Winter Testing

The idea of instituting stringent restrictions on testing in F1, in order to save money, has perhaps been one of the most effective cost-saving measures to have emerged from the work of the FIA and FOTA to save the sport from financial suicide. I remember, not so many years ago, when it seemed that every weekend there wasn't a race, there was a test going on somewhere. The test ban might also have had the incidental benefit of shaking up the established order in the sport, or at least making the individual races a little less predictable. Without time to test new parts and ruthlessly optimise aero-packages and setup for every circuit, there seemed this year to be a slightly more of a random aspect to the performance of individual teams at particular tracks. Without having had the chance to test exhaustively any new parts, and with the radical rules shake-up rendering previous years' experience less useful than it might have been, there was a greater variation in teams' performances from race to race.

No bad thing in my book. A dose of unpredictability helped to keep my interest up during a season in which the actual quality of the racing didn't really stand out. There were an awful lot of high-speed processions. The problem with the testing ban was that it put new drivers at a severe disadvantage. Where in the past anyone making their F1 debut would have had the luxury of having spent endless hours pounding round the Circuit di Catalunya or Jerez, two drivers making their debut in the middle of this year's season had tested an F1 car only briefly, and in a straight line. Of the others, Romain Grosjean, drafted in to replace Nelson Piquet Jr, had almost no experience of the 2009-spec slick-tyred, smaller winged F1 cars and Sebastien Buemi, the only one to have the luxury of a full winter testing schedule, looked far and away the strongest.

So the institution of a 'young drivers' test at Jerez this week, where drivers with more than 3 Grands Prix under their belt are barred from participating, is a long overdue move. It would probably have been helpful to have such an event during the season, but at least now the teams are being given an opportunity to evaluate potential stars without losing out on valuable testing mileage which a more experienced driver would be able to put to much better use. By forcing all teams to use drivers with little previous GP experience, teams are forced to use inexperienced drivers if they want to test at all, and youngsters are given a chance (the exception, to some extent, was Mclaren, who, in Gary Paffett, ran a man whos is a very experienced test driver who just happens never to have taken a Grand Prix start.)

So, who was in action, and who might we be seeing again? The champions of all the major sub-F1 single seater series were there in some capacity or another. Of those, GP2 Champion Nico Hulkenberg is the only one with a guaranteed race drive, with Williams next year, but arguably the man who is really in the pound seats is F3 Euroseries Champion Jules Bianchi, who has done enough in his first day in a Ferrari to get a long-term deal with the team. F2 Champion Andy Soucek, whom I have long thought was better than his GP2 results suggested, ended up quickest in his day with Williams. It's difficult to know how much to read into the times - how much of that came from the driver, how much from the car, and how much from the fuel load and programme he was on? Hard to know, but he's done himself no harm by topping the timesheets in his first F1 test in four years.

Headline writer's dream Bertrand Baguette got a Renault test as his prize for winning the Renault World Series this year. He wasn't particularly quick, but the Renault was not a particularly quick F1 car this year (I still think it was made to look rather better than it was by Fernando Alonso - and even in his hands it didn't exactly look fast). He did enough to earn a run with Sauber tomorrow, though that test will be worth a lot more if the Swiss team get a slot on the 2010 grid (Toyota really ought to do the decent thing and pass their team's slot to Peter Sauber's men rather than the worryingly Qadbak-esque Stefan GP outfit). It's hard to know what to make of him, not least because it took him no less than three attempts to come to the fore in the Formula Renault Series, and generally, the reallty special drivers don't need that long. That said, there are a lot of unfilled seats on the F1 grid just now.... Indy Lights champion JR Hildebrand got a test with Force India after - depending on who you believe - outshining Neel Jani and Karun Chandhok in the simulator, or writing a larger cheque. He didn't come close to the pace of Paul Di Resta, who wound up second on the opening day and - though its always dangerous to read too much into testing times - looks a good bet for an F1 ride somewhere in 2010.

Finally, British and Italian F3 champions Daniel Ricciardo and Daniel Zampieri have been handed testing opportunities at Red Bull and Ferrari respectively. At the time of writing, Zampieri has yet to get any seat time, but Ricciardo has looked promising in the Red Bull - perhaps the soft drinks manufacturer has plucked the wrong British F3 champion for its junior team. Although we didn't get to see how quick Alguersuari might have been in the same conditions.

It was harder to fathom what lay behind the appearance of some of the other drivers at the test this week. Mercedes/Brawn ran Mike Conway - last seen plying his trade in the IRL, and Marcus Ericsson, who, after looking very special in Formula BMW a few years back, has rather faded after a poor year in British F3 in 2008 where he failed to win a single race. One rather doubts that either man will end up partnering Nico Rosberg, so I can only guess that, in the absence of an established Mercedes junior programme, they were simply looking for experienced single seater drivers to help them concentrate on developing the car.

