated it could handle the transfer because of its longitudinal performance. It all means the Bridgestone is more sensitive to weight distribution. The Michelin allowed a greater margin.
I'd imagine the weight distribution range of the cars to be between something like 46 per cent on the front at Hungary/Monaco and 48/49 per cent for high-speed, high-load tracks like Spa/ Silverstone.
t's difficult to get a bigger adjustment window than that because you don't have room to move the ballast. That's why the concept is crucial. In terms of ballast I'd be surprised if everyone wasn't in the 80kg ballpark. The bit you see of the 'tea tray' part of the floor at the front of the chassis is obviously a key place for ballast; you could carry as much as 35kg there.
With the Renault's latest front wing there's space for ballast (1). But you'd not get much more than 5kg in there. It's not an ideal place because it's outside the wheelbase and also higher up than the floor area, thereby raising the centre of gravity.
Being outside the wheelbase will make the car lazier in changing direction - though we're only talking small degrees here, with 5kg of ballast. Some think a bit of inertia is good, that it helps car the car to rotate, but I think it will cause more problems than it'll solve.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/front_wing.gif
Two slots, three or two and a half?
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/tech_2.jpgWe're seeing quite a few different concepts of front wing. Even forgetting the upper add-on top elements for a moment and looking only at the main elements, we see two-plane wings, three planes and even two and a half.
They're all about trying to control airflow separation - which you'll always get at some stage because there's a wing there with a fairly low point in the middle and that's always going to stall to some degree. Under braking or in a high-speed corner that wing will struggle to get enough flow to keep the airflow at the flap attached.
The flaps are very aggressively shaped and what you don't want is to have a catastrophic stall in the middle of the front wing. So the slot gaps are there to keep it attached, keeping the flaps fed with flow. It will reduce your peak downforce - which comes from the throat of the mainplane.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/tech_3.jpgThe whole wing has a low pressure underneath it and the velocity of air through that throat will cause it to separate; the last thing you want it to do is separate over the whole wing so the slots are positioned to keep those bits attached so the rest of the car doesn't suffer as dramatic a failure of airflow.
The Williams of a few years ago had a huge flap and a fairly small mainplane and that's the most catastrophic combination you can have because you fill that flap much sooner and then really struggle to get it reattached.
Obviously a two-plane wing has one slot gap, a three-plane has two. The Renault (2) has a centre section slot on its main plane, making it one and a half. The BMW also has one and a half but its additional slot is on the flap (3). CFD (computational fluid dynamics) will predict where the stall will happen and where it's best to put your slots to make it more controllable.
Upper elements
Looking at the upper elements over the top, only the outer 50-60 per cent of their section is used to create downforce. Those that do stretch across to the nose in the middle are neutral there - their shape is not aerofoil and doesn't therefore create downforce.
The McLaren has an unusual arrangement whereby the upper elements don't actually meet the nose but cross over the top of it (4). This is simply because the McLaren's nose drops down so sharply that this is the only way to have the elements in the right place.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/tech_4.jpgAlthough they look different from anyone else's, they do much the same job. They give you some extra downforce in themselves, without disrupting the flow to the bargeboards (which is why their inner part is neutral).
On some cars the extra front downforce isn't really necessary but it's allowed them to back off the main flap section, making it less critical. Getting the front wing in its working window is where you'll get the most overall car downforce, as opposed to the most front peak downforce.
Keeping the flow attached feeds the rear downforce-producing devices better. If you put on more front flap angle you can take it out of its ideal working window. It disrupts the airflow further back. You do move the centre of pressure forward but the effect on the rear is bad so you're moving it forward only because you've reduced the rear downforce. It's easy to get tricked by that.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/tech_5.jpgSo these extra elements help keep the front wing in its working window, keep you from having to add too much extra flap angle and thereby damaging the rear. You're minimising the trouble caused to the airflow between the bargeboard area that feeds the floor and thereby the rear.
End plates
The most significant thing we've seen here is the move to wider endplates - as seen most notably on the McLaren (5) and Red Bull. Generically you're working the front wing very hard on that outboard bit to give you the front end you need, but then you put steering lock on and the front wheel crosses directly over the hardest-working bit of the wing. You don't want that mid-corner.
It becomes a vicious circle too because the cars tend to understeer in slow corners anyway, yet the slow corners are the ones that require more steering lock. So the more lock you put on, the more you hurt the front aero, the more understeer you get etc.
With a big endplate you minimise this effect although you're surrendering peak downforce because you're giving up some wing area. The trade-off of endplate width versus wingspan probably stops at 6-7cm wide. After that, the wing performance will drop away but the performance with lock on will still be with you. The McLaren has got around 15cm.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/keels.gif
There is still a lot of divergence here between single, twin and zero keels. There is variation also on the height of the monocoque and this has very significant implications.
As ever, it's about compromise.
The chassis cross-section is defined by the FIA. It can be whatever height you want but it has to be symmetrical around the car's centre line. Anything else you add to it is aero blockage. The air that comes between the front tyres is what you can use. There are three things you can do with that: 1) brake cooling, 2) engine cooling, 3) downforce.
The more you have to use for brake cooling the less is available for the other. Any blockage you put between the front wheels is an area with less flow, so you want to reduce that to the minimum. Hence the appeal of twin and zero keels.
But the compromises are stiffness and suspension geometry. The initial windtunnel study makes twin keel look very good, but when you make it structural - make a package that would stand the loads - it disappears on you a bit. But in looking at the whole range from a traditional single keel to a zero keel we're talking single figures of kg of downforce at 150mph. So it's not make-or-break.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/tech_6.jpg
Toyota has taken the most extreme approach. Not only has it opted for zero keel (6, right, compared to '06 single keel), but it's made the chassis front higher than anyone else's, lifting the underside up high to maximise the airflow. But when you move that section of the chassis up by 40-50mm the centre of gravity goes up maybe five per cent and the geometry becomes flawed.
Watch it on the track and its front end is inconsistent to its driver input. When the driver has confidence in it it's pretty quick, but when he hasn't it's horrible. I believe that's coming from the compromises in the suspension geometry caused by having the lower wishbone as high as it is in order to have the zero keel.
With a grooved tyre, it's very different from a slick: you don't have a continuous load/grip relationship, each bit works on its own. With a suspension geometry like that the tyre will be rolling around more and you will get more contact patch movement across the tyre. Everyone has that problem, but the higher you have that wishbone the more you will get it.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/tech_7.jpgPushrod mounting
Ferrari was the only team with its pushrod mounted underneath the front wishbone (7, compared to R27 inset above), but since Magny-Cours Honda has adopted an almost identical layout. Having the pushrod mounted on the upright as opposed to the wishbone does more or less the same job for the suspension.
But it means you can change the characteristics of steering lock, change the weight transfer across the car on steering lock, which is good for low-speed corners and can reduce the understeer. It changes the feeling for the driver, so you have to be careful. But you can do a lot with it and it can actually give a feeling of less understeer even when it's actually the same.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/mclaren_v_ferrari.gif
McLaren seems to run its car more compliant than the Ferrari. It seems to ride the kerbs better whereas the Ferrari seems to have reasonable grip, and seems a very stiff, stable car.
The races where Ferrari wasn't good in qualifying it's often been okay in the race. The races where it's been good in qualifying, it's been dominant in the race.
This is a reflection of the fact that Ferrari doesn't get its front tyres working well enough over one lap in qualifying. And the McLaren does.
Furthermore, because Lewis Hamilton is able to run with quite a bit of oversteer it is able to run his car with quite a lot of front grip in the faster corners. That will certainly help. The McLaren uses the tyre quicker, heats it up quicker and gets access to its performance more instantly.
If you have a car that's very stiff it tends to be a car that wants to understeer. The worst thing you can do to a front tyre when you're trying to warm it up is slide.
You want to load up the carcass and make the tyre's structure warm. Whereas if you slide it all you're doing is heating up the surface and not getting any lateral load into the carcass where you need it.
The Ferrari tends to induce that sliding of a cold tyre, being a stiffer structure. The McLaren, being a bit more compliant, can get the weight transfer going a bit more and get that front end to bite.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/brake_ducts.gif
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/tech_8.jpgBelieve it or not, the Ferrari front-wheel 'hub-caps' (8), that remain stationary as the wheel turns, are theoretically part of the front brake ducts. This is to get around the regulations concerning the wheel rim having to be of a homogenous material.
These carbon bits are bolted onto magnesium rims and so are classed as an extension of the brake ducts, to which they are linked.
At the front, where you need a lot of brake cooling, you want your ducts as small as possible to reduce drag.
At the rear ,where you don't need all that much cooling, you want the ducts as big as possible so they can double up as downforce-generating devices.
This latest development ensures the front brakes are cooled in such a way that they keep airflow from spilling out undirected where it would otherwise increase drag. Instead it directs it out into the low-pressure area just behind the tyre contact patch.
By doing this it allows Ferrari to use a smaller duct intake because it's made it more efficient by directing it in under higher pressure and exiting with low pressure. It will reduce the drag of the car because the wheels account for around 35 per cent of a car's drag at no cost in downforce.
The big thing here is that it's become feasible to measure downforce effects of devices that aren't part of the car's sprung mass. It's only recently that windtunnels have had the bit of kit required to do this. CFD has helped too.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/tech_9.jpgFront brake ducts three years ago lost you a lot more downforce than today. The development we see on the Ferrari is just the start.
There will be some very complex gizmos on the outside and flow devices. Everyone needs brake ducts but how far do you take it: when is a brake duct not a brake duct but an aerodynamic device? They'd be far better writing the regs to limit this pretty soon.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/bargeboards.gif
The further forward you put the bargeboard the more effect it has on the front wing. Conventional bargeboards in front of the rads give almost equal downforce distribution front/rear. The two tend to go in whatever direction they need to go to get the car balanced. Most cars have an element of both.
The leading edge at the front of the sidepod is all about inducing as high a velocity as possible to the flow, so you see lots of bits hanging off acting as flow conditioners to the underfloor, to allow the diffuser to do the maximum work on it, acting as it does like a multiplier. There's lots of different solutions (9) all trying to achieve the same thing.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/tech_10.jpgMost people seem to have the shoulder wings on the top front corners of the sidepods. They pick up the wake of the front tyre and tidy it up.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/rear_wings.gif
McLaren has gone from a fairly conventional twisted rear wing (10) that reduced the load at the draggy outer ends and increased the load in the middle section, which is the downforce producing area, to a much more complex assembly (11) introduced in the last couple of races.
The rear wing runs at about the same overall efficiency as the car so it's an area where anything you get from it translates three for one. So you're not going to get any big advantages from it. You will find more downforce, but in the process you'll create more drag.
But you will get reasonably big downforce numbers, even if the drag goes with it. It won't necessarily make it a faster car, but it will help make better use of the tyres.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/tech_11.jpghttp://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/diffuser.gif
The front wing and the diffuser are to me the bits that are the real car. The McLaren has a very aggressive package of front wing assembly - narrow span, big endplates - to give good characteristics when on steering lock. So they have a good consistent package on the front.
This helps feed the diffuser. Look at McLaren's diffuser in concert with the front wing and you get a good idea of its aero philosophy: its interpretation of the regulations in terms of the height of the inner part of the diffuser is pretty clever. Some bits of the gearbox have become the diffuser, in essence.
McLaren has optimised it to a level in the concept of the car - the gearbox being quite a long lead item. Ferrari has a pretty good package in that area too, but perhaps not quite as good as the McLaren.
It's getting tough to find any more. It's been an area of extensive research in the past because it gives a great return of 10:1 in terms of downforce:drag.
Looking at some of the other teams, they have a very basic diffuser. The Honda has some bits that I'd question. It's the most basic car in the pitlane. Honda has gone past the stage of being far too adventurous, looking at the grey areas too much.
They've stopped doing that but haven't done anything on the real car either, have just left it sitting there. It looks like a three-year-old car now. It's a big team with a lot of money; I don't understand why it doesn't have more vision and more ideas.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/seamless_shift.gif
There are a lot of different mechanisms out there. Minimum torque reduction would probably be a more accurate term than seamless shift.
Ferrari and Renault have introduced their systems this year without problem, but Red Bull has suffered big reliability problems with theirs. The Red Bull gearbox is packaged to the limit and it's probably suffering because of that.
People talk of finding 0.3sec per lap, but I have trouble believing that. The worst gearchange I've seen was 30 milliseconds and the difference between that and the best didn't find you anything like 0.3sec.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/sidepods.gif
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/tech_12.jpg
The area most teams have pushed hardest on is the rear bodywork. A lot of work has been done in getting the Coke bottle squeeze even tighter and reducing the gearbox size to enable this. The undercut of the sidepod feeds this; you need both working together.
Get a good undercut in the sidepod, narrowing the bodywork, and it helps get good attachment along the Coke bottle, which in turn will help produce dramatic downforce improvements. Also, you will actually get good downforce from the sidepods themselves because the velocity of airflow on that surface is 15-20deg to the ground. This has been the big area of development and some teams haven't done it as well as others.
Ferrari (12 - compare undercut sidepods to Toyota in illustration 6), McLaren, Renault and BMW have taken it a long way, while Honda and Toyota still haven't really bought into the philosophy. The numbers when you first look at it might not be big, but with this direction you find a succession of small improvements - added all together, it makes a big number.
The heat rejection figures will be lower than last year because of the 19,000rpm limit. An FIA pop-off valve that limits how much pressure you can have your cooling system running at has capped how small you can go on radiator size.
It used to be that you could pressurise it - the boiling point goes up with pressure so you could run the water as hot as 150C. The pop off valve runs at 3.5 bar which lets you run about 125C. We've seen McLaren consistently able to sit longer with its engine running. Partly that's electronics but basically it's the quantity of coolant in the system.

[Gundalgandul]

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/fermac_top.gif

Acrimonious battles between Ferrari and McLaren are nothing new. just ask Niki Lauda. Or Alain Prost. Or Mika Hakkinen. Or Kimi Raikkonen... TONY DODGINS unravels a saga of strife
Whoever said that sport and politics don't mix? In Formula 1 they are inseparable. But the Ferrari/McLaren wrangle that has smouldered behind the scenes since the start of the year, and ignited properly in July, threatens to overshadow a truly absorbing season in which four men have a genuine chance of winning the world championship title.
This time, the dispute appears to have become personal between Jean Todt and Ron Dennis but, in essence, the concept is hardly new. Competition, 'needle', is most acute among the major players, whether it's Ferguson and Mourinho or Todt and Dennis. Ferrari and McLaren are most often at loggerheads because, over time, they are the ones with the records, the teams constantly in the thick of it.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/fermac1.jpg McLaren'’s David Coulthard clashes with Schumacher, Argentina 1998 © LAT
This season could well go down as the most political in the 50-plus years of the world championship thanks to the fall-out from the recent spy scandal. But that will depend on what emerges in the coming weeks because, to date, 2007 still has a way to go to rival 1994 and 1976.
McLaren v Ferrari has a lot of previous.
The 1976 season was one of the sport's most memorable, and gave the lie to the notion that there is such a thing as bad publicity. At a time when promotion and media awareness of Formula 1 was still a good five to 10 years BC (pre-Bernard Charles), on and off-track fighting regularly took Formula 1 from the back pages to the front - for the first time without a fatality being involved.
It made household names of Niki Lauda and James Hunt in a championship battle that had everything. Lauda can see the similarities between then and now.
"It wasn't just a case of Ferrari versus McLaren," he says, "it was Ferrari versus everyone. Ferrari was very much the outsider. It was the British teams against Ferrari. It still is."
But, ever pragmatic, Lauda says of the current situation: "You can see where Ferrari is coming from, but you have to bear in mind that none of this would have happened if Mr Todt had his own house in order."
That is certainly a viewpoint, but it should be weighed against the fact that 'the Rat' never passes up the opportunity to take a shot at the Frenchman, having had an advisory role with his former team before Todt took up residence in Maranello some 14 years ago.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/fermac2.jpg Hamilton admires Ferrari wing © XPB/LAT
The mid to late-seventies was the era of Luca di Montezemolo (as Ferrari team manager), Lauda and engineer Mauro Forghieri. There was a bit of a trailer to '76, when the nine-stone Luca squared up to a 16-stone clerk of the course at Watkins Glen in '75, when Clay Regazzoni's Ferrari was black-flagged at McLaren's behest. 'Regga' had been unashamedly holding up McLaren's Emerson Fittipaldi while Lauda made good his escape.
Post-'76, Ferrari and Lauda won back the title the following season and Jody Scheckter took the crown for Ferrari in 1979. As Scheckter retired, Ron Dennis was just taking over the reins at McLaren.
Four years later the Marlboro-backed team had become a formidable force and Ferrari was heading into decline, at the beginning of a long spell in the wilderness that would not be broken until Michael Schumacher finally won the championship in 2000, some 21 years after Scheckter! It is no surprise that, for the majority of this time, there was little acrimony - Ferrari simply wasn't competitive enough to make it worthwhile!
That changed briefly in 1990 when Alain Prost, unable to countenance another year at McLaren alongside Ayrton Senna, headed off to Ferrari to fight Ayrton from the outside. Armed with a John Barnard chassis (he'd won back-to-back titles with just such a thing for McLaren in 1985-86), Prost took the title battle down to the penultimate race in Suzuka, where Senna rammed him off the road at the first corner.
The high speed nature of the shunt, allied to the circumstances, made it the highest-profile Ferrari/McLaren spat to that point but, in fairness, it was rooted more in the enmity between the two men than in the culture of either team.
The atmosphere truly heated up in the late nineties, and had much to do with a new system of rule clarification from the governing body: the onus was suddenly on the teams to inform the FIA if they thought that a development route was in a grey area. The governing body would then rule on the matter and issue a 'clarification', without going into the specifics of any team's particular system.
Thus grew the culture of gleaning as much information as possible about a rival's modus operandi before seeking a clarification, or 'grassing them up', as some preferred to call it.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/fermac3.jpg "The dispute appears to have become personal between Jean Todt and Ron Dennis, but the concept is hardly new" © XPB/LAT
When McLaren invested in an ingenious rear-braking system that got around the spirit of the regulations and greatly increased rear stability, Ferrari sought a clarification and the device was banned.
Then came the beryllium ban. An exotic material that was difficult to work with and could be carcinogenic in its production phase, it was used to strong effect by McLaren engine supplier Mercedes-Benz. Ferrari was believed to be strongly behind an eventual ban, a move which some reckoned cost McLaren as much as 40-50bhp.
It was at around this time that someone coined the tag 'Ferrari International Assistance' as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the governing body. Again, though, it has to be said that far from all FIA directions favour the reds. Cases in point were the eleventh-hour decision that cars had to qualify with race fuel in 2003, after a season of Ferrari domination in '02, and the 2005 control tyre regulations, which were instrumental in the previously dominant Maranello squad failing to win a race (Indianapolis shouldn't count!).
There was also disquiet about inconsistency of decision-making in race control and the stewards' room. Paranoia reached a high in 1998, when Michael Schumacher and Mika Hakkinen were embroiled in a highly competitive championship scrap.
Each individual decision is obviously decided on its own merits, but McLaren, having got the jump on Schumacher off the grid, was not happy to see the French Grand Prix stopped because Jos Verstappen had stalled on the grid when, three weeks before, the Canadian GP had been allowed to continue with Schumacher in front and Alexander Wurz upside down at the first corner.
To compound matters, Schumacher was then allowed to win the British GP in the pits without serving a penalty, thanks to a stewards' procedural cock-up after the Ferrari had passed Wurz before the start-finish line on a restart.
A year later, Schumacher crashed at Silverstone and the championship distilled into a battle between Ferrari team-mate Eddie Irvine and defending champion Hakkinen. Despite questions about quite how much Ferrari was behind an Irvine championship push in Michael's absence, Schumacher nevertheless came back in Malaysia and drove a brilliant spoiling race to ensure that Irvine got maximum points.
Brilliant, that is, unless you happened to be Hakkinen, who was messed around all afternoon by Schumacher, who was persistently slow into corners and late on the throttle out of them, to the point where there was a three-second variation in his lap times.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/fermac4.jpg 'Smug' Schumacher with drained Eddie Irvine and Mika Hakkinen on 1999 Malaysian GP podium © LAT
After 90 minutes of that in the Malaysian heat, Hakkinen was fraught, exhausted, riled and third. As Schumacher sat alongside him wearing a smug grin in the post-race press conference, Mika commendably managed to keep a lid on his feelings...
McLaren laughed louder post-race when the Ferrari barge boards were found to be outside the regulations and the red cars were thrown out, meaning that Hakkinen was champion again, pending Ferrari's appeal. To the surprise of not many, the appeal was successful, Ferrari got off on a technicality and the championship went down to the wire, with Irvine a point in front.
Again, to nobody's great surprise perhaps, poleman Schumacher was not quite able to match Hakkinen in the race, with the result that Mika retained his title and Michael himself had another chance to break Ferrari's drought the following year, which he did. "But what if Mika's car had broken?" a McLaren man said quietly.
On to 2003 and the Hungarian GP, in which Schumacher's Ferrari was the first Bridgestone-shod car home, a lap down. All of a sudden, following manoeuvring initiated by Ferrari and Bridgestone, the rules governing tyre measuring, which had been the same for years, were changed, so that technically Michelin's (and therefore McLaren's) contact patch was illegal under race conditions.
The Michelin teams were suddenly involved in a disruptive amount of revised tyre testing, and Schumacher and Ferrari went on to claim the remaining three races and both championships. Was the tyre issue truly influential? In terms of outright performance, probably not, but in terms of optimum preparation, definitely, was the McLaren verdict.
What about the current situation? The same applies.
But now, as then, the British and Italian positions are polar opposites. Italian journalists simply do not believe that McLaren has not gained advantage from Ferrari inside information. Their British counterparts, largely based on McLaren's reputation, are more inclined to accept the team's word.
The Italians see a slightly endearing naivety in that. Would we, they ask, have been so accepting of the position coming from mid-nineties Benetton? With glorious irony, considering that Ferrari was until very recently precisely that - mid-nineties Benetton.
Post-Hungary, Ron Dennis was seeking a private solution to the current issues with Ferrari. But you wonder if the personal positions are too entrenched. It's easy to suspect that this soap opera is far from run, and that some smellier episodes are yet to unfold.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/preview/fermac5.jpg Hunt tracked down Lauda in 1976 British GP at Brands to celebrate a win, but he lost his points © LAT
Truth stranger than fiction
The 1976 season featured rebellious British public-school glamour boy James Hunt pitched against reigning world champion Niki Lauda and Ferrari.
After taking his first grand prix win for Hesketh at Zandvoort the previous year, Hunt had jumped at a McLaren seat when Emerson Fittipaldi went off to drive for the Brazilian-backed Copersucar team.
Hunt was fast and took pole for the first two races, but Lauda won both. James finished second to the Ferrari in round two in South Africa but, amazingly, the six points he scored were to be supplemented by just two more before the end of June, so that the score was Lauda 55, Hunt 8.
But it should have been more... Lauda was formidable in the Ferrari, but less so on a tractor, which he managed to turn over on himself while building a house. He broke a rib in the process and drove round four at Jarama with the aid of painkillers and a surgical corset.
Hunt took pole, Niki beat him away, but James surprised him with a lunge up the inside mid-race. Lauda ran wide over a kerb and did his injured ribs a power of no good. But at post-race scrutineering the McLaren was found to be 1.8cm too wide. Hunt was disqualified.
The irony here was that McLaren's M23 was the widest car on the grid and had been used as the blueprint for the maximum width restriction, which had been measured across the rear track of the '75 car. Since then, however, Goodyear had manufactured some different rubber, allegedly at Ferrari's behest, which had softer sidewalls. The 'squash' made the McLaren illegal.
At Paul Ricard in early July, any hopes Hunt harboured of mounting a championship challenge seemed totally unrealistic when Lauda beat him away. But the Ferrari uncharacteristically blew an engine and Hunt took a maximum score. Two days later, Hunt heard that McLaren's appeal against his Spanish disqualification had been upheld. Lauda was knocked back to second and so, within 48 hours, there was a 21-point swing in Hunt's favour.
But still Niki was comfortable. Brands Hatch was next and the Ferraris filled the front row, but Niki and Clay Regazzoni collided at Paddock Bend, with Hunt's McLaren caught up in the melee. James returned to the pits via a short cut, and Ferrari argued that he should not be allowed to restart. That was technically correct, but the race organisers, fearing a riot as full beer cans were lobbed onto the track, allowed the McLaren back onto the grid. Lauda led, but Hunt passed him and won, much to the crowd's delight. Ferrari appealed.
Next came Nurburgring and Lauda's near-fatal accident. James won the restart. To all intents and purposes it was all over - Hunt would overhaul Lauda's points total over the balance of the season.
But that was counting without Lauda's bravery and determination. Having had the last rites administered, he missed just two races and, blood from blistered skin coating his balaclava, was back in the Ferrari just six weeks later at Monza, where he finished fourth.
But, for all Lauda's heroism, there was more bad feeling in Italy, when the stewards found that the McLarens' fuel had an illegally high octane rating in qualifying. The times of Hunt and team-mate Jochen Mass were disallowed - along with John Watson's Penske for good measure. Hunt, desperate to make up ground, collided with Tom Pryce and was jeered all the way back to the pits. All in all, the Italians had their revenge for Brands!
In the lead-up to the North American races, Hunt received the news that his British GP win had been overturned at appeal and he'd lost his points. Just as it should be, said Lauda, just to wind James up. But Ferrari, as only it could, was to brilliantly shoot itself in the foot during the run-up to Mosport and Watkins Glen. The team had signed Carlos Reutemann in case Lauda wasn't his old self.
When Niki made it clear that he intended to carry on leading the team, there suddenly wasn't a slot for Regazzoni, and a demotivated Clay did little to stop Hunt scoring 18 points in a week on the other side of the Atlantic.
Lauda, despite knocking on Hunt's hotel-room door early on race morning and announcing in his clipped tones, 'Today I win the championship!', managed just four points for third place at the Glen.
The showdown was at Mount Fuji in Japan, and Lauda travelled east with a lead of three points. Torrential rain delayed the race, and Fittipaldi was among those who thought conditions were too bad to start. When the race went ahead Lauda did one lap and then retired, saying that staying alive was more important than the world championship.
After what he'd been through at the 'Ring, nobody could blame him. With his eyelids badly burned, he was still awaiting an operation allowing him to blink tears from his eyes. He could cope with it in the dry, but in the spray it was madness.
As the track dried, Hunt recovered from a late pitstop to replace his shredded Goodyears to take third place. After all the drama, intrigue and acrimony, the title was his by a single point.

