The Battle of the Pits ?

The first thing that struck me, soon after the start of the Spanish race is that McLaren seemed faster than Ferrari. If this is the case, and I have always maintained that McLaren are still faster than Ferrari, the fight for the championship is alive and well.

McLaren have now finished 1^st and 2^nd for the last two races and unless Ferrari find more speed McLaren are looking good for the rest of the season.

Schumacher with a clear track ahead of him may have pulled away slightly in the early part of the race but it did not take Hakkinen long to match his pace and reel him back in. At no stage during the race did either of the Ferraris look faster than either McLaren.

Admittedly Michael Schumacher went out on what I am sure he would admit was the wrong tyres (Schumacher elected to use the harder compound which seemed to lose effectiveness after no more than 6 laps) and things started going wrong for him after the first pit stop when he pulled off prematurely due to a lollipop fumble. Getting a flat towards the end of the race just added insult to injury and he was lucky to finish in 5^th spot behind his brother Ralf.

Both McLarens ran without trouble but the question is if they can be that fast during the race why did they not qualify in the front of the grid?

All teams use a different configuration for qualifying. During qualifying (because we are talking of very few fast or flying laps) they do not have to compromise on anything. Fuel loads are very low, aerodynamic set up can be optimised without having to consider tyre wear, fuel consumption is not an issue and they can assume that they will be doing the fast laps clear of the turbulence of other cars.

None of these conditions can be ignored for the race. Fuel consumption is an issue and a set up that is hard on tyres but fast will not be fast enough to justify an extra stop. Aerodynamics must be set up on the assumption that it has to cope with some turbulence and the fuel load will be enough to last for possibly two to three laps more than needed just in case the driver has to stay out a little longer.

Most teams have special engines for qualifying that produce more power but are not robust enough to finish a race.

On most circuits the difference between qualifying laps and race laps is around 2 seconds and I expect to see this difference increase over the season.

It has always been important in any race to qualify well. The less you have to overtake to get to the front the easier it is on car and driver. But it has never been as important as it is today.

Because it is now almost impossible to overtake on most circuits (in fact I claim that modern aerodynamics have made it impossible to overtake on all but a few, older tracks) qualifying position and time in the pits determine the outcome of every race.

None of the competitive teams can therefore ignore the importance of qualifying well and will be putting more and more effort into optimising their qualifying configurations. Drivers will be spending more time practicing qualifying laps, which will confuse us even more as they will appear faster.

One of the effects will be that the teams with smaller budgets will not be able to keep up (virtually building two cars for each driver for each race is expensive). We are also going to see anomalies develop as some of the slower teams manage to build a far better qualifying set up.

Similarly, pit stops will become more important and more dangerous as these have now become the only way of overtaking a car that is in front of you.

All of the leading teams will spend a lot more time and effort on improving their pit stops. Development and design money will be channeled into perfecting every pit stop.

I would not be surprised if this becomes the No.1 priority for all teams. Increasing speed on the track may still be important but overtaking is virtually restricted to the pit lane. A difference of ½ second in a pit stop will be enough to determine the outcome of a race.

So, with the focus and emphasis shifting to qualifying, starting and pit stop times how will it affect the leading teams?

McLaren may be the fastest on the track but are not as good in the pits as Ferrari. Admittedly they got everything right in Spain while the wheels fell off for Ferrari but I expect Ferrari to maintain their pit stop advantage, although I expect it to be a lot smaller.

Starting has to be Ferrari’s biggest weakness. In Spain Schumacher started well but Barrichello lit up his tyres. So far this season Ferrari have not started well. McLaren on the other hand have started well in almost every race.

Qualifying could go either way. At present it looks as if Ferrari may be marginally faster (they certainly seemed better in Spain) but it is hard to tell as so many factors that cannot be controlled by the teams or drivers can determine the outcome.

McLaren.

As I said, still the team to beat. They may not be as dominant as they were last year but they are still the fastest cars on the track.

McLaren may need to work on qualifying set up as it appears that they are just a touch slower than Ferrari in qualifying. It is difficult to tell as very few drivers get a clean run in qualifying and both McLaren drivers felt they could have done better in Spain, but then I am sure that both Ferrari drivers could have too.