Brendon Hartley's continued placement in the Red Bull Junior programme rather baffles me. Yes, he was decently quick in British F3 in 2008, but he was beaten there by Alguersuari and Turvey. He split his time between the Euroseries and Formula Renault this year, but did nothing of any note in either. He spun the Toro Rosso on Tuesday and sat at the bottom of the timesheets. In his defence, Mirko Bortolotti, another Red Bull junior, was no quicker in the same car the day after - whether this is indicative of the limitations of the Toro Rosso, or of the Red Bull Junior Programme, I couldn't say. What price Ricciardo in the race seat next year?

In some ways, one of the most interesting questions concerns the fate of those drivers not present at Jerez this weekend. There are a good number of drivers who could be considered suitable candidates for the seats at Campos Meta, Manor, Lotus and USF1, who were not selected to test by any of the established teams. A1GP champion Adam Carroll has been talking optimistically of a race seat next year. GP2 front-runner Vitaly Petrov is said to have vast amounts of cash to spend and looked decently quick in the Barwa Campos car. Charles Pic has been there or thereabouts in the Renault World Series for a couple of years and is from a wealthy background, so might appeal to teams needing a driver who brings a budget. And there are a few drivers who have been sitting on the sidelines who really ought to be in the frame. I might sound like a stuck record on the subject, but Anthony Davidson showed flashes of brilliance in his year at Super Aguri, and Takuma Sato is a known quantity who is something of a folk hero in the Japanese motorsport world. And then there's Kamui Kobayashi - not someone I would have considered an F1 prospect until he got in the Toyota at the end of the 2009 season and was instantly on Jarno Trulli's pace.

In all truth, I rather sympathise with F1 team bosses with unfilled seats, facing the question of deciding who to put in their cars next year. Assuming that you don't have millions to tempt Kimi Raikkonen out of retirement (and only Mercedes might be in a position to do so) it strikes me that there are an awful lot of decent, solid number two-type drivers up for grabs, and a good number of junior racers who show signs of promise...people who might well have what it takes if they are given the chance. But on the downside, there isn't really anyone who stands out, head and shoulders above the rest, as a really outstanding talent. Yes, Hulkenberg was quick in GP2 (though he's already contracted to Williams) and Bianchi dominated in the Euroseries, but they were with the stand-out team. Yes, Soucek
romped home in F2, where the cars are centrally run and more equal than in any other single-seater category, but who exactly was he beating? And Baguette won convincingly in the Renault World Series, but when Fairuz Fauzy could finish second, does that suggest the standard of driver wasn't that high. And why has it taken him so long to become competitive there? And how accurate a barometer of ultimate potential is junior formula success, when a guy like Kamui Kobayashi, a midfielder in GP2, can come into F1 and look much more comfortable and confident than frontrunners in that category like Romain Grosjean and Nelson Piquet Jr. And that's the dilemma facing you before you even start thinking about who can bring a budget to ensure you have the money to get on the grid...

Formula 2: The way ahead, or a dead end?

After a break of a quarter of a century, the Formula 2 Championship sprung back into life last weekend at Valencia. The new formula doesn't really bear much resemblance to the old Formula 2. Where the old F2 was an open chassis and engine formula, in essence, Formula 1 with less horsepower, the new Formula 2 takes the 'spec formula' concept further than it has been pushed before and is the first serious 'arrive and drive' racing formula.

Gp2, which it is fair to say is the 'real' spiritual successor to the old F2, as the single seater formula sitting immediately below F1, has a spec chassis and engine, with individual teams having little freedom to modify the basic Dallara-Mecachrome design. Nonetheless, it is a competition between independent teams and the technical know-how required to run a GP2 car competitively is considerable. Even the most cursory comparison of the results of established front-runners like Barwa-Campos, ISport, ART and Racing Engineering with backmarkers like DPR, Durango and Trident shows that for all that they are all running the same basic car, there is a considerable role is played by the team.

The FIA's new F2 concept, heavily pushed by Max Mosley (much to the irritation of his supposed ally, Bernie Ecclestone, who part-owns GP2) does away with the concept of independent teams altogether. All the cars are prepared and run centrally by Jonathan Palmer's Motorsport Vision operation - the people behind the 'Formula Palmer Audi' category, which runs along similar lines. In this it differs, from virtually every other serious junior single-seater category in existence. GP2 and the Renault World Series might have standardised engines and chassis, but the cars are run by independent teams with dedicated race engineers. F3 is perhaps the formula most directly comparable with F2. The lap times of the cars are very similar - the F2 cars having a bit more power and the F3 cars being aerodynamically superior, but F3 is an open chassis and engine formula. For all that Dallara have all but cornered the market, it is open to anyone to try, and Mygale and Lola have both built cars which have won the odd race. Within an admittedly tight rule book, it is also open to the teams to develop their cars independently, too.

