Wednesday 31 October 2012

Indian GP - The Race

Their faces say it all


Right…F1 Season of 2012, you’re really beginning to bore the pants off me now. We haven’t had a thrilling, even remotely exciting race in the History of Forever. Ok well not since Monza which now seems like a trillion light years ago.

This descent into Dullsville may not be entirely unconnected with two things:

Firstly, three of the last four races (since Monza) have been at a Hermann Tilke designed racing circuit. Luckily a whopping one of the last three races (Interlagos) will NOT, I repeat NOT be at a Hermann Tilke circuit. The other two are at the actually quite beautiful Yas Marina circuit and the brand new yee-hah track in Austin, Texas.

Secondly, the last four races have been won by Sebastian Vettel in a Red Bull that is now so fast its practically untouchable. You could put Fangio or Schuey (at the height of their powers) into one of the Ferraris and still Vettel would probably bore them and everyone else into submission and crush all in his path to take the chequered flag. Actually I like to think that Fangio and Schuey would have sneaked the odd win in the last four races but you get my point.

This way to the Tilke-drome

I was enormously tempted simply to cut and paste my blog of the mind-numbingly dull Korea race and just change the title – same outcome, just a variant upon the same borefest. And in this race, we didn’t even have Eddie Jordan doing gangnam style dancing to keep our spirits up. Also it is half-term and the tiny snippets of blog-time that I carve out for myself have disappeared off the face of the earth. And really embarrassingly (the husband told me I had to mention this), I accidentally stopped blogging at lap 48 because I was SO BORED. But you know what, I don’t think I missed much so I can still cobble together a bit of a blog. Hurrah! I think.

What makes me kind of mad is that I was really looking forward to this race and hoping for a bit of drama despite all logical evidence to the contrary. Bernie Ecclestone, Herman Tilke and Adrian Newey…this is ALL YOUR FAULT.

An essential accompaniment to F1 races these days (sadly)

So what went down in India?

1)     Vettel won the race again giving us all a masterclass performance of how to drive a Adrian Newey designed Red Bull at a Herman Tilke circuit. I read some comments on Twitter by some enraged Vettel fans arguing that their man should get far more plaudits. If it was all about Newey’s designs (which it is but anyway) then why wasn’t Webber leading the championship. Er, I think the entire F1 universe accepts that Vettel is a better driver than Webber but the point is that Alonso in a car more or less equivalent to the pre-Singapore Red Bull was comfortably leading the championship. All of a sudden, Vettel has gone from finishing 4th or 6th in races to leading by a country mile by the end of lap 1. He has now led F1 races for 205 consecutive laps. I could weep with despair.

Adrian Newey - all round genius. Can you move to another team now please?

2)     In 2rd place on the podium was Fernando Alonso who forced his way through the leading pack of drivers from 5th place on the grid. This man will not give up the fight for the championship until the absolute bitter end. Even if Vettel is already giving the impudent and triumphant (and not at all annoying) finger of title victory, Fernando will probably still be flinging his Ferrari round Interlagos refusing to surrender. I just love him. Even Lewis Hamilton, not a likely candidate to feel the love for Alonso had this to say:

‘Fernando has driven so well; more so than anyone else here. Sebastian has stepped up a lot at the end of the year with the improvements on his car. But Fernando is still pushing. Today he just drove phenomenally well and he’s holding on still. For me, he really is a three or four-time world champion.’ 

3)     Mark Webber finished 3rd and the most interesting thing about his weekend was that he walked out of the post-race press conference while Alonso and Vettel were still speaking. And neither of them noticed. Awkward.

Got to admire his style. I'd walk out of a room if everyone ignored me too.

4)     Hamilton finished 4th after an appalling start, described by Lewis (never prone to hyperpole) as ‘a disaster, brutal, terrible’. No, Lewis, that would be Hurricane Sandy. He even had his steering wheel changed at one stage though both McLarens found some excellent race pace in the second half of the race to finish just outside the podium spots. Hamilton now needs a maximum 75 points from the next 3 races even to draw level with Vettel on points so its game over. Never mind, Lewis, there’s always next year at Mercedes to look forward to.

5)     The other drivers who finished in the points were (from 6th to 10th) Massa, Kimi, The Hulk (who will be plying his trade at Sauber next season), Grosjean and Senna.

