We Never Change, Do We?
Published
It’s a rollercoaster ride for Formula 1 drivers at the moment, especially for those who are teetering on the brink of expulsion from their teams. We already know Heidfeld is being observed closely, and with the Alonso-to-BMW rumours getting stronger, he’s probably quite worried right now. Bourdais is also under scrutiny, having been told to shine just that little bit more.
Le Seb has hit back, though, and said to his team that there’s no point keeping him if they think he’s going to adapt to a car that he doesn’t like and isn’t working.
If they believe in my potential and my perception of things, which I personally believe can lead to an even better car because it has always been the way I function, then yes, we should definitely give it a try, keep on working and make it better.
It does seem as though Bourdais (despite the luck) has picked up his game, so perhaps the car is working now, and maybe he does like it. Whether that gets him a place for next year, we don’t yet know, but this has made me think. Is it possible for a driver to not suit a car so much that he has to leave?
Restructuring
Some drivers are a bit too tall, aren’t they? Kubica is tall, and Webber has to fold himself in half to get into the car. Wurz has also suffered for his height. In 2005, McLaren designed their car around Raikkonen and Montoya, obviously, and believing third driver Wurz was moving on, they ignored him. He just didn’t fit in the cockpit.
It’s not just about height, either. Kubica (him again) was very vocal about his weight loss at the start of this season, something he undertook specifically to help the balance of the car.
Personality
You don’t have to look very far back at all to find a driver struggling to fit in with his team. Alonso and McLaren in 2007 were just a complete mismatch almost from the word go. Forget about battling with your team mate, if you’re not fitting in with the bosses, then it’s going to be a tough season. If you last the season. Scott Speed saw the harsh realities of this in 2007 as well.
Flavio has never been one to support a driver if he's not pulling his weight, and Kovalainen never seemed to fit in at Renault, whereas he's slipped into the McLaren role very nicely indeed. Raikkonen went the other way, presumably glad to see the back of Mr Dennis, given how relaxed and happy he was donning the red suit instead.
Mechanics
What I’m curious about is a driver just not getting to grips with the car itself. If I remember correctly, Alonso campaigned for McLaren to change his brakes from one supplier to another because they suited him better. Does that mean he would never have been as fast last year if they had refused to budge? How far should a team adapt for their driver, and does it depend on whether they rate his chances or not?
You can imagine Toro Rosso would be willing to tweak their designs slightly for Vettel, but apparently not for Bourdais. Have there been any other examples of this in the past? Does it mean that I’m judging some drivers harshly when really it’s just a bad fit?
60 Responses
Juan Pablo Montoya is the first driver who comes to mind as having a straightforward incompatibility with a team's cars. He hated understeer, which wasn't so bad at Williams (which oversteered as often as it understeered) but a disaster at McLaren. Failing to get on with the McLaren way of doing things (or indeed the F1 way of doing things) made it impossible for him to effect the necessary changes to return to the speed he demonstrated at Williams.
Given Fernando Alonso's style, I think he too may have fallen foul of the tendency of McLarens to understeer to some extent. However, he attributed his failure to other (technical and non-technical) factors. Robert Kubica may wish to bear this in mind should he ever be tempted to venture to Woking.
Ralf Schumacher didn't fare very well at Toyota until he persuaded them to use a zero-keel instead of a twin-keel. Before that, Jarno Trulli looked much better than him in races. After the twin-keel was introduced, the balance of power in Toyota swung to Ralf - until the tyre regulations changed to provide tyres that Jarno could use without graining them significantly. At which point the tables turned, this time irrecoverably so from Ralf's perspective.
However, there are times when the fault appears to be the nut between the steering wheel and the pedals. Also, lack of compatability between driver and car is regularly worsened by compatibility problems between the driver and some key element of the team. It's not clear whether Frentzen's unhappiness with the EJ11 was due to the aero problems that he claimed prevented him from getting as comfortable with it as Trulli or driver underperformance. However, it is 100% certain that poor relations at that time between Frentzen and Eddie Jordan led to his mid-season sacking!
