What you see above are the logos of the oldest and the newst teams in Formula One. All else lies between them, circa 2008...
The last season was a very exciting season for a lot of reasons. For the first time we would not be seeing Michael Schumacher on the track in fifteen years. Britain had a new hope in the form of Lewis Hamilton. This meant that the feeder series, The GP2 was proving to be a success. The first GP2 champion, Nico Rosberg found a place in Williams F1 in the 2006 season. Ferrari, for the first time in a decade was without Schumacher or Ross Brawn. They also had a new driver line-up, in the form of Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa. World Champion Fernando Alonso, who had seen off Schumacher in the past two seasons, was with Mclaren, giving the team a lot of hope and confidence to forge a multiple-championship winning outfit once again. However the drama that would unfold over the eight months was not even close to what many of us had predicted. For starters, it was Hamilton who produced the fireworks and not Alonso. Midway through the season, the sport showed its dirty face. The spy row defamed the sport and cost Mclaren all their constructor’s points, thereby handing over the constructors’ title to Ferrari. Alonso was shooting off his mouth again, complaining that a British team was helping a British driver to win the title. Well he hoped to get preferential treatment, but Hamilton’s scorching performances were too much to take for the Spaniard and he had made his decision. The final race only needed Hamilton to secure three points to become a rookie World Champion, but it was the Iceman Kimi Raikkonen who came from nowhere and clinched the drivers’ title by a single point, thus securing the double.
As winter testing went underway, a lot of changes were seen. Alonso returned to his mentor, agent and former boss, Flavio Briatore and Renault, the very team he accused of not helping him in his title quest as he would take the number 1 car with him to Mclaren. Elsewhere, GP2 was proving to be something of a phenomenon, 2007 champion Timo Glock of Germany secured a driving spot for Toyota and Ralf Schumacher lost his drive. India was the latest country to crop up on Bernie Ecclestone’s radar for expanding the sport. A deal apparently had been done with the Indian Olympic Association and India, it was announced would host a race starting from 2010 in the capital New Delhi. A proud moment for me and my fellow Indians. A long, long time ago, Eddie Jordan’s ill fated Jordan team was bought by Midland and eventually sold to supercar manufacturer Spyker. Now the team was up for grabs once again and none other than Indian billionaire businessman Dr. Vijay Mallya scooped the team up and rechristened it as Force India Formula One Team. Another proud moment for us Indians! Following the controversy in the 2007 season, most top teams chose to have a low profile launch. The one team that went for a flashy, glamourous launch was Formula 1’s newest fledglings, Force India.
Technically we will see a lot of changes this season too. The most important of them all being the absence of traction control, launch control and braking control. This effectively means that the driver is in total control of the car. FIA have made it mandatory to use electronic equipment made by a single manufacturer. This has been done to ensure a level playing field and also as a cost cutting measure. Several other itsy bitsy rule changes have also been implemented.
So far testing says that the front runners will lead the pack like any other season. But then this is testing and not race day. Testing is usually an iterative process. Getting the right set up for the car is like solving a polynomial equation with a lot of variables. So how does one go about pre season testing? Let’s say we need to test the aerodynamics, tyres, handling and dynamics, engine performance under different loading conditions and so forth. The general method used to go about achieving this objective is simple. Keep all terms of the equation constant except for one. In simple terms, take the overall setup of the previous season’s car and run it with the new season’s aerodynamic package. Once this is optimised, retain this and then run the car with this season’s dynamics set-up. When this process is repeated with different packages, the car will finally have an all new setup. Now will be the time to fine tune each component to make it work effectively and reliably, because reliability is the key to a successful season. Championship winning teams need not have the best equipment, but what they need to have is the ability to get the best out of equipment and personnel that they have. Going forward from here, we will now look at the contenders, all the eleven teams, their drivers, their strengths, weaknesses; their last year performances and what will be a realistic achievement for them this season.
I will start with the reigning Champions and my love of twelve seasons, Ferrari. Underdogs to undisputed World Champions. That’s how the season went for Ferrari. After regaining the top spot, they will look forward to consolidating their position once again this season over the course of eighteen races, including the night race in Singapore. If you ask what’s easier; winning the title or successfully defending it, there is no team better equipped than Ferrari in this decade to answer that. Over the recent years they’ve proven time and again that they are the quickest to master any new circuit that hosts a race in Formula One.
Ferrari’s key strengths have always been unflinching reliability, excellent strategy, fantastic driver co-ordination, mastery of new tracks and blistering race-pace. This season they will look forward to enhancing their superiority over the grid as not just the oldest, but also the most successful team in Formula One.
Mclaren Racing have come a long way since Ron Dennis’s company Project 4 merged with Bruce McLaren’s team in 1981. Over the last twenty odd years, the team has seen a lot of ups and downs and some great driver line up, the most famous of them all being Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost. They started the last season with World Champ Fernando Alonso and GP2 Champion, Briton Lewis Hamilton. Things got to a great start as Hamilton quickly got the status of number one driver with his blazing time sheets and chilled demeanour. This did not go down well with Alonso, the wimp. However, what could have been their best season in recent times went all wrong, thanks to the big controversy midway into the season. The team lost all constructors’ points and Ron Dennis had to pay up a £50 million fine. The drivers’ title however should have been effortlessly taken by Lewis Hamilton, but his rookieness did not help him and he crumbled under pressure, handing the crown to Raikkonen.
This season Mclaren look good in testing and could be back with a resounding bang. They have roped in the Finn, Heikki Kovalainen as a replacement for Alonso who has gone back weeping and whining to Flavio Briatore and Renault. The last time Mclaren had a Finn British driver combination, they did not so bad. They won two drivers’ titles back to back and one constructors’ crown. Last season their biggest strength was Alonso and his championship winning experience that would be supported by rookie hopeful, Hamilton. What they ideally should be looking for this season is to forget last season’s debacles and start with a fresh mindset and approach.
Honda; a team with championship wins in the past as an engine supplier still have a lot to prove as a constructor. They only have one win so far. Their driver pairing is one of the most experienced on the grid today with Reubens Barrichello having 253 starts and Jenson Button having 137 race starts totalling 390 race starts, which is nearly double that of Raikkonen and Massa put together at 210 starts and more than eleven times that of Hamilton and Kovalainen 34 starts. They certainly have the experience, but do they have the results to go with it? Lets see. Barrichello has 9 wins to his credit and Jenson Button the sole win in Hungary 2006. Ten wins out of 390 starts. They have won 2.56% of the races they’ve started. Raikkonen and Massa together have 20 wins out of 210 starts. That’s 9.5%. Just for the records, Schumacher won 36.4% of the races he started in. So going by this what can we realistically expect from them? Barrichello will be reunited with Ross Brawn this season, the architect and technical wizard behind 88 out of Michael Schumacher’s 91 wins, the three that Brawn did not play a role in were in 1996 when Schumacher had moved to Ferrari, where Brawn would join him in 1997. Its time they translated their experience into results and started looking at becoming title-chasers instead of languishing in midfield. They should hope to consolidate on their 2006 performance, start 2008 as if 2007 never happened and try to get more podium finishes, if not wins.
Renault have been under the sharp and strategic leadership of Flavio Briatore for 20 years, this year being the 20th. They have produced two back to back World Champions, Michael Schumacher in 1994 and 1995 under Benetton and Fernando Alonso, who ironically dethroned Michael Schumacher in 2005 and held on to his crown in 2006. Alonso’s departure at the end of 2006 did neither party any good. Where Alonso lost the title by a point and a race win, Renault managed only one podium finish in 2007 and scored a lot lesser than they did in 2006. However things look bright for them again. Alonso is back with his agent and former boss, Briatore and they have a budding talent Nelson Piquet Jr, son of former World Champ, Nelson Piquet. However I hope Alonso has woken up from his rookie nightmare of 2007 and helps Renault consolidate their position before they become title chasers again, maybe in 2009.
If there is one team on the grid I dislike, that is Toyota. They entered Formula One in 2002 as the world’s largest automotive manufacturer, pioneers of quality management, Kaizen, JIT, Kan Ban and such innovative lean manufacturing techniques. I don’t know what went wrong but they clearly are a shadow of their automotive history. Their best standing so far has been fourth in 2005. Apart from that they’ve been in the midfield. I cannot understand what’s wrong with them. They’ve changed driver line-up, technical staff, management staff, they don’t lack a big budget and still they are exactly where they were when they started. They do have Timo Glock, the reigning GP2 Champion, who will have to live under the shadows of Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton if the does not perform. I am not quite sure if teams like Honda, Toyota and Super Aguri are doing Japanese reputation any good. If I tell today’s children that Toyota are the pioneers in automotive manufacturing I am pretty confident that I will be laughed at, given their Formula One performance. As far as Super Aguri are concerned, the lesser I talk, the better.
I am not overly going into Red Bull or Toro Rosso as I do not see them going anywhere from where they are. What concerns me though is that Williams have not been able to register a win since Brazil in 2004. That’s more than three years now. Their last title win came in 1997, under heavily controversial circumstances when Jacques Villeneuve was crowned champion after the infamous incident at Jerez, following which Schumacher was stripped off all his points for that season. Williams have a long way to go, with Toyota powering their cars and two youthful drivers who have a lot to prove themselves. Nico Rosberg, the first ever GP2 Champion, is the son of former World Champion Keke Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima is the son of retired Formula One driver Satoru Nakajima. I hope that Williams rise to the occasion and put up a good fight this season. BMW Sauber is one team that has been consistent all along in recent years. They’ve been oscillating between fourth and sixth till they came second in 2007, courtesy of Mclaren being stripped off all their points. In Dr. Mario Thiessen, they have a veteran engineer, who has the technical and managerial mindset to guide them to the top. I like the resilience and consistency they’ve shown season after season and that too without any glitz or glamour. You don’t notice them coming till they’ve arrived. My personal favourite to take the fight to Ferrari and Mclaren this season.
Force India, Formula One’s fledglings are too new to be judged yet. However the experience of Fisichella and the money of Mallya should result in a period of renaissance and we will certainly see them qualifying out of the last four positions and eventually towards the end of the season, we could see them in a top six finish. However, knowing the F1 circus very well, I am keeping my hopes down. All will be revealed on 16th March in Melbourne at the season opener. I am looking forward to hearing the engines roar once again in five days time.