6)     Another race. Another dismal outing for Mercedes. Rosberg tussled with Grosjean and Senna for most of the race but finished behind both in 11th place. That race win for Nico back in China seems like it happened in a parallel universe. Anyone would think Mercedes have just given up on 2012. In a way haven’t we all? See Schumacher below.

7)     One thing the Buddh International Circuit does well is right rear punctures. We had flipping tons of them. First off, Schumacher (but of course) got a puncture after contact with Jean-Eric Vergne on lap 1, Maldonaldo got a puncture after contact with Kobayashi and Perez got a puncture leading to rear suspension damage. Maldonado at least to his credit managed to cruise through some gravel into the pits and somehow got to the finish.

8)     And time for Narain Watch. What magical extra 10ths of a second could he find on his home circuit? A Big Fat Zero literally. Poor Narain trundled home in last place. Still it’s the taking part that counts. To be fair to him, he was told on lap 7 that his brakes needed cooling down and that his car was running hot. Someone should tell HRT that in Formula 1 cars tend to get hot while hurtling around tracks at 200 mph.

9)     Oh blimey, still two paragraphs to go. Help me. I’m done with India so lets look at what else has been making news in F1 starting with reports suggesting a Vettel move to Ferrari in 2014. Both Christian Horner and Vettel have come out to deny the rumours (using various expletives to make their point) but I wonder. Come 2014, might not Vettel be slightly bored of grinding out crushing victories at Red Bull and after all Ferrari is Ferrari. There is no greater team to drive for in F1 and if anyone says different they are lying.

No, Seb, of course you wouldn't ever want to drive for Ferrari

10)  Apparently Alonso was talked down by senior figures within Ferrari from tweeting something along the lines of “I want my 1.2 million followers to know that the key aerodynamic components at the rear of the Ferrari are still the same as they were in May”. This came over a perceived criticism of his qualifying performance from Pat Fry. Alonso’s car is getting some upgrades for Abu Dhabi. They had better make a difference or Alonso will be tweeting something a bit more fruity than Samurai sayings.

They were literally packing them into the Buddh circuit in their ten's.

For whatever reason, F1 doesn’t seem to work in India. Yes, admittedly now at the tail-end of the season, we have the perfect storm of a stand-out dominant team with a dominant driver, drivers have now sussed out how to manage the tyres, the title contenders have been whittled down to two and Grosjean/Maldonado have stopped driving like loons. But even aside from that, crowd numbers were down 30,000 on last year and even Sachin Tendulkar didn’t turn up. Say what you like about Europe but the fans in Europe are freaking awesome and mad for F1.

Who knows what to expect in Abu Dhabi but it comes to something when even Jake Humphrey says ‘dear F1 gods, British F1 fans are best in the world so please, please deliver an exciting race for the first time in a while-they deserve it’. So F1 gods, I hope you are listening. I cannot take another Vettel win, do you hear me. I demand a grandstand finish in Interlagos! 

Saturday 27 October 2012

Indian GP - Qualifying


Previously on F1, this man dominated from start to finish and starts on pole tomorrow. You do the maths.

Stone the crows…I’m actually going to blog qualifying. For the first time since Singapore. Back to a golden age when a car other than a Red Bull was on the front row of the grid. Truly a happier time. So will it be 60 minutes of cars setting fast laps, at the end of which Sebastian Vettel will get pole? Let us see.

He actually looks scarier when he smiles.

All hail the Indian GP for putting on qualifying at a great time for the House of Power. The 5 year old refused to go to football due to the arctic weather outside (its safe to say he’s no Roy Keane in the making) and is ridiculously excited that the F1 roadshow has now rocked up in his beloved India. I asked him yesterday why he likes India so much and he said “because it has hot deserts and pyramids”. Go figure.

I’m boycotting the Beeb this weekend due to the fact that their chief F1 writer believes that apparently Michael Schumacher is only the 4th best driver of all time. Biased much? I await with interest the eulogies on the top three (Fangio, Senna and Clark – all of whom I think were utterly brilliant drivers for the record) and the convenient lack of mention of the fact that they won all or most of their titles in The Best Car of its Day just like the villainous Michael Schumacher.

Downtown Delhi - a riot of noise and colour and insanity.

