How The New Rules Will Affect Formula One
With the start of the Formula One season around the corner we thought we would bring you up to scratch on some of the new laws.
Refuelling
What’s new? Refuelling during races has been banned for the first time since 1993.
What it means? Cars must start each race with more than 210 litres on aboard, which equates to three times the volume and, significantly, the weight compared with last year. Drivers will have to manage their tyres and try not to abuse them in the early laps, otherwise an unscheduled and time-consuming pit stop will be called for.
Impact? Should swing the balance in favour of the clever driver who thinks long-term and holds back during the first 10 laps or so. It was common mistake in the 1980s to write off Alain Prost because the triple world champion was eighth at the end of the first lap, only to feel foolish as he gradually picked off the cars in front and took advantage of tyres that were not shot to pieces. Pit stops without refuelling could last only three seconds.
Qualifying
What’s new? The cars that make it to Q3 (the third and final part of the qualifying in which the 10 fastest cars from Q1 and Q2 establish who takes pole) must start the race with the same tyres they qualify on.
What it means? Difficult decisions to be made. As in 2009, Bridgestone will supply a hard and a soft compound tyre, both of which must be run at some stage in the race. Do you risk using the pace of the softer tyre to get on to the front of the grid, only to have that same tyre lose all performance very quickly when under duress thanks to the heavy fuel in the opening laps? Or do you play safe, run the hard tyre in Q3, pay for it with a place on the second, third or even the fourth row, but make capital once the race is under way?
Impact? Unlike last year when Q3 lap times were affected by how much fuel a driver was carrying into the first phase of the race, Q3 will give a more accurate indication of who is fast because all the cars are running light. As for the race itself, it could be that, because refuelling is not necessary and the softer tyre will be good for only a few laps, a driver might run non-stop on the hard tyre before diving into the pits with a short distance to go in order to complete the necessary laps with the soft tyre. Also expect, in the event of a safety car to see drivers dive into the pits and get rid of the rule requirement by running the least-favourable tyre for a couple of laps under the caution and then change back to the faster tyre immediately after.
Points system
What’s new? The first 10 drivers now score points: the winner receives 25 points, the second 18, the third 15, and then 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 1 down to 10th position.
What it means? More points are up for grabs and the winner is much more handsomely rewarded than before. Previously only the first eight finishers received points, from 10, 8, 6 down to 1.
Impact? The second place man is likely to make a greater effort to snatch the lead in the closing stages rather than playing safe now that the reward for winning has been increased. Similarly, rather than cruising home in the middle of the field because no points are on offer, the mid-field runners will be lured into battle with the car in front because of the championship points available.
With thanks to the guardian.co.uk
Surprises At Bahrain GP Practice Session
Adrian Sutil in his Force India posted the quickest time in the Friday practice session.
With limited practice sessions in the run-up to the 2010 Formula One season, the best indicator of form will be the Friday practice sessions.
And what a surprise it was for F1 fans when Adrian Sutil topped the timing sheets after 18 laps on the Bahrain circuit in the morning’s practice session. The Force India driver posted some solid results last year, and he and the team are looking to continue the improvements from 2009.
Sutil’s time of 1:56.583 was just 0.2 of a second quicker than Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, the man all F1 watchers are picking to set the early pace this season.
Robert Kubica in his Renault was third, followed by the second Ferrari driver, Felipe Massa, in fourth spot.
Other hot favourites, the McLaren duo of Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton, posted the fifth and sixth fastest times respectively, with not much to split the dueling British duo.
And where, you’re probably asking, was Michael Schumacher in his Mercedes? The 40-year-old German posted the 10th fastest time, and he was surprisingly pipped by his teammate Nico Rosberg in eighth.
More results are expected in the second practice session.
Hamilton Aims To Thrill, In Cinema
Lewis Hamilton and girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger.
Lewis Hamilton already has the fast cars, the beautiful woman and a licence to thrill.
What the 25-year-old Briton would love now, as he prepares to battle for the Formula One title he lost last year to compatriot and new McLaren team mate Jenson Button, is a cinematic licence to kill.
“When I was younger I did think of myself being the first black James Bond … I think it would be pretty cool,” he told Reuters in an interview ahead of Sunday’s season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.
“Just to play a part in a James Bond (film) would be wicked. Really wicked,” he added. “I guess that would be a dream for me one day to play a part, even if it’s just a five second guy in the background.”
