The importance of data: #F1 Power units for 2014

Luca Marmorini, Ferrari’s Head of Engines, has been quoted in Autosport.com as saying that it is important that Ferrari have a second (ie in addition to Sauber) customer for their 2014 power unit – note the term ‘power unit’ as effectively these are engine + energy recovery systems, so the simple term ‘engine’ no longer seems to do it justice.

The reason for this concern is that their current second customer Toro Rosso have recently announced that they will be shifting to a Renault power unit in 2014, which makes sense organizationally as they are co-owned by Dietrich Mateschitz of Red Bull with Red Bull Racing, so presumably they can share more data during development and racing and therefore improve the performance of both teams. However Toro Rosso’s location in Faenza makes Maranello the ideal partner from a logistical point of view as they are literally a few kilometres down the road. Location matters in F1, otherwise we wouldn’t have Motorsport Valley in the UK, and so the proximity between the power unit supplier and customer cannot be ignored. For this reason, Marmorini hopes that all is not lost with Toro Rosso and that they may review their decision to go to Renault, as he says on the Autosport site:  “I don’t know if Toro Rosso will be with us next year. We are still working very well with them now. They’re an important contribution to Ferrari engine development, but I also think we are giving them a competitive engine.”

A key factor in this is data. Derek Gardner, the now sadly departed designer of the six wheel Tyrrell, told me that a key problem that they had with the six wheeler was the speed of development of the front tyres, which were far smaller than the standard F1 front tyre that Goodyear supplied to all the other teams. As a consequence they were getting far less data on the performance of the tyre – as it was only fitted to two cars and so were unable to develop it as fast as the other which had feedback from twenty four cars (there were 13 teams racing back in 1976). Data therefore is everything if you want to improve performance.

So currently it seems (and things could still move around a fair bit) that if Toro Rosso move to Renault then Renault will be the leading supplier with power units in five teams: Red Bull Racing; Toro Rosso; Lotus; Williams and Caterham. Mercedes will be supplying power units to three teams: their works team plus McLaren and Force India. Ferrari will be supplying two teams – themselves and Sauber. It seems very unlikely that Cosworth, who currently supply Marussia, will be in the frame for 2014 (but never say never) and so who knows, we may see Ferrari supplying the power unit for Marussia, which will make an interesting dynamic in their race with Caterham to tenth place.

#F1 The Reason why Ferrari and Red Bull Racing Left FOTA

So after a great start to the 2012 season the F1 teams have left Melbourne and are on their way to (or have already arrived in) Malaysia. Aside from the racing, which is sometimes more interesting than the politics of F1, is a recent piece on the Autosport website by two well connected F1 journos: Jonathan Noble and Dieter Rencken. The piece is significant as it suggests the underlying reason as to why both Ferrari and Red Bull Racing left the team’s association: FOTA.

One of the perpetual tensions between Bernie Ecclestone’s Formula One Management (FOM) and the F1 teams, is that the teams feel that they are not receiving their rightful proportion of the media/ circuit revenues – as they are a key part of the show – and Mr E points out that they are taking none of the risk in running races and securing media deals and therefore do not deserve a more significant share of the benefits. The indications from the Autosport piece is that this could be the start of a process where some of the teams actually end up taking a stake in the commercial side of F1. They speculate that Ferrari shares could be transferred to provide them with a stake in the sport – you may have seen that the Lehman Brothers $1.5billion stake in F1 is up for sale, so ‘go figure’ as our American cousins like to say.

While the Autosport piece makes no direct reference to Red Bull Racing, or their owner Dietrich Mateschitz, acquiring a stake, they do mention RBR in the same piece with a quote from Christian Horner, so there is a certain amount of implication by association going on. An investment by Red Bull would make a lot of sense as Mateschitz currently owns two teams (RBR and Toro Rosso) and so, you could argue, is more exposed than individual teams and could therefore, like Ferrari, see the sense in acquiring equity in FOM. This provides a rather persuasive explanation for why they left FOTA, as presumably this placed some restriction on their flexibility in dealing with FOM, which could involve a range of issues, including share swops or buying shares for cash. Of course all of this is pure speculation at present, but I suspect the story will unfold simultaneously with the negotiations for the Concorde Agreement. I hope that the politics etc. don’t become more interesting than the racing, because I hope the racing will be fantastic this year, but I suspect that we will have a fascinating sideshow evolving that will certainly bring about some different arrangements than we have seen in the past. Don’t expect more of the same.