[Gundalgandul]

Felipe Massa: Inch Perfect http://www.autosport.com/journal/article.php/id/images/space.gif
When everything falls into place, Felipe Massa can beat anyone - as he demonstrated last weekend in Turkey. Adam Cooper looks at how he did it, and what it means for the remaining races

By Adam Cooper autosport.com contributing writer http://www.autosport.com/images/space.gif

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/cooper1.jpg

It looks increasingly likely that this World Championship will go all the way to the last race in Brazil, and while finale showdowns have not been uncommon in recent years, the number of drivers still involved at this stage makes the current campaign something quite special.
It wasn't so long ago that Michael Schumacher used to sign and seal titles in July, and yet as we head into September, five drivers are still in contention.
Yes, even Nick Heidfeld can - mathematically, at least - come out on top, although I'd love to know what odds the bookmakers would give on that.
To have four drivers within 16 points of the lead, and all with the performance and opportunity to win, is extraordinary. Perhaps the most impressive thing is that 12 races in, Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen have each taken three wins apiece.
The other great arbiter of performance is qualifying, and the story is rather different there.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/cooper2.jpg
Felipe Massa's Ferrari on the side of the track in Melbourne qualifying © LAT

Massa is clearly on top, with five poles to the four of Hamilton, two of Raikkonen, and one of Alonso. Of course, there are so many factors at play in qualifying now that pole isn't quite the yardstick that it was in the Clark or Senna eras. But nevertheless, it says a lot about Massa's performance this year.
Bear in mind, too, that he had a car failure in Melbourne qualifying, and was screwed by a team operational error in Hungary, so the league table could well have favoured him even more.
He's had some disappointments this year, but the pole-to-flag win was a further sign of how good Massa is right now. What made it all the more impressive was that he did it under strong pressure from his team-mate, and until his tyre problem, Hamilton was close enough to keep both Ferrari men on their toes. It was a faultless performance.
It's not been a faultless year for the Brazilian, of course. He lost a few precious points when he was outfoxed by Hamilton in Malaysia, and lost a lot more when he missed the pit exit light in Montreal.
The team should have warned him to look for it, but in such situations the onus is on the driver to be totally on top of the rules, and he wasn't.
It's also worth noting that, in the mould of such as Ralf Schumacher, he tends to win from the front, getting his head down and turning in a consistently fast and tidy laps, rather than overcoming adversity in the way that the elder Schumacher so often did.
Hungary was a case in point, where Felipe found himself trapped down the field and completely unable to do anything about it. He came home 13th, while in an identical car Raikkonen finished second, right on Hamilton's tail. But Turkey was one of the good days, when he really showed that he can get the job done.
A race won on Saturday
As noted, his qualifying performances have been very strong this year, and Turkey was one of the best.
He was 0.217s ahead of Kimi, and as we were to find out on Sunday, he was carrying an extra lap of fuel. It's no exaggeration to say that he won the race with that qualifying lap, and even before he got back to parc ferme Kimi knew just how hard it would be to retrieve the situation.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/cooper3.jpg
Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen lead the field into the first turn © LAT

Felipe was also a lap heavier than Alonso, and one lighter than Hamilton. That turned out to be a great call by Ferrari, because had Massa been fuelled for one more lap in qualifying, everything else being equal, that extra weight alone would undoubtedly have given pole to Hamilton.
The next job was to convert pole into first place at turn one, something that isn't always guaranteed.
It helped that the 'wrong' side of the grid in Turkey is notoriously dirty and slow, but Ferrari had another ace up its sleeve. As we have seen more than once this year, the team has been able to make the option tyre [in this case officially the medium] work better than its main rivals.
The two tyres were certainly very close, and it was one of those weekends when balance, feel and driver preference were just as important in determining the choice as lap time and degradation.
Indeed, Alonso took a punt and did his crucial final qualifying lap on the harder tyre; a gamble that really didn't do him any favours.
Having the softer of the two tyres fitted at the start does give a slight advantage off the grid, and that clearly didn't hurt either Ferrari driver - especially Kimi, who was able to out-drag Hamilton.
"With the tyres, on Friday we made a long run on both tyres and it was pretty similar, with maybe just one or two tenths between them," said Massa.
"We knew that Friday to Sunday the track changes a lot and the soft [ie medium] tyre should improve even more, so we took a bit of a gamble, although it was a pretty safe risk.
"Especially for the start, we knew that the soft would be better and we had fantastic starts - Kimi overtook Lewis, and we had a very good race on the soft.
"As we've seen a few times this year, our car tends to look after the tyres quite well in the race," said Felipe's engineer, Rob Smedley.
"We knew that we would probably be able to fit the soft tyre, we knew that other people probably wouldn't be able to. So we were going to accept that advantage.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/cooper4.jpg
Felipe Massa, Ferrari © LAT

"He was absolutely inch-perfect in qualifying, when it was very easy to make a mistake on the tyres as we saw other drivers were doing.
"He did the right job, and that paid dividends. He was heavier than Kimi, and that was an added bonus. We were on pole and we had a reasonable amount of fuel in [the car]".
Nevertheless, it was a relief to see him make it to turn one clearly ahead.
"We knew that starting on the clean side, let's say, was going to play into our hands," Smedley remarked.
"That's why it's so important to have the pole. We did that, and we got into the first corner first. How much of a relief is it? It's huge, to be honest!"
After that it was a question of not making any mistakes, although having his team-mate rather than a McLaren behind, and the knowledge that he was stopping later than Kimi, made all the difference.
Having said that, Smedley denied that having a red car riding shotgun took away the pressure.
"There's massive competition between the two. I think the reason why it's better to have your team-mate behind you is that you are going to get more points for the team ..."
Massa did have a little extra to think about before the second stop, however.
"The gap was pretty similar throughout the stint, but then Kimi started to run two tenths quicker and I started to push again," he said.
"Then I just made a small mistake going into turn seven, and Kimi was just able to close the gap completely. But the gap was okay to control, the balance was okay and the car was easy to drive, so it was not so difficult. But the small mistake made my life a little bit more difficult."
It could still have gone wrong - traffic or some other glitch on the crucial in laps before each of the stops - but it didn't. This time the strategy favoured Felipe, just as it didn't in Magny-Cours.
"As you saw in France," said Smedley, "it's very, very difficult to win the race.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/cooper6.jpg
Rob Smedley with Jean Todt and Felipe Massa © LAT

"They're both very evenly matched, they're both in the same car. The one with more fuel usually gets away with it in a situation like that.
"Felipe was absolutely inch-perfect, he drove a fantastic race from the green light to the flag, absolutely not a single mistake. It was always close, and as I said the two drivers are very evenly matched, so it was always going to be a close fight. But fortunately, we came out on top in the end."
The option tyre worked so well that the Ferraris also took them for the second stint, when they could have gone for the more conservative choice of the harder tyre. The decision was Massa's.
"You're always ready with both kinds," Smedley explained.
"And we were right there on the ball, just waiting. I asked him after about 12-15 laps what he thought of the tyres, and he was quite happy. He said the balance was getting better and better, there was more and more grip, and we were just picking up as we went along."
Kimi did get closer at certain stages, but he was never close enough to make any move.
"I think it was quite natural," Smedley said.
"They were racing right until the chequered flag. There are absolutely no team orders, there never has been, but I think at that point both drivers start to look after their cars a little bit more, and it's just a case of that. That's why he probably dropped back."
Massa's only real drama throughout was a highly unusual one - a plastic air vent on the top of his Schuberth helmet cracked and acted like an air brake. Not good for the neck, or the concentration, but he had the presence of mind to rip it off and chuck it overboard.
The race to Interlagos
So what next? Ferrari is close enough to have McLaren a little worried, but it has to keep the pressure on and perhaps force the British team into mistakes. Monza would be the ideal place for another one-two.
"We've got to go there and win it, no other position now is acceptable," said Smedley.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/cooper5.jpg
Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa with Jean Todt © LAT

"If we want to win the championships, then nothing else is acceptable. You saw in Turkey that if we have a good day, and we have a good weekend, then it's all possible, it's all in the bag.
"Monza is definitely a circuit that suits us very well. It's a very, very high-speed circuit, it's based a lot on aerodynamic efficiency, which we know our car responds to. We've got a new package there, as have McLaren of course. We've just got to go there and do the best we can."
Spa and Fuji weren't on the schedule last year, but it's worth noting that Ferrari had the upper hand on rivals Renault at Monza, Shanghai and Interlagos last season. If that sort of pattern is repeated against McLaren this year, anything can happen.
"It's well documented that we're going to places that we know suit our car quite well," Smedley agreed.
"They're high-speed circuits, they're based on aero efficiency, they're places that are reasonably hard on the tyres, and hopefully we'll come out best."
The question is, of course, whether at some point the team has to favour one or other of the drivers.
We have to believe that won't happen until one is out of mathematical contention, and that might not become apparent until the last race or two. For now, Felipe and Kimi are fighting each other as much as the McLaren guys.
Which of them keeps his head together more effectively and bends the team towards their will remains to be seen, but Smedley said that Massa kept his spirits high through recent disappointments, not least Nurburgring, where a tyre problem saw him humbled by Alonso.
"Of course, he did get some flak for it," he said.
"There was a certain issue with the tyres and the car and he couldn't actually win, but that's racing, you've got to get on with it.
"You become demoralised when things are not going your way and you can't really see a way out of it. When you see there are certain things going wrong, and they're very clear-cut things, then I don't think you can become demoralised over that.
"You've just got to say, well OK, I'm having a bit of bad luck, it's not a great period, but everything will turn around ..."

[Gundalgandul]

The Saturday Champion http://www.autosport.com/images/space.gif
Dominance on Saturday has played a big part in determining the shape of this year's championship fight, and in Turkey, it also did much to decide the outcome of the race. Richard Barnes explains

By Ricard Barnes autosport.com's writer http://www.autosport.com/images/space.gif

In terms of the expected and climactic showdown for the world championship, Sunday's Turkish GP provided the perfect result - the four contenders finishing in reverse championship order, with each closing the gap incrementally to those in front.
For Lewis Hamilton, the second right-front tyre failure in three race weekends must have seemed like purgatory, and payback for the outstanding mechanical reliability that he has benefited from all season.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/barnes1.jpg
Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen lead the start of the Turkish Grand Prix © LAT

After the traditional summer three-week break, Turkey served not just as a resumption of battle among the championship front-runners, but also as a postscript to the controversy in Hungary.
The key point of interest was to see which of the McLaren rivals had recovered composure from the negative aftermath of Hungary.
The answer was immediately apparent. Hamilton was back to his self-assured, focused and cheerful self. Fernando Alonso, by contrast, continued to mutter and grumble darkly about feeling 'unrewarded' by the team, as if being handed a king's ransom salary and an equal-best car was meagre compensation for his talents.
If both drivers had given the team reason to feel displeased in Hungary, Alonso was clearly less concerned about the need to make amends.
The contrast in their off-track demeanour translated aptly into their all-important qualifying performances on Saturday. Hamilton once again turned around a disappointing first run and blitzed his second and final attempt. Alonso again impressed early, only to lose it all by gambling on the harder tyre for his second run.
It was indicative of how the season has developed - Hamilton happy to continue with the direct and enthusiastic approach that has worked so well for him, his rivals now forced to think out of the box and contrive 'hit and hope' tactics to try and close the gap.
When Alonso compounded the qualifying misjudgement by deciding to start on harder tyres from the dirty side of the grid, his race was effectively over.
It didn't matter that Hamilton made the same tyre decision and also lost ground on the short run down to turn one. Hamilton at least had a buffer to gamble with. When the BMWs of Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld slotted in between himself and his team-mate and championship leader, Alonso was in immediate damage-limitation mode.
It's a position he's been in many times before, and fate has often been kind to him. Kimi Raikkonen's tyre failure at Nurburgring 2005 and Michael Schumacher's blown engine at Suzuka 2006 were two more memorable examples of when Alonso hung on to prevail despite seeming well beaten in the race.
Hamilton's tyre failure gave Alonso yet another reprieve, and another cause for post-race relief and celebrations that had seemed unlikely just an hour earlier.
Yet, this time it was different. At Nurburgring 2005 and Suzuka 2006, Raikkonen and Schumacher received no reward at all for their efforts. On Sunday, Hamilton hung on for fifth place and four precious points. At Nurburgring and Suzuka, Alonso left the weekend with a healthy championship lead. After Turkey, he still trails.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/barnes2.jpg
Lewis Hamilton has a tyre failure late in the race © LAT

The deficit is almost insignificant, just five points. But, without the undivided support of the team and with both Ferraris bearing down on the title battle as well, Alonso appears listless and out of his comfort zone.
Earlier in the season, the belief (not just by Alonso but also by the Ferrari drivers) was that Hamilton must encounter technical problems at some stage. Sure enough, the luck has turned against the English rookie. Although, even after two race-changing tyre failures, Hamilton still clings tenaciously to the championship lead.
Part of that is due to sheer luck. If the sudden delamination of his front tyre under braking for turn nine wasn't enough to pitch Hamilton out of the race, the mile-long crawl back to the pits (with the loose tread flailing wildly) should have been enough to necessitate at least a front wing change. Miraculously, minor wing damage was the only consequence.
Hamilton's post-race analysis, that he may have been able to pass at least one of the Ferraris if he'd enjoyed the benefit of the extra five laps of fuel during his middle stint, was an unlikely as his post-Monaco claims.
Immediately prior to his tyre problem, Hamilton was only about half a second per lap faster than Raikkonen's lap times immediately following the Finn's final stop. That was never going to be enough to make up the six-second gap between the two.
Still, despite the frustration of losing a chunk of his championship advantage, Hamilton was at least able to minimise the damage.
In the broader season context, the tyre failures at Nurburgring and Turkey have also dispelled any claims that Hamilton is leading by luck due to the technical misfortunes of his rivals. He's now had his fair share of technical failures as well. If he goes on to win the championship, it will be on merit.
That is still potentially a full five race weekends away from being decided, but one factor has become increasingly evident as the season has progressed.
When history looks back on the eventual 2007 champion, it will be noted that Hamilton did most of his effective work on Saturday afternoon and on the run to the first corner on Sunday. For the remaining five GPs, grid position is no longer just vital. It will, in all likelihood, decide the championship winner.
That, in turn, has left Ferrari in a quandary. They have received credit for not implementing team orders yet. But they have no other choice.
Just when it seems one Ferrari driver is set to seize the initiative permanently, the other turns in a winning performance and tilts the scales back in his favour. It has been years since two Ferrari drivers were so evenly-matched.
If Ferrari is to win the title, they will need more than victory in each of the five final races. They also need one of their drivers to step up and consistently outperform the other. Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa continuing to take points off each other will play to McLaren's advantage.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/barnes3.jpg
Felipe Massa celebrates on the podium © LAT

In a situation where the Ferraris are off the front row of the grid, the smart bet would be on Raikkonen. But, with the importance of pole position and the likelihood of Ferrari retaining their slight performance edge for the rest of the season, Massa seems the more likely candidate.
When he can put the car on pole and lead through the first corner (as he did on Sunday), the Brazilian has proved nigh-unstoppable since his maiden win in Turkey one year ago.
Massa has also established himself as the more explosive qualifier, taking five pole positions this year to Raikkonen's two.
However, Massa has never won a race from any starting position other than pole, and he struggles to maintain momentum. He did manage three consecutive poles (and two victories) at Malaysia, Bahrain and Spain.
Expecting another three or four consecutive pole position performances from the Brazilian may be too much, particularly given the quality and consistency of the opposition.
By the standards of the two previous years, the 2007 Turkish Grand Prix didn't produce the most exciting racing. Inevitably, the next few races will follow a similar pattern.
The combination of overtaking difficulty, almost flawless reliability and four evenly-matched drivers who have each won three times during the season has resulted in low-risk racing that favours damage limitation over heroics.
However, as the opportunities diminish, we are also fast approaching the point where conservative driving will no longer be enough, and one or more of the top four will have to go for broke. Whatever happens, the remaining five races are sure to be memorable.

