Every Dog Has Its Day - F1 2009 In Review - Part Two

Only Brawn, Red Bull, Mclaren and Ferrari actually won races this year. Yet the strangest thing about this season, in many ways, what marked it out from the 25 or so I've seen before, was that almost all of the remaining six teams on the grid had days when they looked as though they were in contention, and with a fair wind, they might have joined the winners' circle.

Perhaps the strongest of the six was the now departed Toyota team. It is ironic that the German-Japanese squad have had the rug pulled from under them by the parent company just as they were beginning to look like a serious racing team, as opposed to an enormously expensive white elephant. They made a number of very good calls this year. They were one of three teams to hit upon the double-diffuser concept from the start, and this put them in good stead in the early part of the season. They were also the only manufacturer team not to divert time and money into a KERS programme that they couldn't make work. The team locked out the front row at the third round in Bahrain, and I still wonder if they might have been in with a shout of victory of they had played a tactically smarter game - and in particular had they not put the wrong tyres on both cars at the first stop.

For much of the mid-season, the team appeared to slip into anonymity, struggling to make the tyres work and scoring little after Trulli's podium in Turkey. It was perhaps during this long, disappointing summer, the nadir of which came with a truly embarrassing performance at Monaco where neither driver could get sufficient heat into the tyres and one-time Monte Carlo winner Trulli was left ambling round at the back, seconds of the pace, that the decision was taken by the Toyota board to throw in the towel. If so, the late season return to form is all the more ironic. Timo Glock took an impressive second in Singapore after Rosberg and Vettel eliminated themselves from contention with penalties for pitlane offences and, Jarno Trulli, who had been nowhere in Singapore, settled the score at Toyota's home race (albeit on a track owned by Honda) at Suzuka, with another second place. In the end, it was a case of close, but no cigar for the team though. This year, they came closer than they ever have to taking a maiden race victory, but they leave the sport winless.

The same cannot quite be said of BMW-Sauber. Nonetheless, Mario Thiessen's decision to abandon development of the 2008 car to concentrate on a 2009 title assault now looks mightily presumptuous. It was never quite clear what was wrong with the 2009 BMW. There were times when it ran quite respectably. Aided by luck with the timing of the safety car, Robert Kubica looked in with a shot of victory at the opening race in Melbourne before he locked horns with Sebastian Vettel 3 laps from the end. Nick Heidfeld, who showed rather better relative to his much heralded team mate than he had last year, picked up a lucky second place a week later in Malaysia, and did a good job of picking up the minor points in a car that appeared capable of no more. There were days when it appeared Robert Kubica wasn't really interested, although it may only have been that he was less able to adapt to the 09 BMW's foibles than Heidfeld, who has rather greater experience of driving 'difficult' cars. That said, Kubica's drive to second in the Brazilian Grand Prix was one of the highlights of the year for me.

Unlike Toyota, who always struck me as a rather soulless team, devoid of real character, I'll miss BMW. Yes, they were ultimately just the plaything of a large corporation, but they done a good job of turning the Sauber team into a front-running squad, until things went wrong this year. That they didn't do the right thing by the Swiss team, failing to sign the Concord Agreement and selling the assets to shady investment company Qadbak rather than handing it back to Peter Sauber, leaves a slightly sour taste in the mouth. A shame, because the building blocks were in place to put together a really first-rate racing team.

Renault, in contrast with Toyota and BMW, appear for now to be sticking with F1. From being, at least in terms of race wins, the most successful of the manufacturer teams last year, they slipped well back down the order in 2009. It is hard to assess exactly how bad the 2009 Renault was, because it was effectively a one-car team. All of the squad's 29 points came from their departing number 1 driver Fernando Alonso. It is hard to know whether this was a case of Alonso dragging the car places it didn't really belong, or whether Romain Grosjean and Nelson Piquet simply weren't getting the job done. Probably it was a mix of the two. There was a pole position in Hungary, achieved by running ridiculously light, and a podium in Singapore, but other than that it was a barren year for the Anglo-French squad. They made the news only when the 'crashgate' story broke in the aftermath of the sacking of Nelson Piquet Jr.

Given the $100m fine that Mclaren got for unauthorised use of Ferrari data by one of its employees a couple of years back, the deliberate arranging of an accident to attempt to fix a Grand Prix seemed to be remarkably lightly punished all told. But then perhaps the FIA decided that now was not the time to start driving teams out of the sport. And arguably the chief beneficiary of the move, Fernando Alonso, got off lightest of all. It seems hard to believe he would have run the strategy he did in Singapore had he not had some inkling what was planned. Flavio Briatore bore the brunt of the FIA's wrath. He'll probably be missed about as much as Toyota F1.

Williams started the year in the best form they have shown for several seasons, another team to benefit from spotting the 'double diffuser' loophole in the 2009 aero-regs from the outset. Sadly, the cards never seemed to fall their way. Potential podiums in both the opening races were lost to the timing of the safety car and a bungled pit stop in Australia, and to the timing of the opening of the heavens in Malaysia. The team flattered to deceive to some extent, usually topping the timesheets in free practice, only to slip back down the order when it counted on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

All the same, the team were probably stronger than their 7th place in the Constructor's Championship might suggest. Only once, at Singapore, did they look as if they might be within striking distance of winning a race, although Lewis Hamilton probably had Rosberg covered even before Rosberg effectively eliminated himself from proceedings by tripping over the white line on the pitlane exit. However, there were other races, notably Brazil and Malaysia, where car and driver looked much stronger than the final points tally suggests. As with Renault, Williams were held back by the fact that, in a tight and competitive field, they relied exclusively on Rosberg to pick up points. Kazuki Nakajima might be better than I thought him to be based on his GP2 performances, and certainly he was much closer to Rosberg on pace than Grosjean or Piquet was to Alonso, but in the end, he just wasn't quite quick enough to merit a place in F1. With Toyota's departure, his F1 career is probably over, unless he can use his connections to get a drive with one of the new teams next year.

The single biggest upset of the year, perhaps the greatest shock of the decade, came when Giancarlo Fisichella grabbed pole at Spa - not by running a silly fuel load - but by plain outpacing everyone else in a Force India. The team formerly known as Jordan were making steady progress towards the back of the field up to that point, sometimes frightening Toyota and BMW on their off-days, but until that weekend in the Ardennes, they had never actually scored any points. Yes, Sutil wasn't far off at Silverstone, and he impressed mightily in the rain in China until he flew off the road a few laps from the end, but the best you could say, really, was that while still backmarkers, they were much less far off the back of the pack.

