Spanish Grand Prix Review

However this wasn't meant to be Jenson's race. It was meant to belong to his team-mate Rubens Barrichello, who finds himself suited to Catalunya after his many years of racing and testing there, and who set the pace within the Brawn garage. Time was running out for him to get his title challenge going. Once again in Q3 Button somehow extracted that last ounce of speed to clinch pole, but Rubens was going to fight this setback; from 3rd on the grid, he went around the outside of Jenson going into turn one.

With both cars scheduled to be on a three-stop strategy, and Sebastian Vettel stuck behind Felipe Massa, this should have been Rubens' race to control. But the early safety car placed a spanner in the works; both Brawns had lost precious laps to build up the target gap. By the time of their first stops, Barrichello was just going to clear Nico Rosberg's long-running Williams, but Button would come out behind the German and have his progress and required lap-speed hampered. He got switched to a two-stopper.

At this point in time, Button had almost six seconds on Massa in 3rd. From the published weights pre-race, it was clear that the two-stopping Massa and Vettel would pit shortly - indeed, they came in two laps after Jenson did. The Englishman was not going to get leap-frogged. Going back to a two-stop strategy was a risk-free strategy for Button to secure 2nd place at worst. And, with Barrichello pitting the next lap, he should have done the same, and it should have been a stroll to victory lane for the Brazilian.

But Rubens remained on his three-stop plan. Was that a decision of his side of the garage? Or did the call come from Ross Brawn and Nick Fry? The justification that a three-stop on simulations was the fastest, and Rubens was in a position to make it work because he would come out in front of Rosberg, is nonsense. Winning a race is not about completing a race distance in the optimal time; it is about beating your rivals home. By also going to a two-stopper, Rubens would have had Jenson and the rest well covered.

If Barrichello had been inwardly fuming after qualifying, he was now decidedly irate. He had had enough of playing second fiddle after his Ferrari experience - when Brawn was also the man calling the shots on pit wall. Had this been another intra-team fix to get his team-mate ahead? Pre-emptively, the Brazilian said after the race that if team-orders were utilised at Brawn, he would not be complying with them. Having been given one last chance in a competitive car, he was not going to have it taken away from him.

You can sympathise with Rubens, but there are realities to consider. Here is Brawn's chance to seal a fairytale debut season; would they not do everything in their power to ensure that? Whatever the case in theory, in practice there is invariably a number 1 and a number 2 in a front-running team, which quickly sorts itself out in the first few races. Maybe only twice in the last 20 years (say, 1989 and 2007) has the title been won by a driver who has not had a clear advantage in performance and/or his team's affections.

Button has been at BAR-Honda-Brawn since 2003. He took the team's focus from Jacques Villeneuve onto himself. He was at the forefront of BAR's successful 2004 campaign, and took Honda's first win in Hungary in 2006. This season he has bounced back from a dismal 2008 and he has won all the crucial moments, against Barrichello and the rest of the field, in the fly-away races. Arguably, it's already too late for Rubens. Team orders or not, Brawn won't be unhappy if it's Jenson who keeps on winning.

If there had been a strategy screw-up for Barrichello, then there was also one for Brawn's nearest rivals Red Bull, in the case of Vettel. The young German was in bullish mood in Barcelona, declaring himself a championship contender, and proving his blistering speed in qualifying to almost seize pole despite a heavier car, in the process now going 5-0 up on Saturdays over his qualifying specialist team-mate Mark Webber. But another duff start not only put him behind the Brawns, but behind Massa as well.

Like in Bahrain, Vettel's strategy depended upon keeping the pressure on the lead cars before leapfrogging them during the stops. But just as that plan got undone by being stuck behind Lewis Hamilton at Sakhir, so it came to naught again by being held up by Massa. Vettel couldn't get past on the track, so how was he to do it in the pits? He was to pit before Massa during the first stops, but the safety car had thrown those predictions out. Either way, Sebastian was going to pit at a similar time as the Ferrari.

The latter was what they ended up doing with Webber, and it worked a treat. But they did neither with Sebastian, instead giving him a middling fuel load, which meant he came out behind Massa, spent another stint behind the Brazilian, and then pitted at the same time as Felipe for his second stop as well! Had it not been for the Ferrari's fuel issues towards the end of the race, Vettel would have come 5th in a race he had hoped to win. An 18-point gap to Button even at this stage will not be easy to overcome.

Webber's drive was an excellent effort after the misery of Bahrain, and showed he is far from a spent force in the team. His race could also have been ruined when he was caught napping at the restart and the KERS-shod Fernando Alonso barged past him despite his efforts to force the Spaniard off the track. But Mark simply dived back down the inside into turn one and miraculously made it stick. Along with his move on Button in China, Webber's been responsible for the best two passes of the year so far.