Watching the opening moments of the Sky coverage which showed the team risking life and limb trying to navigate their way through downtown Delhi in tiny little cars, I realised that driving in Delhi looks a lot like Mario Kart. Crazy does not cover the half of it. Maybe this could account for the 5 year old’s fascination with the place! I read an article on driving in Delhi the other day and came across this brilliant quote:

“Real men don’t feel pain. They don’t cry. They also don’t use an indicator. We in Delhi – we are all khaalis mard. All Man.”


So Bernie, how about a Grand Prix in Cuba?

First up, an interview with Bernie (poor Martin Brundle, two near-death experiences in one day) about the endless, protracted negotiations on the Concorde Agreement. According to Bernie it is all the fault of the lawyers. In the good old days, according to Bernie, you used to just scribble things down on the back of an envelope – damn those pesky lawyers hey for wanting things done properly. More worryingly, Bernie seems to think we might lose 2 or 3 races in Europe in order to ‘move on’. Brundle to his credit looked utterly aghast and pointed out that this would mean we would only have 4 races left in Europe. OH GOOD. Because we all want more races like the coma-inducing Singapore, Korea and Bahrain ones.


Welcome to Narain's home grand prix!

Its Time For Narain to give us a guide to the circuit! Its actually quite a fun looking circuit with a mini Eau Rouge hill up to a very long straight. The main issue last year was lots of dust. Oh and also Narain said he got a bit dazzled by all the orange stripes bordering the track. Bless. Johnny Herbert said Narain’s main problem was his team-mate being faster than him. Fair point when all’s said and done.

Time to get on with the important business of qualifying and with two minutes to go of Q1, the top three were Vettel, Hamilton and Webber. Hovering just above the Dropzone of Doom was Paul Di Resta, Schuey and Kobayashi. Vergne was languishing in 18th spot while his team-mate, Ricciardo, shot up to 12th place. Kovalainen spun off and parked his car on some gravel. Its fair to say his career has been downhill (black-run style) since his one, failed shot at stardom at Team McLaren.  Dumped out of Q1 were the usual suspects: HRT x2, Marussia x2, Caterham x2 and Jean-Eric Vergne but, importantly, Narain Karthikeyan was NOT last. Anyhoo, the fastest drivers on the track in Q1 were Maldonaldo, Vettel and Rosberg. Hope springs eternal.

With 3 minutes to go of Q2, Vettel and Webber were the fastest Adrian Newey designed cars drivers on track. Bored already. Massa was stuck in 17th (wonder if Luca regrets offering that new contract yet?) and the Bad Boys of F1, Grosjean and Maldonaldo, were 15th and 16th respectively. Massa found a scrap of pace and shunted Schuey into the dropzone and all eyes were on Kimi who had yet to make it into the top ten but with a final push squeaked into 8th place. Maldonaldo from 17th did a blistering lap to zoom up into 7th place. Schumacher could not improve on his time and will only start tomorrow in 14th place. Not a good day at the office then for Schuey, Grosjean and Senna who all missed the cut unlike their team-mates. The biggest cloud of misery would be hanging over the Force India garage whose drivers, Di Resta and the Hulk, would only be starting in 12th and 16th. Ouch.


If the commentators are going to name-check James Bond, then I feel entitled to follow suit!

And finally time for the chaos, mayhem and pandemonium of the final shoot-out session. Well I talk a good talk but with 3 minutes to go, a grand total of 3 cars had set a time – Webber, Alonso and Hamilton. Is it just me or is this qualifying format not really working? In The Most Desperate Attempt Ever to include a topical James Bond reference, Brundle noted that Vettel was 7/1000ths out or alternatively 007. Not to be outdone, Crofty then said Vettel was ‘the Man with the Golden Finger’. Please make it stop now.

And whatd’ya know….Vettel put his car on provisional pole. Gah. This is how everyone will line up in tomorrow’s race:

1.     Vettel
2.     Webber
3.     Hamilton (snuck into 3rd spot at the death)
4.     Button
5.     Alonso
6.     Massa
7.     Kimi
8.     Perez
9.     Maldonaldo
10.  Someone is missing! No time was set...<checks results> ah, its Rosberg

Tough times for Alonso. Is the title slipping inexorably away?