Then Fisichella grabbed pole at Spa, and finished second. He was faster than eventual race winner Kimi Raikkonen too - it was really only the Ferrari's KERS equipment and, to be fair, probably Raikkonen's superior race-craft, which enabled the Italian team to take the victory. To prove it was no fluke, a week later, both Force Indias ran top-5 at Monza too. The VJM002 was clearly well suited to fast, open tracks. To judge by both the car's speed-trap times and it's remarkable fuel efficiency, which was better than that achieved by either of the other Mercedes-powered teams by some margin, it appears that the crucial advantage they had was tremendous aerodynamic efficiency. At tracks like Singapore and Abu Dhabi, where mechanical grip through slow and medium speed corners was crucial, they remained also-rans, but their late-season form was nonetheless a revelation.

Last, and in most respects, least, there was Toro Rosso. There was no repeat of the giant-killing performances of 2008 for the Faenza team, and it was a little hard to believe that they were running the same basic car as the Red Bull team which was in the running for the title. I suspect a large part of the explanation is that they simply didn't have the drivers to get the job done. Sebastian Buemi did a solid, competent job for a 20 year old in his first season, but it was hard to assess how quick he really was. Should he be judged by his pace relative to Sebastien Bourdais, who never seemed to get to grips with F1 at all, and relative to his still less experienced team mate Jaime Alguersuari? Or would a fairer comparison be with the 'A team' Red Bulls?

In what was a very competitive year, it could be argued that Toro Rosso did well to pick up eight points over the course of the season with what is by some distance the smallest team on the grid. Their approach to driver selection continues to baffle me. Jaime Alguersuari might be a British F3 champion, but his performances in the Renault World Series were hardly such as to mark him out as anything particularly special. If racking up points was the objective, then Takuma Sato or Anthony Davidson would surely have made more sense. On the other hand, Alguersuari is Spanish and well-connected, so it's possible than sponsorship concerns may have driven the decision, especially if Red Bull are still intending to sell the team. He did just enough, in my book, to merit a full season next year. In the end, Toro Rosso didn't have a bad season, especially in comparison with the team from which they were born, Minardi. The trouble is, everyone else, even Force India, had a better one...

End Note: Shell got in touch with me recently regarding promotion of a competition offering bloggers and aspiring writers the chance to establish a career as a motoring journalist. Those who know me will be aware that this is strictly a hobby for me - Ten years ago, it might have been right up my street, but these days I'm well settled in a job as a policy-wonk in Government and have seen too many people end up disillusioned when they mix work and pleasure. You, however, might feel differently, and if you do, you might want to take a look at this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxXYNn1ZxTc&feature=player_embedded
http://www.writeintogear.co.uk/shellv-power/,

A Step Into The Unknown - F1 2009 Preview

Anyone's game?

In the more than 20 years I've been following Formula 1, I honestly can't remember there being so much uncertainty as to who would be at the front going into the first race of the season. For the last couple of years, it has been pretty clear from Winter testing that the battle at the sharp end would be fought out between Ferrari and Mclaren, and so it proved to be. This year, though, there is no such certainty.

Through the Winter,, Ferrari, Toyota, Williams, Red Bull, BMW, the new Brawn GP team, Renault, and even, right at the last gasp at Jerez last week, the seemingly troubled Mclaren, have shown flashes of real pace. The trouble is, it's hard to read too much in testing times. Without knowing who has been running what fuel loads, who have been concentrating on simply getting miles on the new car, and which teams, if any, have been running low-fuel qualifying-simulation 'glory runs' in order to attract headlines and sponsors, it is hard to know what the times tell us.

A real upset?

Perhaps the biggest question left unanswered by the winter tests has been just how real the apparently scintillating pace of the new Brawn-Mercedes is. If the stopwatch is to be believed, then they've got a car which is kind to its tyres, and about half a second quicker than anyone else round Jerez and Barcelona. But are they running underweight to attract backers? Ross Brawn says they're not, and to be sure, it doesn't seem the sort of thing that an old hand like Brawn would be doing, but, of course, if they were running light, there would be little sense in admitting as much. And if the car isn't underweight, is it legal. Red Bull have already indicated their intention to protest the team's diffuser and if as Helmut Marko claims, it is really worth half a second a lap, Brawn's chances this year are going to hinge on the outcome of that appeal.

But assuming, for a moment, that Brawn really are the team to beat going into 2009, the battle between Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button could be rather intriguing. Barrichello had six years in a Ferrari, so it can hardly be said he's never been given a chance in a title-winning car. However, throughout that time, he had Michael Schumacher as a team mate, and, leaving aside the fact that Schumacher was probably the single most consummate driver of the last 20 years, it's not clear whether Barrichello was often even allowed to race him. So in a sense, this might be his first real run at the F1 title, in his 17th season in the sport.

When he was first paired up with Jenson Button in 2006, it was the younger Button who had the edge and won Honda's only Grand Prix win (in that incarnation, the previous works Honda team, too, also scored a single GP win with John Surtees back in 1967) but last year, it was Barrichello who, in what we had assumed to be the autumn of his career, generally had the edge in the awful RA108. Truth be told, that's of a piece with Button's career as a whole. Given a good car, he's tended to be quick, but in a bad one, like the 2001 Benetton or last year's Honda, and he tends to lose interest.

If the Brawn really is as quick as it looks, then, aside from being a final ironic coda to the disaster that was Honda's return to F1 as a factory team, the battle between two men who, just a couple of months back looked to be out of work, and who must surely have thought their time at the top of F1 was over could be hard fought indeed.

Massa vs. Raikkonen - the Rematch

It is usually fairly safe to assume that Ferrari will be somewhere towards the front of the pack. Neither the loss of Rory Byrne, Jean Todt and Ross Brawn nor the departure of Schumacher appears to have affected that. The winter testing times have been promising too, and it is probably a fair assumption that they will be somewhere near the front this weekend. What will be interesting to see is whether Felipe Massa will be able to retain the upper hand over his better paid team mate into 2009. He certainly had the edge for much of last year, but then Raikkonen was clearly never entirely at home with the understeery 2008 Ferrari. The reckoning is that the 2009 slick tyres will leave the cars more prone to oversteer, with the rear tyres wearing faster than the fronts, and that could give Kimi the upper hand. The only remaining question is that of whether his motivation is quite what it once was, with a world title in the bag and untold millions in the bank. All said, for all that this year looks very open, I think over the season as a whole, with Mclaren seemingly in trouble, Ferrari stand a good chance of seeing off the pretenders to their crown. Which of their drivers will have the edge, though, is another question entirely.

All according to plan at BMW?

Mario Thiessen, BMW’s master planner, had always pencilled in 2009 as the year that the team formerly known Sauber would make a serious bid for the world title. There were moments last year when it seemed they might hit their target a year early, but Kubica’s brief period at the top of the driver’s table notwithstanding, the team abandoned development of the 2008 machine to concentrate on this year’s car. Will that pay off? It’s too early to tell. On the plus side, they are reputed to be further ahead in the development of KERS than any other team, and have had their 2009 car up and running very early on.

On the other hand, though, the car hasn’t stood out in testing – it’s been decently quick, but not on the same pace as the Ferrari. And if they’re going to lodge a title bid, it’s surely going to have to be with Kubica, which might pose a problem on two fronts. Firstly, as one of the sport’s tallest and heaviest drivers, he’ll be more heavily penalised by the extra weight of KERS than most. Secondly, his lacklustre 2007 season was put down in part to a car too oversteery for his liking – and, of course, received wisdom is that the 2009 cars will tend to oversteer. In spite of all this, I still see Kubica as a dark horse for the world title, especially if the other front-runners run into reliability troubles.

The car in front…at last?

Toyota have spent a lot of time and money in F1 since the turn of the decade without achieving much in the way of anything. There are signs that this might be about to change this year. The team appear cautiously confident that the TF109 will be right at the front, and Timo Glock hinted in a recent interview that he thought victory in Melbourne not beyond the bounds of possibility. The team will have benefited more than most from the ‘reset’ provided by the rules changes, and despite budget cuts, they still have more resources than more or less anyone else on the grid.

After an uncertain start, Timo Glock has matured quickly into a very solid F1 performer – about the only team mate Jarno Trulli has ever had who has troubled him as a qualifier on occasion. Trulli, meanwhile, remains the master of the single quick lap. If the latest rules don’t make overtaking easier than it has been in recent years, then given a half-way quick Toyota, that might be enough to secure Trulli Toyota’s first win.

The Renault-powered quartet

None of this year’s F1 cars would win beauty contests, but nothing else is quite so downright ugly as the stubby-nosed Renault R29. Early pace in testing suggested the car might be as bad as it looked, too. Since then, though, Flavio’s team appear to have sorted out the car’s rumoured lack of downforce and Fernando Alonso has been sounding a lot more positive with regards his chances than he did at the same time last year. Certainly if the Renault is anywhere approaching competitive, Alonso can be relied upon to get the most out of it. His troubled year at Mclaren notwithstanding, anyone who can win two races with last year’s R28 can be relied upon to get the job done.

Nelson Piquet Jr’s retention I can only guess is down to the team not being confident that Di Grassi or Grosjean were likely to be any better. There was little indication in 2008 that he will follow in his father’s footsteps though unlike Hamilton, he is at least unlikely to unsettle team mate Alonso to the detriment of the team as a whole.

Renault will also benefit from having been allowed to update their engine to achieve parity with the other engine-makers after they took the engine-freeze regulations a little more literally than anyone else last year. It’s reckoned that alone might give them another couple of tenths of a second, and that will be good news not only for Renault, but for the Renault-powered Red Bulls.

If the Renault is the ugliest car on the grid, then a strong case can be made for the Adrian Newey-designed Red Bull RB5 being the prettiest. After flying in the hands of Sebastian Vettel soon after being unveiled at Jerez, they haven’t really stood out since but all the same, surely it’s time for Adrian Newey to build another world-beater. Perhaps they’re just taking a little longer than others to get on top of their car. However fast the Red Bull does or doesn’t turn out to be, though, the battle between team mates Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel is going to be one to watch. Neither man can afford to be outpaced by the other. Both are clearly quick, but questions remain as to whether either is absolutely first-rate. Webber, the 21^st Century Chris Amon, lost much of the winter to a broken leg picked up in a cycling accident – not what he needs as he faces the sternest challenge of his career. On the other hand, Vettel wouldn’t be the first highly rated youngster to come off second best to the Aussie. Ask Pizzonia. Or Wilson, Or even perhaps Rosberg. As I say, one to watch…

Woking in trouble?

It doesn’t matter how much money you have, or how long your pedigree, building a racing car is a tricky business, and the scope to get it horribly wrong is considerable. Early indications are that the 2009 Mclaren is simply not working as it should – that it has fundamental aerodynamic flaws. With the in-season testing ban, it’s going to be very difficult for the team to make up for lost time and ground, though if anyone has the resources to do it, it is Mclaren.

That said, those 1.17 laps at Jerez right at the end of winter testing – are they a sign that the team have got their problems licked? Or just a glory run on a day when the circuit was particularly quick?

If the car is as bad as it seems it might be, it will be an interesting test of Lewis Hamilton’s character. There’s no doubt that the young Briton is outstanding in a good car, but in his whole career, he’s never really experienced the dispiriting feeling of being in an uncompetitive car. If he rises to the occasion, and transcends the limitations of his equipment, as say, Schumacher did at Ferrari in 1996, his reputation will be well and truly sealed. If his head goes down, and he allows himself to be outpaced by Kovalainen, or if he begins to take his frustrations out on the team, his reputation might be destroyed as quickly as it was made.

The pressure is on for his team mate, Kovalainen too. Last year, he seemed to be within reach of Hamilton over a single lap, but could not stay with him over a race distance and Mclaren’s failure to capture the constructor’s title from Ferrari could be said to be down in part to their number 2 driver’s lack of race pace. If he’s to remain with Mclaren, or another front running team beyond the end of the season, he’s going to have to be a lot closer to Hamilton than he was in 2008. That said, he does have more experience with bad cars. Perhaps his troubled debut year with the difficult Renault R27 might turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

More of the same for Frank’s boys?

Williams seem to go well every winter, and every season since they fell away from the leading teams around 2004, they have suggested that this time it will be different, and the team will be back at the front. It never seems to work out that way. Recent Williams have tended to be quick out of the box, and with their good mechanical grip, they usually run well on the streets of Melbourne, but the team have been behind the curve when it comes to aerodynamic efficiency, and it’s not clear whether the rules changes will help. The testing times have been encouraging, but then they always are. The team abandoned development of the 2008 car early to concentrate on the 2009 machine, but that would be more likely to pay dividends if it weren’t for the fact that Mclaren and Ferrari aside, pretty much everyone else did the same thing.

On the driver front, it’s crunch time for Nico Rosberg. After a promising couple of years in 2006 and 2007, he struggled to rise above the limitations of his car last year, and with the emergence of Kubica, Hamilton and Vettel, no longer looks like he’s necessarily one of the stars of the future. Kazuki Nakajima acquitted himself well last year, but unless he ups his game this season, he’ll only be in the sport as long as engine-suppliers Toyota think its worth paying to have him drum up interest in the sport in Japan.

Supporting cast

Toro Rosso are unlikely to match the highs of last season, which saw them beating parent-team Red Bull and winning their first race. Whatever happens this year is likely to be something of a come-down. Which is a shame, because there is real potential here. They will still be running a Ferrari-engined Red Bull, which with Giorgio Ascanelli heading up the engineering side, should provide the team’s latest pair of Sebastiens with the means to embarrass the front-runners on occasion. Bourdais has been retained for another year, which was probably the right decision. Armchair enthusiasts might have been keen to see the return of Takuma Sato, but in all honesty, the Japanese driver has had more than his fair share of chances in the sport already, and failed to make the most of them.

The choice of Sebastien Buemi to partner Bourdais seems rather odd, and the only way it makes sense is that he was the only driver on the Red Bull junior ladder with the experience needed to make the switch to F1. He was unexceptional in his time in GP2, and if he doesn’t deliver quickly, the likes of Brandon Hartley and Jaime Alguesuari will be knocking at the door. That said, if he excels in F1, he wouldn’t be the first driver to prove quicker in F1 than in his junior career.

It’s hard to believe that a Mercedes powered Force India is going to be any quicker than a Ferrari powered one, really. Team owner Vijay Mallya has been making optimistic noises which leave me wondering whether he really understands the sport and the sheer scale of the task facing the former Jordan outfit. Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil are back for another year. Both are competent enough, but I must confess to feeling a little disappointed that the team aren’t bringing on another promising youngster. Sutil no longer entirely convinces me – a driver who’s really going places shouldn’t struggle to beat Fisichella, and it would have been interesting to see what Grosjean or Di Resta could have done in the car. Expect them to bring up the rear again.

So who’s going to win it?

Pretty much the whole thrust of this piece has been to admit that for once, I really don’t have a clue (not that I’ve got a brilliant track record of picking driver’s champions anyway). At the risk of putting a curse on the Maranello team my hunch is that Ferrari will have the edge over the season as a whole. Brawn might appear to be the quickest of the bunch right now, but there have to be question marks both over the legality of the car, and over whether they have the money to fund the kind of development needed to keep them at the front over the whole season. Toyota have looked promising, but even if the Toyota can match the Ferrari on pace, are Trulli and Glock really able to take the fight to Raikkonen and Massa? Kubica, Alonso and Hamilton all certainly can, but with the possible exception of Kubica, I’m not convinced that any of those three will have the car they need to make a bid for the title. So, forced to choose, I’d tip Ferrari, and forced to pick one of Massa and Raikkonen, I’d back Raikkonen to secure a second driver’s crown. But I can rarely remember feeling less sure….

When your time is up

British F1 viewers will have been treated to, or perhaps that should be, subjected to, a series of adverts for the mobile phone company, Vodafone, in which Dame Judy Dench tells us (over a montage of pictures and clips of one Lewis Hamilton) that "a dream can only become reality if you chase it and chase it and chase it." Maybe so, but the thing about dreams is that they tend to be unrealistic, to be flights of fantasy. Else they wouldn't be dreams.

Lewis Hamilton's 'dream' - that of becoming Formula 1 World Champion, is a case in point. In the 57 years that the World Championship has been in existence, just 29 individuals have achieved this feat. Given that there were around 29 drivers on the grid over the course of this year alone, (and, according to Wikipedia, nearly 800 different drivers over the years) the odds are not especially good.

Even making the F1 grid, though, is a kind of statistical lottery win. As a young kid, I had dreams of being an F1 champion myself. As with probably almost every kid who got hooked on watching the sport, I didn't have the family connections, or money, to pursue this ambition in any meaningful way. I was a couple of years older than Lewis Hamilton is now when I even first got behind the wheel of a kart. If I had wanted to become an F1 driver, I would have had to have been racing karts since my early teens The vast majority of those dreaming of F1 stardom fall at the very first fence, and through no fault of their own. (Incidentally, there have been odd exceptions to this rule. Damon Hill was the last World Champion who did not come up through karting. To my knowledge, the last driver who did not spend his teens in the karting ranks was Robert Doornbos).

That still leaves hundreds, perhaps even thousands of young men across the world who take their first steps into the world of Junior single seater racing each year. The options are myriad - Formula BMW, Formula Ford, Formula Renault, and various less well recognised routes exist in Britain alone, and most of these championships have their analogues in every western country as well as, increasingly, many less traditional motorsporting countries in the Far East, the Arab world and South America. Most of the drivers in these categories will never progress beyond them - to Formula 3, International Formula Masters, Formula Atlantic or any of the other categories that make up the next rung on the ladder. Sometimes this will be because they simply didn't have the requisite ability to pursue their career to the next level - sometimes it will be a shortage of funds. Sometimes, given that many drivers have backers who see 'their' man as an investment, it is hard to disentangle the two.

While there are drivers who make the leap straight from Formula 3 to Formula 1 (or even from Formula Renault to Formula 1, in the exceptional case of Kimi Raikkonen), the final step these days, is almost invariably a stint in GP2, or perhaps the Renault World Series. Most aspiring single seater drivers never get this far, and yet still there is no getting away from the fact that even most of those men who do will never race an F1 car in anger. In the three years that GP2 has been running, just 5 drivers have made the leap to F1. Thus far, of those five, only Lewis Hamilton has actually won a race (though one would not necessarily bet against Heikki Kovalainen or Nico Rosberg eventually joining him on the list of GP winners). For every Michael Schumacher, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of men who might have wanted it just as much, but who lacked the talent, or the breaks.

What, though, of two drivers sloping out of the back door after a decade in Formula 1? In the final analysis, were Alexander Wurz and Ralf Schumacher successes or failures? Both came into Formula 1 in 1997, and both initially looked like young guns who were going places. Alex Wurz began his career as a substitute for fellow Austrian, Gerhard Berger, picking up a podium in only his third race. After this promising showing, Benetton gave him a full time ride alongside Italian Giancarlo Fisichella in 1998. His time at Benetton started well enough, with a string of points finishes in the early part of the year, but gradually tailed off
as the season went on. The following years were not great for Benetton, but over time, Fisichella comprehensively established himself as the more promising of the two, and it was no great surprise that Wurz found himself without a drive in 2001.

Wurz's decent technical understanding of the sport and his work ethic made him an ideal candidate for the role of test driver, and it was in this role that he was employed for five years at Mclaren. In a sense, it must have been immensely frustrating for a man who had his heart set on reaching the top in Formula 1, but it was perhaps not such a bad way to earn a living really. Mclaren almost certainly paid its test drivers rather more handsomely than any middling team that Wurz might otherwise have ended up at would have paid its racing drivers. Perhaps the Austrian had figured out from his time at Benetton that, while a perfectly decent racing driver, he lacked that extra something which separates the good from the great. In view of that, a solid career as a test driver must have seemed a sensible option.

On some level, though, he must have hankered to try his hand at race driving again, for little else could explain his move from Mclaren to take a testing job at the much less well-funded Williams team. Sure enough, when Mark Webber exited stage-left for Red Bull, he was drafted in to drive alongside Nico Rosberg. This brought a final podium finish (at Canada) but on the whole must be judged a disappointment. While reasonably quick in the races, he was hopelessly lost in qualifying, and in modern F1, that is always going to leave you at a massive disadvantage. Whether it was because his competitive edge had been dulled by too many years testing, or whether it simply was an illustration of the fact that Wurz lacked the last few tenths of a second a lap that make a really great F1 driver, there can be little doubt that by the end of 2007, his time at the top of the sport was done.

All the same, when assessing whether a driver succeeded or failed, some account must be taken, I think of what he did with what he had. In this respect, I think Wurz came out well. In terms of sheer, innate talent, I don't think he was anything exceptional, but he was a good solid worker, and he picked up a few podium finishes when the cards fell his way. I think he can retire, comfortable in the knowledge that he achieved about as much as could have been expected.

It is much harder to know whether the same can be said of Ralf Schumacher. He has always struck me as something of a mercurial talent. There were times when he was absolutely imperious - and all too many others when one scarcely noticed he was there at all. He has, of course, the misfortune of being Michael Schumacher's younger brother - and compared with him, Ralf's F1 record looks decidedly second-best. But then, in comparison with Michael, whose doesn't?

It was widely suspected that he reached F1 largely because of the family name, but his first couple of seasons with Jordan identified him as something of a diamond in the rough - quick, if prone to mistakes. It was in 1999, when he moved to Williams, that his reputation was made. Paired alongside Champ Car champion Alex Zanardi, and given the least competitive car Williams had built in over 10 years, he set about picking up a very decent haul of points and finished sixth in the drivers' standings. His team mate, by contrast, failed to score a single point all year.

2001 was, in a way, both the making and the breaking of Schumacher Jr. Paired against another Champ Car champion, Juan Montoya, Ralf picked up his first victory in the San Marino Grand Prix and followed this with further wins in Canada and Germany. He finished up fourth in the driver's championship - about as much as could be expected from anyone driving a car other than a Ferrari or a Mclaren. The trouble, for Ralf, was that his inexperienced team mate looked ultimately the more exciting prospect - the driver who had more potential.

2002 was a bit of a non-event, such was the sheer level of dominance achieved by the Ferrari F2002. Ralf was one of only two non-Ferrari drivers to win a race, but while Juan Montoya somehow hustled the Williams to seven pole positions, Ralf never started from P1, cementing the view that the Colombian was the quicker of the two.

In 2003, Ralf Schumacher found himself, for the only time in his career, with a car which had the potential to win the world championship. The Williams was no race-winner at the start of the year, and it was noticeable that Juan Montoya was able to do a lot more with it than Ralf Schumacher. Thus, while Montoya was second in the opening race, Ralf could only manage 8th. While Montoya managed to salvage 8th on the grid when the car proved all at sea in Malaysia, Ralf was 17th!

The thing is, when the Didcot squad got the car really sorted, the pendulum swung. Nothing could touch the Williams for pace in the middle of the season - and at that point, it was Ralf, rather than Montoya who was able to extract the greatest pace from the car. Had it been the other way round, Juan Montoya just might have ended the year as World Champion. Interestingly, the moment the Williams began to fall away from the ultimate pace, sure enough, it was Montoya who was quicker again.

After that one opening that Ralf Schumacher had for a title campaign (it's easy to forget that at mid-season, he looked as good a bet as anyone to take the championship), he would never win a race again. To be fair, though Juan Montoya won his final race at Williams in 2004, he never really had a race-winning car again. It is open to question, how much the blame for that lay at his own door. To the surprise of many, Ralf Schumacher moved to Toyota for an absurd sum of money in 2005. At the time, it looked like a case of pecuniary greed getting in the way of furthering his career. In retrospect, it can be argued that he correctly foresaw Williams decline, and Toyota ought to have been the more promising team.

For a while, in 2005, it looked like he might be right. In the early part of 2005, they were briefing Renault's closest challengers, but it was noticeable that Jarno Trulli, rather than Ralf Schumacher, was the man racking up the results for them. The situation reversed in 2006, but it scarcely mattered - Toyota have never maintained the momentum they showed at the beginning of the 2005 season, and have slid ever further back into mediocrity. In 2007, the situation had reversed again, and generally, Jarno Trulli was the man who managed to eke a little more out of yet another undistinguished Toyota chassis. When the team decided that Ralf Schumacher was an expense that made little sense, it was no surprise that a long queue did not form for the German's services.

So how should Ralf Schumacher's career be judged? As a success - on the basis of those 6 wins? Or as a failure, because of the tantalising hints that he was capable of so much more. Much depends on the answer to one question. When the car wasn't quite there, was it simply that his driving style required a car that was absolutely right for him to show his abilities to best effect or did he simply get lazy. If the former, then he probably achieved about as much as he could. If, on the other hand, it was a lack of application on his part, that's another matter. He would be a driver who had the talent, but just didn't work hard enough - wasn't consistent enough, to deliver all that he might have been capable of. Another Juan Montoya, if you like. In the words of Dame Judy, he had a dream, but he didn't keep chasing it, and chasing it.

Who You Know...

Twenty years ago, Williams had just claimed their second straight constructor's championship and Nelson Piquet had brought the driver's title to Grove for the first time in five years. In one sense, the Didcot team were at the very top of their game and appeared invincible. If one looked a little closer though, they seemed very much to be staring into the abyss.

Honda, their partner in the successes of the two previous seasons, were abandoning the team, and Frank Williams' men would be left to do what they could with specialist engine builder John Judd's atmo V8s. Not only that, they would have to find the budget to pay for them. Reigning champion Piquet was abandoning the sinking ship for Lotus, who were keeping their Honda V6 turbos.

Quite why Honda elected to leave Williams high and dry has never been entirely satisfactorily explained. Sure, the fact that Mclaren had Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna on their books for 1988 explained why they were a catch for the Japanese manufacturer, but why abandon Williams in favour of Lotus?

It has been said in some quarters that Honda were irritated that the team allowed supposed number 2, Nigel Mansell, to race and beat his double world champion team mate, Nelson Piquet. Perhaps closer to the truth, they were frustrated that an absence of team orders enabled Alain Prost to sneak through between them in 1986 and win the world title in a demonstrably inferior Mclaren Porsche.

Still, why stick with an increasingly shambolic looking Lotus and end the deal with Williams? One possibility is that it came down to Frank Williams' refusal to countenance employing one Satoru Nakajima. Satoru was the first full time F1 driver from Japan. He had come into his ride at Lotus at the relatively late age of 34, and his record in the junior formula suggested he was competent, rather than exceptional. Paired alongside Ayrton Senna at Lotus Honda in 1987, he never really stood a chance. The most telling statistic is that while Senna won 2 races that year with the awkward but not entirely hopeless Lotus 99T, and was even an outside bet for the World Championship at one stage, Nakajima finished in the points on just two occasions. About the best that can be said is that he did no worse than John Player's man, the Earl of Bute, the previous year (Scottish aristocrat, painter, and some-time racing driver, Johnny Dumfries, in case you're wondering...) when he found himself alongside the Brazilian.

Nakajima was in Formula 1 not because anyone was under any illusion that he would set the world on fire with his pace, but because Honda's marketing man demanded a Japanese driver in F1, and their engine supplier status gave them leverage to place him in one of their cars. Nakajima was a long-time Honda man, and was one of only a handful of Japanese drivers of the time who would not embarrass themselves in a Grand Prix car, and so the job was his.

To be fair to Nakajima, he had his moments. A fine drive in monsoon conditions at the 1989 Australian Grand Prix, where he scored his best finishing position, of 4th, on a day when many more illustrious drivers failed to keep it on the island, springs to mind. In hindsight, his biggest problem was probably that at just over 9st, he simply lacked the brute physical strength to get the most out of an F1 car. Nonetheless, it was entirely understandable that Frank Williams, who was running a team that had just won the constructor's championship twice in a row, did not wish to employ a journeyman in one of his cars on the mere say-so of his engine supplier.

In the long run, he was probably right. A year later, Lotus lost their Honda engines and began to spiral into a terminal decline, which ended with them messing around with drivers like Phillippe Adams in 1994, before being declared bankrupt. Williams, meanwhile, endured a torrid season with Judd, nonetheless picking up a couple of second places, courtesy of an inspired Nigel Mansell, before embarking on a fresh relationship with Renault which would yield multiple titles.

Fast forward twenty years, and all of a sudden, Satoru's son, Kazuki has been gifted a drive in the Williams FW29 in the final race of this season, and is being talked of as a serious option for a full-time seat next year. On balance, this seems rather odd. Nakajima has looked decently, rather than exceptionally quick, in GP2 this year, against a field that is perhaps not the strongest. He finished fifth in the championship, but in a GP2 grid that produced 12 different winners, he never finished higher than second. His wild driving style, all Peterson slides, and armfuls of opposite lock, looks spectacular, but is unlikely to translate well to an F1 car.

So why has he got the drive? There is a saying, which I've oft heard repeated gleefully by people who on any rational analysis look hopelessly out of their depth that "It's not what you know, it's who you know" (this is sometimes echoed by the more competent and somewhat bitter people they have been promoted over...). Unfortunately, this is all too true in the motor racing world. Given a completely free hand, Williams might be more inclined to try out Timo Glock, or even to have made a bid earlier this year for multiple Champ Car champion, Sebastien Bourdais. Come to that, I actually felt that Hiroshi Yoshimoto did more with what he had in GP2, having done about as much as anyone has with the haphazard BCN team last year, but he seems to have been perversely ignored by those on the lookout for Japanese drivers. However, Frank has an engine supplier to please...

Williams are not in the position they were 20 years ago. They have not won a race since 2004, have not scored a podium since 2005, and can hardly any more be thought of as front running team. They get their engines for free from Toyota, and in exchange for that, the team might be well advised to show a little willing. Nakajima, being the son of a man who for a long time was Japan's most famous racing driver, has plenty of contacts in the Japanese racing world. Doubtless, this has opened plenty of doors for him with the major manufacturers whose support is becoming increasingly vital in developing a career in motorsport. For a couple of years, he's been a Toyota development driver, and at a time when Honda have been seen to be doing rather more for Japanese drivers, Toyota now want in on the act. Frank Williams, this time around, has found he holds none of the high cards, and has judged it is in his team's best interests to accede to Toyota's request and hope that Kazuki is a shade better than his F3 and GP2 results suggest.

And who knows, it might even be the case. Certainly Nakajima looked a good deal more convincing in GP2 this year than he did in the F3 Euroseries the year before. Perhaps he's just taking a while to develop. All the same, I can't help but feel that this could be a move too far, too soon. Another season of GP2 might provide an opportunity to smooth over some of the rough edges which are undoubtedly still there, away from the limelight. I hope I'm wrong, but I can't help thinking that Kazuki may find out in a fortnight's time that , beyond a certain point, it really is about what you can do...

Rumours

There appear to be an awful lot of stories doing the rounds in the F1 paddock at the moment. Whisperings that leading teams are unhappy with one or more of their drivers, and, come to that, rumours of drivers decidedly unhappy with their teams.

Of course, in an environment as intrinsically competitive as Formula 1, when the results aren't coming, it is natural that the leading players will be desperately seeking to understand why this should be. Inevitably, some will wonder if a key player who is a weak link in the chain - a chief designer, a driver or a team manager who isn't pulling his weight. It is human nature, too that the last person that most F1 people will think of as the weak link is himself. You can be sure that while the rest of the world might think that Ralf Schumacher isn't doing a very good job at Toyota, or that Honda is being terribly managed, Ralf and Nick Fry will be convinced that the blame lies with others.

So, what are the stories doing the rounds? Ralf Schumacher seems as good a place to start as any, as an awful lot of other questions might hang on his future. Schumacher, who is widely rumoured to the second-highest paid driver on the F1 grid, has not had the best of seasons at Toyota. He has scored just 2 points all year, compared to his team mate Jarno Trulli's 7. More importantly, he has looked off the pace when compared to his team mate all year. He was outqualified by the two Spykers at Monaco, he made a silly mistake which put him out on the first lap at Indianapolis. Come to that, even in the races where he did score points - Australia and Canada - his performances were hardly outstanding. In Australia he threw away 7th place, allowing Nico Rosberg past him on a track where passing is normally all but impossible. In Canada, he may have made the points, but on a day with such a high attrition rate, his team might reasonably have hoped for better than 8th place.

Toyota's problem is this: Given that they're paying for him anyway, and given the extreme difficulties in enforcing performance-clauses, is there any point in getting rid of Schumacher Jr before his contract comes up at the end of the season? He may not appear to be doing a very good job, but it has to be said that the Toyota does not appear to be an especially good car. It is not clear, either, who would take his place. The team could draft in test driver Franck Montagny, who would probably be competent, but he wasn't so good that Renault thought him worth keeping - and that despite his nationality... And if not Montagny, then it is unclear quite who they would go with. Kazuki Nakajima has links with the team, but surely lacks the experience necessary to do any better than Schumacher - besides which, he has looked unexceptional in absolute terms in GP2, and wasn't as quick as, for example, Paul Di Resta in F3 last year.

So, chances are, Ralf Schumacher will keep his drive until the end of the year, but that this might well be his final season in the sport. Next question. Who might replace him in 2008? If some of the wilder rumours are to be believed, the answer to this question could be.....Kimi Raikkonen

At first glance, this might appear to be rather far-fetched. Haven't Ferrari paid him some unimaginable sum to be his lead driver until the end of 2008? On closer inspection, though, perhaps it is possible. Its hard to avoid the conclusion that the Raikkonen-Ferrari marriage has got off to a rather rocky start this tear. Ferrari have been decisively outpaced by Mclaren in recent races and the question must be there in the back of Jean Todt's mind - Is it the drivers?

Felipe Massa had, on balance, been quicker than Kimi Raikkonen this year, despite the pre-season assumption on the part of most observers that he was the de facto Number 2 at Maranello. This has been seen by some as a sign of remarkably improved form from the previously rather mercurial Brazilian, but what if it isn't so much that Massa is quicker than we thought he would be, as that Raikkonen is slower?

If that were so, then it would suggest that, with a driver of the calibre of an Alonso or a Hamilton, Ferrari might be able to mix it with Mclaren without having to find improvements in the car. The trouble is, though, if the team believe that neither Massa nor Raikkonen are their best options, who else on the grid might do a better job?

If paddock gossip is anything to go by, it would seem that the Ferrari management have alighted upon the promising Williams driver (and the other GP2 champion) Nico Rosberg. Working on the assumption that Alex Wurz hasn't forgotten to drive in the years since he was last a full time racing driver, it does rather appear that Rosberg Jr is getting the Williams much further up the grid than it really deserves to be. Of course, the same thing appeared to be true of Mark Webber at Jaguar, and he's never really looked quite so quick since, but if Ferrari become convinced that Kimi Raikkonen is not the answer to the conundrum of replacing Michael Schumacher, they may as well try someone else.

So if Rosberg goes to Ferrari, Kimi Raikkonen would be in line for being shuffled off to Toyota (if retirement doesn't seem the more appealing option) and Williams, who would struggle somewhat with meeting Raikkonen's fees, might well go chasing Adrian Sutil.

But what if that's not what happens. What if Ferrari decide that the best way to take on Mclaren's seemingly invincible driver line-up is to snatch one of them. Mclaren would probably be very reluctant to let either of them go - the biggest advantage of having the two quickest drivers on the grid tied into long-term contracts is that the best on offer to any putative rival is the third fastest driver on the grid. Ron Dennis will remember well that, whatever his other problems at the time, when he had Senna and Prost in the late eighties, the other teams never posed much of a threat.

The problem is that the drivers themselves might not see it that way. Both Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton might feel that they are drivers of the kind of stature that deserves undisputed no.1 status. They can't both have that at Mclaren, so if a vacancy were to open up at Ferrari at the end of the season, would Ron really be able to keep hold of both his young charges?

There's one final thought, which I haven't heard aired this season, but which I can't write off as entirely fanciful. Remember what Alonso said at the end of last season, after he had won his second world title? He said that "3 world championships is a good number. It's what Senna got, it's what Piquet got, it's what Lauda got. I don't want to be a racing driver forever." Fernando has never enjoyed the fame and attention that has come with being a double F1 world championship and neither does he appear to be revelling in the challenge posed by his rookie team mate this year. He must know, too, that given time, Hamilton is only likely to get better. Could it be that, if he were to win the title this year, he would simply walk away from the sport, job done, still only in his mid-twenties? What would that do to the driver market?

How to go Motor Racing

Peter Sauber's old boys are doing rather well aren't they. There's little doubt that, after the first 3 races, Ferrari and Mclaren are some way out in front of the field, but contrary to what might have been expected, it is BMW which is leading the chasing pack. Renault, Williams, Toyota, Honda and Red Bull would certainly be happy to swap their position with that of the Swiss/German team.