So is the Formula 2 concept a good or bad thing? The future of sub-F1 level single seater racing or a a dilution of the very essence of what the sport is meant to be about? I'm in two minds myself. Let's look first at the case for the new Formula 2. The first big mark in its favour is that, by running the cars centrally and doing away with the arms-race between independent teams, costs have been brought down dramatically. While a season of GP2 costs as much as £1m, and even a year in F3 is reckoned to set a driver back more than £500k these days, a season in F2 costs around £200k.

That's still an awful lot of money - vastly more than the average early 20-something is likely to be able to lay his hands on, it is at least a slightly less daunting figure for a promising youngster to attempt to raise from sponsors and backers. Still more than an awful lot of very promising youngsters in karting are ever going to be able to lay their hands on, but probably less than the cost of running competitively in, for example, the British Touring Car Championship. It should to help to open up the sport to a few more people who don't have the backing of lavish driver development schemes, vast family wealth, or the ability to call favours in the business world.

For the money, a driver knows he's getting the same equipment, prepared to the same standard, as everyone else. And that's good news for the driver, or at least for any young driver with the self-confidence to believe that he needs only a level playing field to emerge on top. My hunch is that most aspiring would-be F1 drivers believe they have what it takes and they need no unfair advantage, even if, almost by definition, most of them must be wrong. Compare that with GP2. Is Romain Grosjean the stand-out driver in that championship right now? Certainly he appears to be doing a good job, but it's hard to know for sure. Perhaps Barwa-Addax-Campos, or whatever they're called this week, are just making their driver look quicker than he is. Maybe Nico Hulkenberg, or Lucas Di Grassi, or who knows who else, might have won in the Barwa car. All we really know for sure is that Grosjean is quicker than Vitaly Petrov... The same is true, to a greater or lesser extent in all the junior formulae. Try to recall the last time that anyone won the F3 Euroseries in anything other than an ASM/ART car...

In one important way, Formula 2 promises to be much more interesting than its rival series. Thanks to the way it is run, we should know with reasonable certainty that the guys at the front reallty are the quickest drivers in the field, and not simply those with the best prepared cars, the smartest race engineers and the cheque books to procure access to them.

And yet there's a part of me that really doesn't like what the new F2 represents, an insistent voice in the back of my head telling me that it is the logical end-point of what is said to be Max Mosley's desire to turn F1 into a single-chassis formula. Motorsport, for me, has only ever been partly about the drivers. It's about the teams, about the cars, too.

The old F2 gave teams considerably scope to develop their cars. Some teams went so far as to build their own chassis. It was a valuable training ground, not only for drivers, but for designers, engineers, mechanics and team managers wanting to make the step into F1. A number of F2 teams went on to F1 having begun building their own cars in F2. AGS, Minardi, Osella and Toleman all started out as F2 constructor-teams (though of those, only Toleman, which would eventually become today's Renault F1 team, found any long-term success).

By contrast, the latter-day F3000 series with it's single chassis and engine (the uninspiring Lola Zytek) and the current GP2 championship simply don't provide the kind of technical challenge required to enable teams to progress on to F1, and with the teams solely concerned with running, and not designing, the cars, it doesn't provide an opportunity for budding designers and engineers either. To be fair, there's an argument that F1 is in any case now so expensive and so far removed from any junior category that it wouldn't matter what the rules are for GP2 - the last team to make the leap from F3000 to F1 were the Italian Forti team, and their experience appears to have deterred anyone else from having a go in the last 10 years, but a more technically free formula might at least have served as a place in which individual engineers and designers could gain experience which could prove useful in F1.
To some extent, that is still the case, at least for race engineers and mechanics. It's far less clear how the new F2 will do any of this.

There is a related problem - one F3 team bosses were keen to emphasise in a recent Autosport article. The new series, with its' pooled race engineers, limited scope for set-up changes and centrally-run cars provides little opportunity for a driver to learn the art of developing a car - of working with engineers to identify and solve handling and set-up problems and work as part of a team to optimise a car's performance. Motorsport, at the top level, is about more than simply the ability to take a well-honed car and lap quicker than anyone else can - a driver needs to be able to work with a team to develop a car over a season. How interesting will F1 or Indycar teams be in drivers who have never learned this black art? To be fair, F2 is unlikely to be anyone's last stop before F1 anyway, but if that is the case, then to what extent does the reduced budget really help young drivers?

In the end, the question of whether the new Formula 2 championship will prove to be a success will depend much on where the champion and other front-runners go in 2010. Will it prove to be a launch-pad for those seeking to establish a professional racing career, or is it little more really than a slightly faster Formula Master with only the cachet of the F2 name to recommend it? I don't know whether it will succeed, and I can't even make up my mind whether it would be a good thing if it did. I've seen what appear to me to be talented drivers whose careers have stalled for lack of funds to get a seat in a top team in GP2 or similar, and it will be good to see who comes out on top in a championship where the equipment really is equal. On the other hand though, motorsport for me has always been about more than just the drivers - and that certainly isn't true of the new F2. I suppose we'll see how it turns out...