The Future of FOTA

The news that both Ferrari and Red Bull Racing are planning to withdraw from FOTA has led many to suggest that this is the end of the team’s association. Clearly it is better for the teams to act as one if they wish to get a bigger share of the FOM revenues, but as seems to always happen, self interest is the decider at the end of the day. They are all agreed that they want to reduce costs – doesn’t any organisation? The important question is therefore how do you do it? When you’ve got your own bespoke test track then a ban on testing means you can’t use one of your key assets to improve your performance, so you can see why Ferrari would feel that being in FOTA isn’t in their best interests, RBR are in a different situation where their business model is a very different one to the other teams, so, again it may make better sense for them to go their own way. Of course we also have HRT who were the first to leave FOTA back in January 2011. The other reason rumoured for the departure of Ferrari and Red Bull Racing is the issue of third (or fourth) cars where constructors are allowed to sell/loan their cars to other teams, a practice well used in the 1950 and 60s. Stirling Moss’s legendary victory for Lotus at Monaco in 1960 was not achieved for Lotus Racing, but for Rob Walker’s private team using a Lotus 18. This is an issue which FOTA has been divided on and it could be argued that building more cars would effectively reduce the costs of certain teams such as Ferrari and also for RBR, whose original concept was to provide cars for Scuderia Toro Rosso. It’s just a very different way of achieving the same objective.

However regardless of the reasons for Ferrari and RBR to leave the team’s association, does this spell the end of FOTA? As history has a habit of repeating itself, it is interesting to note that in the controversies around previous Concorde Agreements, there were three teams who were united in refusing to sign up to the fourth agreement which was due to run from 1997 to 2002. They were McLaren, Williams and Tyrrell. In many ways it was this stand that led to the financial demise of the Tyrrell organisation, a team who had dominated F1 in the late sixties/ early seventies. Eventually a revised, fifth, agreement was drawn up which included the three teams and was to run from 1998 to 2007. The current (sixth) agreement is to run until the end of 2012, and this is where the negotiations are focused. The point of history is that the three teams who resisted the fourth Concorde Agreement are very much at the heart of FOTA today, McLaren providing the chairman, Williams a committed participant and the team that was originally Tyrrell Racing has now morphed into Mercedes GP (sorry Mercedes AMG GP!), via spells as British American Racing and Honda, with senior management team Nick Fry and Ross Brawn very much committed to FOTA. So even if FOTA doesn’t represent all the F1 teams, it may represent a significantly powerful voice that can influence the terms of the seventh Concorde Agreement, if it holds together.

In the Shadow of Great Leaders: Enzo lives on

There are relatively few examples today of where a single leader imprints their personality on an organisation. A couple from contemporary businesses would be Steve Jobs at Apple (now holding more cash than the USA) and Richard Branson at Virgin. The question will be how long after these individuals have gone will their shadow remain in these organisations? I am reminded of a documentary I watched on the making of the Disney animated film Hercules. The Artistic Director was artist Gerald Scarfe (remember the animation of Pink Floyd’s The Wall? – that was Scarfe). There was one scene where Scarfe had drawn a satyr which showed a certain amount of buttock cleavage, ‘I don’t think Walt would like that’ said one of the Disney animators, who’s Walt I immediately thought, was he one of the producers? He was referring to Walt Disney who died over forty years ago, but clearly his spirit was alive and well throughout the organisation.

I have been very fortunate to have been able to meet and occasionally interview many of the movers and shakers in F1, but if I had to select the one person I would have loved to ask some questions to, above all others, it would have been Enzo Ferrari. Like Walt Disney, Enzo’s presence is still very much in evidence at Ferrari. The term ‘racer’ is often used to describe someone whose very being is driven by the need to race, and win races. If all of the money disappeared from F1 many people would disappear, but the racers would still be there. Enzo was the original racer, he was, at one time, a works driver for Alfa Romeo, he created one of the first motorsport companies: Scuderia Ferrari which provided cars and the support for rich individuals to go racing. His road car operation was there to help raise funding to go racing. Many car manufacturers have tried to emulate the Ferrari mystique by racing to promote their road cars. None of them come close and the reason is Enzo Ferrari, his passion and his values. I recently managed to get a copy of his autobiography ‘My Terrible Joys’, it is one of the best motorsport books I have ever read, it is candid and insightful, it is, of course, his view of the world, but it is all the more engaging for that.