[Gundalgandul]

2007 Turkish GP Technical Review http://www.autosport.com/images/space.gif
Formula One returned from its summer holiday last weekend, and a few teams brought new developments along with them to Turkey. Craig Scarborough takes a look at some of them

By Craig Scarborough autosport.com's technical writer http://www.autosport.com/images/space.gif
After the now-traditional August break in the championship, the teams returned to action for the increasingly popular Turkish GP.
Now in its third year, the new track has become a favourite with the teams and drivers. It's challenging layout provides not only a bravery contest around turn eight, but also a challenge in accuracy through the slow complex ending the lap.
The extremely hot summer being experienced in southern Europe made the track's already challenging layout even tougher, especially for the tyres and engines.
Now scheduled quite late in the season, Turkey usually features a lot of car upgrades - the track's similarity to the season-closing Japanese, Chinese and Brazilian circuits make it an ideal place to debut the last of the current car's developments.
This time around though, races preceding Turkey have featured several upgrades, and the expected Spyker B-spec car did not appear. Thus, there were fewer developments than expected.
Irrespective of the slower corners, it is good high-speed aerodynamics that are needed to be fast around the Istanbul track. The car and tyres have to work hard around the sweeping curves opening the lap, the four-apex turn eight and also through the kink on the back straight.
Yet the car still has the long straights and braking into the slower corners to contend with. Thus, the cars are in a typical medium-downforce guise and sprung stiffly to keep the cars' underside flat to the track for maximum efficiency.
As the track has long corners, the drivers are constantly seeking a better balance to make the most of the grip the car has available. This balance will pay off in the race, as a balanced car is easier to drive and easier on its tyres.
The extremely high track temperatures this year also made life difficult for the rubber. Bridgestone arrived with its medium and hard compounds to cope with the stresses of the fast corners and heat.
For the first time the teams were quite divided in their preference for the harder or softer tyre. Ferrari chose to race with the medium tyre, only running the harder tyres at the end of the race.
McLaren, however, did the opposite, and again Alonso chose the harder tyre for his last qualifying run. It seems many drivers were taking too much out of the tyre on their qualifying lap, leaving little grip for the final slower corners.
Therefore, many drivers chose to run a very slow out-lap to preserve the tyre, whereas Alonso reckoned on the harder tyre lasting better.
In the race, many drivers suffered 'chunking'. This where the tyre picks up some of the marbles off the dirty line around the track. The colder marbles stick to the hot tyre, which reduces the tyre's grip.
The chunks tend to wear off naturally, but sometimes they can accumulate and then tend to be thrown off, taking some of the tyre's rubber with it. In Lewis Hamilton's case during the race, the chunking reached a stage where the tyre delaminated, ripping a strip off the tyre.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/scarborough1.jpg (http://gallery.autosport.com/photo-large.php/dir/scarbs/image/2007tur1)
BMW Sauber have added a vertical (yellow) element to the two horizontal fins on the bargeboards © Scarborough (Click to enlarge)

BMW Sauber
Having stated that some 50 percent of the team's now considerable development resources are focused on the 2008 car, BMW Sauber arrived with a neat new detail on the F107.
The bargeboards have received a small vertical vane (yellow). Like many teams, the BMW Saubers sport two horizontal fins on the trailing edge of their main bargeboard.
These add downforce, as well as having some effect on routing the flow around the sidepods. Some other teams use vertical fins to route the flow around the car. The new element provides the best of both worlds.
Red Bull Racing
Having signed ex-Honda technical director Geoff Willis, who was seen in the Red Bull pits for the first in Turkey, the team are still pressing on with aero development, in light of the developments seen at the preceding races (engine cover and rear wing).
Their new development is yet another McLaren-inspired idea. However, this is one that may predate Adrian Newey's time at McLaren. Red Bull adoption of the McLaren-style bridge wing makes sense in that the Red Bull has a similarly low nose profile.
The previous Red Bull bi-plane wing element twisted down to meet the nose cone, but in the new configuration this is avoided and provides some useful wingspan to create downforce and/or condition the flow over the front of the car.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/scarborough2.jpg (http://gallery.autosport.com/photo-large.php/dir/scarbs/image/2007tur2)
The new bridge wing element (yellow) on the Red Bull works in conjunction with the new lower front wing © Scarborough (Click to enlarge)

The dramatic-looking upper wing is mated to a new three-element lower wing. The wing has a completely different span profile to the previous Red Bull wing. The centre section is flatter, with pronounced flick-ups at the outer tips.
This shape has been widely adopted this year - in Red Bull's case, the less aggressive profile is potentially more efficient and makes less downforce, but the new upper wing offsets some of the loads lost by the lower wing.
This philosophy of an upper wing to create downforce and allowing the lower wing to be more lightly loaded improves the flow over and under the rest of the car. This makes the rear wing and diffuser work better, allowing the car to run less drag overall.
Spyker
Having been testing the B-spec chassis at Silverstone with some success, the team were unable to run the car at Turkey as planned as the new rear impact structure failed its crash test.
This came as a blow to the team, who had already pushed back the car's original launch from the European GP to the Turkish race.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/scarborough3.jpg (http://gallery.autosport.com/photo-large.php/dir/scarbs/image/2007tur3)
For Turkey, Spyker had both a new front wing biplane element (yellow) and a compartment for ballast (arrowed) © Scarborough (Click to enlarge)

As the B-spec car is largely a revised rear end, comprising rear suspension and gearbox casing, the car required a revised crash structure. This forms part from the car's primary crumple zone in case of a rear-end crash.
The carbon fibre structure mounts to the rear of the gearbox around the differential case, and extends back to mount the rear wing.
Often this component is used to mount some of the suspension members, such as the rear toe link. A large part of this structure's shape is now dictated by the FIA rules, as regards cross section and height. It comes as something of a surprise that the new component could fail the crash test.
Notwithstanding the team being unable to run the complete B-spec car, Spyker did run a new development on the front wing. The endplates and cascades have been replaced with new parts, forming a full-width bi-plane element, but stopping short of the McLaren/Red Bull bridged format.
Being at the front of the car, the new wing could be run beneficially without the complete B-spec rear end. One sign that the team's B-spec development work will pay off is that new front wing has space for ballast to be installed in the middle of the front dipped section.
Teams have tended to move their weight distribution forward this year to suit the Bridgestone tyres, which demand more load over the front tyres. The need to run a forward weight bias is limited by their ability either to 'design in' the required layout, or to run enough ballast in the right places.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/scarborough4.jpg (http://gallery.autosport.com/photo-large.php/dir/scarbs/image/2007tur4)
Toyota are the only team to use the larger outlets fairing around the exhaust pipe © Scarborough (Click to enlarge)

The option of running ballast is down to having the basic car under the weight limit to run enough ballast, and also to having space available in the right places to install the bulky ballast. The compartment on the new Spyker wing has a tell-tale 9kg sticker on it.
Toyota
In order to keep their V8 engines cool, Toyota brought their usual array of cooling options for the car.
For the race, the team adopted extra grills on the sidepods, while the usual vented panel around the exhaust now sported a larger fairing.
These cooling fairings were popular with the old V10 engines, but have gone out of vogue with the V8. This is due to the smaller capacity engine having a lower heat output, and also the drag penalty of these fairing is less favourable with the lower power engine. Toyota is the sole team running this style of hot air outlet.
Toyota also retained the option to provide cooling by opening up the sidepod below the main flip up, but the three outlets provisioned along the flank are rarely used.

[Gundalgandul]

Dodgy Business http://www.autosport.com/images/space.gif
Perhaps it was bad luck, or maybe karmic retribution. Whatever the case, both Tony Dodgins and Ron Dennis took holidays between Hungary and Turkey - and only one turned up in Istanbul looking relaxed...


By Tony Dodgins autosport.com columnist http://www.autosport.com/images/space.gif

Post-Budapest, Ron Dennis looked like a man who needed his holiday. I was looking forward to mine, too. But there was a difference. He was leaving his squabbling kids behind as he headed for a short break in the Caribbean. I was picking mine up at Budapest airport.
They say you shouldn't mix business with pleasure, but an upside of doing the European races with a motorhome is that you've got a ready-made hotel in some interesting places - and you can take plenty of toys.
But anyone who thinks it's a glamorous life might just enjoy a bit of schadenfreude if I relate some details of my summer 'break.'
To say that plenty had gone on in Budapest was a bit of an understatement. I also had a feature to do during the following week, which I'd stupidly taken on at short notice.
"Try to make sure you've got your work out of the way by the time we land," my wife had said. Er, right...
Tuesday was stinking hot and I headed for a bit of waste ground near Budapest Terminal 2, where I could at least fire up the generator, run the aircon and write, relatively undisturbed - but for the odd 737 or two...
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/dodgins1.jpg
Tony Dodgins' latest adventure began in the Hungaroring pitlane © Reuters

I'd worked late into Monday night, and felt a bit ropey. So, when Angela called to say that they were delayed three hours and wouldn't be in until 10pm, I had sympathy for her - the need to amuse a six-year-old and a four year old - but figured I might get an unexpected hour or two's kip before they arrived.
So I put the kettle on, switched on the satellite dish and watched a bit of the IRL race from Michigan while I swigged my Tetley's.
I was sitting there contemplating whether it would actually be enjoyable to be sat there at 220mph two inches away from other cars jinking all around you for two hours. Just as I was thinking it, Dario Franchitti got airborne, Danica Patrick went underneath him and he came down on top of Scott Dixon.
Obviously this was Tuesday and so it wasn't live, but we'd been pre-occupied with Budapest and hadn't heard about it.
It soon became evident that Dario, and everyone else, thankfully, had escaped totally unscathed, which was incredible. That Dario went aviating again, six days later, must have left him seriously contemplating the meaning of life.
Back in Istanbul last weekend we were talking about it with Mercedes motorsport boss Norbert Haug and got on to the media days on the old Nurburgring Nordschleife where, for years, Mercedes drivers have taken journalists, wide-eyed, around the old Ring.
Norbert remarked on the fact that the pros all respect the Ring and that Mercedes has never had a damaged car. Whereupon I told him of the lap I'd done with Franchitti and Autosport's Andy Hallbery and photographer Martyn Elford.
It was Dario's first experience of the place and, I'm sorry Dario, but I did grass you up and reveal how we'd explored the scenery just after the Karrussel.
"Ah but there was no damage," Norbert said.
Well, not after we'd got out and pulled the front spoiler off the tyre, removed the mud and told a sheepish Dario that if he got out of there before anyone else came round, we'd keep schtum.
But, Dario, we did tell you that it would cost you and, as the cheque still hasn't arrived 12 years on, despite you making off with Tony George's spondoolicks in May, it's high time we snitched...
Anyhow, two hours before their revised ETA, my mobile rang - the family was outside Terminal 2 awaiting collection. My feature was two-thirds written as I shut the laptop and drove round to pick them up.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/dodgins1.jpg
Tony Dodgins' latest adventure began in the Hungaroring pitlane © Reuters

With the motorhome switching from working tool to holiday accommodation mode, my other half did the sort of things that other halves do when blokes have been in their living environment, which included monitoring the fridge and chucking away anything remotely approaching its use-by date. We needed to go to the supermarket, she announced.
First thing next morning we're at Tesco in Budapest - really - and there's one of these stupid height restrictions which, I guess, is to stop people camping in the car park.
So we left it parked on the road for 45 minutes. Wrong. We returned to find the passenger side front window shattered all over the seats, the contents of every locker strewn on the floor and no briefcase. The installation of a metal safe was a job I hadn't quite got around to.
Happily we'd taken wallets, purses, passports, etc, but the laptop, with my two-thirds written feature had gone, along with three phones, two cameras, etc, etc.
We started the glass clean-up but the kids were upset and wanted to know if the 'naughty men' would come back. 'Bloody hope so', I thought, quietly contemplating the hammer I keep in a drawer as some kind of spurious nod to the idea that I might actually have the first clue about what to use it for.
Obviously there wasn't a hope in hell of getting anything back but you have to go through the motions at the local cop shop for insurance purposes. But they didn't have anyone on hand who spoke decent English, or even Geordie.
It was a case of parking up outside, in your 26ft motorhome, and waiting for the translator to arrive.
After a couple of hours he pitched up, by which time it was 8pm and the game of 'I Spy' was becoming tedious.
"Tell you what, Angela said, why don't you take the kids in with you so that they can see what goes on..."
And so I'm in a sweaty room with my four-year-old, Olivia, on my knee, and my six year-old, Freya, keenly taking in what's going on. Which is not a lot. There's a stroppy, portly - putting it kindly - Magyar, who doesn't look so happy about being called down to plod central.
"I get annoyed when people move," he says.
Come again?
"You should have called the police from where you were because we need to know where the incident happened," he sighed.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/dodgins3.jpg
Bernie Ecclestone and the Hungarian police © LAT

