Motorsport: Disparity too great in F1

Monday motorsport reportMarch 19, 2007

The signs were there after Saturday's qualifying that there is too big a disparity between the top teams and the rest -- 2.8 seconds a lap between first (Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari) and 10th (The surprising Takuma Sato's even more surprising Super Aguri), and 1.9 seconds even between first and seventh (Aussie Mark Webber's Red Bull).

That disparity was confirmed in the race, with only six cars finishing on the lead lap.

And there is still not enough overtaking.

F1 involves a lot of strategies, but fans deserve to see some passing on the track, not just positions changing during pitstops -- as happened with the McLaren pair Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton.

What the weekend proved is that Ferrari is the top dog, hardly missing a beat without Michael Schumacher, while the teams linked to German car manufacturers are the next best -- Mercedes-powered McLaren and BMW-Sauber.

BMW is knocking on the door of being a big force. Its car is technically excellent and its driver line-up equally so, with Nick Heidfeld finishing fourth and youngster Robert Kubica in that position, and ahead of Heidfeld, before he was forced into retirement.

World champions Renault are still thereabouts but don't have an absolute top-flight driver without Fernando Alonso.

We've already seen Giancarlo Fisichella left in Alonso's shadow the past two seasons, and Renault's newcomer Heikki Kovalainen made too many mistakes yesterday for someone we were told may be something special.

Japanese teams Toyota and Honda are struggling already, although Toyota's performance was perhaps a bit better than expected -- especially to have both its cars in the top 10 on the grid and the race classifications.

Super Aguri, a Honda satellite team, was way above expectations with Takuma Sato qualifying in the top 10 and finishing 12th. Tail-end team Spyker has signaled it will seek arbitration, under F1's Concorde Agreement, on the legality of the Super Aguri, Toro Rosso and Red Bull cars.

The factory Honda team, which three years ago loomed as a powerhouse rival to Ferrari, is a shadow of what it ought to be -- and its cars, with the commendable environmental message on them, look as bad as they are going.

It was a mixed weekend for Australian Mark Webber, but his qualifying performance was nothing short of brilliant to put his Red Bull seventh on the grid and he did a serviceable job to wrestle a mishandling car home 13th in the race.

Apart from much-needed improvements to the car, Webber would do the public a favor if he brushed up on his interview technique.

Anyone other than the most committed F1 fan must wonder what on earth he's talking about in some of his rambling answers.

Anyway, getting his on-track results sorted is a higher priority than that just now.

Webber's teammate, David Coulthard, was eliminated in the first round of qualifying on Saturday and yesterday made a beginner's error -- and a potentially lethal one -- that led to his RB3 jumping over the front of Alex's Wurz's Williams.

Coulthard had the good grace to apologise promptly, but the veteran now in his 14th season of F1 deserves a reprimand for his action -- rather than the commendation one journalist wanted to give him for injecting some excitement into the race.

Kimi Raikkonen was cold-blooded in taking pole position in his Ferrari debut with a lap 0.421 seconds faster than second-best Alonso's McLaren, and it was the same story in the race, with the 7.242-second margin at the finish understating Ferrari's superiority.

Had Felipe Massa's gearbox not failed in qualifying, and the team's decision to change the engine and start him from the back of the field, it probably would have been a Ferrari one-two on Sunday afternoon.

Massa drove superbly to come from last to sixth, but again that highlights the disparity between the top teams and the rest.

The unsung hero of the day was Ferrari's Australian race engineer Chris Dyer, the former Holden Racing Team computer whiz who worked with Michael Schumacher for several years and now is Raikkonen's guiding light.

That was Dyer you could hear speaking to the new Ferrari star on the radio at the end of qualifying and the race.

It would be nice if he could give Raikkonen a personality transplant.

Seriously, in the long term hopefully success with Ferrari will bring out a lot of the best in Raikkonen as it did with Schumacher.

The revelation of the weekend on the track was McLaren rookie Lewis Hamilton, who at 22 became the youngest driver to stand on an F1 podium.

He's everything his supporters reckoned him to be, and if the McLaren cars are capable of winning races this year there is every chance Hamilton will notch a victory in his debut season.

One wonders whether there may have been a little bit of diddling in the McLaren pitstops to get Alonso ahead of Hamilton.

Having recruited a dual world champion, McLaren has a huge investment in Alonso and will be only too aware that he is its best chance of a title this year -- and that perhaps weighed in its strategies, to ensure he picked up eight points for second rather than six for third.

That apart, Hamilton drove an incredibly mature race for a rookie, especially in staying ahead of Alonso for so long without putting a foot seriously wrong.

Second was the best Alonso was going to come away with yesterday, unless Raikkonen made a big mistake or the Ferrari failed, and the Spaniard calmly did everything right to get as good as he could.

He'll take it up to Raikkonen, and Massa, during the season if McLaren can bridge the gap to Ferrari -- but that's a very big if.