Red Bull called the strategy just right in his case. But the team's problem is that while they have a car which on raw speed is a match for the Brawn - and without a double-deck diffuser as yet - the team, Vettel and Webber have made too many mistakes already and lost too many points, in qualifying, in race starts, in strategy, and they have lacked Brawn and Button's killer instinct. Being the second best outfit on the grid, which is what Red Bull are at the moment, doesn't mean you're in the title hunt.

But when it comes to not having killer instinct, no team has misplaced it quite like Ferrari has. Their own version of a double-deck diffuser and other aero tweaks gave the F60s a welcome speed boost and bodes well for good points for the rest of the season. But elsewhere the comedy of errors continued unabated. First, there was Kimi Raikkonen missing the Q1 cut, for exactly the same reason as Massa in Malaysia. They had thought an average first lap good enough, and had not bothered with a second run.

Actually, who was the "they"? Could the team really make the same mistake twice? Kimi nonchalantly admitted afterwards that only having one run was always the plan in order to save the softer tyres, but he had not done a good enough job. That was true enough - he went 0.6s slower than he had managed in free practice. But he also intimated that he actually didn't want to go out for a second run! And if that was true, the team allowed him? Very curious inflexibility and inaction when Kimi's first run had been mediocre.

Although Massa could do nothing about Webber overtaking him in the second stops, he looked set to hold off Vettel for the whole race, until his late fuel dramas. Whose fault this was, was unclear, whether it was a rig problem or human error of some kind. But once the problem was discovered, those on the pit wall couldn't decide what to do about it. They kept telling Felipe to save fuel; the Brazilian, busy holding off Vettel, exasperatedly kept asking what exactly the team wanted him to do.

In hindsight, the obvious choice was to let Vettel go, drop a few tenths per lap, and hold onto 5th place. Instead, Ferrari's indecisiveness reached a point with four laps to go, when Massa not only had to let Vettel past, he had to drop his pace so much that he also lost 5th to Alonso, and almost had to give 6th to Nick Heidfeld as well. At least the pace is starting to return for Ferrari, but operationally the whole team still seem to be in ga-ga land. For that, we award them 'Reject of the Race' this time around.

Apart from the interesting dramas for Brawn, Red Bull and Ferrari, it was fairly humdrum for the rest of the field, as you would expect from Barcelona. Alonso had a second straight race of pretty much running in the same position all the way through. Having got past the slow-starting Toyotas into 6th, he would have finished there but for Massa's fuel dramas. In the other Renault, Nelson Piquet Jr put in an improved performance to qualify and finish 12th, but a poor start meant there was no scope to finish higher.

BMW arrived in Barcelona, still without a double-deck diffuser, but with a new nosecone that rather resembled a duckbill. It provided a small upturn in form, with Robert Kubica getting into Q3 but Nick Heidfeld still mired in 13th on the grid. But their fortunes reversed in the race thanks to the start. In short, Heidfeld made a good one up to 9th, which became 8th after the first stop due to his 31-lap opening stint which got him in front of Timo Glock, which became 7th at the second stop after jumping Rosberg also.

Kubica, meanwhile, made an atrocious start, fell to 13th off the line and never really recovered, enduring a long battle with Glock after the first stops and eventually finishing a lapped 11th. He remains one of five drivers yet to score a point in 2009, and his season has really fallen off a cliff after his combative showing in Australia. It would not be a surprise if his disgruntlement and frustration is resulting in less-than-100% efforts. It would also not be a surprise if he makes an early move to jump ship for 2010.

REJECT OF THE RACE
Ferrari
Improved pace, but way too much went wrong!

Kazuki Nakajima once again failed to make it into Q3, and for the second race in a row found himself needing a nosecone change after the first lap. From there, the only car he could get past was Giancarlo Fisichella's Force India. Kazuki is, frankly, proving quite useless at the moment, but what are Williams to do? Replace him with a rookie in Nico Hulkenberg or Kamui Kobayashi when the test restrictions this year mean they won't sit in the car before a race weekend? It's an unenviable position for Williams to be in.

After being up the pointy end so far this year, Toyota fell back a bit in Spain. For a car that has appeared to be quite aerodynamically well-sorted, that came as a surprise given that Barcelona is regarded as an aero litmus test. Certainly on pace they seemed to be behind Ferrari. Both Glock and Jarno Trulli also got off the line poorly from their 6th and 7th places on the grid, with Trulli paying the price when he got pushed wide by Rosberg at turn two, spearing across the track and into Adrian Sutil as he recovered.

Some have suggested that instead of rejoining the track rapidly and triggering mayhem he should have kept the car straight and eased back on at turn three, but Jarno was acting on instinct and coming back on at the apex of turn three might have been just as dangerous - and it would have dropped him even more places. Glock paid the price for an early and long stop and a 30-lap second stint, fell out of the points and stayed there. A quick recovery is needed, but Monaco is a traditional bogey track for Toyota.

