F1- SEASONAL SILENCE SOON TO BE SHATTERED
- 29 May 2013
These are long hard months. Cold damp winter up North, well actually damned cold with bucket loads of snow. Blazing hot down South, apart from those areas in Australia and Brazil that have been washed away by some of the largest floods in may a year. And nary the faintest hint of an 18,000 RPM V8 wailing away in the distance to be latched onto in desperate hope. The loudest noise in F1 land is the clicking of keyboards on a designer’s computer, the whooshing of a wind tunnel, the hum of an autoclave baking the latest monocoque and the thump of steel on carbon fibre as said monocoque passes its mandatory crash test.
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True, this is when the tech boys, such as Adrian Newey et al, really earn their crust. And the chaps that build all those fiddly little bits are putting in seven day a week shifts to gain that last 0.010 of a second in lap time.
But that’s OK. They mostly live in Europe anyway and couldn’t have gone anywhere if they wanted to. They were all snowed in. Happy White Christmas guys. Digging through four or five feet of freezing, icy white stuff to get to a car that probably won’t start sure takes the romance out of that scenario.
But for the rest of us, it’s just a long bloody silence with only rumour, hot air and innuendo to keep the drug flowing. Coke snorting dopers have no idea what real withdrawals are like. Not even Charlie Sheen can know what it’s like for a F1 fan. No desire to quit but forced into three months cold turkey. Aaaaggghhh…..
It wasn’t always like this though. Just five years ago we would have had the “launch season” which in reality was a moving yawn where every team manager would tell us how they were going to win this coming season. But at least there was some colour, some pizzazz, plenty of free booze and some pictures for the magazines. There was also some testing going on. Even in January you could find someone pounding around Jerez or Catalunya.
And ten years ago, before this era of stringent financial responsibility, there would be teams with new drivers and interim cars making hay while the winter sun shined through from November to February. Many running hugely under-weight and smashing lap records in the hope of conning some sponsor silly enough to believe the times. The fun thing was however, that no-one really knew if the times were bogus or not. They often were, but there was always hope that one of the minnows had got it right.
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Then of course were the really “good old days” Opening round of the World Championship in the searing heat of Buenos Aires in early January. Heaven. True, most teams showed up with the previous year’s cars but they now had different paint jobs and different fellows sitting inside them. The new cars usually didn’t arrive until the start of the “European” season in April or May.
And before that? In the sixties the top teams would bundle everything off to New Zealand and Australia for the eight race Tasman Series. A winter world championship, so to speak, which was won by the likes of McLaren, Clark, Stewart and Amon. Would that we could enjoy that utopia nowadays.
But we can’t, so stop whining. Tomorrow though, our cold sweats and DTs will end as the first test of the year gets underway at the Ricardo Tormo circuit near Valencia. The majority of teams will have the initial version of their new cars on hand, but some, like McLaren, will be running interim cars so they can squeeze out that last week of computer time.
At the big end of town there are no real changes. Red Bull still have Vettel and Webber, McLaren have Hamilton and Button, Ferrari, Alonso and Massa, Mercedes, Rosberg and the unter-ubermensch and Renault keep Kubica and Petrov. In fact the only real change here is that Group Lotus have bought into the Renault team and it is planned that they will run in a black and gold livery that doesn’t remind anyone at all of the old John Player Special sponsored cars of a bygone era. Not in the slightest. Much. Nice though.
One problem may be that Canada has laws that forbid any advertising/sponsorship that even remotely looks like an old fag packet. Makes me wonder just what Ferrari will do in Canada also. Surely the fact that the Scuderia is still sponsored by Marlboro can have nothing at all to do with the “flag” on the engine cover that bears a startling resemblance to half a packet of the Marlboro chevron. How long before that goes the way of the barcode?
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In the lower half of the field is where all of the changes have been made. Williams has dumped the talented Nico Hulkenberg in favour of Pastor Maldonado and the mega bucks from Venezuela while retaining Barrichello who will start his nineteenth season in the top grade. Force India have dropped “Luckless” Liuzzi and promoted the talented Scot, Paul di Resta. Hulkenberg takes over di Resta’s spot as their test driver which should keep the pressure on both Paul and Adrian Sutil.
Sauber has secured major dollars from Telmex along with a couple of young Mexican drivers, Sergio Perez, who will race alongside Kamikaze Kobayashi, and Esteban Gutierrez who will be their test driver. Toro Rosso has added West Australian Daniel Ricciardo, but only as their Friday test driver to their current race line-up of Buemi and Alguersuari. For now. Team Lotus have swapped their Cosworth engines for a Renault power-plant and a Red Bull rear end but have retained both Trulli and Kovalainen.
Hispania F1 have signed Narain Karthikeyan and, well, someone who they may or may not announce sooner or later. They have done a deal for a Williams gearbox but just what they will be putting that into is still a mystery, A new car? A 2010 Toyota, that is still a possibility now that they have some Indian cash to chuck about? Or a tinkered with Dallara? Finally Virgin struck a sponsorship deal with Russian sports car maker Marussia and Timo Glock will be joined by promising Belgian Jerome D’Ambrosio.
So who will be quick? Well, the top half will probably still be the top half come season’s end although Williams might break back into that group. Many hope so. Last years bottom feeders will hope to break into the midfield, while the midfield will hope that they don’t. And as you can’t even run underweight in testing any more, the next few days should give us a glimpse of who has got it right. Or more rightly, it might give us a glimpse of just who has gotten it horribly wrong.
Sam Snape