"Give me a street map and I'll show you," I said. "Funnily enough, I didn't have a phone left, I didn't have the direct line to the station, I had some upset children and a more pressing need for some Perspex or at least some polythene and tape for the gaping hole that used to be my passenger window."
He sighed and shrugged. Whereupon Olivia, who looks angelic, fixed him with a sweet smile and blew the most sensationally-timed raspberry I've ever heard.
Freya, who's a sensitive child, looked mortified. I closed my eyes, simultaneously thinking 'atta girl!'.
When we got around to the list of what was missing, I made mention of my Formula 1 pass. Whereupon the stroppy, apathetic Magyar reacted as if he'd just plonked himself down in the electric chair. Suddenly, I was his best friend. He normally went to Hungaroring, but hadn't made it this year.
We spent the next 15 minutes discussing the ins and outs of the Hamilton/Alonso situation at McLaren. Remember the old beer adverts - 'Only Heineken has the power to do this!' Well, Formula 1 does as well, it seems...
Finally, I was told, we would have to wait for the 'special man' who would come and take pictures and fingerprints in the motorhome. The kids were excited at this development and Olivia repeated, twice a minute for the next hour, "Daddy, daddy, when's the special man coming?"
I don't know what they were expecting, but seemed a bit let down when a bored-looking bald fellow arrived and fired off a couple of shots with his digi camera. Eventually, at 11pm, we were out of there.
The enthusiasm to see Budapest had evaporated and we headed for Austria, where priority number one was a replacement laptop so that I could restart my feature, now rapidly approaching deadline.
Of course, they all had German operating systems when we stopped in Liezen. A computer store told me they would have an English Windows XP within 24 hours if I placed an order, so we clicked our heels for a day. Guess what? It didn't arrive.
I had a bit of a sense of humour failure about that, whereupon Fritz, the store manager, told me that I was welcome to come to his house, where his 13-year-old son had just about every computer disc under the sun and would install an English operating system.
Only problem was, he lived halfway up a mountain. Getting there, in the motorhome, proved interesting...
Sorted, and very grateful, we head out of Austria, for the Italian lakes, which had been the original plan, Monza being the next stop after Istanbul, which I planned to fly to from Milan.
I beg a bit of extra time on the feature, rewrite it while the kids are in bed and try to send it. No dice. The satellite internet in the motorhome is not working. Our visitors had tried to remove the electronic control box and buggered up all the wiring.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/dodgins4.jpg
Lake Garda, Italy © Reuters

But there's a wi-fi point at the campsite. Trouble is, my teenage saviour has not loaded any wireless drivers. Panic!
The site has a computer that can be used in an internet room, but you can't advance book it and the office only opens at 8am next morning.
I manage to blag a USB stick from the girl in the office and transfer my feature onto it. I then get up at 7am to make sure I'm on pole for the internet room. But I'm only on the front row. A bloke from Sydney has beaten me to it. You can't pre-book time and so I have to wait until he's finished. He tells me he'll be an hour, but he takes two and a half...
Lake Garda is crawling with Dutch and German cars and you see an English registration about once a day. Then my luck changes.
Unbelievably, an English Jeep parks a few pitches away and the chap wanders over to talk motorhomes. I tell him about my dramas and, guess what, he works for Sunseeker boats and regularly installs satellite systems. And he's brought his tools with him!
He hops up onto the roof, establishes I still have power, delves into the control locker and, hey presto, it's working again!
He then tells me about the new boat that Lewis Hamilton has just ordered after the company lent him one in Monaco. Hope he doesn't get the kind of grief from the tabloids that Jenson did, I laugh...
My second saviour means that I can now watch England versus Germany and also be confident in the fact that I can return from Istanbul on Monday, transmit finished work and also keep my promise of taking the kids out on a speedboat.
I work till midnight after Turkey then get up at 4am to catch the 6am Alitalia back to Milan, writing as we fly. I jump into a hire car and am back at Lake Garda for 10am. The satellite still works, I send a feature and go to book the boat. There's one left, with a single outboard and, says the girl, there's a slight problem with the propeller.
What kind of a problem?
"Ah well," she says, "Someone has crashed into some rocks and it's a little bent, but it still works. "You need to pay 300 Euros if it is more bent when you come back."
And, what, I ask, if it fails when I'm in the middle of Lake Garda? And I don't have a mobile phone? I'm due at Monza for the test and have commitments at 8am the next morning.
There is substantial disaster potential here, I reckon, but the kids look very disappointed when I suggest I'm not up for it.
She smiles, and shrugs. Charmingly. Very Italian. There's life jackets on the boat and we'll know if you don't come back. She smiles again.
Oh, what the hell... We go for it, and there's a happy ending. The prop holds up, there's no drama and I get to Monza on time, from where I can report that Lewis Hamilton's low-downforce McLaren package finished the opening day a tenth up on Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari. Never a dull moment...

[Gundalgandul]

http://www.autosport.com/magazine/fifthcolumn.jpg

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/fifth_top.gif

In Formula 1 'the silly season' has always been that point in the year when rumours gather strength of who will be driving what the following season, and so on, but in the newspaper world the phrase refers to this time of the year - August - when not much is going on. The House of Commons is mercifully closed for the holidays, TV dishes up repeats of repeats, and there is an impression that everything is on stand-by, awaiting the return of normality on September 1.
It's a fact that, since the Hungarian Grand Prix, everything has been outwardly still in the world of F1. This is the only three-week break in the schedule from May to October, and testing is banned, so for many the opportunity arises, as Fernando Alonso observed last week, to "recharge the batteries".
Ron Dennis, for one, has taken a holiday since the Budapest weekend, and that's good, for if ever a man looked at the far end of exhaustion, it was Dennis as he spoke to the press before leaving the circuit that Sunday afternoon. In normal circumstances Ron is a man plainly exhilarated by victory, but on that occasion he was so drained that not even Lewis Hamilton's third grand prix win could provoke a smile.
In RD's absence, Martin Whitmarsh will have called him as little as possible, but, with so much whirring round in his mind, it will not have been easy to switch off. Thanks to Ferrari's appeal, the 'Stepneygate' affair remains unresolved, and in Hungary McLaren's drivers, first and second in the world championship, stupidly and immaturely put themselves before their team at the worst possible moment.
In the last couple of weeks, it may be taken as read that Whitmarsh will have had 'discussions' with Alonso and Hamilton, and I imagine that the great majority of the words he used will have been of one syllable.
While it's likely that the pair of them will be disputing the world championship right through to the Brazilian Grand Prix, on October 21, so it's not impossible, with six races to go, that one could get most of the luck, and find himself battling for it not with his team-mate, but with Raikkonen or Massa.
In that event, a degree of togetherness could serve Alonso or Hamilton well. In the normal course of events McLaren, as we know, does not operate 'team orders' - and anyway the concept is supposedly banned these days. But still there are ways of being... useful, of putting the team's interests first.
Over the years Ferrari has employed the tactic innumerable times, and often without much subtlety, but one remembers, too, that Eddie Irvine, disputing the world championship with Mika Hakkinen at Suzuka in 1999, at one stage lost a great deal of time behind David Coulthard's McLaren.
In the event, it made no difference to the result - Irvine never had a prayer against Hakkinen that day - but it might have done. And, come Interlagos in the autumn, if only one McLaren man should be disputing the title with one or more Ferrari drivers, he might prefer to feel he wasn't going out there alone.
At that point, a team-mate's goodwill would be a handy card to hold, and I can't believe the thought hasn't occurred to either Alonso or Hamilton. This being 'the silly season', the Hungarian spat between them has of course been the focal point of F1 gossip even more than would ordinarily have been the case.
Advice to the team, and its drivers, has come in from far and wide, and predictably the most down to earth and entertaining was from Alan Jones, sounding much as he did in the Williams days when discussing the shortcomings of his team-mate, Carlos Reutemann.
In the 1981 Brazilian Grand Prix, which was wet, the Williams duo dominated from the start, but if Reutemann narrowly led from Jones, Alan wasn't worried because he anticipated that Carlos would let him through, as his contract required. This he failed to do, and there followed much trouble.
I spoke to both drivers about it, and each, in his way, was disarmingly honest. "Alan had a reason to be upset," said Reutemann. "I can't disagree with that. When I saw the pit signal, telling me to give way, I thought, 'If I do that, I stop right now, in the middle of the track, and I leave immediately for my farm. Not a racing driver any more. Finish.'"
Alan, I said, now claims he doesn't trust you any more. "He's absolutely right," said Carlos immediately. "He shouldn't! I don't think the same situation will happen again - but if it did, I think I would take the same decision as in Brazil..."
Over to Jones. "Well, we're not going to have a repeat of Brazil, that's for sure! If ever we're in that position again, I shan't sit back and wait for Carlos to move over - and, believe me, I wouldn't want to be Frank Williams in that situation. No way I'm going to sit behind again - I'm going to try and pass him, and just hope I don't lock a brake or something and lose Frank a bunch of constructors' points in one fell swoop.
"I've got my contract, and Carlos has his - and the contracts say that if we're less than seven seconds apart, and comfortably in front of the third car, then I, as number one driver, will win the grand prix. I understand why Carlos doesn't like it - I wouldn't like it - but that's the way it is, and if he didn't like the terms of the contract, he shouldn't have signed it."
At the end of that season I interviewed FW, and of course this question came up. "Every year," he sighed, "I take a slightly tougher attitude towards drivers, and I'm probably unusually jaundiced about them just at the moment. To be honest, all I care about is Williams Grand Prix Engineering, and the points we earn. I couldn't care less who scores them..."
Very forthright in those days, F1 people, were they not? And 26 years on Jones hasn't changed. Addressing the McLaren situation last week, Alan said it was vital that the team had to come up with a game plan, that Dennis had to make it very clear to both drivers what was acceptable and what was not.
He understood, he went on, that Alonso, being a two-time world champion, arrived in the team in the expectation of being de facto number one, and that no one had anticipated that Hamilton, from the off, would be quite the force he has been.
"Alonso doesn't like it," Jones said. "Fair enough - neither would I! But the first guy you've got to beat is your team-mate, and if I were in that situation, I'd be trying all sorts of tricks, psychological or otherwise.
"By doing what he did in the pitlane, Alonso might have taught Hamilton a bit of a lesson. Hamilton needs to remember that he might need Alonso's help later on. If I were Alonso, I'd say to Hamilton, 'If you don't want to play the game, this is what we can do. You're leading the championship - if you'd like me to bugger that up for you a bit more, you keep going...'"
As the 1986 world championship approached its conclusion, there were four drivers - Nigel Mansell, Nelson Piquet, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna - in contention for the title. Prost's McLaren-TAG had nothing like the power of either the Williams-Hondas or Senna's Lotus-Renault, but still he liked his chances, and not only because he was the best driver in the world. Why, then? I asked. Alain smiled. "Because," he said, "the other three all hate each other..."

[Gundalgandul]

http://www.autosport.com/magazine/insideline.jpg
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/tur/inside_top.gif

Even an averagely good scriptwriter would have little trouble weaving a fictional blockbuster storyline around the various controversies of Formula 1 2007. He could certainly take the ostensibly unrelated topics of 'Stepneygate' and 'pitlanegate' and thread them together to reveal one big conspiracy. What that conspiracy is would be up to the writer.
Would he have the blue blood in charge of the governing body making his final play at undoing his nemesis, the mechanic made good who's in charge of the team fighting for the world title?
Or would the tale be given a twist after setting it out with the Machiavellian Italian team as the pantomime baddies, making the reader think that its machinations against the upstanding British team will be revealed, only for all assumptions to be shattered on the last page?
In the struggle between the team-mates, would the tough and wily world champion be prepared to use his inside information of the delicate espionage story to extract from the team the deal he wants?
And would that lead his sensational rookie team-mate straight into the arms of their biggest rivals, where incidentally there's a huge managerial power struggle going on and driver choice becomes the issue the two factions make their Waterloo?
Where the facts end and the fiction begins is a blurry line and F1 has certainly produced a great soap opera so far this year. In fact the tv critics probably rate it right up there with 1976 and 1994.
In that '76 story there was a supporting actor playing team-mate to one of the two lead male roles. His name was Jochen Mass, and he commented a couple of years ago how that controversial Hunt v Lauda '76 season left a permanent mark on the sport.
"There was a sort of pseudo-intensity about the season," he said, "that has remained part of F1's make-up. [The intensity] is not always there, but you can create it by making everything more important than it really is. That's show business."
Well right now with two appeal hearings set, either one of which could determine the outcome of the world championship, things feel pretty intense. Especially so given the apparent stakes - McLaren's reputation and integrity, its association with blue chip partners like Mercedes-Benz, Santander and Vodafone, F1's credibility with the public etc.
But isn't this just more of that pseudo-intensity Mass speaks of? Regardless of who knew what and when in the Stepneygate case, hasn't espionage always been part of motor racing? Yes, Ferrari is certainly justified in wanting a few answers, but isn't this ultimately a sport whereby men in cars race each other round in circles?
We're not talking acts of terrorism here or the theft of pensions. Should the governing body be getting involved in taking points from a participant, rather than letting any civil proceedings deal with the actual law of the matter? A cynic would say it makes things more dramatic if it does, adds to the soap opera.
Did it really need to get involved in pitlanegate? Probably it did once the stewards had become embroiled - and the stewards probably had to because of complaints from factions within the team about the incident. But given that, should potentially world title-deciding points be dished out and taken away over the matter?
Looks like Hamilton pulled a fast one over Alonso to try to ensure pole by being lighter on a track where pole is especially crucial. Alonso saw an opportunity of paying him back and taking pole himself. This surely is how we would want two rivals fighting over a world championship to behave?
Surely this is just racing; two combative guys in the same team fighting each other for a world title, and a team trying to keep a lid on the cauldron of competitive desire that has ensued by pitting two aces against each other in the best car - and getting itself in a bit of a knot in trying to do so, instead of letting it all play out.
Do we really have to make a soap opera out of it? Here's where the fiction writer could bring the threads together. Is it the best car because of crucial information gleaned in its gestation from an informant in the rival team?
If the scriptwriter decided it was, then he could lay out a plot whereby a chain of events ultimately reaped the injured party's revenge. The car was so good because of the espionage that it led to the drivers struggle with each other being so intense that they had to split - with one of them washing up at the injured party's doorstep for the next season, motivated like never before, and with lots of crucial information to impart.
Then maybe the double sting in the tail: that this was what the Machiavellian team had planned all along when it first leaked the story about the supposed espionage and planted the information with the unsuspecting designer...