Hamilton was speaking after the launch, on a deserted building site on the fringes of Manama, of a new alternate reality game by personal sponsor Reebok.
The online launch, with the idol of millions standing in front of a giant screen several stories high with just a production crew and a handful of curious bystanders in attendance, created a surreal effect that added to the clandestine feel.
The game is scheduled to last until October, with an evolving storyline and Hamilton playing a secret agent, with Bond-like running and jumping stunts.
“Clearly I would never be breaking into anyone else’s house but it’s kind of cool to pretend I was doing it and in the best way you possibly could,” he said.
Secret Life
Hamilton, who is dating pop singer Nicole Scherzinger of the Pussycat Dolls, already has one secret life of his own and intends to keep it that way.
“Wouldn’t you like to know? yeah, well. It’s a secret,” he said when asked about it.
“I work as hard as I can to make sure when I get to the race that I’m in that zone for the weekend. As soon as I leave, I switch off and go into a different place.”
In his case, home in Switzerland or to his girlfriend in Los Angeles.
“I am always on my computer…getting into different worlds,” he added. “When I am at home I go online with my brother, who is back in the UK, and we race each other and its like we are there in the same place.
“I am online racing all these computer games, I could never put my name on it because kids around the world would beat me and my brother beats me quite often. So I would never like anyone to know it’s actually me.”
Courtesy of Stuff.co.nz
HAVE YOUR SAY: Do you think he should just stick to his day job?
Baby Schumi Wants To Make His Mark
Sebastian Vettel was nicknamed Baby Schumi
Sebastian Vettel is the most thrilling young driver in Formula One and, following his second place for Red Bull in last year’s championship, the most intriguing competitor in this season’s potentially riveting battle for the world title.
But Vettel is also, by far, the most relaxed and engaging racer in the notoriously guarded paddock.
“You might think I’d get more attention this year,” the 22-year-old German says in his immaculate English, “but there has actually been less focus on me. This is all because some old German guy decided to come back. He is keeping all the German writers very busy and that’s good for me. I take my hat off to the old guy.”
Vettel waves his beanie in the direction of the Mercedes motorhome where a returning Michael Schumacher offers just one compelling strand in a revitalised racing narrative which resumes this Sunday with the opening race in Bahrain.
“This season we might get lucky and talk about the racing rather than politics or business,” Vettel says. “We’ve got Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull. That’s four teams and eight drivers. At the moment it’s difficult to know who is at the top. One of us will finish first and one of us will finish eighth – with six others between.
“And we have this interesting competition between team-mates. You’ve got two British drivers in a British team – with [Lewis] Hamilton and [Jenson] Button at McLaren. I don’t think it’s going to be easy for Jenson. Lewis is very quick and he has known this team for many years. You can see what he did back in 2007 when Fernando Alonso was at McLaren. So I’m very interested to see McLaren and Ferrari [where Alonso and Felipe Massa have had their moments of strife].
“Obviously in Germany people are more interested in Michael and Nico [Rosberg] and a rivalry between two German drivers. A lot of things could happen in all these teams. So I think the most spectacular combination is me and Mark [Webber] because everyone knows we don’t have a problem. Of course I want to beat him every time, and he wants to beat me, but we get along well.”
Vettel nods in acknowledgement when reminded that he and Webber have had their problems.
Their relationship started badly when, in 2007, Vettel shunted Webber off the track during the Japanese grand prix. Vettel drove then for Toro Rosso and he was chasing Webber who, in turn, was pushing Hamilton hard for the lead in sheeting rain.
Last year there were also some combative battles between Webber and Vettel as the Australian veteran and the German tyro came close to hunting down Button after the British driver looked to have wrapped up the title after winning six out of the first seven races. “You know Mark,” Vettel says of his similarly likeable team‑mate, “he is not afraid of saying what he thinks. So after that crash in Japan he was direct. He was angry and I was angry but, afterwards, I was sorry. We’ve never had a problem since.”
Webber ranted against Vettel’s inexperience in 2007 but the German’s rise as a prodigy can be measured in the number of records he holds. He is the youngest-ever driver to score points in a Formula One race [when aged 19 at the US grand prix in 2007] as well as the youngest-ever to take pole position and reach the podium. He also became the youngest-ever race winner when, just a few months after he turned 21, he was victorious at the Italian grand prix in September 2008.
