Will all of the new teams survive to the end of the 2010 season?

Is Bernie Ecclestone the Nostradamus of Formula 1? Photo: Jenkins, Pasternak & West

Bernie Ecclestone seems to have a knack for predicting the future in F1 (although like other great forecasters of the future – he sometimes gets it very wrong – the British Grand Prix at Donnington, for example). He has been quoted in the Daily Telegraph as stating that he wouldn’t be surprised if ‘one or two’ of the current teams don’t make it till the end of the season. Given his prediction at last years’ Singapore Grand Prix that USF1 may not make it to the grid, Bernie’s views are normally very well informed and so are taken very seriously, given that he also made the point that he felt Lotus should remain this implies that the two teams to which he is referring are HRT and Virgin Racing. Given that HRT are having to destabilise their driver line-up in order to access sponsor’s cash, it certainly looks from the outside that the team are taking desperate measures to deal with desperate times, and therefore at some point the cash may run out for HRT. However, there does not seem to be an air of desperation coming from Virgin Racing, and Timo Glock, in particular, seems to be giving the Lotus drivers a run for their money in terms of establishing who is going to be the best of the new teams in 2010.

My preliminary analysis on race results so far is that the highest race position of the three new teams is Lotus having secured 13^th place at the Austalian Grand Prix, still some way from scoring championship points and unlocking the additional funding that points scoring teams enjoy. If we score their relative results for each of the 11 races so far on the basis of 6 points for the first of the six new team cars having completed the race, 5 points for the second etc. Lotus have 56 points, Virgin 55 and HRT 51, so not much to chose between them on this basis. If we look at the starting grid positions, awarding points on the same basis, then Lotus have 115 points, Virgin 73 and HRT 43. So, at this point in the year we have a clear running order: Lotus, Virgin and HRT. Bernie appears to be suggesting that the financial longevity of the teams is in a similar order, with Lotus being financed for the long run by Tony Fernandes, Virgin Racing have a medium term business model which is dependent on the Virgin brand being used to attract new sponsors and partners and HRT appear to be currently underfinanced and are having to resort to race by race funding strategies to keep the cash flow positive. In the past Mr E has himself stepped in to support struggling teams such as Minardi, in his interview with the Telegraph he suggested that the new teams were already costing him (ie FOM) a lot of money, without much to show for it in terms of media interest and spectators, maybe he’s signalling that they need to be strengthening their balance sheets if they wish to stay in the game, or maybe he’s already privy to one or two exit strategies.

Round 2: Winners and losers from Australia.

Kubica will have moved himself up to the top of a few shopping lists for 2011

So with Round 2 now completed how are things shaping up in 2010? Here’s my latest take on the winners and losers.

Winners

Formula 1: Well it was a great race for a start, no dip in the middle but a whole series of dramas as things unfolded and the differential speed of the competitors created some great TV. My favourite moment was when Alonso’s engineer radioed him to tell that Hamilton was now only 3.5 secs behind him – his response was ‘I don’t want to know!’ Great stuff. Let’s just hope that we don’t have to have rain to have a great F1 race.

Jenson Button: I thought Jenson’s move to McLaren was going to be a bit of a disaster for him, but it looks like I was totally wrong. As Martin Brundle predicted, his smooth driving style meant that he was far less troubled by tyre wear than anyone else, and of course, he wasn’t exactly slow either. This now creates a very interesting dynamic in McLaren – more of that later!

Robert Kubica: It is interesting to note that Kubica is the driver that the other drivers rate, and he showed why at Melbourne. Maybe the Renault is actually better than we thought at the start of the year, but there is no question that his second place was a stellar achievement. Kubica has just moved to the top of the front runners’ shopping lists for 2011.

HRT: Hispania were looking the most troubled of the new boys at the first race of the year, with Chandok effectively doing his shakedown in the race which only lasted for one lap, his team mate Bruno Senna went a bit further and retired after seventeen laps. However at Melbourne Chandok brought the HST car home, a real achievement given the trials and tribulations they have been through, albeit five laps behind, but it is still a finish.