It is now twenty three years since Enzo’s death and Ferrari have just put a piece on their website asking for comments on the great man:  http://www.ferrari.com/English/Formula1/News/Headlines/Pages/110814_In_memory_of_Enzo_Ferrari.aspx

I am certain that Enzo’s shadow will be there for as long as there is a prancing horse on a Ferrari.

From the frenetic to the tedious: Reflections from #ValenciaGP

So which do you think was the better race – a grand prix that lasted over four hours and where spectators had to endure hours standing in torrential rain, or a sunny, on time race in a beautiful Spanish city? Montreal and Valencia could not have been more different, and the biggest difference was the racing – in Valencia there really wasn’t any.

Winners

Vettel: Sebastian seems to have moved his driving onto a new level, and despite the mistake in Montreal which created Button’s victory, he really is looking untouchable. Hard to see how he can now lose the 2011 title, but stranger things have happened.

Ferrari: Despite a lot of criticism Ferrari seemed to be the only team with the race pace to keep RBR in check. As usual Fernando is the one that is always there to find the sudden opportunity. He could still win this championship.

Lewis’s radio broadcasts. I always enjoy Lewis claiming 100% visibility when it was chucking it down, as he did in Montreal. In the end it didn’t do him any good, but his radio broadcasts are always entertaining, or LOL as my daughter would text. I particularly enjoyed ‘ I can’t go any slower’ when his engineer was asking him to be more careful with the rear tyres, followed by ‘I can’t go any faster’ when it looked like he was dropping back towards Felipe Massa. F1 would be so much duller (yes really!) without Lewis.

Jaime Alguersuari: Alguersuari has come in for some (undeserved in my view) criticism in the last few races. He silenced his detractors in Valencia with a great drive from 18^th on the grid to 8^th in the race.

Losers

Valencia Circuit: Although it looks great, with the bridge and the old gothic fish market, but since the first grand prix it has only been able to produce mind numbing processional ‘racing’. Given that Bernie has always said there are too many European Grand Prix, it has always been strange to have two Spanish races, if we have to have two can we find a better track?

McLaren: McLaren made some good calls in Montreal, but the race really didn’t work for them in Valencia, perhaps it was the high downforce, or perhaps they don’t go well at boring tracks, let’s see what happens at Silverstone.

Michael Schumacher: Finished 17th, unlike some, I’ve been very reluctant to write Michael off, but as Vettel looks more and more like a champion, Michael looks less and less like one.

#CanadaGP. If not the best #F1 Grand Prix for a decade, it was certainly the longest!

The Canadian GP was over four hours long from flag (or rather lights) to flag. It was also quite the most extraordinary race that we’ve seen for some time.

Winners

McLaren: It has to be said that so far this year McLaren do not appear to have really delivered on the promise their car has been showing. But that changed in Montreal, well it certainly changed for one of their drivers and the team must take a fair amount of credit for opting for the high-downforce setting, something that neither driver seemed particularly happy about during qualifying, but it paid off in the race.

Jenson Button: It is perhaps a bit unfair that Jenson’s Championship season was achieved in an outstanding car, and one which most people remember for the rather creative interpretation of the regulations relating to rear diffusers. However it has to be said that on his day Jenson is peerless and this was another one of those days, he showed the kind of controlled aggression that you only associate with the best of Champions. There are still a lot of races to go (although not quite as many as Bernie might have liked) and there is still plenty of time for things to shift in the championship stakes in Jenson’s favour.

Charlie Whiting: Race Director Charlie Whiting often gets a lot of stick over this or that, and particularly from Martin Brundle relating to how long the safety car is out. Of course we don’t want to see safety cars, but we want to see loads of wrecked cars and injured drivers much less. I think he achieved a great balance between anticipating undrivable conditions and keeping the racing alive for the fans. I was convinced the race was going to be called off during the red flag period – not because I wanted to watch Antiques Roadshow - but because I felt that was the lower risk route. But he didn’t and what a race we had. Thanks Charlie.

Sir Stirling Moss: Stirling has retired from racing at 81 years old after giving himself a fright on the Mulsanne straight at Le Mans, the equivalent of what most other 81 year olds might feel batting along the pavement in their mobility scooters. What an absolute winner, never a champion, but one of the most respected drivers of all time, and someone who Enzo Ferrari rated as the closest to Nuvolari he’d seen, you don’t get higher praise than that.

Losers

Lewis Hamilton: Lewis could have won this race, but in the way that Alonso is often ahead of his car, Lewis seems to be ahead of everything, particularly the car in front, before he’s passed it. There seems to be an air of desperation about Lewis’s driving. Let’s hope he’s got things a bit more under control for Valencia.