Thanks Alianora, some great stuff in there :)
McLaren do seem to be a team with a lot of disatisfied ex-employees, and yet someone that fits the team stays forever. D'you think maybe they should try and be more adaptable, or just wait for the right drivers to come along?
Just by the by...
Lehman Brothers who have gone bang in a big way owned a 16.8% stake in Formula 1. There is now a bit of a fire sale going on. Apparently CVC are likely to buy it though which should mean not much change for F1.
Why would CVC want to buy more shares? Didn't they inherit a huge debt? Unless buying more shares means more profit, meaning faster debt payments...
I think CVC will be keen to stop anyone else wanting to take the firm in a different direction...
http://www.tel...08/09/16/cncvc116.xml
Oh dear my comment has been blocked...
As an another aside, F2 is pushing through. Jonathan Palmer will be the commercial rights holder, with WilliamsF1 designing, but not constructing, the cars. How it will fare against GP2 though remains to be seen.
So... Renault has GP2 and Formula Renault, Williams has F2, Ferrari has A1GP, BMW has Formula BMW... who else have I missed among the single-seater junior formulae partnerships?
I remember Gerhard Berger struggled to fit into his McLarens ('90-92) because he was tall. I think minimum cockpit dimensions were a lot less stringent then, and designers had just started following Adrian Newey's lead on making the frontal area of the car as narrow and short as possible for maximum efficiency (see Newey's Leyton House designs of the late '80s).
Mansell definitely struggled to fit in his McLaren.
So much so they had to delay is re-appearance and make a B-spec car.
I think the B stood for bulbous or blobby...
On Lehman Brothers. The Formula One Group owes them $1.2. So I guess Bernie will get a nice discount for paying them off quickly. That will be nice for him. :( http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns20780.html
Following on from Ali's comment on driving styles. I made a point on CLive's blog yesterday that there seems to be something in the tech regs that polarises driving styles. I have never known a season when so many team mates are getting such different performance from the same car. Hamilton is killing Kovi but Heikki is a good driver just not aggressive enough to get the best from the MP4/23. Kimi looks amateurish at times because the Ferrari has extreme understeer until its tyres are hot and Massa suddenly looks like a champion. Kubica seems to have made a big jump on Heidfeld but Nick is suffereing for the same reason as Heikki.
DC suddenly looks like he is completely past it but again I put this down to him being smoother than Webber. I would not be surprised if Piquet is suffering because he cannot duplicate Alonso's extreme understeer driving. I am sure the same is true for the Sebs.
The only pairing who look evenly matched are Button and Barrichello both of who have very smooth driving styles. Since this year's cars/tyres seem to respond to aggressive understeer or oversteer driving Honda's true performance may be masked. Although I have spent years arguing that teams should have drivers of similar style it may be that Honda are suffering as a result of doing just that. When you see how much faster the really aggressive drivers are you have to ask where would Kubica be in a Honda? ANd is Alonso to Honda really such a big risk?
Of course next year we have a bunch of totally new regs which turn the whole thing on its head but I for one will watch closely if Alonso goes to Honda and tests this year's car. If he posts a very fast time it may not just be the usual new driver publicity lap.
blimey, i've missed loads this morning. couple of things:
do str do that much to their cars then? i assumed they pretty much get what they're given. le seb should be directing his complaints at newey. i wonder if he's setting out his stall for other teams (e.g. "i do more than just drive, ya know")?
rumour was this may have been to prevent lewis copying his braking points. not sure if that's true or not though?
while it's not really in the same ball park, i wonder if berger will remember this when it comes to choosing his '09 lineup?
he solved this issue by leaving his wallet at home.
in the dry at spa the french seb had the run on his teammate for 99% of the race. he just has less experience in the wet (and with starting procedures).
on the other had, nick seems to be able to get more out of the bmw than kubica in the wet.
i disagree. i think bernie may be quietly panicking right now. if max happens to be able to get his preferred backers in line, there could be a bidding war on the shares.
we may be about to discover just how serious the bert and ernie feud really is. especially as journeyer pointed out, that f2 is going full steam ahead.
