FUEL TEMPERATURE BURNS ANGRY FANS!
Some things just won’t go away, like those people ringing you asking if you want another pre-approved credit card, home loan mortgage, or people trying to sell you knock off Viagra through junk mails, not noticing you don’t need them etc. I started writing this article last month and gave up on it, not knowing how to finish it. Thanks to Mclaren’s appeal decision; however, it just made my job a lot easier.
Sunday 23rd September 2007.
No grand prix this weekend but some good motor sport to watch. It is nice to watch some racing without the politics, I thought. Me and my big mouth...
A nice timetable for the day; and with no work today I could watch the World Touring Car Championship (WTCC) in the UK at Brands Hatch. Then after that is the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM.) with the title close up.
DTM is a nice little series with the German car giants. Mercedes and Audi going head to head fielding 10 cars each. It’s also been a good retirement home for F1 stars, like Jean Alesi and Heinz Harald Frentzen, they have taken part in the series in previous years and still has Bernd Schneider won the title 5 times. Bernd’s F1 career is not taking off after driving for struggling team Zakspeed.
For me, I like to see how Double F1 champion Mika Hakkinen goes on. He used to make my Sundays miserable, when I was 15, beating my beloved Ferrari. But I certainty miss him. Now he’s no longer in F1, be good to see the Flying Finn racing again.
That’s all I wanted to see, good close racing. I almost got it too; the trouble was in my native look at things I forgot how much Audi and Mercedes just don’t get on. So those politics reared there ugly head again. It was a gradual build up to disaster but it happened. Basically the two Audi drivers Mattias Ekstrom and Martin Tomczyk got wiped out... by Mercedes drivers. First off was Hakkinen trying an ambitious move on Tomcyk then later Ekstrom got punted into the gravel after a clash with another Mercedes driver. Personally I was enjoying the scraps, it was certainty an action packed race. They were at the Barcelona track that the F1 guys use, but using the shorter configuration and there was overtaking clashes and generally annoyed drivers fighting it out very angrily on track. Great stuff!
Then with 10 laps to go it all got a bit strange. The cameras cut to the Audi pit garages who were clapping. Which was odd because Audi didn’t have anything to clap about, with Mercedes being 1-2-3 on the road highest Audi in 4th which had just been passed by another Mercedes that had left it bouncing across the grass and gravel before it rejoined. Then one Audi came in to the pits then another and another. Timing as it was on a commercial break. Once the action returned, it was clear there was no more “action” to watch. All the Audis had been called in to the pits to retire in protest.
The cameras were not on the cars racing but instead were on Audi boss Wolfgang Ullrich and Mercedes boss Norbert Haug, having a heated discussion with each other before walking off. Each on their mobiles probably speaking to people back at head quarters explaining what on earth was going on. In fact, that’s all I saw for the last few laps, high ranking people in Mercedes or Audi team shirts on mobiles walking round looking annoyed, serious faced or just trying to stomp about looking important. The racing got put forgotten about as this mini drama played itself out, which was a massive shame as Jamie Green trying so hard for the past few years took his first win on Merit. He was so far ahead by the time Audi decided to pull out he had no idea what was going on until told just before he went on the podium. The results made interesting reading. Only 6 cars finished the race and as I sat there I was sure I’d been here before. Seeing a lot of cars pull out of the race into the pits leaving just 6 cars...
Ah, yes! F1 US Grand Prix Indianapolis 2005, probably the biggest case of shooting yourself in the foot I’ve seen in my lifetime of watching motor sport. F1’s strength in America hasn’t been as strong as maybe Bernie Ecclestone would like, the fact is there is a following in America. Those events that weekend were just a joke where interests of teams and commercial aspects took over the bigger picture.
To recap on Friday practice the Toyota of Ralf Schumacher on his first flying lap of the weekend smashed heavily into the wall; re-enacting his smash the year before, this time luckily without injuring his back. The events then spun out of control, it turned out that a manufacture fault in the Michelin tyres, meant that the diamond cut service and the unique (to F1) Turn 13 with its 9 degree banking had caused the tyre sidewalls to fail on the left hand rear side. Michelin had found the tyres wouldn’t last more than 10 laps. To comprehend things, it was in the regulations for that year the teams could not change tyres. The 3 teams on Bridgestone had no problems at all; the 7 Michelin teams on the other hand were in trouble. Michelin had said they would not allow any team they were supplying to race on the unsafe rubber.