The first lap incident took out both Toro Rossos of Sebastien Buemi and Sebastien Bourdais, as the Swiss rookie braked when Trulli spun, and Bourdais piled into him from behind. Although Buemi had made another poor start like in Bahrain, he had outshone the Frenchman again. Whereas Bourdais missed the Q1 cut, Buemi made it easily in 11th, less than 0.6s off the best. In Q2, as the track gripped up, he actually went slower due to traffic and an off, otherwise he could have been higher than 15th on the grid.

Sutil could count himself as having been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it was more a case of instant karma as he had actually gained a number of places but cutting across the inside of turn two. Had he been where he was off the start line he would have been lower down, but he would have avoided being hit by Trulli. Had he not retired, it would have been interesting to see if any action had been taken, as asphalt run-offs increasingly invite people to avoid first laps logjams by cutting corners.

But in terms of humiliating pace, probably no team would have been more red-faced than McLaren. If Barcelona is an aero litmus test then this weekend showed how much the MP4-24 aero package fails. Plus it showed that a double-deck diffuser doesn't compensate for other shortcomings. Heikki Kovalainen never came close to making the Q1 cut and was out with a gearbox problem early in the race, whilst Hamilton never came close to making it past Q2.

Lewis was forced onto the grass off the start, dropping him to the back of the field, but he used his KERS well to overtake Piquet, and his strategy should have kept him on the tail of Heidfeld with a chance of snaring 8th. But his pace deteriorated dramatically in the middle stint as he wore out both his rear tyres and his front right, and in the end he was a lapped 9th, nowhere near leap-frogging Rosberg. The quirks of Monaco give Hamilton a chance, but seeing how awful the McLaren was here must have been galling.

Of course, the Spanish GP also took place amidst the latest off-track political furore in F1, which could prove to be a crucial turning point for the sport. After the diffuser row has come the wrangling over the FIA's 40-million cost cap for 2010, as well as other regulations which are aimed at cutting costs, but which also introduce a two-tier system, with technical freedoms for teams willing to submit to the cost cap, but restrictions for those who are not. It is worth discussing the issue briefly here.

In reality the issue is not the cost cap, nor the two-tier system, nor the governance of the sport, but how all three factors act in concert. Apparently, this has been something decreed unilaterally by the FIA. That halts the growing power of FOTA. The cost cap also entices in new teams which might dilute the influence of FOTA. Plus the cost cap hurts the big spenders, the manufacturers, the most. They may not want to sign up for it. But with a two-tier system, there is no guarantee of an effective equivalence formula.

So no wonder many teams see this as having been a pre-emptive strike by the FIA, aimed at antagonising those the FIA has least time for, i.e. the manufacturers. Ferrari, Toyota and Renault have threatened to not place an entry for 2010 as they are required to do by May 29. It is understood that privately BMW are of the same view. Surprisingly, so too is Red Bull, despite being a 'privateer' team. Currently, only Brawn, Williams and Force India appear to be committed to FIA-run F1 2010-style.

F1 is driven by big money, big money comes from big investment, big investment comes from big sponsors and the big costs for hosting and TV rights, big sponsorship and hosting and TV rights costs depend on big crowds and TV audiences, and big crowds and TV audiences rely on big names. Regardless of the time in F1 and relative success of the manufacturers, they are big, reputable names. In other words, the current commercial model of F1 is geared around the manufacturer teams.

Rencken argues that Ferrari et al's threat to leave FIA-run F1 is no idle threat either. Ferrari are in partnership with the struggling A1GP series, which has a good schedule of tracks including several classics, and a debt that could be serviced if all defecting F1 teams chipped in. Split F1 series is, for once, seemingly a real possibility. Bernie Ecclestone has noticeably not taken sides; he also has the 'GP1' name at his disposal to run alongside GP2 and GP3. One feels he will simply follow commercial dictates.

The threat of a split series has overtones, for Australian readers, of World Series Cricket and the split Bathurst 1000 races in 1997-1999. For international motor racing fans, the other prime example is the CART v IRL war. In all these examples of a traditional series versus commercial power, those with the commercial aces (which the IRL turned out to have by the 2000s) have always won out - although the effect CART v IRL had on US open-wheeler racing is now clear for all to see, especially when compared to NASCAR.

The point is, separate F1 series is in no-one's interests. F1's current stakeholders know that - hence the urgent talks to try to find a compromise, which are yet to succeed, but everyone knows they must. The ideal resolution - and one which may require some creativity to achieve - is one which will limit costs effectively and still encourages some new outfits to join the sport in 2010 and beyond, allows everyone to race under one set of regulations, and also does not sideline FOTA but gives it genuine lobbying influence.