So its the third consecutive Red Bull front row lock-out – oh whoopi-do-dah. Barring a miracle, it looks ominously like its Vettel’s championship for the taking. Darn Adrian Newey and his genius car upgrades that arrived in Singapore. Seb has the swagger jagger of a champion elect (while Alonso marched into the pits with a pained grimace) although despite what Martin Brundle says, Seb looks nothing like Brad Pitt! Clearly Martin would be as useless as the husband at a quiz-night picture round.

Anyway on race day anything can happen. We all know from Narain that those orange stripes can play havoc with a driver’s senses so fingers crossed for some cracking action.

Thursday 18 October 2012

Korean GP - The Race


Hallelujah! The chequered flag!

Writes title of race. Passes out with boredom.

Right, I have now returned with a double expresso and two fondant fancies from the Mr Kipling box I accidentally bought this morning. The Great British Bake Off Final – this is ALL your fault! And seriously…who knew that fondant fancies were The Hardest Thing to make on the planet. Obviously I have never tried but if the fantastically talented John, James and Brendan struggled, what hope is there for the rest of us! Actually there was only ever a Big Fat Zero of hope for me in the first place. So I feel respect is due to Mr Kipling although I suspect the fragrant Mary and the delectable Paul (yeh, we’re on first name terms now) might not agree with me.

Never ever ever attempt to make these at home. 

It would be so much more fun (for me anyway!) to blog about the glorious Great British Bake Off Final but with a super-human effort I shall haul myself back to the sensational and thrilling race at the Korea International Circuit in Yeongam. Hash irony etc.

After the 100% positive feedback that I received for my last race blog – ie. the one person surveyed, the husband, said he liked its short and punchy style (emphasis on short I feel but I’ll take whatever positives I can), I have decided to adopt a similar approach for this blog. Also I cannot face having to relive the whole race in its entirely. It might result in me eating the rest of the fondant fancies and overdosing on coffee. And frankly, that dullfest of a race doesn’t deserve ‘epic’ blog treatment and nor, lovely readers, do you!

So without further ado, to recap, the top ten qualifiers were:

1. Webber        2. Vettel
3. Hamilton      4. Alonso
5. Raikkonen    6. Massa
7. Grosjean      8. Hulkenberg
9. Rosberg       10. Schumacher

So what went down in South Korea (aside from some not-at-all predictable ‘hilarious’ gangnam style rap dancing – see later):

1.     Vettel took the lead on turn 1 on the first lap and stayed in the lead for all 55 laps for another mindnumbingly boring crushing victory. He has now won THREE races in a row. He is now level with Jim Clark and Niki Lauda with 25 career victories in the all-time list. But most importantly what this now means is Another Potential Turning Point in the Title Race in that Vettel has now overtaken Alonso in the Championship race and leads him by 6 points. On the one hand, I really want the title race to go down to the wire but on the other hand, I fear that Vettel has the momentum, the car and that Ferrari, even with the utterly brilliant Alonso inside, just can’t keep up. Damn and blast. F1’s Evil Genius, Adrian Newey (was he the Dark Lord in an earlier blog or was that Ron Dennis?) has clearly been hard at work.

One of the all-time greats, Jim Clark

2.   The podium line-up was completed by Webber in 2nd and Alonso in 3rd. I was amused to see Vettel’s comment that Mark was always on his toes. As. If. Sebastian. Will be VERY interested to see how team orders are carried out at Red Bull (that most sanctimonious of teams when it comes to opining on team orders) as and when the need arises. Its safe to say that Alonso gets the maximum possible out of that Ferrari although their 3rd/4th finish at the South Korean GP mean that they leapfrog McLaren into second place in the Constructors’ Championship. Quite stunning for a car that resembled a tractor in the opening few races and where one half of the driver line-up is Felipe Massa. Cruel I know.

3.     McLaren’s abysmal weekend: part 1. The Hero of Suzuka, Kobayashi crashed into Button and Rosberg at the start who were having a good old drag race when Kamui kamikaze’d (sorry, couldn’t resist) into them both, trashing Jenson’s suspension and indeed his race. I bet Grosjean and Maldonaldo were thinking ‘yeeeeees, it’s someone else’s turn for driver hate today’. It was a suicidal move – there have always been risky, aggressive drivers in F1 but this season, there do seem to have been a LOT of driver errors and First Lap Incidents. You wonder if the comparative safety levels now in Formula 1 have made some of the younger drivers feel they are almost untouchable. Dangerous mentality if that is the case.