It has long been an open secret in the pit-lane that Vettel is on course to become the next great star of the sport.
Even more impressively, he appears as entertained as he is gratified by such bold claims.
“All these nice people saying I’m going to be world champion won’t make me any faster,” he says. “You have to believe it yourself.”
Attention might initially gravitate towards Schumacher but Vettel should overshadow the racing great with whom he has been compared since his teenage years. “They used to call me ‘Baby Schumi’. I didn’t like it but I understood.
In Britain, when you had Nigel Mansell, a national icon, the question after him was always the same, ‘Who is the next Nigel Mansell?’ The only one you didn’t get it with was Eddie The Eagle because he was not much good.”
Fame
In the unforgiving paddock Formula One boils down to winning – and making as much money as possible from a corporate enterprise. But, this season, the very human and remarkably gifted Vettel might just transform the cynical perception of an often cold business. “Last year it was different.
No one expected Red Bull to challenge for the title. But now people expect us to be at the top. I like that but I also think it’s important for me to say hi to all the mechanics from those other smaller teams who helped me when I was starting out. Sometimes that gets lost along the way.”
Then, just in case he sounds too noble for his own good, Vettel leans forward intently. “I want to win a lot of races this year – and it would be nice to start in Bahrain. It’s not my favourite track but I finished second there last year. There’s no champagne but the trophies they give out are great. I got a small, silver one last year and now I’d like the really big one.”
Best of all, as Vettel admits, would be a glittering trophy at the end of season which seals his apparent destiny as he becomes only the second German to win the world championship. “I’d love that, but seven other drivers are each planning something different. But I like to think that, this year, I could be good enough.”
Schumacher Puts His Neck On The Line
Recovery from injury at 41 was against the odds but the former champion is no ordinary man.
As if Michael Schumacher did not have enough to think about, he will have mixed feelings over an alteration to the race track on which he will make his Formula One comeback this weekend. A new half-mile loop to the circuit at Bahrain will bring six additional bends, six more places per lap to add strain to neck muscles already due to receive a tough work-out during the course of a 192-mile race, Schumacher’s first since October 2006.
It is true the seven-times champion has gone racing during his three-season absence but the difference between a kart or motorbike and the punishment dealt out by a grand prix car is comparable to that between a punt on the Cam and the Olympic coxless fours.
The irony is that a motorcycle racing accident could threaten one of the most celebrated comebacks in the history of sport. Schumacher says he has received the medical all-clear over damage to the seventh vertebra and a fracture at the base of his skull, roughly the size of a thumbnail but in a place supporting the weight of the skull. The G-forces unique to Formula One will seek out the tiniest weakness in this, the most vulnerable part of a racing driver’s body, particularly for a man of 41, twice as old as some of his rivals.
Dr Riccardo Ceccarelli, from the Italian sports clinic Formula Medicine and formerly of the Toyota Formula One team, explains the potential hazard that Schumacher will face as he embarks on a 19-race season covering more than 7 000 miles of racing and practice. “I know of no other sport that places such big demands on the neck muscles,” says Ceccarelli. “A head and F1 helmet together weigh about 6kg. Add about 4g as experienced when cornering in a grand prix, and the neck has to support 24kg.”
Schumacher will face 16 changes of direction on each lap in Bahrain, the saving grace being that only two of the corners are fast enough to register 4g. But it will be a different story on 4 April in Malaysia where the effect of numerous fourth- and fifth-gear curves at Sepang will be aggravated by intense heat and humidity.
Famous for introducing levels of fitness never dreamed of when he arrived in Formula One in 1991, Schumacher will be as well-prepared as it is possible to be. Having been tempted back by Mercedes Grand Prix, formerly known as Brawn and, before that, Honda and British American Racing (BAR), Schumacher has been fortunate in having access to gym equipment designed specifically for the neck and thought to be unique among F1 teams.
“It’s known as a rehabilitation machine,” says Anthony Davidson, the former test driver with Brawn, Honda and BAR. “It was made in Germany and deals with neck injuries. We took it a step further and used it to build muscles on the neck because that’s the area of a F1 driver’s body that takes the most punishment. When Michael joined, he asked me to bring him up to speed on how it worked. What did he think of it? I don’t know. Michael doesn’t give much away.”
For the full story visit the guardian.co.uk
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