[Gundalgandul]

Baru denger kabar dari autosport.com, coloumnist favourite gue, matt Bishop diangkat menjadi Head of PR and Communication McLaren. Ga akan baca lagi deh kolomnya dia "From The Pullpit" di autosport.com...:((. FYI, he is also my good friend in F1 paddock.
But, its also a good news for Matt. Congratulation for a new appointment Matt, Good luck, buddy....


McLaren appoint Bishop as head of PR

By Biranit Goren Wednesday, September 26th 2007, 12:55 GMT
F1 Racing's editor in chief Matt Bishop has been appointed Group Head of Communications and Public Relations for McLaren.
Bishop will leave Haymarket, where he also held the position of editorial director for the motorsport division, at the end of the year and will begin work at Woking in January 2008.
Forty-four-year-old Bishop joined F1 Racing shortly after its inception in 1996, leading it on to become the best selling Formula One magazine in the world.
His flamboyant personality and prolific writing, coupled with strong ties within the paddock, has made him one of the best known and most powerful motorsport journalists in the world.
Editor's note: In light of his new adventure, Matt Bishop will sadly no longer write his regular column 'From the Pulpit' for autosport.com.

[Gundalgandul]

The 2007 Chinese GP Preview http://www.autosport.com/images/space.gif
Lewis Hamilton could make history in China this weekend, but Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen will do their best to delay his celebrations. Tom Keeble analyses the prospects ahead of the penultimate race of the season


By Tom Keeble
autosport.com writer
http://www.autosport.com/images/space.gif

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/jpn/preview1.jpg

Analysis
Shanghai is a technical, challenging circuit, with a couple of relatively long straights connected with a flowing series of corners. Like other Herman-Tilke designed circuits, it stretches the drivers as well as the cars, and offers opportunity for overtaking.
The challenge starts with the first corner, where the cars brake from near maximum speed for a long, tightening right hand corner. Another tough left hand corner further round the lap means that there is a huge load on the both the front tyres, ensuring they get a real workout.
Preventing the teams from simply adding downforce to minimise the wear problems, the back straight is about a kilometre long, and the start/finish is not much shorter, so a balance must be struck with drag in order to maintain outright speed on those straights.
With a significant chance of rain over the weekend, teams will have another compromise to consider – wet conditions require more ride height and downforce, but optimising down this route would make the cars vulnerable to being passed on the straight. It is worth noting that the track seemed to take a very long time to dry out last year, so if it is wet at any point, then a return to normal dry running is probably going to take a while.
Overtaking, whilst possible, is fairly tough here, with the corner ending the back straight as the main opportunity, so a good qualifying performance tends to be well rewarded on race day.

Flashback

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/jpn/preview2.jpg
Renault teammates Giancarlo Fisichella and Fernando Alonso lead the Ferrari of Michael Schumacher © LAT

In 2006, a wet qualifying session saw lots of mayhem on track in the early sessions, but ultimately illustrated the dominance of the Michelin, and particularly the Renault duo, seeing Alonso comfortably on pole ahead of Fisichella. The Hondas similarly looked strong, with Barrichello and Button filling the second row (sharing the same time). Schumacher split the McLaren pairing of Raikkonen and de la Rosa, with Heidfeld and Kubica following up in eighth and ninth.
On a wet track – though the rain had stopped – Alonso made a clean getaway in front of his teammate on race day; Fisichella meanwhile struggled to contain Raikkonen, who had passed both Hondas on the run down to the corner (but handed third back to Button on the first corner before passing in to turn 14). Schumacher meanwhile was pushing Barrichello, who was finally unable to contain the ever quicker Ferrari at turn 14 on lap eight.
He set about chasing down Button, passing on lap thirteen as the Honda driver struggled with tyre wear. Raikkonen passed Fisichella at about the same time for second, before pitting on lap 16. Unfortunately, his engine shut down two laps later… At the front, Alonso's day took a turn for the worse as he started to struggle with front tyre wear, taking a trip through the gravel on turn one.
Schumacher and Fisichella stopped on laps 21 and 23, staying on their wearing intermediates, but Alonso replaced his front tyres on his lap 22 stop, as the existing wear was a problem. They immediately grained, and he found himself running four seconds a lap slower than Fisichella and Schumacher – who had closed up by lap 28. Fisichella passed his teammate when the position became untenable, with Schumacher close behind.
Midfielders started their stopping for dry tyres around lap 24 – Kubica lasting two laps before returning for intermediates. Both Toyotas struggled on, with Ralf Schumacher suddenly starting to post competitive times, Alonso dived in for a new set of tyres on lap 35, but between a slow pitstop and trouble getting the tyres up to speed, he remained two seconds a lap slower than the leaders for several laps.
Fisichella stopped for dry tyres a lap after Schumacher, but despite coming back on track immediately in front of the Ferrari, slid wide on his cold tyres and let the car through on the inside.
Alonso suddenly found grip and really got in to gear, now two seconds a lap faster than Schumacher or Fisichella; eight fastest laps had him re-pass his teammate and set about chasing down the Ferrari. Rain started coming down, two laps from the end, boosting the Renault advantage, but he was still only able to get down to three seconds off the lead before the race ended. It was a solid win for Schumacher and Ferrari in adverse conditions.

Pos Driver Team Time
1. M.Schumacher Ferrari (B) 1h37:32.747
2. Alonso Renault (M) + 3.121
3. Fisichella Renault (M) + 44.197
4. Button Honda (M) + 1:12.056
5. de la Rosa McLaren-Mercedes (M) + 1:17.177
6. Barrichello Honda (M) + 1:19.131
7. Heidfeld BMW-Sauber (M) + 1:31.979
8. Webber Williams-Cosworth (B) + 1:43.588
Fastest race lap: Alonso, 1:37.586
Qualifying best: Alonso, Q2, 1:43.951

Weather

The weekend is expected to be cloudy with light winds and temperatures up to about eighty degrees; however, there is a high chance of thunderstorms rolling through on Saturday and Sunday, with fairly high winds added to the race day mix.
Consequently, the teams will probably have to prepare for mixed wet/dry running in qualifying, and avoid running an aerodynamic set-up that is critical to cross winds if they are not to discover a sudden drop in performance on race day.
Strategy
In dry conditions, China is optimally a two-stop race, with little to be gained from running light enough for three stops, and limited reward for running a single stop. In the wet, a single stop approach offers more flexibility, particularly for those looking to make up places after a poor qualifying.

Conclusions

With Hamilton in a position to lock up the title this weekend, all eyes will be on the rookie, who needs only to beat his teammate and Raikkonen to seal the deal. The China circuit should offer a slight advantage to Ferrari this weekend, though McLaren should be competitive.
BMW-Sauber remain best of the rest, with Williams and Renault the most likely teams to pick up the remaining points. Should it be a wet weekend, as predicted, then another exciting and unpredictable race should ensue.

A Lap of Shanghai with Fernando Alonso

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/jpn/trackmap.gif

"Shanghai circuit is a very modern track; it's very wide with a lot of safety escape roads. Gravel traps don't really exist here; they are mainly asphalt run off areas which increases the safety. It is a very challenging track; especially Turns One, Three and Four. Turns One and Two are pretty high speed, you start in fifth gear, you downshift from seventh to fifth; you brake very gently and have to keep a lot of momentum through the corners.
"As you are going through here the circuit just gets tighter and slower. You then have to decelerate into Turn Three, which is a blind entry after a very long corner, so you really have to commit into it without knowing where the apex is. It helps a little that they put a post in the middle of the kerb which acts as an indicator and means we can be more precise on the entry.
"However the first sector is pretty difficult and it is important for a good lap, especially if you get to Turn Three and you get it right; the car has to just touch the kerb over it. The rest of the track is pretty straight forward, with a lot of heavy braking. You could have a go at someone if you have a clean exit coming out of Turn Four with good traction. You take Five completely flat easily and you brake hard into Six, which is a first gear corner.
"You downshift from fifth gear and if the car is good and you have good traction in Turn Four you can overtake in Turn Six. Turns Seven and Eight are very high speed. Turn Seven was flat last year in the dry, but even in the wet it was close to being flat. However it is very difficult to get to close to anyone here because of the downforce effect of following the car in front. I think Turn Seven should still be flat even with less grip from the harder Bridgestone Potenza tyres.
"Then we come to Turn Eight, which is a difficult corner. The car is normally very twitchy on the entry and it's a third gear corner. Turn Nine and Ten are not very difficult. At Turn Nine you downshift from fifth to third gear and the important thing really is to go flat on the throttle once you have turned into the apex and keep it flat into 10 without lifting.
"It is important not to lift here as between Turns 10 and 11 there is a short straight and the extra speed you gain on the exit of 10 allows you to get into Turn 11 with more top speed. This is a second gear corner and quite tricky, you have to go over the inside corner as much as you can. Turns 12 and 13 are both flat again, if you get them right.
"Front graining on the tyres is a big possibility in Shanghai because of all these high speed corners. There is a very long straight coming out of Turn 13, its 1.5km which makes it quite easy to overtake into Turn 14. This is a first gear corner with very heavy braking. This just leaves you one more corner, Turn 16, a 90 degree corner leading onto the pit straight.
"It is quite narrow here compared to the rest of the track. It's a third gear corner where you really have to put the power on the apex and try to get a very clean exit again to gain the maximum speed on the long pit straight."

Team by Team

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/jpn/preview3.jpg
Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso © LAT

McLaren Mercedes
It was an interesting weekend in Japan, where McLaren were comfortably fastest in qualifying and the race. Alonso spun out and crashed whilst Hamilton went on to win, despite Kubica running into him on the way. It put the rookie 12 points ahead of his teammate, and in a position to tie up the championship this weekend.
Poor reliability cost the team dearly last year, as Raikkonen retired whilst running strongly, but the car is in far more reliable form this year. The team will be expecting a strong challenge from Ferrari, who could have a slight edge at this race, but should be able to get at least one driver on the podium.
1. Fernando Alonso: with a 12-point deficit to his teammate, Alonso needs to beat him by at least two points to remain in touch. Alonso was very quick in China last year, though problems with tyre wear left him off the pace at a critical point, ceding the win to Schumacher. He should be formidable again, though the competition from Hamilton and the Ferrari duo ought to be tough.
2. Lewis Hamilton: able to secure the title by doing little more than beat his teammate, but with everything to lose by failing to finish, Hamilton ought to be playing a fairly conservative game this weekend. It remains to be seen quite how he approaches this race: considering the limited number of mistakes he has made, it would be no surprise to him approach the weekend flat out.
Objectives: Win.

Renault
The Japan weekend started badly for Renault, who qualified on the sixth row as they gambled on dry settings for the race. In the event, it was a wet race, but the drivers made the most of very heavy fuel loads to make progress, eventually finishing second and fifth.
A repeat performance in China would go down well – though producing it would require more adverse conditions to take advantage of, as a significant portion of the places gained came from others misfortunes. Last year, China represented a missed opportunity, as Renault's strategy saw Schumacher win, even after they locked out the front row in qualifying.
3. Giancarlo Fisichella: struggling to contain his less experienced rookie teammate, Fisichella has his work cut out if he is to retain a lead role within the team. Even if he can't get on a par in qualifying, he has to do more on race day. At least the technical Chinese circuit should let him bring his experience to bear…
4. Heikki Kovalainen: now well into his stride, Kovalainen's season now includes a podium finish – and whilst improving on that seems unlikely, with seven consecutive points finishes, he is clearly a candidate for another this weekend.
Objectives: Get both cars into Q3 and at least one in the points.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/jpn/preview4.jpg
Felipe Massa © LAT

Ferrari
In Japan, having started on intermediate tyres and been order back to the pits for full wets whilst behind the safety car, the Ferrari duo were hugely disadvantaged when the race started, as it had effectively eliminated any chance of a race win. Raikkonen's race to the podium was an excellent salvage affair, keeping his championship hopes mathematically alive, but there is no denying it was a bad weekend for the team.
China should be an interesting weekend. Last year, Schumacher put on a brilliant display in the wet to come through and win on the unfavoured Bridgestone wet weather tyres and deny an otherwise dominant Renault a famous one-two. Clearly, this is a place where Ferrari are capable of putting together a challenge; they ought to be very competitive here.
Raikkonen showed an impressive turn of pace last year, until his McLaren let him down, and ought to be tough to beat.
5. Felipe Massa: having made a tactical pitstop to facilitate Raikkonen's progress in Japan, it is clear that his primary role is to enable his teammate in the quest for the drivers' championship. That means beating Hamilton – but not his teammate – if the opportunity presents itself.
6. Kimi Raikkonen: without even considering Alonso, in order to maintain a shot at beating Hamilton to the championship, Raikkonen needs to take home at least seven points more than the rookie – so even if he wins, he is out of the running if Hamilton finishes better than sixth. Clearly, nothing less than a win will do at this point.
Objectives: Finish one-two…

Honda
Japan did not go too well for Honda, despite Button qualifying on the third row: an opening lap collision put paid to that advantage, and the car simply doesn't have the pace to make up places from the back.
It was an interesting race for Honda in China last year, where their drivers set identical times in qualifying for the second row, before finishing sixth and seventh on race day. A year later, and the team will be setting their sights on less lofty goals: getting a car into Q3 and racing in the midfield will be a tough challenge.
It seems clear that the team should hope the predictions for rain are accurate; should it be wet, then their drivers will be able to make up for the deficiencies in the chassis, and the possibility is there to put together a standout weekend.
7. Jenson Button: blisteringly quick in the wet, though perhaps accident prone, Button might again make Q3 and score points in the event of another wet weekend.
8. Rubens Barrichello: always quick, Barrichello can be expected to make it to Q2 if the track is dry, though challenging for points would be a tough proposition. Nevertheless, the Brazilian will not be there just to make up numbers, and might surprise.
Objectives: Get at least one car into Q3 and fight for a points finish.