Ferrari: As in Monaco Ferrari showed great promise for the actual race with Fernando not really being able to mount a serious challenge. Filipe had a rather erratic race, but redeemed himself with a last minute charge to take sixth away from Kobayashi.

Team Lotus: With one HRT and two Virgins ahead of them at the end Team Lotus won’t have been happy with their days work. They need to start making progress if they want to seriously challenge Toro Rosso, Sauber, Williams and Force India.

The value of technical leadership: why Ferrari need a Ross Brawn

With Sam Michael and Jon Tomlinson leaving Williams, and the news that Aldo Costa will be standing down from the Technical Director role at Ferrari, it looks like some of the F1 teams are getting into panic mode and believe that a bit of firing is needed. Unfortunately, although such managerial machismo may create the impression of decisiveness from the top, it will only work if these specific individuals are the real source of the problem. Quite often this is not the case, and that means that the problem remains but is now compounded with all the effort and disruption of recruiting or promoting new people and integrating them into their new roles.

When we interviewed Ross Brawn at Ferrari back in 2004 we asked if there was a particular innovation that had created their success, this was his response: “… if we had an innovation here it’s the fact that we combine the engine and the chassis together as one whole, but we apply that principle to all areas of the car with the electronics, the engine, the chassis, the aerodynamics, the structure, it all had to be a whole, there was no point in having one area very strong and the other area weak.” Aldo Costa had replaced Ross in this overarching role focused on ensuring that all the departments worked together to get the best overall result – this role requires not only managerial skill, but also technical knowledge and capability, these ingredients are only found together in a few key individuals, Ross Brawn is one of these and apparently Aldo Costa is not. However Ferrari have now segregated the technical roles into chassis (Pat Fry), engine and electronics (Luca Marmorini) and production (Corrado Lanzone), each reporting into the team principal. This implies that the only person with an overall responsibility and overview is Stefano Domenicali. Stefano is a lovely guy and a great manager, but he doesn’t have the technical insight of a Ross Brawn to knit the whole thing together, that is what Ferrari need now.

Is Tony Fernandes the fourth visionary for global motorsport?

John Hogan is a man who has seen it all in Formula 1. As a key part of Phillip Morris’s development of the Marlboro brand in F1 he has been behind the scenes of many of the shifts and changes over the last forty years. Having had the privilege of sharing a platform with him in the past, I know he is also pretty clear as to who the most influential people have been in the history and development of F1. In his view there are three: Enzo Ferrari, Colin Chapman and Bernie Ecclestone. Each has had a profound effect on the sport/business of F1 well beyond their respective organisations. Ferrari in building the world’s most renowned motorsort business, capturing the blend between mystique, glamour and the power of racing; Chapman in driving new technologies and commercial opportunities, providing the basis for today’s focus on aerodynamics and the use of commercial sponsorship; and Ecclestone by creating a global media product out of a series of fragmented commercial arrangements between race organisers and teams, which is today surpassed only by the Olympics and World-Cup Soccer, and they occur every four years. The big question of course is will anyone approach the contribution and impact that these three gargantua have had on the development of Formula 1? I don’t have a ready answer, but I think Tony Fernandes could be on the right track.

One of the biggest challenges for global motorsport today is not finding new F1 races, but building the grass roots enthusiasm that underpins the development of talent and expertise that are needed for the future. With purpose built F1 circuits in places like Malaysia, China, Korea, India and Abu Dhabi the problem they face is that, unlike those in the UK, Italy, USA and Japan there is virtually no grass roots infrastructure of racing to support them. The next big opportunity is therefore to embed motorsport in these areas, in a sense to build the foundations under the house, because without this there will be no sustainable future for these circuits.

In addition we see many of the world sports car manufacturers fighting to go even further upmarket. In a market segment which is already well populated by powerful brands such as Ferrari, Porsche, Mercedes and Aston Martin we now see firms like McLaren and Group Lotus also trying to enter this space. Of course everyone wants high value products which can make massive margins due to their brand strength (just look at the success of Harley Davidson as an example of this), but that’s just the problem everyone wants to be there and so the competition is immense, and this of course puts downward pressure on margins. The big opportunity is not to go for the obvious high value end of the market, but the low value, low price segments which has the potential to grow the market and grow the enthusiasm that is needed to underpin and engage with motorsport in emerging markets. That is exactly where Tony Fernandes seems to be heading by linking his F1 project with the Caterham Car company, I think the opportunities here are immense, and it could be that Fernandes is making a small step on the road to becoming the fourth F1 visionary.