Losers:

Michael Schumacher: Melbourne was not a good race for my 2010 predictions (although Ferrari are comfortably leading the constructors championship), I don’t think that Michael envisaged he would be fighting with Jaime Alguersuari for 10^th place in his comeback year, but that was what happened. My theory is that Michael will start to turn things around, but if things don’t change we could see him bowing out early as battling with the Toro Rosso’s is not what he expected to be doing when he returned to F1.

Lewis Hamilton: Lewis drove a typically aggressive race, fighting all the way through, but he also showed his fragility when losing his cool with the team, not a good idea when your team-mate is showing everyone else the way home. The battle for number 1 at McLaren is going to get very interesting.

Red Bull Racing: ‘To finish first, first you have to finish’ this is something that Red Bull have struggled with, particularly with Sebastian Vettel in the cockpit. Their cars are very fast, but do not seem to be as strong as the Ferrari or McLaren. Mark Webber clearly wanted to win this one, but things just seem to go against him, not a lot of breaks for the Milton Keynes based team, let’s hope things turn around for them in Malaysia.

Virgin Racing: As you probably know, I’m a bit of a fan of Virgin Racing and their approach to developing an F1 car, but things are tough for them at present. First, they’ve had to request permission from the FIA to redesign their car with a larger fuel tank so that it can finish some of the longer races – a pretty fundamental problem. And also they have not managed to finish a race (so it isn’t even clear if the fuel tank can take them full distance on any circuit). Glock and Di Grassi both retired, although Glock did manage to complete 41 laps out of a 58 lap race. Things can only get better!

Reflections in the sand: First impressions from Round 1

I suspect Mr E would have liked a bit more excitment from Round 1

So a few mysteries have been resolved and quite a few questions remain as to how things will shape up for 2010. Regarding drivers most of the number 1 vs number 2 groupings played out as expected – Alonso ahead of Massa (but not in qualifying), Vettel ahead of Webber, Hamilton ahead of Button, with the interesting exception (despite my predictions on the subject) of Rosberg both out-qualifying and out-racing Schumacher. It will be interesting to see how this shapes up over the next few races. Is Schumacher just happy to be an F1 driver once more, or is the will to win the same as before? If it is we can expect to see a reversal of this situation over the next few races, and in particular in the race rather than in qualifying. As Niki Lauda once remarked of his comeback at McLaren alongside a young new driver called Alan Prost – he knew he couldn’t win in terms of sheer speed, so did so on using his experience and a bit of cunning and guile – the next few races will be interesting at Mercedes.

The performance of the cars was interesting too. McLaren certainly didn’t seem to have an advantage in the straights with their driver’s knee operated rear wing stall system – perhaps it was all a ploy to divert the others away from other areas, remember the famous twin brake system that McLaren used in 1997? The Red Bull Racing exhaust system seems to be working well – by avoiding exhausting the hot gases over the rear of the car they have apparently created an aerodynamic advantage. It means a more complex exhaust system – they had thought that this was the cause of Vettel’s problem – but it turned out to be a spark plug. It will be interesting to see whether the other teams follow Red Bull in what would be a major redevelopment of their cars. But the most positive part of Bahrain for me was the pace of the Virgin Racing car which, with Timo Glock at the wheel out-qualified all the other new teams. Although neither car finished, they are clearly ‘new team’ fast and so have destroyed the myth that you can only build a fast car with a wind tunnel – well done to Nick Wirth and his team at Wirth Research. The next question is whether they can develop the car as fast as the wind-tunnel teams through the season.

And although there were some interesting factors related to the drivers and the cars – the same could not be said of the actual race! It was all a bit processional and if Vettel hadn’t had his problem, it would have been even less exciting. The tyres seemed to hold up pretty well and so we didn’t see the variations in speed that had been anticipated between full and light fuel loads. Perhaps the drivers and teams were feeling their way a bit and being over-cautious? It was certainly a very dignified start with everyone falling into the train pretty quickly – with the exception of a little duet from Kubica and Sutil. So let’s hope things liven up a bit in Australia, it would be a shame if the most exciting part of the 2010 season actually happened before it started!