All teams except Ferrari had agreed that they should put a chicane before Turn 13 that would scrub the speed off and reduce the load on the tyre, that Michelin would be safe enough for their tyres. The FIA said no to the chicane idea. Their argument was that the FIA could not sanction a chicane without proper testing of it. They have very specific guidelines when evaluating circuits, run off areas, weather the corner itself is dangerous to cause an accident itself. FIA president, Max Mosley, said that if they had put this chicane in place and it had caused an accident, injuring a driver or a piece of a car flying into the crowd, then an investigation would show that the chicane had been put in place without following its own safety guidelines, how would that look in court? Fair enough, so the chicane can’t happen. The teams had gotten so fixed on the chicane idea that no other realistic idea was put forward. Nobody backed down. Bridgestone runners pointed out that when they had tyre problems in Spain Michelin didn’t care, so why should them?
The situation had got to the point that all people were after was to blame someone: blame Michelin, some said Ferrari for not backing the chicane idea, even if they had the FIA would of said no. No one even mentioned a simple idea that would have solved the problem: why not stick all the cars on Bridgestone tyres? They were safe and Bridgestone were prepared to supply all the teams. In the wake of Michelin pulling out mid season because of “Indygate” and they would have easily been able to supply the teams there.
There probably would have found fault with that idea, to be fair, but there’s the point. F1 and motorsports has got into a very sad state of arguing and causing so many political battles it is ruining the championship itself. No motorsports is safe from it. Even in the WTCC, this year more than ever has had other teams moaning about BMW’s rear wheel drive so called advantage.
The trouble is, in a series like WTCC is that it has an “equivalency formula” that is meant to even things out. It never work though; like in 1988 when the FIA had a formula that was suppose to even out the difference between turbo and normally aspirated engines. It never works and even if it was any team that is struggling is going to try to immediately blame the most obvious advantage a rival team has then try and get it banned. This is for me an annoying aspect, like Ferrari’s flexi wings or Renaults Mass damper last year. There was no rise to the technical challenge and beat them with something better, it was more a case of forget that lets try to complain to the governing body and get it banned instead.
Like the spy saga that has ran all summer, it taints the sport. Whilst Ferrari have now won this year’s constructor title, the fact is, whether you agree with the World Motor Sport Councils verdict or not, Ferrari’s title is questioned. Were Mclaren cheating, and does the punishment fit the crime? At the end of every season you should be able to say, “Well that team won fair and square fair play to them”, and a lot of people just cannot say that about Ferrari’s title this year, which then begins to undermine F1 itself.
That is, where I do believe the FIA has opened a dangerous prescient for the future of F1. The Formula 1 World Title, why do drivers want to win it so badly? The answer is very simply, to prove that they are the best because it is the pinnacle of motorsports. The Fangio’s Ascari’s, Hill’s, Mansells, Senna’s and Schumacher’s all the champions have added to the history of the sport. The drivers want to win it because it is the greatest prize in motorsports, and while some drivers claim they don’t care about the history of the sport, but all of them have seen their hero race when they were young, James Hunt, Jackie Stewart, Niki Lauda. The title is about being the best by beating the best, not in a court room with lawyers...
Tuesday 23rd October.
Ever had one of those dreams? You know the one where you get home and there is that hot super model you’ve always fancied and she’s there in your room. You go over to her and she suddenly turns into a scary monster or that high school ex-girlfriend that had the acne explosion on her face, you then wake up in a cold sweat wish you’d stuck with the first part of the dream. That’s exactly where I am right now.
Sunday’s season finale race was unbelievable, somehow the underdog of the 3title contenders, Raikkonen, was able to close the 7 point gap and win the title from Alonso and Hamilton. Unfortunately thanks to a problem with fuel temperatures, both titles may have been settled in court this year.
To get it down to the problem in the most basic terms so that you and I can understand it is like this. The temperature of the fuel in the car must be no more than 10°C cooler than the ambient air temperature of the track. Naturally this varies throughout the day so it is up to the teams to make sure that there fuel is within the correct temperature. The official track temp is supplied by the FIA on the timing screens that all the teams use. The reason for this is the cooler the temperature of the fuel the car gets a small boost of around 10 bhp, though this figure varies depending on who you ask. This gives the car a small advantage for a short amount of time as the fuel soon heats up whilst in the car. All the teams have different ways of keeping the fuel the right temperature in the rigs, not surprisingly the Mclaren and Ferrari teams are thought to have the most advanced systems to deal with this.