Is F1 an individual or team sport? The case of team orders

Jean Todt is now in the position of having to enforce the rules against team orders, rather than applying them

F1 has found itself in a rather silly situation, in that the rules say that team orders cannot be applied to alter the positions in a race and yet everyone recognises that this is practically impossible to enforce, so it will be interesting to see what the FIA’s World Motorsport Council makes of the goings on at the German Grand Prix this weekend. The current rules were created following the way in which Ferrari applied team orders at the Austrian Grand Prix of 2002. This was in the period when Ferrari were building up to their dominance of F1, with Michael Schumacher winning the drivers’ championship for five successive years between 2000 and 2004. It was clear to most of those following F1 that Ferrari had a clear strategy of focusing all their efforts on securing the drivers’ championship for Schumacher, with the additional driver providing a clear supporting role, however the way in which they secured the win in Austria with the unusually dominant Rubens Barrichello being asked to allow Michael to pass and secure the win resulted in a global outcry that races were being fixed. The notion of team orders is as old as Grand Prix racing and certainly has existed in Formula 1 since it started in 1950, particularly as from 1950 to 1957 there was no constructors championship and so everything was focused on getting one particular driver to become world champion, unless you were Enzo Ferrari of course, when no driver was allowed to become more famous than his cars (although apparently this philosophy has now changed!).

Some teams, notably Williams, McLaren and more recently, Red Bull Racing, have been very explicit that they do not have team orders, although there are generally agreements between drivers to avoid situations such as those at the Turkish Grand Prix where Webber and Vettel took each other out of the race, and Button and Hamilton very nearly managed a similar feat a few laps later. I have always regarded F1 as a team, rather than an individual sport, it therefore makes sense for some explicit orders to exist so that the team is maximising its performance. After all the only separation, apart from the drivers’ and their entourages, are the dedicated race engineers, the same mechanics do the pitstop no matter which driver it is, the same people design and build both cars – one team with two players. Jean Todt was therefore unrepentant back in 2002, as Ferrari Team Principal, when he received widespread criticism for asking Barrichello to relinquish the lead – it was for the good of the team and that was where his priorities lay. However, lest we forget, F1 is also a spectator sport, and there was no question that Turkey 2010 was one of the most exciting Grand Prix this year because drivers from the same team were genuinely racing each other. So we are left with a typical F1 compromise, no team orders, or rather no team orders that look like team orders. So when Rob Smedley radioed to Massa that ‘Alonso is faster than you, please confirm’ it was clear to anyone with a passing interest in F1 that there was some other meaning here, and when Massa duly let Fernando past it became self-evident what that meaning was.

It is interesting to ponder as to the wording on Fernando’s Ferrari contract, given his experiences at McLaren he was probably very keen to get some explicit commitment to number one status at the Scuderia. I’m not a lawyer, but I wonder if a contract (and I clearly have no knowledge as to whether or not this is the case with Alonso) which effectively applies team orders – ie one driver is explicitly given rights over another – is enforceable in a sport where the rules clearly state the opposite? The FIA has a Contracts Recognition Board, designed to arbitrate in contractual disputes between teams, I wonder whether they also need to be vetting contracts to ensure they comply with FIA regulations? Maybe something for the new President of the FIA – Mr Todt – to consider.

But I’d like to propose a different solution. I have no problem with Ferrari applying team orders – it is a strategic choice that they have made in how they run the team. I believe each team should make an explicit and verifiable statement to the FIA and the public about their approach to team orders, so Ferrari can stop pretending to be doing one thing while clearly doing another. It might be embarrassing for some number 1 and number 2 drivers, but at least the fans will know where they stand and allegations of race fixing would become a thing of the past, imagine that!

A bad weekend for Ferrari: the winners and losers from Valencia

 

 

 

 

Valencia 2010 was a race to forget for the Scuderia

Winners

Sebastian Vettel. From the air Valencia is an attractive circuit, but like most of the city based street circuits such as Monaco and Singapore it has tended to deliver a noisy, high speed procession rather than an exciting F1 race. So the formula for winning at Valencia is pretty simple – get pole, make sure you keep it at the start of the race, and stay there for the rest of the afternoon, if anyone starts to close on you, put in a few quick laps to let them know you have more in reserve if they want to make a fight of it. That was exactly what Sebastian Vettel did. It was a faultless performance and one in which he has now reasserted his championship campaign.

