Today is Tuesday, and I can't quite believe that it's almost the end of February already. That's both scary, and also very cool. The season will soon be here and I can no longer moan about the countdowns. It's close enough that counting down to the season is acceptable. Meanwhile, here are some of the things we're talking about:
This week's F1 Debrief is all up and ready for you to listen to. We discuss plenty of news from the past week and gather a lot of lovely feedback as well. If you're keen on the outtakes, I posted a couple on the daily post yesterday, and am pointing them out here as well: Mr C can't speak and Christine can't speak.
I also updated Christine's Rankings yesterday, in which Heikki Kovalainen got the most points. Unfortunately for him, they weren't all in the right direction. There are also notes on the Virgin Racing drivers, plus Webber gets his first (minus) points as well.
It looks as though Stefan GP have postponed and/or cancelled the test of their new car in Portimao. Apparently the downfall is the lack of tyres, which is down to Bridgestone. The tyre supplier aren't allowed to give them F1 tyres, and couldn't get GP2 replacements in time, so for now, the Stefan test is off.
That's all for now. Don't forget to vote on the latest part of Life in the Fast Lane. We're getting towards the end of the story now, so each vote is more and more important! I will see you in the comments.
If you were hoping for a quiet off season, you will need to wait just a little bit longer. It is Bonfire Night tonight, and we have certainly seen fireworks in Formula 1 for the past few days. Ahh, I like being cheesy about it. Here are some of the things we're focusing on:
Toyota pulled out of the sport and we have tons of coverage of this. There's a breakout thread, a brilliant guest post from Stuart, a quick roundup in F1 Minute, and a Toyota shaped Big Picture as well.
Meanwhile, the rumour mill went into overdrive with suggestions that the top bosses at Renault were gathering as well. Could there be another team on the way out already? That would be three teams out in the space of a few months, plus Bridgestones. No wonder the FIA are starting to sit up and take notice.
All this to-ing and fro-ing has put a bit of a spanner in the works of our 2010 Season line up thoughts. We now have even more drivers to try and squeeze into less teams, with Trulli and Kobayashi needing a drive as soon as possible. Do we think they'll fit in anywhere neatly?
That's all for now. Let us know how Thursday is going for you, as it is notoriously not a great day for Sidepodcast regulars. As ever, I'll see you in the comments.
With the news that Toyota are throwing in the towel, Stuart Codling takes a look at where it all went wrong for the Japanese team.
After nine years, and the expenditure of sums that even Toyota’s legion of accountants can probably only guess at, the Toyota Motor Corporation has left a sport that it didn’t really want to be part of in the first place. It might be the world’s largest car manufacturer, but it owes that position less to clever marketing than it does to producing durable, inexpensive motor cars.
TMC was led by the nose in to F1 by its European arm, which was desperate to attract a younger constituency of car buyers by cultivating a racier image. But at board level, Toyota regarded F1 with a level of bemusement. It couldn’t understand why it was pouring so much money into the project, and its own cumbersome internal mechanisms prevented it from making its F1 team a success, or marketing it effectively. It never even got around to producing a range of sporty road cars to bask in the halo of the sporting success it ultimately never achieved.
Historically, Japan was a martial society and this reflects in the way it does business. There is tremendous emphasis on the chain of command. And it’s still trying to cling on to a jobs for life ethic, which is anathema to progress: what you get is a large body of employees who clock in and clock out on time, and who never rock the boat as they cruise serenely towards retirement. No one wants to take responsibility for anything. Everyone ‘manages up’. Vital decisions are delayed as they pass from desk to desk, meandering up the hierarchy.
The official launch of Toyota’s first proper F1 car in December 2001 was a big deal, and I covered the build-up to it with Darren Heath for a feature in the world’s biggest-selling F1 magazine. With a year of testing in the bag, Toyota ought to have come out of the box flying. Instead, Allan McNish, Mika Salo and a host of who-are-they-anyway dignitaries pulled the sheet off a box-sided vehicle that could most charitably have been described as a clone of the Ferrari F1-2000.
What had they been doing all year? Circulating Paul Ricard to no avail in an embarrassingly slow test hack, that’s what. Toyota had already fired one designer (Andre de Cortanze) and replaced him with another (Gustav Brunner, from Minardi). De Cortanze is an odd character. He loathes journalists (he evicted me and several others from the Toyota garage personally at Le Mans in 1999), and, so one of the team told me, he would occasionally kick everyone out of the garage so that he could talk to the car. Brunner? Well, he’s been involved in some good cars, but he’s not Adrian Newey.
