After the tasty hors d"e;oeuvres of the early season flyaways, it"e;s time to begin devouring the main course of the European season at Barcelona this weekend. The Circuit de Catalunya is the main proving ground for Formula 1 teams, and it will be interesting to see how things have progressed since pre-season testing. Back then the big question was: "e;is Brawn running underweight?"e; As I suggested to you at the time, and have since been proved correct, the answer
was "e;no"e;, and Jenson Button and the team arrive with healthy world championship leads in both categories.
WHO CAN BEAT BRAWN?....
I"e;m lending no favouritism here when I say that Red Bull Racing is the team most likely. The performance of the RB5 is already very close to Brawn"e;s BGP 001 in the dry and clearly quicker in the wet, and we also know that there"e;s a pace gain to come (although not in time for Spain) in the shape of the so-called "e;double diffuser"e;. The other team that has the potential is Toyota. I wouldn"e;t like to say it flattered to deceive in Bahrain, but the strategy was very much to deliver the front row. In hindsight, that meant it didn"e;t have enough fuel to make it stick in the race. After those three teams, it"e;s difficult to imagine the rest - even the might of McLaren and Ferrari - have significantly closed the gap. However, it is clear that McLaren has made the most progress since the beginning of the year, and they will take great encouragement from that and the recent FIA ruling.
CONTRASTING FORTUNES
It"e;s always interesting when a team publicly declares it has switched off development on a given season. Last year, we heard that from two teams: Honda and BMW. It was clear why Honda did it, and look at the benefit that team (albeit rebranded as Brawn) has reaped. But in BMW"e;s case, they were in a championship-winning position. I found it hard to understand why it did that - why would you throw in the towel? F1 can change so much in a year, if you"e;re doing well, you must be doing something right, so push on. BMW then put a lot of effort into getting out on track early, and develop its KERS device, trying to find that potential benefit. It put all its eggs in that basket, and it just hasn"e;t worked out. Contrast that approach with Brawn and Red Bull, whose cars were the last to hit the track and haven"e;t yet raced with KERS...
UPGRADES MORE VITAL THAN EVER
With no in-season testing, and the imminent issue of budget capping looming in the future, I think you"e;ll not only find teams accelerating their investment into developing this season"e;s car, but they"e;ll be spending what they can on understanding if they have a stable aerodynamic platform for the future too. There"e;s no better place than Barcelona to judge whether you"e;ve got an upgrade that works or not. It"e;s not just the databank that"e;s generated from pre-season; it"e;s got a great blend of fast, medium and slow-speed corners. If you find more downforce with your update, assuming you"e;ve not saddled yourself with too much drag, you go faster. It"e;s that simple. So we have the potential this weekend to see the performance of teams improve, depending on whose brains have been the cleverest back at base over these past few weeks.
A TEST FOR THE RULES TOO
Since 1996, no-one has won this race from behind the front row. Its fast nature lends itself to processional racing, but will that reputation be broken by the KERS and new wing set-ups? We"e;ve talked a lot about KERS helping the overtaking, but we haven"e;t heard much about the adjustable front wings helping. A lot of teams seem to have trouble getting these wings to work, and we don"e;t get any information as to when, or if, they are using them. That said, the KERS icon is pretty small on the on-board graphics - I think we should have a big, flashing "e;boost!"e; symbol. We all happily pay to watch Hollywood movies where things are right in your face, so why do we get some whiz-bang graphics in F1 too?
Subscribe