Yet another First Lap Incident

4.     McLaren’s abysmal weekend: part 2. From 3rd on the grid, Lewis Hamilton could only finish in 10th place. Early on in the race, his car suffered a rear anti-roll bar failure which meant his tyres were chewed up and fried at a vastly accelerated rate. I thought Martin Whitmarsh showed real class in hailing Lewis’s drive as heroic. I imagine Ron Dennis is probably still chucking darts in a frenzied rage at his Lewis Hamilton dartboard on his Death Star. Lewis was the only driver to make 3 pitstops and he still finished 10th despite driving with a load of grass sticking out of his car for the final few laps. So credit where its due to Lewis Hamilton or Lewis the Bull as the 5 year old now refers to him. Nope, me neither! He also came up with Jenson the Button and Michael the Shoe. He was enormously pleased with himself. Bless.


Kimi: too cool for F1 and life generally

5.    And what of the 3rd placed man in the Championship. Mr Kimi-Matias Räikkönen! He finished in 5th place. What a fantastic season he is having! I would love, love, love to see him in a Ferrari again (his spiritual home, surely!?) or a McLaren or heck even just a Race Winning Lotus. I most of all want to see Kimi driving an Adrian Newey designed car. Please, Bernie, make it happen! But if Kimi ever gets bored of racing, an illustrious career in acting could await. This hot-off-the-press video clip is pure GENIUS.


6.    Presumably someone at Lotus has ‘had a word’ with Grosjean as he had an exceptionally quiet race. Just kept his head down, had a clean race and finished 7th.  Good day in the office for the Hulk who finished in a well-deserved 6th place after he executed a beautifully judged move on Grosjean and Hamilton near the end.

7.      And South Korea was a happy points hunting ground for Toro Rosso who finished in 8th and 9th respectively. And yet again, Mercedes were nowhere to be seen (even in and around the distinctly average middle-pack of cars). Rosberg’s race was terminated through no fault of his own and Schumacher finished 13th after being literally passed by the world and its dog. I might need some hypnosis after this season is over to block out any memory of Schuey in a Mercedes.

Jean-Eric and Daniel just shooting the breeze

8.    My new bookmarked port of call for all Narain news is the The Times of India website as he barely gets a mention elsewhere. But even on there, all there is to report really is that he finished 20th. In last place. Still next up, India. No pressure mate!

9.     Did anyone else wonder why the Beeb picked South Korea as a ‘live’ race? Clearly the opportunity to meet the legendary Psy was just too irresistible for Jake, Eddie and DC. For those of a weak disposition, LOOK AWAY NOW! Here are the boys in action – do not say you weren’t warned (I called this back in Suzuka!!).

10.  Johnny Herbert did the podium interviews! Why? Does anyone know? Psy so should have done the interviews and made the drivers do a gangnam dance. Just to wake us all up if nothing else!

So that pretty much wraps up South Korea. Thank the Lord. Just time for a quick update on driver news for 2013:

Massa has signed a one year deal at Ferrari. His EIGHTH season at Ferrari. Who’d have thought hey? Certainly not 99% of F1 fans. Just as we were all getting excited about the significance of a ONE year deal as being code for ‘Vettel moving to Ferrari in 2014’, that old kill-joy Luca di Montezemolo said he doesn’t want ‘too many roosters in the same henhouse’ at Ferrari. It would be carnage, pistols at dawn etc. Luca, you are no fun.

Maranello in 2014?

Its looking very likely that the Hulk will be on his way to Sauber next season and possibly will be partnered by Esteban Gutiérrez (what an awesome name – he sounds like a Mexican drug-dealer!). This sort of means Kamui is out on his ear and that Di Resta might be staying at Force India after all. Poor Paul, he’s probably still in denial waiting for the call from Maranello. Maybe in 2014?! Snigger.

And so just 4 races to go. Definitely getting into Squeaky Bum Territory. Next stop is India which for some inexplicable reason is a country the 5 year old has a strange affinity with so he is very excited! I just looked up who won the inaugural race there last year who shall remain Nameless. Clue: he is German and wins a lot and isn't Michael Schumacher. Obviously. Lets hope Grosjean qualifies high up the grid and causes some mayhem for all our sakes!