So, far from entering F1 like a bullet with a year’s worth of useful experience, Toyota limped on to the grid with a hastily developed ‘blank sheet’ design that achieved very little, apart from nearly killing McNish at Suzuka. By the end of the season, not for the first or last time, the team management decided that a quick fix was required to assuage the bad vibes emanating from Japan. It had become clear that Salo, who had been hired to be the superstar, was merely on cruise-and-collect, interested only in being slightly quicker than McNish – which he would achieve by, say, a tyre pressure adjustment immediately before his final qualifying run.
Canning both drivers continued the trend of ‘managing up’; “It’s not our fault for designing a slow car – it’s theirs for not driving it fast enough.” Over successive years the team would devote increasing resources to managing the expectations of Japan, producing reams of statistics to demonstrate that, yes, actually, they were improving, even if they weren’t actually winning anything.
The hiring of Mike Gascoyne for a ludicrous fee at the end of 2003 was another doomed quick fix. Commuting to Cologne daily via private jet, he joined the team too late to influence the 2004 car, which was another flop. As Gascoyne analysed the working practices of the team, he was shocked by the unscientific methodology of the aero department in particular. Under pressure to produce results, the aerodynamicists were looking for big jumps; but in modern F1, progress is achieved through an accumulation of tiny gains. You can’t find half a second a lap with just one component.
Although performances improved under Gascoyne’s watch, his maverick nature led to conflicts with Japan. Never one to worry about the chain of command if something needed to be done, Gascoyne became increasingly fed up with what he saw as inertia and interference, particularly when it emanated from a time zone eight hours further around the globe. It can be very frustrating when your first act upon reaching the office is to open a series of emails demanding clarification of certain points; and the person who sent them, from whom you require authority to perform various actions, is about to or has already left for the day, so you are forced to spend the rest of your day doing very little. Little wonder that Gascoyne equipped his office with a remote-controlled model tank, which he would fire at any arrivals he didn’t like.
Towards the end of 2005 TMC decreed that because it had reached an OEM deal with Bridgestone to furnish its road cars with tyres, the F1 team must also use Bridgestone rubber. This scuppered the team’s 2006 season even before it started.
The Bridgestone family of tyres had to be run at a much more aggressive camber than the Michelins to arrive at their optimum operating temperature. Toyota’s 2006 car, which had been designed to run on Michelins, lacked the range of adjustment to make the Bridgestones work. Gascoyne duly carried the can, and the team eventually produced a B-spec car with prominent nodules on the nose to accommodate the revised geometry. Still, lacking knowledge of the Bridgestones continued to serve as a handy excuse for the next couple of seasons.
And so, then, to 2009, and another season of irregular flashes of form commingled with long spells of midfield mediocrity. It was inevitable, given the economic circumstances, that Toyota would wield the axe.
This is a company that aimed to have a 15 per cent share of the world’s car market by 2010, but which is now facing the same issues of overcapacity as the American giants it once bestrode. In a world driven by accountants we are all slaves to ROI; and Toyota, that quintessentially accounts-fixated car corporation, could not overlook such a grotesque cocktail of overspend and underperformance forever.
Bridgestone have confirmed that they do not wish to renew their tyre supply contract with F1 after the 2010 season. A statement from Motorsport Director Hiroshi Yasukawa read:
"The decision made by the board of directors comes after considerable and lengthy evaluations and has been based on the company's need to redirect its resources towards further intensive development of innovative technologies."
This will leave the FIA searching for a new tyre supplier - who will get the nod?
It is essentially the halfway point of the year today, with 182 days gone, and 183 still to go. On the one hand, this year is absolutely flying and it's ridiculous that it is July already. On the other, I feel like June went really slowly and Le Mans seems like eons ago. Anyway, here are some things we're discussing:
Abu Dhabi seems to be flavour of the moment, with a Yas Marina circuit being released to allow fans closer to the track. I couldn't get it to work, so have no idea what the under grandstand bit is like. However, the track gets a mention in F1 Minute and the Big Pic today, so their marketing is clearly working!
Kimi Raikkonen will be officially rallying in a World Rally Championship event in Finland at the end of July. With Le Seb doing Le Mans, and Kimi rallying his heart out, which other drivers could take part in other series?
Bridgestone have announced the tyre allocations for a further four races, with Hungary and Valencia taking the two softer compounds, whilst Belgium and Italy stick with the medium and soft variety. Does this actually mean anything though? For a viewer, the only thing that matters is soft versus hard, rather than one of four individual compounds. Another Bridgestone fail?
That should keep us going for now. There should be some more excellent tennis on later, which is one bonus for us hitting the last week in June and first week in July already. I'll see you in the comments.
We're into the weekend now, and I realise I haven't asked what you're all doing? Our plans are naturally structured around the Formula 1, but perhaps there are others out there who might be... gasp... going outside or something. Let us know, anyway.