And the winner of the F1 2010 World Championship is…

Will Williams win their first Grand Prix since 2004 in 2010?

Following on from the Oscars last night, I thought I would engage in a bit of fiction and make some predictions as to how I think the 2010 World Championship will end up. It’s a good time to make a prediction as after Bahrain on the 14^th March we will get a far truer picture of the form of the cars and drivers. At the moment we really don’t know – so I can have a guess and plead any false predictions on the lack of real data we currently have on the performance of drivers and cars!

My prediction is that the F1 2010 Drivers’ World Championship will be won by Michael Schumacher in a Mercedes, closely followed by Fernando Alonso in a Ferrari and then his team mate Filipe Massa, meaning the the F1 2010 Constructors’ World Championship will be won by Ferrari. I make this prediction based on the fact that for 2010 the removal of refuelling will move the focus away from a series of short pre-planned sprints on fresh tyres and optimal fuel loads, to a long distance race where the performance of the cars at the start will be very different from that at the end of the race. Where performance will be based on a drivers’ ability to conserve all the critical aspects of the car – particularly tyres and brakes through the race and also their ability to respond and adapt to changing conditions and competition – in other words, in Mintzberg’s terminology: strategy will be far less deliberate and planned and become far more emergent and adaptive. Given this, my view is that Michael Schumacher will be at less of a disadvantage, as the experience the other drivers have of the last two or three years will count for a lot less due to these changes. I also believe he will win because of his partnership with master strategist Ross Brawn, which will give them the edge in terms of reading and adapting to changing situations. The confidence they have in one another is second to none and their major competitors will be feeling their way in largely new driver/team relationships. Also Schumacher and Brawn have significant experience in sportscars and endurance racing, experience which will be relevant in the new F1 of 2010. OK so why Ferrari runner up and not McLaren and Red Bull? I think that the impact of Alonso at Ferrari and the return of Massa will be a powerful stimulant for the Maranello based team whose form in testing looked strong, insofar as this can be taken as a predictor of performance. I am clearly assuming that the collective potential of two world champions at McLaren and the stability of the driver line up at Red Bull will fail to overtake the Mercedes of Schumacher and the Ferrari’s of Alsono and Massa, so in all likelihood I will be totally wrong – such is the nature of pre-season predictions!

And what of the other teams? Well I will also throw in a couple more predictions, which perhaps come more from the heart than the head. I predict that Williams will win a race in 2010 – their first since 2004 – this is because I believe that Williams and Rubens Barrichello, along with Hulkenberg are a great fit, although the Cosworth engine is likely to be a bit thirstier than its rivals I think if we have changing conditions such as wet to dry or dry to wet, Rubens can be a formidable force. If the weather falls right this could be Williams’ chance.  I also predict that Virgin will be the best of the newcomers, I make this prediction, not because I don’t wish to see Richard Branson in an Air Asia hostess uniform (or Tony Fernandes in a Virgin one for that matter), but because I’d like to see the innovative approach of the 100% CFD design approach build up some credibility, I’m sure that at some point, in the not-too-distant future, the wind tunnel will be consigned to the history books, and given Virgin’s commitment to non-windtunnel approach I think the sooner they start to show promise, the better.

So will it happen as I predict? Probably not, and if you have any predictions of your own, please send them in. By next Sunday evening we’ll have a better idea as to who is on the right track.

And then there were three…

The news that USF1 will not be competing in the 2010 F1 world championship is a major blow to all those who have worked so hard in an attempt to create, not only a new F1 team from scratch, but also one located in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, an area better known for NASCAR (which someone once told me stands for North And South CARolina!) than Formula 1. Even the hugely successful Roger Penske located parts of his operations in the UK when competing in the US single seat series, and so locating an F1 team in the US was a bold move, and one which ultimately appears to have failed.