BMW Sauber
It is telling that both BMW drivers complained that the Japan race should not have been started, as they struggled to show their usual advantage. Kubica ran into Hamilton, earning a penalty that put him down the order, which set up a thrilling, aggressive fight for sixth against Massa.
Heidfeld was involved in an incident with Button early on, and fought hard with a damaged the car, which eventually stopped on the last laps, denying him his eighth consecutive points finish. All told, a bit of a missed opportunity for the team, who clearly showed plenty of pace.
The Chinese Grand Prix should be an interesting opportunity to make amends: last year, the team looked good in wet conditions, taking a fourth place for their troubles. Comfortably the third quickest outfit in the dry, they are not exactly slow in the wet this year either, so two decent points finishes are in order, provided the drivers can avoid mistakes and get their cars to the finish.
9. Nick Heidfeld: a strong performance last year bodes well for Heidfeld, who is well placed to push the leading outfits and challenge for a podium finish.
10. Robert Kubica: despite being considered a rising star, Kubica continues to be overshadowed by his experienced teammate; but China was a good race last year, barring a poorly judged gamble on an early change to dry tyres, so he could well better his teammate this time out.
Objectives: Get both cars in the top six in qualifying and the race.

Toyota
At their own circuit in front of a home crowd, Toyota must have been hoping for a far better weekend than the one they produced, which was characterised by difficult qualifying, indifferent racing and poor reliability. Whilst the conditions clearly did them no favours, it remains unclear why they were so outclassed on the day.
This is a bad sign, as they head to China – the scene of a very similar performance in wet conditions last year, though at least there was the Bridgestone wet weather tyre to blame on that occasion.
11. Ralf Schumacher: having announced his exit from the team, it is hard to see much changing for Schumacher this weekend: a capable racer on his day, they are few and far between, so there is a very real chance of another lacklustre weekend.
12. Jarno Trulli: having apparently set up the car for far drier conditions than those that actually transpired in Japan, perhaps Trulli will err in the other direction for the weekend ahead. Trulli tends to qualify well at technical circuits, so a return to the middle of the pack is possible if the team don't gamble badly on the weather.
Objectives: Get back on track – cars in Q3 and fighting for a top ten finish.

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/jpn/preview6.jpg
Mark Webber and David Coulthard © LAT

Red Bull Racing
It was a rollercoaster ride for the team in Japan, where they saw Webber running second behind the safety car, preparing to take a genuine shot at challenging for the lead, when Vettel crashed and took him out. Even then, they had a fourth place finish with Coulthard. Clearly, the car and team operate well in wet weather…
Last year in China, the team looked good, threatening to score points if there had not been an entanglement with Massa: prospects are pretty similar this year. If the conditions are dry, then they should be fighting for top ten finishes; but in inclement weather, both drivers have a shot at finishing in the points.
Considering Red Bull are only five points adrift of Williams in the constructors' championship, with two races remaining, every point counts: particularly with the prospect of a wet weekend ahead to shake up the order, a strong race here could make up that difference.
14. David Coulthard: still a little off the pace in qualifying, Coulthard will be looking for a strong Saturday if he is to maximise his chance scoring opportunity on race day – particularly if he is to defend his points lead over Webber.
15. Mark Webber: strong on qualifying, getting to Q3 on Saturday should set Webber up for a points finish – should his luck hold, and the car make it to the finish intact.
Objectives: Get at least one car to Q3 and finish in the points. Beat Williams.

Williams
Japan did little to aid the Williams cause, with both cars failing to make the finish. Rosberg's ten-place penalty for a replacement engine did little for his race day chances, whilst the sensor failure illustrates the team have still not eliminated their reliability gremlins.
Last year, the team put on a decent showing in China, rapidly getting dialled in before taking home a point on race day. There is every reason to expect the car and technical skills of the drivers to again suit the circuit, which bodes well for a points scoring opportunity. However, they will have to do better that last weekend in the event of rain, particularly as Red Bull are only five points behind in the championship.
16. Nico Rosberg: quick and consistent in the dry, Rosberg might have displayed a weakness in the wet in Japan, where he was off the pace at times – though under particularly trying circumstances. Regardless, he remains Williams' best bet for an improved tally: likely to qualify in the top ten, and finish in the points.
17. Alex Wurz: consistently disappointing in qualifying, Wurz usually has a lot to make up if he is to challenge for points on race day – but starting so far back increases the odds on a collision for even the best racer. Should he have a half way decent session on Saturday – which is possible, as he was very quick here in testing last year – then Wurz remains a contender for points, but is otherwise unlikely to make an impression.
Objectives: Make it to Q3 and score points. Beat Red Bull.

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/jpn/preview7.jpg
Sebastian Vettel © LAT

Toro Rosso
Japan was something of a mixed blessing for the team – on a wet track, they were outstanding, but a couple of driver errors proved expensive, costing a potential podium and double points finish. It was impressive to see the team running amongst the front-runners, and making it into Q3.
Last year, they had a fairly decent outing in China, and must be hoping for another wet weekend, which would offer the best chance for points. Though it seems likely that this time around, they'll be extra careful to steer clear of the Red Bull drivers on the race course.
18. Vitantonio Liuzzi: a time penalty for passing Sutil under yellow flags dropped Liuzzi out of the points – poor reward for the strong drive to eighth from the back of the grid. Quick in China a year ago, he must be looking forward to an opportunity to try again over the weekend ahead.
19. Sebastian Vettel: a terrific weekend in Japan was marred only by crashing into Webber whilst running third behind the safety car, earning a ten-spot grid penalty for the weekend ahead to boot. He will do well to overcome that handicap and threaten the points again…
Objectives: Get a car into Q3 again; fight for a point.

Spyker
A year ago, Spyker arrived in China with a new livery, a new owner, a contract for Ferrari engines and new test drivers… only to languish at the back and play second fiddle to Super Aguri.
It is an interesting the difference that a year makes. Although they are again changing hands, the focus has remained on making progress, which is being delivered with their new B-spec chassis. It has let them take the fight to the midfield: despite indifferent qualifying in Japan last weekend, they fought hard and came away with a point.
20. Sakon Yamamoto: after beating Trulli – despite starting last – in Japan, the Japanese has to be optimistic for the weekend ahead; as his experience improves, he is closing the gap to his teammate.
21. Adrian Sutil: apparently a demon in the wet, Sutil has to be looking for more of the same this weekend, though the new chassis apparently offers him enough opportunity that he can mix it up in the midfield regardless of the weather.
Objectives: get into Q2 and fight for top ten results.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/jpn/preview8.jpg
Takuma Sato © LAT

Super Aguri
With the mayhem caused by rain in Japan, Super Aguri must being ruing a lost opportunity: Sato was unable to keep his tyres working effectively, and Davidson retired with a sensor failure.
A year ago, China was a highlight for the team; the wet race let them run against the midfield, though Sato was later disqualified for blocking. Given their difficulties last weekend, perhaps another wet weekend is not what they need – they have been showing better performance in the dry.
22. Takuma Sato: as the season has progressed, Sato has shown decreasing form, and is probably a good indicator of the team's development pace failing to match those ahead; however, he should be able to work well on this technical circuit, where his experience can be brought to bear.
23. Anthony Davidson: in recent races, Davidson has shown some excellent pace, particularly over single laps, where he usually shows Sato the way – and he might spring a surprise in any qualifying session.
Objectives: Make it to Q2 and fight the midfield for places.

[Gundalgandul]

The Pre-GP Statistical Analysis: China http://www.autosport.com/images/space.gif
Who dominated the last three Chinese GPs, but for all the wrong reasons? And what milestone is Rubens Barrichello set to reach at Shanghai? Michele Merlino crunches the numbers

By Michele Merlino FORIX collaborator http://www.autosport.com/images/space.gif

Memorable moment in the Chinese GP

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/jpn/merlino1.jpg
Michael Schumacher walks back to the pits © XPB/LAT

2004 - Is that the seven-time world champion?
With the title already won, Michael Schumacher (Ferrari) endured a troublesome weekend: he spun off on his timed qualifying lap, and as a result he had to start from back of the grid. In the race he ran into the back of Christian Klien (Jaguar), and after a few laps he spun again. A tyre failure put Schumacher out of the race for good.
Out in front, Rubens Barrichello (Ferrari) had Kimi Raikkonen (McLaren) in his tail for the first part of the race, with the Finn unable to pass. McLaren then gambled, short-fuelling Kimi at the second stop in order to pass the Brazilian, but the strategy worked badly and the Finn lost second place to Jenson Button (BAR). So the win went to Barrichello, who was trouble-free for the entire last stint.

2005 - Is that the seven-time world champion, again?
Michael Schumacher started things badly right from the formation lap, when he went for the racing line at an incredibly low speed and was rammed by Christijan Albers (Minardi). During the race the German spun off behind the safety car and was again the main talking point of the Chinese GP for all the wrong reasons.
The fight for the lead was decided by Renault's clever strategy, using Giancarlo Fisichella to cover Alonso's lead, slowing down the charging McLarens of Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya, and the Spaniard ran all the race by himself.

2006 - Yes, that is the seven-time world champion
The tyre war between Michelin and Bridgestone produced some awkward situations in wet races in 2006, and China was one of those: when the track was wet, Michelin had and advantage; when it started to dry, Bridgestone was better.
And when it happens, the differences can be measured in seconds, so in the first part of the race, Alonso (Renault) stormed away into the distance. But then, when conditions changed, it was Michael Schumacher's turn to have the best from his tyres, reaching and passing the Spaniard.
In the final stages Alonso lost time in the pits, and despite being the fastest under the conditions, Schumacher was able to hold on to his lead, winning the race.

China personal scoreboard

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/jpn/merlino3.jpg
Nick Heidfeld and Heikki Kovalainen © XPB/LAT

Fernando Alonso was the pole-sitter in the last two years, won in 2005, and came a close second last year.

Giancarlo Fisichella, together with Alonso, completed the full front row for Renault, qualifying second in 2005 and in 2006, however he counts only one podium finish, with a third place last year.

Felipe Massa never made it to the front row or to the podium in three attempts.

Kimi Raikkonen made it to the front row only in 2004 and was on the podium both in 2004 and 2005.

Jenson Button scored only a podium finish in 2004 (second).

Rubens Barrichello was the pole-sitter and won the race in 2004 and then never made it into the top five in the race. The win in Shanghai is the last one to date for the Brazilian.

Nick Heidfeld scored points only last year with a seventh place.

Jarno Trulli never made it into the points in China.

David Coulthard was always classified ninth in all his three participations.

Ferrari's best qualifying position in 2005 and 2006 was only a sixth place.

Renault recorded their 50th pole in China in 2006, the last one to date for the French team.

What to look for in China

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/jpn/merlino2.jpg
Ferrari © XPB/LAT

• Ferrari are looking for their 200th win and their 600th podium place.
• Rubens Barrichello is going to start his 248th race, equalling Michael Schumacher at the second place on the all-time record. Then, Rubens will miss only 8 races to match the all-time leader Riccardo Patrese, with 256.
• If Rubens Barrichello completes at least 39 laps into the race, he will become the second driver of all times to have run at least 60,000 kilometers in the races. The only one so far is Michael Schumacher, who ended his career with 66,164 kms.

Lewis Hamilton's championship chances

Going into the Chinese race, Lewis Hamilton has a 12-point advantage over Fernando Alonso, and 15 over Kimi Raikkonen.
These are the combinations that will secure the Briton the title in Shanghai:
Hamilton-Alonso-Raikkonen
Winner-Any result-Any result
2nd-3rd or worse-Any result
3rd-4th or worse-Any result
4th-3rd or worse-Any result
5th-4th or worse-Any result
6th-5th or worse-2nd or worse
7th-6th or worse-2nd or worse
8th-7th or worse-3rd or worse
No score-8th or worse-3rd or worse

The above table takes into account only a scenario with 11 or more points' difference between Hamilton and his rivals, because if a 10-point difference is recorded after China, the situation will be calculated based on the number of wins, then the number of second places and so on, opening up many possibilities.

The shape of 2007

Even with a Japanese race full of drama and run in extremely difficult weather conditions, the shape of the season remains the same. A couple of additional noteworthy trends:

• 11 times out of 15 has the car with the best time in Friday practice eventually won the race.

• 2 times out of 15 did a non-Ferrari/McLaren driver score a second place in the race. It happened in Canada (Heidfeld) and Japan (Kovalainen), so the domination of first places by the two teams extends almost entirely on the second places. The podium places count speaks clearly: out of 45 podium places available so far, 22 went to McLaren, 18 to Ferrari and only five to the rest of the teams...

