COOPER: Hard To Draw Conclusions From First Four

Formula 1

COOPER: Hard To Draw Conclusions From First Four

After four races, the 2012 pecking order for Formula One is still not clear...

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted May 05, 2012 Balen (BEL)

The McLaren of Jenson Button leads the Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel in the Australian GP. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Outside of the August break, it’s unusual for F1 to enjoy two free weekends in a row during the season. However, for the drivers and teams, there hasn’t been much of a respite, thanks to last week’s Mugello test.

We’ve gotten so used to the lack of in-season testing over the past few years that the three-day session at the attractive Tuscan track became an event in its own right.

It’s easy to forget that in pre-internet days we barely even noticed that F1 testing was going on, so prevalent was it. There were weeks when cars might be in action at two or three different venues, depending on the preference of the teams and tire companies, and since the top drivers often weren’t at the same place at the same time, lap times were of even less value.

Over the past few seasons we’ve gotten used to the lack of in-season testing, and teams in turn have found their ways around it, by focusing on ever more accurate simulations.

Naturally, the sheer rarity of last week’s Mugello test meant that a lot of attention was focused on it. Given that it preceded the first European race in Spain – where traditionally teams introduce the update packages they’ve been working on since January or February – it was clearly of some interest. But how relevant was it, in reality?

In the end we didn’t really learn that much from the lap times. While there was some new stuff, not surprisingly most people have saved their more significant updates for Barcelona. Why rush through the design and build of new pieces to run on track on Tuesday, May 1 in Italy – when Friday, May 11 in Spain is of far more significance? Those extra days make a lot of difference.

Of course some people did have new bits to try, and a lot of folks gleaned some valuable information on tires by playing around with setups – doing stuff they wouldn’t have time to do on a race weekend – so it wasn’t a complete waste of time for the teams. But it was hard to infer anything useful from the headline times, even if we faithfully reported them. On each of the three days, the best time was set on hard tires, so we never really saw the ultimate pace. Nobody had much to gain by running in qualifying trim.

It was interesting to hear Christian Horner, whose Red Bull team always cuts it fine when it comes to bringing parts along at the last minute on race weekends, play down the significance. The fact that McLaren preferred to use its test drivers and send Jenson Button to Budapest to do doughnuts in the city streets also says a lot.

Kimi Raikkonen was not exactly disappointed to miss out: “We didn’t have any major new parts to test and we don’t race at Mugello, so I was not crying when it was decided that I wouldn’t test. I know the track well but there was no need for me to drive. I am here to race and that is what I will do in Barcelona...”

Only when everyone shows their hands with their full update packages in Spain will we have a clearer idea of what the current pecking order is, and even then we should be cautious. While the first European race still has some significance, these days the top teams bring new stuff constantly.

The bottom line is that things will continue to change by the weekend as teams introduce new parts, and different tracks and climate conditions play to the strengths of the various cars. And the overriding factor this year is, of course, how teams deal with the tires on a given weekend.

It’s always been that way to some degree, of course. However, this year everything is so close that a top team which has an off weekend risks not just slipping off the first couple of rows, but outside the top 10.

“I think this season is going to ebb and flow,” Horner said after Sebastian Vettel’s Bahrain win. “As I’ve said, it’s a matter of trying to be consistent at the races that you can’t win, take the maximum out of them, and at the races you can, you need to deliver. I’m sure this championship with 16 races to go there’s going to be a lot more variation to it.”

Consistency is certainly what’s going to win titles. It’s already clear that no single driver is likely to get into double figures in terms of wins and poles this year, and it’ll be the fourth and fifth places achieved on days when it doesn’t all come together perfectly that ultimately win somebody the title.

Sebastian Vettel (Center) celebrates winning the Bahrain GP as fellow podium finishers Kimi Raikkonen (Left) and Romain Grosjean (Right) look on. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

It shouldn’t go unnoticed that Vettel and Red Bull moved into the lead of both championships after Bahrain, and few would have predicted that a couple of weeks earlier – even Horner himself.

“We’ve consistently managed to be scoring pretty decent points in the first four races," Horner said. "We’ve had four fourth places with Mark (Webber), we’ve had a second, a first, a fifth and an 11th with Sebastian dropping that place with the backmarker [in Malaysia].

“And that puts us into the lead of the drivers' and constructors’ championship after the flyways, which is certainly not what we were expecting after the first couple of races, so it just shows if you maintain your focus and teamwork, that it can pay dividends.”

In contrast, McLaren started the season in brilliant style, but of late has endured a difficult time. Bahrain, in fact, was a total disaster by the team’s standards as the team got the complex tire equation wrong.

“We’re a strong team, we’ve come back from these things plenty of times before,” rued Martin Whitmarsh after the race. “You have bad days, and this was certainly one of them.”

Whitmarsh remains confident that over the long haul, McLaren can still come out on top, despite the intense competition that we are seeing.

“I think it’s a much more interesting championship right now than I’d like it to be," the team boss said. "It really is. We’ve never discounted the Red Bulls. You’ve had four different winners, four different constructors winning the first four races of the championship.

“We’ve got to focus on what we did wrong, and clearly we did something wrong. These tires are very, very challenging, and if you get in the sweet spot then you’re in great shape, and if you’re out of that sweet spot, you’re in for a tough time.”

The good news is that even the teams find it hard to judge what’s going to happen next, which suggests that the season will continue to entertain us.

“Four races now have all been very, very different in complexion,” says Whitmarsh. “And who knows what’s going to happen at the next one. We’ve got to understand what we did wrong, how we weren’t performing. We’ve got the people who are capable of doing that and recovering the situation. There’s no magic."

Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED