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...

Losing the Edge

The othr weekend, I ventured south for a friend's Stag party and afternoon's kart racing. As the 'Stag' was a former F1 journalist (he's since moved off into the world of football writing) it was inevitable that we would end up talking motorsport. On the minibus out to Buckmore Park*, we got to discussing Luca Badoer's prospects in the forthcoming European Grand Prix. Our conclusion was that he wouldn't make a fool of himself, that he would doubtless be slower than Kimi Raikkonen, but that any professional racing driver, given the tools to do the job, would be able to get within seven or eight tenths of the car's ultimate potential. After all, Jaime Alguersuari, a man who hadn't particularly stood out in the Renault World Series this year, was able to get within about that margin of Sebastien Buemi in his debut at Toro Rosso in Hungary.

As everyone knows now, we got that wrong. Though our embarrassment must have been as nothing when compared to that experienced by Badoer himself. Qualifying plum-last, some 2.6s off the pace of Kimi Raikkonen's sister car, and spinning twice on his way to finishing last and a lap down, in a car good enough for a podium in his team mate's hands. There are more than a few intriguing questions around the whole Badoer/Ferrari story. How serious was Schumacher about stepping back behind the wheel? Did the team, and perhaps the FIA, have their eye on getting Alonso in the car? And why did the team pick Badoer over their other tester, Marc Gene, who has much more recent race experience? Is their willingness to give the man a seat a sign of a kind of soft-headedness that would never have happened in the days of Jean Todt?

But the question that has really puzzled me is simple. Why was Badoer so slow last weekend? OK, so he hasn't raced in 10 years, but he's done upwards of 10,000km for Ferrari in testing over the last decade. Yes, in terms of ultimate ability, he's clearly no Michael Schumacher, but in his time, he won the F3000 championship, and was usually quicker than his Minardi team mate, Marc Gene when they were paired together back in 1999. His credentials, in short, seem rather more solid than, say, Alguersuari or Buemi. There's no doubting, though, that he was a good deal slower than either of them. What lay behind this?

Before last weekend's race, there was much talk of how Badoer's lack of recent race experience might cost him in terms of racecraft - his ability to pass and to defend, but in the end, that was all but irrelevant. For all his thousands of kilometres of testing mileage, he simply wasn't as quick as a guy who was in his first F1 race, and a teenager in only his second F1 GP whose previous experience didn't extend beyond the World Series by Renault. Is it that Grosjean and Alguersuari are simply much better drivers? Perhaps, but I don't think that's the whole story.

I suspect that Badoer's real problem was that he simply had no recent experience of driving a racing car right on the limit. Testing does not require that a driver push the car to the very limits of his ability. On the contrary, if a test driver isn't holding something in reserve, isn't driving within himself, then it may be hard for him to accurately evaluate the effects of set-up changes and new parts. To do his job, in other words. The trouble is, if a driver gets out of the habit of driving at the limit, on the edge of his abilities, perhaps it simply gets hard to start doing so again, after a while. Certainly after 10 years. And remember that, unlike many F1 testers, Badoer has not been keeping his hand in racing in sportscars, or, in the case of younger F1 test drivers, competing in junior single seaters.

There are other difficulties. One which was not much remarked upon, but which might go some way to explaining his travails, is that an F1 tester in this day and age will typically spend a lot of time pounding around the same small number of circuits - Barcelona, Valencia, Bahrain, and in the case of Ferrari, Mugello. He gets out of the habit of learning new circuits, and in particular, difficult street circuits where the walls are right up close, and the smallest error risks being punished with a bent steering rod or damaged suspension.

Not convinced? Well, I might be wrong but it would go some way to explaining why Alex Wurz, after some 7 years on the sidelines, was so thoroughly outclassed when he drove alongside Nico Rosberg at Williams in 2007. The same might even be true to a lesser extent of drivers who have spent too long in uncompetitive cars which haven't exactly provided the inspiration to push to the very limit of what's possible. It would go some way to explaining how many F1 drivers careers eventually fade out - think Thierry Boutsen, Mauricio Gugelmin or Martin Brundle.

If I'm right, it poses something of a dilemma for the three new teams lining up to enter the sport next year, USF1, Manor F1, and Campos Meta. Do they go for unproven youngsters, fresh out of GP2 or WSR? Or do they hire an old hand like Pedro De La Rosa, all the while knowing that not only is he not a truly front running driver, but he almost certainly has had his edge blunted by years of pounding round Valencia and Barcelona for Mclaren? Probably the safest bet would be to go fifty/fifty, hiring one young gun and one old hand. But that risks the worst of both worlds. What if the 'young gun' is another Luciano Burti or Antonio Pizzonia - someone who doesn't quite make the grade? And what if the old hand is too slow to really expose this? How will the team ever know for sure that the problem lies with its drivers, rather than the car? Its an intriguing dilemma for all the new teams. It will be interesting to see how they resolve it. Oh and Stefano... Do the right thing. Give Anthony Davidson a call about a job you have for him in Belgium on Friday....

*52.04 in an RX7 in 'Pro' spec to beat, set in my first heat, if you want to see how you compare!!

Rivals

How much to read into testing times? Truth be told, it's probably not wise to make too many assumptions on the basis of fastest laps alone. Remember when, through the winter, the 2005 Honda looked like it was a couple of seconds a lap quicker round Barcelona than anything else? Or when the 2001 Prost was topping the time sheets after an abysmal 2000? In neither case did this turn out to be a reliable guide to what would happen come the season proper. Quite why Honda was so quick in the early months of 2005 I've never been sure, while in 2001, Prost were probably running their car underweight to attract sponsors.

Nonetheless, there's something tantalising and intriguing about the fact that Sebastien Vettel's Red Bull has lapped Jerez nearly a second quicker than anyone else (Hamilton's time can safely be ignored, as it was set using a 2008-spec rear wing). The chances are it was only a single particularly well hooked-up qualifying lap when track conditions happened to be just right. Word has it that it is actually Ferrari and Renault who are quickest right now, with Williams, BMW, Red Bull and Toyota clustered together and snapping at their heels. A big question mark remains over where Mclaren fit into this picture. The fact that they had not until recently been able to run their 2009 rear wing leaves open the question of whether there are fundamental problems with their 2009 car, or whether, as with the early problems with the Renault, too much is being made of too little.

All that said, the radical changes to the F1 rulebook have the potential to rewrite the form book to a degree not seen in recent years. No longer are teams chasing incremental performance gains on well-tested concepts. They are, in a sense, starting from scratch. For all that the technical rules are far more restrictive than was once the case, it is probably still just about possible to find that 'unfair advantage'. The introduction of KERS, in particular, just might allow one team to make a leap which results in a car substantially quicker than anyone else's. I hope this doesn't happen because F1 seasons in which only two cars stand any realistic chance of winning races don't tend to be very interesting. Think 1992, 2002, or 2004.

That said, though, it does depend to some extent on which team finds that unfair advantage. The 1988 F1 season remains to my mind one of the classics because, although there were only two cars in the field with any realistic chance of winning races, they were being driven by Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost - and Ron Dennis was happy to let them race. In a reversal of the situation in recent years, I'd rather it were Ferrari than Mclaren or Renault. In the Schumacher era, a dominant Ferrari meant the race was a foregone conclusion. It is not entirely clear that Barrichello or Massa were often allowed to race the German, but even if they were, neither was capable of beating him on a regular basis. These days, though, the team have no clear number one and provided that management don't impose one, a battle between Massa and Raikkonen would be most intriguing. By contrast, I can't see Kovalainen putting up a serious fight against Hamilton over a whole season, and as for the idea of Piquet Jr. giving Alonso anything to worry about....

Vettel's testing times got me thinking though.... If one team turns out to be head-and-shoulders above the rest this year, wouldn't it be interesting if it were Red Bull? They've certainly produced one of the prettiest cars on the grid this year (it's a relative thing, they've all got stupidly proportioned wings, but you can't pin the blame on Adrian Newey for that...) but is it just possible that they've also produced the quickest?

Who knows, probably it's nothing more than an idle daydream. But if they have, the battle between F1's long-time nearly man Mark Webber and Grand Prix racing's new golden boy Sebastien Vettel could be as fascinating as the battle which ensued when Fernando Alonso went off to Mclaren as a double champion and suddenly found himself having to work very hard indeed to deal with his rookie team mate Lewis Hamilton.

Mark Webber is perhaps the single great unknown quantity in the sport. He's going into his eighth season now, and still I don't think we know for sure quite how good he is. We know he's quick, but there have been odd hints that he's more than merely quick. That he's one of the sport's true greats - a man who could go mano a mano with Kubica, Hamilton, Alonso or Raikkonen if he only had the equipment worthy of his talents.

After all, he put a Jaguar on the front row at Malaysia in 2003, and this in the days before teams had the option of playing with fuel loads and going for Saturday afternoon glory. At Monaco, in 2006, he looked like for a while like a serious challenger for victory in a Williams Cosworth before the engine let go. Over the last two years, he's outqualified his former title-contending team mate David Coulthard 31-4 at Red Bull. And the Japanese Grand Prix at Fuji in 2007 might be best remembered for Hamilton's great drive in the wet, but Mark Webber was actually catching him in second before he was punted off the road by... Sebastien Vettel.

For all that, it remains open to question whether Webber is really in quite the same class as, say, Hamilton, Alonso or Kubica. Way back when Renault tested both Alonso and Webber, Pat Symonds reckoned that the Spaniard was the quicker driver. His first year at Williams, was rather disappointing too. Yes, the Grove team's relationship with BMW was on the rocks by then, but he didn't really appear to be any quicker than Nick Heidfeld that year. And Heidfeld may be a solid, professional racer, but after 9 seasons in the sport, I've not seen anything to suggest he's from the very top drawer. Added to that is the question of whether the broken leg he sustained in a cycling accident over the winter might have a more lasting impact. It has often been said that no racing driver is ever quite the same after sustaining a serious leg injury, although it didn't seem to stop Michael Schumacher winning five titles after his leg-breaking crash at Silverstone in 1999.

Up against him is the sport's youngest ever winner, Sebastien Vettel. A man whose career has, in some ways, been the very opposite of Webber's. Where Webber has had to fight hard for every opportunity - not usually getting the best cars in his junior formula days, and not making it to Formula One until he was 25, Vettel's path was eased by backing from both Red Bull and BMW, and he made his F1 debut at the age of just 19, standing in for the injured Kubica at Indianapolis. He did a sensible job, came home 8th and in so doing became the youngest man ever to score an F1 point. A tug of love between BMW and Red Bull was resolved in the latter's favour and by the time of the Hungarian Grand Prix, he was a full-time F1 driver for Toro Rosso.

In the second half of 2008, the Toro Rosso proved to be a rather effective weapon, embarrassing the 'works' Red Bull squad, and when the big boys screwed up in the rain in Monza, Vettel seized the opportunity he was presented with both hands and became the youngest Grand Prix winner in the sport's history. It might have relied a little on luck, but Vettel was consistently there or thereabouts in the latter part of the season - only once finishing out of the points in the last seven races.

But how special is he? On the one hand, Toro Rosso is built around the shell of the old Minardi team - and in that light, his haul of one win, one pole and 35 points looks very impressive indeed. But another way of looking at it is that he had, at his disposal, a Ferrari-powered, Adrian Newey designed car, engineered by the hugely experienced Giorgio Ascanelli. Put that way, the Toro Rosso sounds like an impressive package indeed. Sure, he scored an awful lot more points than his team mate Bourdais, but the midfield pack was so tightly bunched last year, that this did not always equate to a significant difference in pace between the two - especially in race conditions. It is worth remembering that, at Monza, Bourdais, after being delayed at the start, was lapping just as quickly as Vettel in the rain.

Both Vettel and Webber have their reputations on the line this year. Each really has to be quicker than the other, or at least as quick as the other. Vettel need to blow away Webber to maintain his status as the sport's coming man, while Webber needs to get the better of his young new team mate if he's not to become yesterday's man before he was ever really today's. Regardless of how competitive this year's Red Bull is, it's going to be an intriguing rivalry between two seemingly apolitical, straightforward men which much at stake. But if Adrian Newey, Geoff Willis and co. have found something special, then it just might turn out to be one of the most fascinating battles the sport has seen. Roll on Australia.