MOTORSPORT: Bringing F1 back to earth

Friday motorsport reportJuly 6, 2007

Sam Michael (pictured), the technical director at Williams Grand Prix Engineering, says that the reintroduction of ground-effect cars could be the answer to improving the opportunities for overtaking in F1.

Michael says that the recent initiatives announced by the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) to make F1 green, more relevant to the production of road cars and more exciting (which we have reported on here a couple of times) won't produce a lot of passing.

"Going towards less downforce and power doesn't seem like the solution," Michael has told autosport.com. "Reducing the downforce isn't the solution for F1."

Ground-effects were pioneered in F1 by Lotus towards the end of the great career of that company's founder, Colin Chapman, and played a big part in Mario Andretti's 1978 world title.

Chapman and his fellow engineers created a low-pressure area under a car, initially through the use of "skirts", effectively sucking the car to the road. Later there were innovations such as the fan on the back of one of the Brabham models built in the time that team was owned by Bernie Ecclestone.

Ground-effects also coincided with the heyday of Williams Grand Prix Engineering.

"You can benefit from following the experience F1 had in the 1980s of using ground-effect more than we do now," Michael says.

"The things that have probably made F1 worse is getting rid of ground-effect, and lifting the front wing -- it's gone up 150mm in the last five years. Both those things made the cars very sensitive to onset flow.

"You need to adjust performance elsewhere, but you can do that with the tyres. If the cars get too fast, Bridgestone can change that from one race to the next. It's quite easy -- and we should make an advantage from that."

However, we would be putting our money on Ferrari this weekend, based on its one-two finish in last weekend's French GP and its recent testing form at Silverstone.

Ferrari is now nearing 200 GP wins. It has 196 victories from 749 races since 1950 -- and in 73 it has finished first and second. McLaren has won 152 times, Williams 113 and Renault 33.

The French race was Hamilton's first in F1 that he did not lead and it was the first in which he was overtaken -- by ultimate winner Kimi Raikkonen off the start line.

Hamilton's McLaren-Mercedes teammate, Fernando Alonso, won at Silverstone last year for Renault.

Only one driver has won the British GP two years in a row with different teams -- Alain Prost with McLaren in 1989 and Ferrari in 1990. And apart from Giuseppe Farina in the first F1 world championship in 1950, Jacques Villeneuve is the only driver to have won at Silverstone in his rookie season -- 1996, the year before he went on to win the world title with Williams.

We mentioned earlier this week that this year's British GP marks the 30th anniversary of the first turbocharged F1 car, a Renault which we have since been reminded was nicknamed "The Yellow Teapot". It is also the 30th anniversary of the F1 debut of Gilles Villeneuve -- with McLaren.

In almost 60 years now, F1 has had the exquisite talents of Fangio, Moss, Clark, the writer's boyhood hero Jochen Rindt, Prost, Senna, and Michael Schumacher. Many would include Nigel Mansell and Jackie Stewart among these names too, and now there is Hamilton, but to some F1 aficionados Gilles Villeneuve is the greatest of all.

Hundreds of drawings and other technical data relating to this year's Ferrari F2007 have been found at the home of McLaren's chief designer, Mike Coughlan, in Surrey. McLaren has suspended Coughlan, distanced itself from him and is insistent that none of the technology in those Ferrari files has found its way on to the McLaren MP4-22s which are leading the F1 championship.

The package of data was given to Coughlan in April, before McLaren hit a purple patch in May.

Ferrari apparently believes that McLaren's improvement after the Spanish GP in mid-May is consistent with the leaks at the end of April.

Nigel Stepney, a senior Ferrari team member, was dismissed early this week while holidaying in Asia. Ferrari already had Italian police investigating Stepney, who has worked mainly at its Maranello factory this season rather than at races.

Coughlan and Stepney worked together at the former Benetton team (now Renault) and Ferrari in the 1990s.