I have to confess that when BMW took over the Sauber team, I didn't think any good would ever come of it. I wasn't alone on this, either - Mike Lawrence confidently predicted that they would never win a race - save in the kind of circumstances which led to Giancarlo Fisichella's shock win for Jordan at Interlagos in 2003. The doubters had good reason to be pessimistic. After all, Mario Thiessen had spent six years trying and failing to win the world championship with Williams - a real racer's team which had won multiple titles with Renault, Honda and Cosworth. One got the impression that both parties were more interested in apportioning blame for failure than in seeking success. Certainly, there appeared to be a degree of resentment from Frank's men at what they saw as inappropriate meddling on the chassis side of things. The odds seemed against Thiessen achieving anything with the solid and respectable, but hardly front-running Sauber team. It looked for all the world that BMW's board had sanctioned a colossal ego-trip on the part of their motor-racing chief.

And yet it hasn't worked out that way. Maybe Thiessen was simply capable of much more when given complete control. Maybe Frank Williams and Patrick Head are simply out of touch these days. Maybe the shared Germanic culture of Sauber and BMW has smoothed working relations, but BMW have emerged as the front running full manufacturer team in just their second season of F1.

This begs an interesting question. If, for example, Volkswagen's board was looking at putting together an F1 programme, what lessons are there to be learned about how to go about it. More importantly, perhaps, what traps should definitely be avoided. Here are 6 useful pointers:

Resist the temptation to start from scratch

Formula 1 is a seriously complicated business these days. The balance of power between the teams may shift from one year to the next, but all are relying on a vast bank of knowledge and past experience. Toyota have spent perhaps more than any other team in establishing their Formula 1 team over the past five years, and yet still it has not paid off. BMW and Renault, on the other hand, have done well out of buying up a midfield team and injecting fresh capital. Chassis manufacture, in particular, remains something of a black art even now, and its better to buy in the experience of an existing privateer team. Going further back, Renault did everything in house first time around, and while they came close to winning the title in 1983, there is little doubt that they squandered a huge early advantage with their turbo engines because they didn't know enough about chassis building. Michiel Mol, and perhaps even Dietrich Mateschitz or Frank Williams could probably be persuaded to sell at the right price.

Leave the job to the racing people

I may not be Mario Theissen's greatest fan, but he has been around motor racing for a long time and he understands how the business works. Likewise, Renault have taken a very hands-off approach to the running of their race team. They have left the Enstone team in the guiding hands of Flavio Briatore, a man who may not understand what makes a car fast, but certainly knows how to manage racing people. By contrast, Toyota have always more directly involved their company's senior management, and recently, it appears Honda have begun to head down the same track. The task of building two fast racing cars is very different from that of building hundreds of thousands of reliable cars that people want to buy. Don't assume the skills are interchangeable.

Don't hire and fire

Surely nobody made a bigger mess of running their works Formula 1 team than Ford/Jaguar did. In the five years they were in F1, they got through countless team principals and managers - Neil Ressler, Niki Lauda, Bobby Rahal, Tony Purnell and Dave Pitchforth. Nobody was in the job long enough, or was given enough freedom, to turn things around. It's worth remembering, too, that top F1 people tend to come with massive egos and an unshakeable belief that they are right and senior management are wrong. Let them think that. When it comes to F1, they're probably right. Toyota and Honda are widely rumoured to have sacked Geoff Willis and Mike Gascoygne because they showed insufficient respect for company bigwigs, and look where that got them. Renault and BMW, on the other hand, have tended to be able to keep hold of their technical people.

Don't think an F1 team is just another corporate department

I've pointed out before in a piece about Toyota that running an F1 team as if it is a department in a large corporation is unlikely to work out. Recent anonymous articles from a Honda insider at Pitpass indicate that the same problem is infecting them now. I think it was Jackie Stewart who said that an F1 team should have a "corner shop" rather than a "big store" mentality. This means a degree of flexibility and a distrust of strict hierarchies that is uncommon in any large commercial organisation. Renault, in particular, seem to have done a very good job of maintaining this feel to their race team, and the result is that the best people want to work for them, even though they are not thought to offer the same kind of financial incentives as, say, Toyota or Mclaren.

Making sure that the parent company doesnt interfere with the operational decisions of the team for non-racing reasons is equally important. When Jaguar came into F1, they had a much greater budget than in their later years but it was squandered on things like ensuring that the computer systems were in line with Ford company procurement policy. Toyota's switch to Bridgestone tyres in 2006, long after the team had begun designing their 06 car around Michelin rubber was rumoured to be similarly motivated by corporate, rather than racing reasons (Toyota road cars come with Bridgestone, rather than Michelin tyres, apparently). The long and the short of it is that F1 is too cut-throat a business to allow for these kind of compromises.

Sort out the drivers

Getting the right drivers is a notoriously tricky business. As Patrick Head once said, the problem is that its always a bit of a shot in the dark. There are, however, some obvious mistakes to avoid. Don't pay over the odds for a driver who is clearly not from the very top drawer. There is really very little reason to pay more than, say £2m to any driver who is not Raikkonen, Alonso or (it would now seem) Hamilton. In particular, there really is no earthly explanation for why Toyota have made Ralf Schumacher the second highest paid driver in the F1 paddock. He's not necessarily a bad choice of driver for Toyota. He's competent and fast, if not quite from the very top drawer, and he arguably makes more sense than an unproven youngster, but there is no way he is worth what he is paid. Jaguar Racing, who made pretty much every mistake in the book, made an arguably even greater error in paying a vast fortune to Eddie Irvine to tool around in a series of awful Jaguars for 3 years.

Ask whether its really worth it...

I don't have the definitive answer to the question of whether "win on Sunday, sell on Monday" really holds true. I think that various marques have enhanced their image by their involvement in F1. This may have helped them to sell cars. It may not have done. It is entirely possible that advertising/branding itself is a great swindle perpetrated on the industrial classes by cunning arts and media studies graduates. That's for another time. What I do know is that Mercedes stick to building engines, and leave the racing car manufacturing to Mclaren. It saves them an awful lot of work, and right now, I'm not sure they're getting any less positive publicity than they would if the car was simply a 'Mercedes'. In fact, by being directly associated with a famous racing name like Mclaren, they might even benefit more. Did winning the world title as 'Renault' really do Renault any more for their image than winning it as the engine supplier to Williams or Benetton? Perhaps Toyota should sell the racing team and jump into bed with Williams...