What is also intriguing is that it appears that speculation in the paddock that this was going to be the case has been building, not just in the past few weeks, but since autumn 2009. In my post of 1 October 2009, ‘Handling the press’  which has a link to a BBC interview with Bernie Ecclestone, in the interview Mr E himself states that he is concerned about USF1, it is therefore an open question as to why given this amount of speculation early on and a number of visits by the FIA, the team were allowed to continue to this point. It is clearly devastating to all involved in the project, and it is the other side of the glamour and success that F1 is more usually associated with. It now appears that 2010 will go ahead with three of the four new entrants, Virgin Racing, Lotus and Hispania (formerly Campos). However, given the turmoil of 2009 it is quite remarkable that three totally new teams have been created in such a short space of time. It is a real testament to the power of the competitive spirit – just the kind of thing you need to pull out of a global recession.

The Battle of the Brands: Ferrari vs Virgin

The Ferrari and Virgin brands have many similarities as well as some clear differences

You can tell a lot about a brand by its history and there is a fascinating contrast between new entrant Virgin and the team who were founded before F1 arrived in 1950 – Ferrari.

Both Ferrari and Virgin are global brands, both are inherently linked to a charismatic individual – Enzo Ferrari and Richard Branson – whose main focus in life has been to promote and stand up for the values of their brands. As is the case with Walt Disney, Henry Ford and even Steve Jobs, the individual and the brand are inseparable.

Both brands have strong national ties, Ferrari epitomise everything that is Italian, going back to the days when F1 cars were colour coded according to their home nation – the Ferrari red has therefore always been synonymous with Italy, it is their national F1 team and always will be. But beyond Italy the prancing horse is recognised globally to represent performance and aspiration, it is certainly more globally recognised than Formula 1 itself, particularly in North America. Similarly Virgin, although operating at a global level, have strong British, or specifically English, roots. Sir Richard Branson’s epic challenges in boats and balloons made him a national hero in the UK, he is portrayed as the archetypal British Entrepreneur, someone who could get things done and addresses problems in a practical no-nonsense way. When British Airways famously lost its way on branding and decided to remove the Union Jack from its tail fins, it was Virgin Atlantic who stepped in with the British flag featured on their new designs. When British building society Northern Rock got into trouble, Virgin were quickly on the scene with a proposed (and subsequently rejected) rescue bid.

But there are also some interesting differences. The Ferrari brand has always been linked to a very specific product range – luxury performance cars and motor racing, yes they have dabbled in merchandising perfumes, pens and laptops in a similar way to the brand leverage approach of Harley Davidson, and no doubt generate a reasonable return through licensing, but a Ferrari is a car, nothing less, nothing more. In contrast the raison d’être of the Virgin brand is to support new ventures and create innovative new business models. It is in effect branded venture capital. Virgin seek to make a return from using their brand to start up new concepts and then bring in new investors to take the business forward. They are not interested in stability or maturity, or any particular kind of product; they focus on dynamism and change. Whereas Ferrari epitmise tradition and stability (former Ferrari Technical Director Mauro Forghieri once told me that Ferrari had been slow to imitate ground effect aerodynamics as Enzo had refused to allow his cars to be fitted with ‘skirts’!), the Virgin brand has always worked best when up against the establishment. It is the cheeky newcomer which challenges the rules of the game and transforms an industry. Whether it’s taking on the big music retailers, the major record labels, transforming the concept of the recording studio, taking on British Airways in transatlantic air travel and the US airlines on the home territory, or even providing accessible space travel for the not-quite-so-mega rich. The Virgin brand works best when it has competition and it thrives on adversaries who are well established and the dominant player in their industry, in F1 this can only mean one team: Ferrari.

It therefore comes as little surprise to hear Sir Richard Branson responding to the comments made by Ferrari (see previous post) in traditional Virgin style; we may not be beating you today or even this year, but we will prove that we can be at least as good as you using a fraction of the budget and a different approach that will bring change to the industry over the next two or three years. Let battle commence.

A Message from the Prancing Horse Whisperer

So is this a race car transporter or a horse box?