Peter Windsor said that it was mainly because of Alonso's driving style, more so than Lewis copying him.
no, nigel solved this issue by quitting f1 for good.
I disagree. Pitpass.com says:
This is according to CVC UK managing director Nick Clarry.
Let's remember that all FOM shareholders have a tactical alliance with Bernie. They won't let Max in, I'm sure.
maybe, but according to the telegraph*:
"However, if there are multiple bidders for the shares it could force the price up which is definitely not in CVC's interests having spent over $2bn on acquiring its F1 stake. With Lehman in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, it would be up to the company to secure the highest price for the asset to pay off its creditors. This could lead to CVC finding itself with a co-investor who might have a different idea of the best direction for F1."
sounds anything but clear cut to me. more info here:
http://www.tel...08/09/16/cncvc116.xml
*christine delicioused that article this morning, i'm just leeching her links now ;)
But it seems CVC has the final overriding say in any sale... Can Lehman override that, especially considering they agreed to the original arrangement? I doubt that.
The Lehman story just got a lot more interesting going by recent posts.
My guess would be that ALonso wanted a braking material more suited to his driving style. McLaren share data between the drivers so Lewis would have known his braking points. What Lewis needs from the brakes and what Fernando needs from the brakes is very different so I am not surprised they wanted different friction material. I am just amazed McLaren managed to give them a car they could both drive.
don't know. i suspect it's nowhere near as simple as clarry is making it out to be.
i guess we know bernie never looses, but i also imagine it's max carrying the bigger smile this morning.
also, i don't how much belief to put in this old, umm, article:
http://www.gra...m/mole/mole20650.html
but, if i was in lehman's position, a potential $100bn sovereign wealth fund might make me re-read the small print, just in case.
hahaha
The way I understand it is this. They have to offer it to CVC. But CVC have to offer a fair price. If CVC decide to get greedy and offer too low a price (because Lehmans is disadvantaged) then Lehmans Executors will be forced to sell it to the highest bidder.
Basically CVC gets fair value first dibs. The way Pitpass imagines it would imply that the shares are worthless because CVC could offer a pound and have to sell them to CVC. I guarantee that's not how it works.
The question is if CVC will be able to afford the fair value price. They would probably need to borrow.
I agree completely with Steven Roy. The car and driver styles make so much of a difference and it is proven in all those examples that he used.
I also remember that at the beginning of the season LeSeb showed so much promise but as soon as the new STR was introduced he was never as comfortable, in fact he was the one who crashed it in its pre-race testing. He seems to be over it now and it may justify his statement that he does more than just drive. It also seems completely possible that a smooth driver like Nick would be faster in the BMW in wet than Kubica and he too has been overcoming his qualifying woes.
Maybe one day the cars wont affect F1 so much...Oops! that would be a spec-series and we never want to see that so drivers must adapt themselves or the cars
I need to make a minor clariication in my original Lehman Brothers comment. The amount of money is $1.2 billion not $1.2.
Ah, that makes loads more sense, Alex. I believe that IS what CVC plans to do: negotiate with the Lehman Executors on a SLIGHTLY discounted price in exchange for faster payment. After all, Lehman needs the dough ASAP. While CVC will have to borrow anew, they'll make a net gain in that their debt, albeit now with a different creditor, will be reduced significantly.
Journeyer Bingo!
It may be that another bank becomes the owner though because basically the shares are being held as collateral for the loan.
Back to the point of the article (sorry for the aside Christine)...
I think the most important thing is if the driver feels part of the team. That's where the really great relationships happen.
Schumacher at Ferrari springs to mind. Lewis at McLaren.
And the one thing you don't want to be is the other driver there. Well not if you want to win.
are there any others like that? either past or present.
alonso at renault during his pre-mclaren years springs to mind.
Agreed.
Hakkinen at McLaren?