Mika Hakkinen drove a perfect race and certainly deserved the win. It looks as if his bad fortunes are behind him and we can expect a lot more aggression from him in future.

Hakkinen is possibly the best qualifying driver on the circuit today. He seems to know exactly when to go out and how to get his concentration and rhythm focused in a single warm up lap.

David Coulthard is also a good qualifier but most of the time he is marginally slower than Hakkinen. So far this season he has impressed me. There is little evidence of the Kamikaze style overtaking that he was displaying last year.

Ferrari.

Although they seem to be getting their qualifying act together they still need a little more race pace to stay ahead of McLaren. The Ferrari is fast but does not have the outright speed to get away from McLaren.

Schumacher qualified well in Spain and if he did not have the disasters during his pit stops or a deflated tyre he could easily have won the race by keeping Hakkinen behind him on the race track. Even though the McLaren of Hakkinen appeared faster it was obvious that overtaking was not an option.

It looked as if the tyres Michael chose was a mistake. On fresh tyres he did pull away from Hakkinen for a while but it was not long before he could not maintain the gap and Hakkinen closed in again.

So there is a possibility that my perception that the McLaren is still faster than the Ferrari may be based on the poor performance of Michael’s tyres, but if that was the case why did Barrichello not do better?

Barrichello is still not coming to terms with his car. He is decidedly slower than Michael in qualifying and race trim. He blames car set up, but that is as much the job of the driver as it is the team.

Williams.

Admittedly Button’s engine failed 4 laps before the end of the race but Ralf Schumacher finished in 4^th place and would have finished in 3^rd if he was not overtaken by Barrichello while they were both trying to get past the stricken Ferrari of Michael Schumacher.

Williams are getting better fast. They are not far off the pace of the leading cars and once they completely sort out the niggly reliability of their motor, they will be able to totally focus on going faster. When that happens they will close the gap to the leaders.

Ralf drove another brilliant race. His start was unbelievably fast and although he did not have the pace to stay with the leaders he did not seem to have any difficulty in keeping Coulthard behind him. (Another example of the impossibility of overtaking).

Jordan

Not a particularly good race for Jordan although they did manage to get one car home in the points and the other one also finished the race albeit one lap down.

They need a lot more speed as well as reliability if they want to get both cars in the points from now on. Williams are more reliable and are faster than Jordan so if all the Ferraris, McLarens and Williams cars finish a race it will be hard for Jordan to score a single point.

Frentzen is fast. In previous seasons I questioned his ability to overtake but as this is no longer a feature of Formula One this should not be a handicap.

Trulli has not really had a chance to show how fast he can be but seems to be suffering more mishaps than most drivers. Maybe he should attend a mishap management course.

Benetton.

Flavio Briatore must be wondering if it was a good move to take up the reigns this season. They are just not doing well.

They seem reliable enough but are way off the pace. I am starting to wonder if the old Supertec engine is their only problem. Both drivers seemed to be fighting their cars in Spain – they could also be struggling with a poor chassis.

Jaguar.

At least both cars finished. But not far in front of Minardi who has to campaign for a whole year on Jaguar’s budget for a single race.

I’m sure they will get better, but that is only because they cannot get a whole lot worse!

Sauber.

Salo finished just out of the points and Diniz ended his race by spinning off on the first lap.

They are unlikely to improve their position over the season (of course I am not expecting Diniz to spin off every time) as they are unlikely to get better faster than the other teams.

Prost.

Alesi got shunted out of the race by Pedro de la Rosa in a brave but strange overtaking manoeuvre which took both cars out of contention and the Prost of Nick Heidfeld actually finished in 16^th place.

Encouraging, for a team that normally starts packing up by half race distance.

I don’t know what it is with this team. Initially they blamed their electronics, but now that seems fixed and the cars look slow and hard to drive. They were a lot better last year.

Arrows

Another sad day at the races for Arrows. One car crashed and the other out of action by lap 25 with a gearbox problem.

They are not getting better but I expect to see them do well in testing again.

Minardi

I like Minardi. They are slow, but they try and it is a great training ground for young drivers.

BAR.

Zonta finished in 8^th place and if Villeneuve did not suffer from hydraulic problems he could have finished somewhere ahead of Zonta.