Autosport has recently picked up on some comments featured on the Ferrari team website under the title of the ‘Horse Whisperer’. It is a channel that Ferrari have used to informally comment on F1 issues, particularly as they relate to regulations and the position of the governing body, the FIA. In the lastest instalment of the Horse Whisperer, they make reference to the damage caused by the ‘Holy War’ between the teams and the former FIA President, he’s not mentioned by name, but it is pretty safe to assume it is Max Mosley. The key message of this post is that in focusing on bringing in new teams and neglecting, or even discouraging, the manufacturers the FIA have had a negative effect on F1.

This is a position which Ferrari have stuck to all the way through 2009, they often referred to F1 now being more like F3, a direct reference to the background of some of the new entrants. Of course Ferrari did have their own agenda which was to extend the grid, not through new entrants, but by allowing well resourced teams to run a third car, this certainly would have helped them with their problem of having more drivers under contract than they could accommodate in two cars. If the FIA had moved in this direction then we would, in all likelihood, have seen a Massa, Alonso, Schumacher line-up in Ferraris this year, imagine that!

The Horse Whisperer is well worth a read for a Ferrari perspective on the world of F1, as you can see from the following quote – with my parentheses : “two teams [Lotus and Virgin] will limp into the start of the championship, a third [Campos] is being pushed into the ring by an invisible hand [ie it is probably Mr E.]  – you can be sure it is not the hand of Adam Smith [could the Horse Whisperer be an economist?] – and as for the fourth [USF1], you would do better to call on missing persons to locate it.”

Of course Enzo Ferrari himself was never really happy with new small teams, for many years he disliked the British constructors referring to them as ‘garagistes’ or ‘assemblatori’, although it is also fair to say that he developed a great respect for Colin Chapman and Lotus (that’s the original Lotus, not the current reincarnation).  But new teams can be good for F1. Most importantly in my book they often bring new ways of doing things and innovations that the existing teams have either not seen or simply ignored, such as the mid engine layout [Cooper] and composites [first used on the wings of the Hill F1 car]. It is the classic ‘innovators dilemma’ that existing businesses do not want to change as they have already invested in particular technologies and approaches which they do not want to let go of, in today’s F1 this is the wind tunnel. It is therefore the new entrant who has nothing to lose by doing things in a different way – Virgin Racing with their 100% CFD developed car – who can create the disruptive innovation that everyone ends up following. Of course, the real test will be on the track, and maybe not for a year or two, but change will come and F1 will be the better for it.

The 2010 F1 grid, some theories so far

Will CFD ever replace the windtunnel and will Virgin have a competitive car?

Any conclusions from an F1 test have to carry a major health warning that they may be simply a function of a teams desire to close the deal on some new sponsors (if it’s good) and running on heavy fuel loads (if it’s bad). Given the lack of sponsor decals on many of the cars at both Valencia and Jerez, the implication is that many teams still have some very big holes to fill in their budgets, or alternatively they are waiting to launch the full livery at Bahrain. Given that the tests are a good opportunity to give new sponsors exposure, I suspect the former is closer to reality.

But is there anything we can say, given all the provisos on fuel levels/ tyres etc. ? Well can I suggest one or two theories regarding the rhetoric around the teams at testing. The first is that the teams who claim that everything is going fantastically well (e.g. Virgin), means that it isn’t, and the teams that claim to still have lots of concerns and issues (e.g. Ferrari) means that it is. One big part of the build up to the start of the F1 season is expectation management. This is a difficult path to tread in that the new/smaller teams want to reinforce the message to their new investors and partners that they’ve made the right choice, and the larger teams want to make sure that if they do have a performance advantage it’s kept under wraps and that they don’t end up disappointing all their fans by not living up to expectations. My theory after Valencia was that the Ferrari engine was good, and this has not been disputed by the performance at Jerez so far, particularly that of the Ferrari powered Sauber and Toro Rosso. Ferrari themselves have been making lots of concerned noises after a dominant display at Valencia, a less dominant display at Jerez may be due to the fact that they don’t want to be seen to be too far ahead at this stage in the game.