As it turns out, Force India have done a Williams and entered the 2010 championship regardless of what FOTA are trying to acheive. It looks as though the team will get suspended from the association, leaving them with just eight members still in the conditional entry. Will that be enough to turn Max's head?
There appears to be a significant lack of grip on the softer tyres in Turkey, although some teams found the two compounds very similar. With Bridgestone bringing compounds two steps apart, it seems to have caused nothing but trouble so far this season.
It is qualifying day, and that means before the knockout phases get underway, we have to make our predictions in the Sofa F1 Pole Poll. Simply state who you think will be on pole and the top eight finishers in the race. It's just a bit of fun, and the chances are you won't get all eight right!
That'll do it for now. There'll be a Joe Show along at some point today, along with plenty of other podcasting goodness, so keep your eyes peeled. I'll see you in the comments.
Joe has journeyed to Shanghai ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix, and we catch up with the gossip from the paddock, especially now the diffuser row is essentially over.
We also discuss the Science Museum trip, how the Shanghai weather is looking, plus what there is to do on a Saturday night.
If there's anything I dislike more than Thursdays, it's April Fool's Day. I don't remember the last time I saw a really good, original fool that got everyone talking. However, it could happen, so keep your eyes peeled. Meanwhile, here's what we're talking about:
Toyota have dropped their appeal over Trulli's penalty that demoted him from 3rd to 12th. They say that it would be pointless, as they can already see how it would be rejected. One of these days, someone will put in an appeal and see it all the way through to the end!
Bridgestone have admitted that the soft compound is likely to cause more problems in Malaysia, although they use the word "challenging" rather than "terrible." Supposedly, the hard tyre will be slightly softer, but shouldn't make too big a difference, whilst the soft tyre is going to be the issue.
Meanwhile, Rosberg is worried about the timing of the race itself, having experienced the later starting format in Australia. He reckons the shadows are a problem, and if it rains in Malaysia, then it's going to be undriveable.
That'll do for now. Don't stick to what I've mentioned above though, there's plenty going on both in and outside of the world of F1 to talk about. I'll see you in the comments.
This article was originally written for BellaOnline, but is republished here for posterity.
Back at the Japanese Grand Prix 2008, we saw the introduction of green paint on the Bridgestone tyre. Last year, to distinguish between the hard and soft compound, the centre groove of each soft tyre was painted with a white stripe. To raise awareness of the FIA's "Make Cars Green" campaign, the white stripe was joined by green stripes in the other grooves for one race only.
As a fan, it was confusing, and generally it was not a good choice.
With the introduction of slick tyres, Bridgestone have been looking for ways to rehouse the stripe that would have gone in the groove. They have decided to place a stripe on the inside and outside of each tyre - on the sidewall. They have also decided that the stripe shouldn't be white, that it should be green.
So far, I haven't seen anyone suggesting this is a good idea - it doesn't look good by itself, and can only serve to detract from each team's livery. I suppose it is yet another thing we will get used to, but once again, this doesn't seem like a popular decision by Bridgestone.
The other difference between the 2008 and 2009 set of tyres, is that each race weekend will see a change in compounds combinations. Instead of adjacent compounds, there will be a gap in choice. For example, there are four compounds: hard, medium, soft and super-soft. Last year in Melbourne, Bridgestone brought the medium and soft tyres - two compounds adjacent to each other. For 2009, they will be bringing the medium and super-soft tyres - widening the gap between the compounds.
This should make the difference in tyres more pronounced. A driver has to run both sets of tyres over the course of a race, and has a limited number of each during the weekend. Tyre decision is crucial, especially when the softer compound heats up quickly, delivers a fast lap, but does not last long. The harder compound takes longer to warm up, but is more durable.
The changes are yet another thing the teams will have to think about this season, although the change to slick tyres is probably foremost in their minds, rather than a choice of white or green paint.
Friday at last, and the massive news week I predicted seemed to come to nothing. However, there were plenty of things to discuss yesterday, that will keep us going through today.
It looks like the drivers will be paying the superlicence fees after all. It's not really a surprise, of course, the chances of a strike were pretty small. However, it does make me wonder what all the fuss was about? They must have known it would make no difference?
In fugly news, Bridgestone have decided green is the colour of choice to mark the soft tyres from the hards. Without grooves to play with on the new slicks, we're getting green markings round the sidewalls. It's not pretty. But then, what about the new cars is?
Also, don't forget to read Mr Roy's latest guest post about a certain Bernd Rosemeyer. Always a fascinating look into the depths of F1's history. If that's not enough for you, Ollie has a well-written post on Elio de Angelis that is also worth a read.
That should do it for today. Don't forget to let us know if you're doing anything super-exciting over the weekend, and equally you can let us know if you're not. I will see you in the comments.