[Gundalgandul]

http://www.autosport.com/magazine/fifthcolumn.jpg
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/jpn/fifth_top.gif

In recent days it seems to have been 'open house' on McLaren, and although no charge of any kind has involved Lewis Hamilton, it must have been hard indeed for any rookie driver, even the most impressive in memory, to have been unaffected by the tumultuous events of the recent past. That said, Fernando Alonso has been apparently untouched - and that does take a bit of understanding. For some little time, one watched his behaviour in and around the McLaren motorhome, and thought him an isolated figure, sticking with his little coterie - father, manager, Spanish journalists - and paying no attention to anyone else around him. A strange way to behave, but then one has come increasingly to regard Alonso as a very strange man.
There is nothing new in a poor team atmosphere, with the drivers not getting along - one thinks of Alan Jones and Carlos Reutemann at Williams, overwhelmingly of Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna at McLaren - but usually a situation like that is overt.
On the last weekend of Gilles Villeneuve's life, I was chatting to him in the Zolder pits at the end of a session, when his Ferrari team-mate, Didier Pironi, drove in. At once Gilles took my arm: "Let's get out of here..." Literally, he did not want to be in the vicinity of Pironi.
Alonso is not at war with Hamilton in that sort of way, but it is because of Lewis - because of Lewis's pace - that he has become jaundiced with McLaren, resentful that he, the world champion, is not automatically regarded as the team's number one driver.
That's not how they do things at McLaren, where the drivers get equal equipment, there are no team orders (in the Ferrari sense of the word), and over time a natural team leader emerges, by simple virtue of his results. It happened that way with Prost, with Senna, with Hakkinen. A number one driver doesn't need to be nominated: he just is.
In David Coulthard's recent autobiography, he speaks of the resentment he long felt at McLaren, the impression he had that Ron Dennis always favoured Hakkinen. There was no suggestion that he, DC, was getting other than equal equipment, more a feeling that, all things being equal, Ron would prefer to see Mika win.
And ultimately, Coulthard writes, his boss admitted that such was the case. Dennis did have a special relationship with Hakkinen, not least because he was greatly affected by the accident at Adelaide in 1995, in which Mika almost died. Also, Mika was a better driver.
Earlier this year Prost, who won three championships with McLaren, said he had sympathy for the predicament in which Alonso found himself, believing it not unlike the one he had faced in 1988, when Senna came aboard.
In fact, the circumstances were a little different. By the time Ayrton arrived, Alain's feet had been under the McLaren table for close on five years, and team and driver had done well indeed by the other. In the mid-'80s Prost was the best driver in F1, and McLaren was very much 'his' team, be his team-mate Niki Lauda, Keke Rosberg or whomever.
Then in came Senna, and it was soon clear that, more weekends than not, on pure pace he had the edge. As time went by, Prost felt his situation changing; no longer did the team revolve around him.
It wasn't that Alain ever attempted to denigrate his rival's ability or speed. No, it was more of a human thing: for a great racing driver, Prost was always unusually sensitive, and when Senna's standing, in the affections of the team, began overhaul his own, he felt more than a little hurt.
Thus, a few months ago, Prost said he felt sorry for Alonso, in a team with a new 'favourite son'. In fact, though, their situations are similar only superficially. Unlike Alain, Fernando had not been firmly established at McLaren - indeed he was the newcomer, and Hamilton, F1 rookie or not, the one with his feet under the table.
It was interesting last week to read of Juan Montoya's thoughts on the subject. When he learned that Hamilton was to be Alonso's team-mate, he said, he felt sorry for Fernando. Why? "Because Lewis is like Ron's own child. Ron paid for his whole career, so he would rather see him win..."
Perhaps, in the normal course of events, it is true that Dennis would prefer to see Hamilton win, just as one always felt with Hakkinen. Ron does have a long-term investment in Lewis, and has been close to him for 10 years. But the fundamental problem is that Alonso never expected to be threatened by his McLaren team-mate, whomever it should be, and the pace of this rookie has been a sore shock to him.
It is only since the World Motor Sport Council hearing the other week, however, that we have learned the true level of froideur which exists between Alonso and Dennis. Not since race day in Hungary, Ron revealed in Paris, had he and his driver exchanged a word.
Given what Alonso threatened that morning in Budapest, mind you, one could hardly blame Ron for never wishing to speak to Fernando again. I still find it scarcely believable that a driver, in an attempt to better his own position, could blatantly try to blackmail his own team owner - and I somewhat doubt that the same thought hasn't occurred to other team principals, as some of them consider hiring Alonso in the near future.
Had the FIA stewards stayed out of the Alonso/ Hamilton qualifying fracas at the Hungaroring, it would have been a simple matter of Dennis or Martin Whitmarsh sharply advising the two drivers to grow up, but of course - unfathomably, to me - the stewards did get involved, as a result of which Alonso was punished, and Hamilton was not. The next morning came Alonso's failed attempt to intimidate his boss.
The irony is that in the weeks since, through this period of extraordinary McLaren upheaval, Alonso's form in the car has crystallised, and he has driven with all the brilliance at his command. We may not admire the man as once we thought we did, but there's no doubting the imperious resilience of the driver.
In recent weeks there has been much talk of the curious goings-on in the Formula 1 of today, of practices as old as Job which have suddenly become 'offences'. Discussing the 'Stepneygate' affair at Monza, for example, Jackie Stewart and others pointed out that this sort of thing had gone on since the beginning of time. It was the same with 'team orders'.
Another accusation recently laid at Alonso's door was that he had offered the mechanics on his car a financial bonus every time he finished ahead of Hamilton. Imagine! It was made to sound like a heinous crime, one of recent invention.
Long ago I interviewed Fangio in London, and the immortal Juan Manuel, while entrancing me with tales of his career, made it clear he did not come up on the down train. At one point he talked about the 1953 Italian Grand Prix, in which his Maserati team-mates were his protege Onofre Marimon and Felice Bonetto.
"My car had a terrible vibration all through practice," he said, "and it could not be cured. In every team I drove for, I always made sure of having the mechanics on my side. Very important. Whatever I win, I would tell them, you will get 10 per cent. The night before the race, I again complained of the vibration - and on Sunday it was miraculously cured!"
How so? I asked.
"I have no idea," Fangio smiled, "but I know Bonetto's teeth fell out during the race..."

[Gundalgandul]

The Observer
http://www.autosport.com/images/space.gif
After a torrid 2007 season full of controversy at McLaren, Fernando Alonso needs a change. Damien Smith explains why


By Damien Smith
Autosport magazine editor in chief
http://www.autosport.com/images/space.gif

We received an email this week that made us chuckle. An agent claiming to represent a Champ Car squad contacted one of our advertising team, asking how to get hold of Ralf Schumacher's manager!
It's hard to imagine Ralf being up for the change of scene. He's hardly one of those drivers who seems really in love with the sport. Anything other than Formula One would surely be considered too much of a step down for a man like Ralf.
Still, Mr Champ Car agent, worth a shot, I guess.
It's fashionable to criticise Schuey Jr, and for good reason. Both he and Toyota are almost anonymous in F1, having found themselves lost in the midfield struggle, scratching around for the odd point or two. And that's on the good days.
For a team with the resources of Toyota, and a driver with genuine talent who in the past put in performances his brother would have been proud of, that's embarrassing.
Ralf's F1 story might not be over, of course. He might still land a drive with another team following his departure from Toyota at the end of this year. But where exactly? And why? Is the hunger really still there? It's hard to believe.
There have been too many 'off' days at Toyota for Ralf to be considered a top-liner. He hasn't been one of those for years. But as we wait for Fernando Alonso's future to become clear, teams such as McLaren, Renault and Williams look set to have openings for 2008. Will Ralf even register as an option for any of these teams? Surely not for McLaren and Renault.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/jpn/damien1.jpg
Ralf Schumacher © LAT

Perhaps Williams might be interested. Perhaps. Technical director Sam Michael always had time for him during Ralf's heyday at the team. But Japanese GP2 driver Kazuki Nakajima is tipped to replace Alex Wurz in a move that would please engine supplier Toyota. And given that Ralf is walking away from the biggest car manufacturer in the world, it hardly seems likely that he would be welcomed into its customer team - which is, of course, also its number one team in F1 at the moment. More embarrassment.
So where else? Spyker/Team India? Surely not. Then again, never say never, I suppose...
But let's face it, the future of Ralf Schumacher in F1 is pretty much incidental for most of us. He won't exactly be missed by many people if this is the end of the line.
What is really fascinating is where Alonso will pitch up in 2008, and what effect a team move would have on the rest of the grid.
More than ever, it seems inconceivable that Alonso can remain at McLaren next year - whatever his contract says. As we all know, he hasn't spoken to Ron Dennis since the Hungarian Grand Prix and even relations with Lewis Hamilton, which were just about bearing up through the summer, have now broken down, seemingly beyond repair.
This week Alonso has told the Spanish media that a sabbatical is not on his mind, that he is sure he wants to race on. That's interesting. I for one thought this was perhaps the most likely outcome for 2008 - and it still could be. Alonso might not want it, but it would suit Dennis very well.
But if Alonso can squirm out of McLaren and straight into another race drive, a place at Renault makes sense. He would be welcomed back to his old, familiar team. But would he want to go back? After all, it was his choice to leave in the first place - and it's human nature that once you have chosen to move on from somewhere, you rarely feel the urge to return. Unless you have to, of course.
So perhaps - just perhaps - we come back to Toyota. Could Alonso be the man to replace Ralf? Yes, he could.
Toyota can afford Alonso, and they desperately need to hire a driver capable of lifting them from their pit of mediocrity. Jarno Trulli and Ralf Schumacher looked like a strong line-up when they joined Toyota - and let's face it, both are proven winners.
But the team have yet to sign a true star name who will almost guarantee progress and proper results. That time surely has come.
http://journal.autosport.com/2007/jpn/damien2.jpg
Fernando Alonso speaks with Toyota test driver Franck Montagny © LAT

Whether Alonso would be up for the challenge Toyota represents is another matter. He will recognise just how much work there is still to do in Cologne and he will be familiar with the frustration that has ground down his old teammate Trulli.
At Monza Jarno told me that he can see the potential at the team, and that he has to be ready for the day when it finally does come good. He hasn't lost his faith - yet.
And that might be enough to convince Alonso that Toyota could be the answer. He would be able to mould the team around him, drawing on those plentiful resources and working hard behind the scenes to get the corporation thinking like an F1 team.
He has the experience and knowledge to do that - much like Michael Schumacher did when he joined Ferrari. It would be fascinating to watch.
But who knows what is going on in the mind of Fernando Alonso these days? The quiet, smiling Spaniard I knew back in his Formula 3000 season is almost unrecognisable today. He was never exactly gregarious, but he is so insular and shut off from everyone who does not form part of his inner circle that he is becoming hard for anyone in F1 to understand.
There are two races still to run and he could still become a three-time world champion in the coming weeks, of course. But thanks to the phenomena that is Lewis Hamilton, we have all had to re-evaluate our perceptions of Alonso this year, whatever the outcome in China and Brazil. And we have seen a dark side to Alonso that was only ever hinted at in his Renault days.
It's actually a little sad to see. He's still a great driver and a great champion. But he needs a change. The McLaren move that looked like such a great idea has gone horribly wrong.
So it's time to start again. And perhaps Toyota is exactly the right place to do it.

[Gundalgandul]

http://www.autosport.com/magazine/insideline.jpg

http://journal.autosport.com/2007/jpn/inside_top.gif

What Fernando alonso has pulled off in the last two races (before Japan) is quite remarkable. In the white heat of fuss about his role in the spying saga, with the team preoccupied with the World Council hearing, he has simply gone even further into himself than usual, disappeared into that protective zone we've seen before - the one he released himself from when he stood atop the wheel of his Renault in Brazil '05 screaming at the planet as the new world champion - and dug deep. Where he goes to we cannot know, but it's a place that gives him special powers.
Forget about the ethics of his negotiating ploys with Ron Dennis in Hungary, and think only about his performances coming off the back of a disappointing run in Turkey. At both Monza and Spa he was utterly magnificent, leaving Lewis Hamilton breathless in his wake.
For all that this is ostensibly a team sport, these were solitary performances. Watch him in the team garage or motorhome and there is no visible bonhomie with the team. He communicates with his engineer only within the necessity of getting what he needs from the car, but otherwise he's to be found sitting with his trainer, his manager or his father. Even when he's not around, his little coterie remain together, separate from the rest of the team, apparently distrustful. And, post-Hungary at least, that feeling is probably mutual.
Maybe there is something in his culture that lends itself to mistrust - to looking always for signs of betrayal - and then any resultant success can be particularly heroic. Fernando's predecessor, Juan Pablo Montoya, had it too. Both found that betrayal at McLaren - or believed they had.
The reality is that of all teams McLaren is the one most devoted to - and best-equipped to provide - equality of opportunity. In the case of Montoya, this commitment led to the team compromising its performances last year: McLaren acceded to his wishes during the off-season for a different development direction to Kimi Raikkonen, and this left them producing two different front ends for the MP4-21. The distraction and split resources that ensued definitely did not help the team's cause.
Yet even at McLaren there comes a point where equality has to give way to the necessity of the moment. During Montoya's time it happened during the 2005 Canadian Grand Prix, when a safety car gave the team the perfect opportunity to spring title chaser Raikkonen into the lead - at Montoya's expense. Montoya was not a championship contender and Raikkonen was, so it was simply common sense, regardless of the cover story the team used for an explanation afterwards.
Yet even at this stage Montoya still had faith in the equality of the team, refused to believe that McLaren had deliberately disadvantaged him. He reckoned anyone who believed that was a fool. He's probably less certain now. The point is, he did appear to try harder to fit in there than Alonso has. Had Alonso been in the same situation, you can be sure he would have believed the worst.
It is when Fernando feels alone and fighting the odds that he seems to produce his best stuff. For the past few races he has been operating behind enemy lines and now, at the critical time - in the deep, nitty-gritty, high-stake grind of a title run-in - he's suddenly stepped up a gear. Given that his title rival Hamilton has been leading the championship for most of the year, Alonso has made his rival's position psychologically difficult. Hamilton's the hunted, Alonso the hunter.
But the scale of Alonso's fightback becoming apparent is just the sort of stimulus to trigger Hamilton onto new heights. His career is littered with situations where the need to respond to a situation has led him to squeeze more from himself than he knew he had.
The question is: will Hamilton's cause be aided by the team? Given the acrimonious background - that the team might have justification in feeling betrayed by Alonso's actions in threatening to use the email evidence on his lap- top - might the team be tempted now to do what Alonso has accused them of doing all year? Absolutely not.
Unlike at Montreal '05, this time there is no competitive reason to favour one driver over another. There may be emotional reasons, but if McLaren boss Ron Dennis was going to allow them to determine his course of action, he would surely have done so in Hungary. Now, unless something disastrous unfolds, it's a case of which McLaren driver wins.
My betting is that McLaren will remain as absolutely committed to equality as ever - and that to win it Lewis is going to have to reach within himself, just as he has done many times before in his career, just as Alonso has recently done.
But should Fernando retire from any of the three remaining races with any sort of mechanical failure - lack of hydraulic pressure maybe - then it can be imagined just how that might be interpreted. Not just by Fernando, but by the watching world too.