The trouble with the regulation is that it states the fuel temperature “IN” the car is 10°C of ambient temperature; the temperature is taken off the fuel rig, not the car. BMW and Williams successfully argued that with the heat of the engine and that the fuel hose itself is left in the sun and heats up itself the fuel itself would have been well within the 10°C rule. Also was the fact that there was another weather station supplies data, Meteo France. They had done a deal with the FIA and the cost to run Meteo France’s services was split between 8 teams. It seems there is no rule which of the two must be followed, Meteo France also carrying an FIA logo on it. At the critical points of the race where the fuel rig temperature is taken The FIA reading was to be between 36-37°C, whilst Meteo France showed a temp between 32-34°. Going by Meteo France the two teams were clearly within the limit. The two teams being at maximum to of been out of the range by 4°. So with data that could not be proven accurate and seemingly no one sure which is the official reading, they have to follow the race stewards decided they could not punish the teams.
That should have been it. The main fault, as far as I can see, is a lack of communication to the teams by the FIA. They should have said you follow the FIA guidelines on the timing screen not Meteo France. Also is the fact how can you say the temperature in the car is outside the rules if you have no way of knowing what its actual temp once it is in the car? It is totally understandable if teams put fuel in the car at a temp that is say 13° below ambient temperature if they know from experience it will only be 8° below and legal once it is in the car. Thus saving a couple of degrees and giving the team a legal advantage. In case you haven’t noticed F1 is a very completive sport. Whilst Mclaren may not like this, I see it’s more of FIA caused confusion than the teams doing wrong. A bit like Silverstone in 98 when the Stewards basically messed up the procedure of giving Schumacher a stop go penalty too late for passing under yellow flags. The Stewards messed it up that much informing Ferrari too late than the rules allowed and not giving the right penalty at that time (it should have been a time penalty added to his final finishing time but due to the mess up it was a stop go.) That meant Schumacher took the penalty on the last lap and crossed the finish line in the pits winning the race in the pit lane! It was an embarrassing mix up but not the teams fault and the result stood.
What to say about Mclarens appeal? I can’t say much other than I find their reasoning strange. McLaren F1 CEO Martin Whitmarsh said that,
“we feel that if we hadn't lodged our intention to appeal we would surely have been criticised by fans and Formula One insiders alike for not supporting our drivers' best interest."
Here is where you have to weigh up what is more important. The drivers best interest or the sports? Hamilton himself has said he wouldn’t want the title this way so what is the point? Later Mclaren realised an official statement saying;
“However, if there has been an irregularity, which is not the fault of the team, we feel that the matter must be properly examined to ensure that the rules are applied. This is something that we believe the FIA would fully support and would wish to be seen to have done.”
Hopefully what will come out of this is clarification of what is ok and what isn’t. The regulations in F1 have too many grey areas that teams are insure of (in most if not all teams they have people paid purely to point out these grey areas to exploit any advantage). Formula 1 does not need another title decided this way. Other than close racing and a good fight, 2008 should aim to have a year politically free as possible.
Maybe I’m dreaming again, and I hope that whatever happens the result of the race does stand. Not just because, yes, it is the best race we’ve seen for a long time but for F1 as a whole. I believe Williams and BMW have done nothing wrong, merely been a victim of unclear regulations. The title swapping hands now will do nothing to endear F1 to the casual viewers and will even make the dedicated fans switch off. That is what makes this sport. The fans, me and you, who tune in to watch, buy the team gear and follow what’s happening in the news or on the web. There’s not much point winning the race and championship when there’s no one there or cares to see you do it.
Thinking back to the DTM saga back in September, Wolfgang Ullrich was being interviewed and was asked “what do you have to say to the fans?” He defended his decision for pulling his cars out saying that Audi weren’t here to race like this being knocked out the race, What he didn’t say was “Sorry I know we are tainting the show and spoiling it for everyone” Shame because he may regret that one day when there are less fans than cars in the series.
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