There is still much talk in Melbourne about a night GP, perhaps as early as next year.

Clearly F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone and Australian GP chairman Ron Walker are pushing for it, and a formal proposal is now to be put before the Victorian government within some weeks.

While media polls are showing a favorable reaction to the idea, there is one very big potential hurdle.

When the GP was snatched from Adelaide and plonked in Albert Park, it was a fait accompli.

There was no consultation with the public then and, for the event to happen in Melbourne, and at Albert Park, there could not have been.

It would have been derailed if there had been a consultative process.

The difference with this idea of making it a night race now is that the public, and particularly residents in the vicinity of the track, will have a chance to organise their opposition earlier and better -- although they will need to do a lot better job than the impotent Save Albert Park has done over the past 14 years since the announcement of the Melbourne GP.

In any case, maybe there won't be enough opposition to a night race to stop it.

But what the discussion may open up could be a lot more debate about the costs of the event, the benefits and the size of the audience -- at the track and on television.

For starters, opponents of the event may query how the world's most technologically advanced sport does not have crowd-counting equipment sophisticated enough to give precise figures rather than rounded off, estimated attendances.

And there's one thing in particular to bear in mind in this night-race debate. Is Bernie Ecclestone using Melbourne as a pawn in a game, to pit Melbourne and Singapore in some kind of bidding contest?

For some time now it has appeared that Singapore has been designated as the place for a new GP, and the world's first night GP -- perhaps in April or August-September next year.

Yet in the past week Melbourne has been invoked as a potential night-race venue, and if the 2008 Melbourne race is run at night it will steal any Singapore race's thunder.

World championship points after first of 17 rounds -- Drivers: K. Raikkonen 10 points, F. Alonso 8, L. Hamilton 6, N. Heidfeld 5, G. Fisichella 4, F. Massa 3, N. Rosberg 2, R. Schumacher 1; Constructors: McLaren-Mercedes 14, Ferrari 13, BMW-Sauber 5, Renault 4, Williams 2, Toyota 1. Next GP: Malaysia, April 8.

The crowd figures announced by the GP organisers -- 301,000 for the four days, with 105,000 on Sunday, up 2000 on the main day last year -- suggest the Supercars weren't missed as much as the Supercar people, and indeed pretty much everyone in the sport, expected.

However, some questions may be asked about the accuracy of the attendance figures.

Irrespective of that, the GP support race program was woeful and needs the V8 Supercars back next year.

It's in everyone's interest and will happen. It might just be a matter of arranging the face-saving all round first.

Answers still needed on HRT
We reported Saturday that the Holden Racing Team ownership row had been settled, and applauded the outcome -- even though it was an outcome we could not see the Touring Car Entrants Group was allowed to make.

However, we believe there are still explanations needed about this whole sorry saga.

In particular, what was it that was at the heart of the matter?

Was Tom Walkinshaw sold, or given, a slice of HRT when he should not have been?

If so, what has happened to remedy the situation?

How substantial is the fine imposed on HRT or its owner, Skaife Sports?

What is to happen with the money from that fine?

Does it go into TEGA's consolidated revenue, or might it be used for some special, worthwhile purpose?

We might have another look at this situation midweek.

Ambrose earned another US$15,725 (A$20,145) in prizemoney at the weekend after also starting from 28th position in his Ford Fusion.

Jeff Burton won the 300-mile (480km) race -- his second Busch win in as many weeks, this time crossing the finish line ahead of Kevin Harvick while Kyle Busch, who led 143 of the 195 laps, was third after a late drive-through penalty. Series leader Carl Edwards finished fourth and Juan Pablo Montoya eighth.

The sixth race in the series will be at Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee next Saturday.

Busch series after five or 35 rounds - C. Edwards 810 points, K. Harvick 666, D. Blaney 641, K. Busch 587, D. Hamlin 582, T. Stewart 581, M. Ambrose 563, M. Wallace 547, J. Burton 531, JP Montoya 529.

Porsche mechanicals rob Briscoe
Ryan Briscoe's debut with Roger Penske's Porsche sports car team did not work out well in the 12-hour race at Sebring in Florida, although the versatile Aussie set the fastest lap time in his class.

Briscoe's RS Spyder was knocked out of outright and LMP2 class contention early in the classic with a brake line problem and later electrical problems that cost the Porsche more than 90 minutes in the pits.

After Briscoe set his fastest lap the car finished eighth in class and 23rd overall.

"It just wasn't meant to be our day today," Briscoe says. "All three of us (the other drivers were Sascha Maassen and Emmanuel Collard) did a really great job but we had issues that were out of our control."

Since the race Davison has been given a two-place penalty for passing two cars under a yellow flag, but Davison and Velocity claim he was only regaining his position ahead of those cars after they passed him under yellow flags and have lodged an appeal.

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