I am loving the McLaren F1 Bedding advert on the bottom of this page! Check it out!
If I recall, Minardi and Jaguar has to fit the car around Justin Wilson in 2003
Alex Wurz was a tall chap too. For a couple of years he was the second test drive behind De La Rosa to drive the McLaren cars due to them having to change the car for him to fit.
Pedro's not exactly a shorty, though, either!
Jan Magnussen at Stewart. Went throught the junior formulae with Paul Stewart Racing which morphed into SGP and he worked with management and engineers he had dealt with for the previous couple of seasons.
:)
Naah, the real trick is to be the driver who's ghost still haunts the team to this day ands is used as the measure in which all other drivers are comparaded to.
Example: Villenuve when "Il Commandre" Enzo was at the helm of Ferrari.
Current Example: Alan Jones is still haunting Williams....
Compared to Wurz he is though.
Pedro - 5' 8"
Wurz - 6' 1"
Sizeable difference.
Current example: Schumacher at Ferrari! I swear I even saw him on the pit wall last weekend ;)
We need to be able to put sounds on to this site. That comment is just begging for a Twilight Zone theme.
Another two for the list and both Scottish. Jackie Stewart hung over Tyrrell for the rest of there existence and Jim Clark did the same for a long time at Lotus.
Schumacher at Benetton?
video doing the rounds a lot today, but just in case you've not caught it:
http://drop.io...crazy-in-civic-type-r
Warning to any delicate eared Italian speakers... She says some very naughty things about Riccardo's mother in the middle of all of that! :)
i had no idea. apologies!
I found it very amusing (I've heard much worse!). And there is, in my experience, a lot more conversational swearing in Italy. So it's less bad. As long as you don't blaspheme you're okay it seems. Scott In Italy would know!
just noticed - sidepodcast has broken the 110,000 mark in comments in total.
huh?
at the top in the address - it shows what number a certain comment is in the order of every single comment or post ever on the site. i was merely pointing out that number has hit 110,000. :)
ahh, that's just an arbitrary figure. nothing like that many in truth.
last year we posted the comment count at the end of the year, but if you're interested the actual comment count as of your last comment is:
48,121 total
however, it should be noted, that figure above includes trackbacks too. these shouldn't really count towards the comment total, as they get created every time we link from the one post to another. the more we internally link, the higher the count.
when we get a spare moment we'll do a genuine comment count.
scott, just for you, we've added some site stats to the sidebar. probably won't stay forever, but we'll leave up for the rest of the day for ya.
for reference:
47,894 comments
226 pingbacks
2 trackbacks
most commented posts predictably are the race threads, and christine has written more posts than me :)
many thanks to http://identi.ca/lambic for the wordpress widget.
lol, just for me :)
thanks for that anyway :P
now that my internet connection isn't messing around, i saw just a while ago a new Bridgestone advert with a certain Mr. L Hamilton? dunno if that name rings a bell or not... :P
Didn't notice you did guest writer, I suppose that would be a decent feature if you know what I mean.
if you're interested r.g. see this post for more info:
http://www.sid...a-and-the-rest-of-us/
the text in bold at the head of the article sums up everything you need to know.
not trying to persuade these two to let any of us write something on here, are you R.G? ;)
warning. incoming blatant and shameless promo link:
sorry. we'll be getting on with some actual work now.
awesome! No doubt about it, Sidepodcast gets my vote! :D
I don't pay any attention to podcasts. Do you know any that are worth nominating?
erm....this one! :D
I've nominated you guys for both in the Best Produced and Sports categories :) Everyone do the same now! :D
there was this one i used to listen too, it was about 60 seconds long, but these days i just can't seem to find the time...
Was there a subtle hint somewhere that I missed?
Oh dear :)
hahahahaha
Don't forget best video podcast... Sidepodcast TV!
I nominated sidepodcast in the categories suggested and F1 minute in people's choice and general
Assuming that Tost said this and we already know that Buemi is a favourite for the seat, it looks like Bourdais is out of a job.
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