The first suggestion of sabotage at Ferrari came after a white powder, perhaps detergent, was found in the fuel system of the red cars at the Monaco GP, where McLaren whipped them by more than a minute. The FIA is now investigating and McLaren has willingly submitted to the most thorough examination.

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo says this latest case of industrial espionage "is an incident of unheard of seriousness".

Stepney and his Italian lawyer insist he is the victim of a dirty tricks campaign. Two former Ferrari engineers, Angelo Santini and Mauro Iacconi, were found guilty in April and given sentences of nine and 16 months respectively, subject to appeal, for taking secret Ferrari material to Toyota's F1 team.

The company has had an eight-year involvement in V8 Supercars and been associated with three championships -- by Marcos Ambrose in 2003 and '04, and Russell Ingall in 2005.

Its branding in what is now its final season is on the Ford Falcons of Ingall and Stone Bros teammate James Courtney, and Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup driving for Team Vodafone/Triple 8.

Following is the list of the top 20, but be sure to get a copy of the magazine to see the comments about the top "ton".

One omission from the top 100 we've noted is rally ace and 1995 Round-Australia Trial winner, Ed Ordynski. We're sure readers will think of other names they reckon should be in there.

20 -- Tim Schenken
19 -- Dick Johnson
18 -- Norm Beechey
17 -- Colin Bond
16 -- John Bowe
15 -- Geoff Brabham
14 -- Mark Webber
13 -- Ian "Pete" Geoghegan
12 -- Marcos Ambrose
11 -- Vern Schuppan
10 -- Frank Matich
9 -- Craig Lowndes
8 -- Allan Moffat
7 -- Frank Gardner
6 -- Larry Perkins
5 -- Mark Skaife
4 -- Jim Richards
3 -- Alan Jones
2 -- Peter Brock
1 -- Sir Jack Brabham

Doornbos is joint leader of the series with triple champion Sebastien Bourdais on 145 points, while Australia's Will Power is third on 131 and looking for a repeat of his opening round victory in Las Vegas for Team Australia to keep it a three-cornered contest.

Power has proven himself a street circuit specialist, so Toronto -- described as tight and tough -- may suit him at this seventh round of the series.

The dual Australian V8 Supercar champion finished 16th in his Florida debut and has since raced at another 'superspeedway' -- Talladega in Alabama, where he was in the top five before getting tangled up in a multi-car accident with barely 10 laps left.

At these big ovals the NASCARs run restrictor plates between the carburetor and inlet manifold on the engines to reduce horsepower and keep speeds to about 305km/h (190mph). While the straights at Daytona are almost flat (just 3 per cent banking) the turns have 31-degree banking.

The 100-lap Busch race at the 4km (2.5-mile) track Saturday morning (Australian time), carries prizemoney of more than US$1.5m.

It's round six of the 12-race season and, under a rule change, the Roger Penske-entered Porsche RS Spyder that Briscoe shares with German Sascha Maassen the air intake restrictor is now five per cent smaller.

That will reduce the car's performance by five per cent to 478hp and lessen the chances of it and other LMP2 cars beating the more powerful LMP1 cars outright again.

"We're very unhappy about these changes halfway through the season, and, as far as exciting competition for the spectators is concerned, we regard this step as detrimental," says Porsche head of motorsport Hartmut Kristen. "Our paramount aim this season is and always was to win the driver, manufacturer, team and engine classifications in the fiercely-contested LMP2 class.

"We will continue to concentrate on this goal against strong competition from Acura and Mazda."

The Porsches will run with E10 ethanol fuel for the first time this weekend.

Briscoe and Maassen won outright at Salt Lake City the week before Briscoe's fifth place in the Indianapolis 500 for Penske's son, Jay.

German Timo Bernhard and Frenchman Romain Dumas were the overall winners at Long Beach and Houston and have a 13-point lead over Briscoe and Maasen in LMP2, and a commanding 36-point margin over the nearest Acura drivers.

Porsche leads Acura in the engine manufacturers point standings by 26 points.

To comment on this artcle click here.