The other really interesting comparison is between the two new teams running: Lotus and Virgin. Virgin have had a difficult start with some front wing problems and, so far, appear to be a few seconds behind the Lotus. Given that they both have the same engine, the main difference is that the Lotus was designed by using a wind tunnel and CFD and the Virgin by 100% CFD, this suggests that the CFD technology is not up to the wind tunnel, yet. However I do believe that at some point it will be and, if so, Virgin will have a potential advantage. Of course the big question is how long it will take and whether Virgin are prepared to wait for it to happen. Of course the good news is that both Lotus and Virgin have cars and are testing, whereas the other newcomers Campos and USF1 have yet to make it to a circuit.

Reflections from Valencia – The Ferrari engine is on top

You wouldn't put a Ferrari engine in a BMW would you?

It is always dangerous to read to much into testing, and this year the fact that the cars have far larger fuel tanks means that the variation of fuel weights is far greater and that trying to infer race performance is very dangerous.

However, I think there are a certain things we can observe from the general pattern of play so far. First the Ferrari engine appears to be doing a great job in putting Ferrari and Sauber (I know they’re still technically BMW Sauber, but in reality you wouldn’t find a BMW with a Ferrari engine would you?) at the front of the time sheets. Of course Toro Rosso also have a Ferrari power unit, but there performance hasn’t been too shabby. Second the Cosworth unit is on the pace and although Williams haven’t been toward the front of the timesheets they often focus on race performance rather than putting in a few quick times to keep the marketing people happy. Third, drivers wise if we focus on comparing within teams, Alonso and Massa have started as they mean to go on – fighting for ‘number one’ status at the Scuderia, which will make things very interesting. Hamilton has dominated Button, and Schumacher has dominated Rosberg.

Of course these could all be pure fiction as the teams are experimenting with different set ups and fuel loads, but next week things get even more interesting when we have the Jerez test and the Red Bull Racing, Virgin, Lotus and Force India cars will also be on the track.

All engines are equal, but some are more equal than others (updated)

The last time the Cosworth name appeared was on a 2006 Williams

As the Valencia test gets underway this week, aside from the car and driver comparisons that can be drawn, the one I’m going to be looking out for is engines. Admittedly Valencia is not likely to be an ‘engine’ circuit, but the performance of the engines, both in power, reliability and fuel economy is going to be a critical factor in explaining the performance of the teams in 2010. Fuel economy is a potentially critical issue as there will be no in-race refuelling and so the ability of the engine to require less fuel to complete a race is going to be a big competitive advantage. An announcement was made recently that the 2009 spec engines would not be ‘equalised’ . The FIA had given the engine suppliers the opportunity to adjust down the more powerful units if there was a view that there was an inequality, but it looks like (surprise, surprise) this could not be agreed. Of course this did not include Cosworth who have based their 2010 power unit on their 2006 spec engine. The engine was originally designed to run at 20,000rpm and will now run at the regulated 18,000.

The word on the street is that, of the 2009 engines, the Mercedes and Renault power units are likely to be the best combination in power and economy, with the Ferrari engine looking to be thirstier. Commentators have noted that Ferrari have recently registered a number of ‘reliability upgrades’ which are allowed under the regulations, which have been interpreted as Ferrari trying to address this problem. One of the most successful corporate and technological partnerships in F1 is that between Ferrari and Shell, in the past Shell have worked with Ferrari to develop fuels that both weighed less and gave a power advantage, I’m sure, if there is a problem, that it will be addressed before too long. But the really interesting question is how well the Cosworth engine will perform. The message I’m hearing from the Cosworth people is a bullish one, they are optimistic that they will be right up there in terms of performance and economy, however there are concerns that as the team have not run an engine in F1 since they partnered Williams in 2006, there could be reliability issues. Either way it will be interesting to look at the times at Valencia in terms of engines as well as cars and drivers.

Valencia first session, it looks like the engine order is Ferrari (Ferrari, Sauber); Mercedes (Mercedes, McLaren), Cosworth (Williams) and then Renault (I’ve excluded Toro Rosse [Ferrari] on the assumption that their poor performance is due to the fact that they’ve had to design their own chassis for the first time!)