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Formula 1
HOBBS: F1’s New World Order
David Hobbs says that even though three teams may have trick aerodynamic aids in Melbourne, that doesn't always guarantee success....
Melbourne: A great place for a race (LAT)
After the winter’s testing it’s difficult to really make any prognosis.
You’d expect the main teams – Mclaren and Ferrari – to be right up there as always, but toward the end of the winter the Brawn-Mercedes came along, and then Kazuki Nakajima turned the fastest lap of all on the final day of preaseason testing at Jerez for Williams.
Of course, winter testing isn’t as reliable as it looks. Some teams might be running underweight, some might run with low fuel, no rev limiter etc, but the first practice in Australia has turned the world upside down a bit, with Nico Rosberg going quickest. I know one swallow doesn’t make a summer, but it’s pretty significant that all the so-called “diffuser” teams are right there at the front, namely Williams, Brawn and Toyota.
Mark Webber did a good job to split them in that Red Bull. He’s going to have his work cut-out this year with young Sebastian Vettel breathing down his neck rather than David Coulthard. Meanwhile the two Ferraris were in mid-pack, and the two Mclarens were right down at the bottom of the charts!
Obviously a number of teams protested the “diffuser” teams, and they won’t have a resolution to that until after Malaysia next week, but if they are allowed, I’m sure Mclaren and Ferrari will very quickly bolt something new onto the car.
However, having a trick new component isn’t an automatic passport to success. In 1971 I won the Formula 5000 championship in a Mclaren, and the following year my team owner Carl Hogan bought a couple of Lola T330s, which were the hot thing at the time.
But this kid called Graham McRae came from New Zealand with his McRae Mk I chassis. He brought with him these Swiss-tuned Chevrolet engines, and we struggled a little bit by comparison – I finished third in the points, behind McRae. So, for 1973 we decided to buy in a set of these Swiss engines, at great expense but seemingly an excellent choice, as in McRae’s car they had been bulletproof.
How wrong we were! They were a massive disappointment in terms of power, and worse still, they weren’t very reliable either. That was one of those things where we thought we had a world-beater, but it turned out to be a large waste of time and resources.
I drove a lot of dud cars in my early career, after initially driving some good ones, and there’s no doubt about this – driving a bad car is not good for your psyche or your reputation. A good example of this is young Adrian Sutil in the Force India. He crashed a lot last year, but it is because he’s in a bad car and having to compensate by driving at eleven-tenths, while everybody in the good cars is at eight-tenths, so you do tend to crash more. The whole thing can be very dispiriting.
Conversely at Brawn, they were so bad last year under the Honda name, but now with the extra 60-odd horsepower from the Mercedes engine, and a completely new Ross Brawn-designed chassis, I’ve no doubt that Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello will feel like a couple of kids that feel like they’ve broken into a candy store!
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
You’d expect the main teams – Mclaren and Ferrari – to be right up there as always, but toward the end of the winter the Brawn-Mercedes came along, and then Kazuki Nakajima turned the fastest lap of all on the final day of preaseason testing at Jerez for Williams.
Of course, winter testing isn’t as reliable as it looks. Some teams might be running underweight, some might run with low fuel, no rev limiter etc, but the first practice in Australia has turned the world upside down a bit, with Nico Rosberg going quickest. I know one swallow doesn’t make a summer, but it’s pretty significant that all the so-called “diffuser” teams are right there at the front, namely Williams, Brawn and Toyota.
Mark Webber did a good job to split them in that Red Bull. He’s going to have his work cut-out this year with young Sebastian Vettel breathing down his neck rather than David Coulthard. Meanwhile the two Ferraris were in mid-pack, and the two Mclarens were right down at the bottom of the charts!
Obviously a number of teams protested the “diffuser” teams, and they won’t have a resolution to that until after Malaysia next week, but if they are allowed, I’m sure Mclaren and Ferrari will very quickly bolt something new onto the car.
However, having a trick new component isn’t an automatic passport to success. In 1971 I won the Formula 5000 championship in a Mclaren, and the following year my team owner Carl Hogan bought a couple of Lola T330s, which were the hot thing at the time.
But this kid called Graham McRae came from New Zealand with his McRae Mk I chassis. He brought with him these Swiss-tuned Chevrolet engines, and we struggled a little bit by comparison – I finished third in the points, behind McRae. So, for 1973 we decided to buy in a set of these Swiss engines, at great expense but seemingly an excellent choice, as in McRae’s car they had been bulletproof.
How wrong we were! They were a massive disappointment in terms of power, and worse still, they weren’t very reliable either. That was one of those things where we thought we had a world-beater, but it turned out to be a large waste of time and resources.
I drove a lot of dud cars in my early career, after initially driving some good ones, and there’s no doubt about this – driving a bad car is not good for your psyche or your reputation. A good example of this is young Adrian Sutil in the Force India. He crashed a lot last year, but it is because he’s in a bad car and having to compensate by driving at eleven-tenths, while everybody in the good cars is at eight-tenths, so you do tend to crash more. The whole thing can be very dispiriting.
Conversely at Brawn, they were so bad last year under the Honda name, but now with the extra 60-odd horsepower from the Mercedes engine, and a completely new Ross Brawn-designed chassis, I’ve no doubt that Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello will feel like a couple of kids that feel like they’ve broken into a candy store!
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
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