AussieGrit. While his team mate put in a faultless performance to dominate the European Grand Prix, Mark Webber had a more difficult time, he didn’t make a good start from his second position on the grid and things seemed to go from bad to worse as he moved back through the field during the opening lap to ninth place. Red Bull responded by changing his strategy and bringing him in to make his pitstop early, this resulted in his now having to make his way through the ‘B’ teams of HRT, Virgin and Lotus. Heikki Kovalainen was leading this group and decided, as they were racing for position – allbeit 18^th place, that he would defend against the Red Bull. This resulted in a potentially horrific accident where, on colliding with the rear of the Lotus, Webber’s car did a backward summersault and then hit the barriers at speed, fortunately Webber was able to immediately climb out of the car and return to the paddock. Of course the safety features of the car and track, and a good dose of Aussie grit enabled him to do this, but it was also clear that a small variation in Webber’s trajectory could have produced a far worse outcome. It also vividly underlined the inherent danger in having too large a performance gap between the back and front of the field. This is something that the Le Mans 24 hours has always had to contend with, but it reinforced the case of those who have successfully argued for reintroducing the 107% rule (any car which is slower than 107% of the lap time of the fastest is not allowed to race) for 2011.

Kobayashi-San. At Abu Dhabi in 2009 Kamui Kobayashi was the talk of the paddock after his performance for Toyota, standing in for an injured Timo Glock. However during 2010 the abilities he demonstrated at the Yas Marina circuit have been far from evident, until Valencia that is. As I mentioned earlier this is a hard circuit to demonstrate any kind of race craft, but that was what Kobayashi did, with a lot of help from the strategic minds on the Sauber pit-wall. He stayed out when the safety car was deployed and therefore found himself moving from 16th to third place, as pretty much everyone else had dived into the pits. He kept his position meaning that he used his harder compound tyres for 52 laps of the 57 lap race, he then popped into the pits to change to the obligatory softer compound and promptly overtook the duelling Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Buemi, both of whom were equipped with the same Ferrari engine as Kobayashi. Perhaps there was a bit of luck involved, but in F1 it’s all about making the most of it when you’ve got it, and that’s exactly what Kobayashi-San did in Valencia.

Losers

Ferrari. Valencia was Fernando Alonso’s big opportunity to reinstate his campaign to be a contender for the 2010 world championship – a position which was very much taken for granted at the start of the season, and underlined by a dominating performance at the first Grand Prix in Bahrain. But things change quickly in F1 and their season has been undermined by an underperforming car and some uncharacteristic mistakes from the two times world champion. With this also being one of the two home grand prix for Alonso, and with Ferrari also bringing along a number of well publicised upgrades, the expectations were being built up well before the race. Fernando was undoubtedly well placed for a good result at the start, but all of this unravelled horribly when the safety car came out at the worst possible moment and saw him slip back from a solid third place to ninth. What really urked Fernando was that his nemesis, one L. Hamilton, who had been just ahead of him as the safety car emerged from the pitlane, decided to pull ahead, rather than tuck behind the silver Mercedes. Hamilton momentariy hesitated on seeing the safety car emerge, but then floored the throttle, leaving Fernando to sit behind the safety car, undoubtedly fuming and waiting for retribution to be exacted on the McLaren driver. Eventually Hamilton received a drive-through penalty, but given the twenty minutes or so that had elapsed from his misdemeanour this meant that, even having served his penalty, he still retained second place, whereas Fernando now found himself in ninth. As a consequence all the frustration that Fernando and Ferrari were experiencing was directed onto the FIA, the safety car rules and their implementation. In the Jean Todt and Ross Brawn era the idea of Ferrari publicly declaring that the FIA handling of a situation was a ‘scandal’ and their driver claiming that the outcome of the race had been ‘manipulated’ would have been unheard of. Ferrari would handle this kind of thing behind closed doors and in a way that did not create overt division between themselves and the regulatory body. The fact that such public statements have been made is a sign of their frustration at a lack of progress in a season in which they should have played a far stronger role than they have managed to do so far. Things can only get better for Ferrari.

Mercedes.

The other big team who are not delivering to expectation is Mercedes. There was much talk about the fact that the Brawn car of 2009 performed so well because the (then Honda) team had switched focus to its development early in 2008. I wonder at what point Mercedes will decide that most of its technical efforts should now focus on their 2011 car? With Nico Rosberg finishing 12^th and Michael Schumacher 16^th, even though they too were effected badly by the safety car, it suggests that they may have already made their decision.