Sunday, September 25, 2011
Saying goodbye to Europe
Welcome to this week's blog, the final blog from a European race for 2011, which feels very strange indeed.
I can scarcely believe I'm writing that; where is my life disappearing to?
Firstly, let me apologise for the lack of a blog after the Belgian Grand Prix.
The only holiday I've managed to grab this season was the week after Spa and I would have been in serious trouble with Harriet, my wife, if I'd spent the first of our five days away writing a blog.
Anyway, back to last weekend, and the end of my love affair with a truck for another season. OK, you're probably thinking a love affair with a lorry is rather strange, but it's more than that, it's our European home.
You see, for the grands prix that are referred to as 'fly-away' - the long-haul races outside Europe, that is - the circuits provide the hospitality suites for the teams and the production offices for the television stations.
It is essentially to cut down on costs so the huge team 'paddock palaces' aren't transported the other side of the world.
But at the European races, we take a truck, which we occupy from the first European race in Spain to the last one in Monza.
It's a dressing room, edit suite, production offices and kitchen all rolled into one. It has even been known to accommodate the odd overnight stay if someone's working particularly hard and late in Monaco and can't face the drive back to our hotel on the way to Nice.
But now our European adventure is at an end for another year and so it was with a heavy heart on Sunday evening that we waved off Pete D'Lemos and the trusty silver truck he looks after; we'll see him next in Spain in eight months.
It feels like two minutes since I walked into that truck for the very first time in 2009. It was the same one ITV had been using, but their presenter Steve Rider's office had been turned into an edit suite so I couldn't quite say I was walking in his shoes.
Talking of getting his job, remarkably it is three years ago this week that the then BBC head of F1 Niall Sloane offered me the chance to be the presenter, and what a learning curve it has been.
I can still remember the fear and apprehension as I walked into the F1 paddock in Australia for the first time, and the nerves as I started listening to 'The Chain' down my earpiece, hoping the words would come out in the right order.
The good news is that doing this job never becomes 'normal' or mundane and I still cherish every moment.
For that reason, I asked someone to follow me with a camera this weekend as in years to come I'll fondly look back on what it was like to share the pit lane with Eddie Jordan and David Coulthard as a 30-something guy, lucky enough to see the world and follow the sport I love.
I managed to capture Paul di Resta's Force India while taking this shot of the Monza track from a gate near the pits
I've posted a selection of pictures with this blog. Have a look through and see what you think. The one I'm most proud of is the one directly above - and it doesn't actually feature much apart from a big silver gate!
You see, one of the oddities of this job is that I very rarely see a car actually on the track.
We must be out of the pit lane with 15 minutes to go before qualifying and the race and so by the time the cars are track I'm in the paddock and there is nothing to see.
An hour before we go on air and Eddie Jordan, Ted Kravitz and I have to cram ourselves between Ferrari and McLaren's motorhomes to get our gear on for the show
One of the most common requests I get is from people who have tickets to the race asking to get into the paddock. I tell them they would soon be bored of sitting around drinking coffee and would see more in the grandstand.
Anyway, in Monza on Sunday, I walked out of the paddock and along the back of the garages and the photo is testament to how tricky it is even for me to get to the track during the action - I always say that in front of the TV you get the best seat in the house and this is proof!
And why am I so proud of the photo? Well, Paul di Resta's Force India is passing by me at full speed and somehow I managed to press the button at just the right time - trust me, it was far more luck than judgement.
Talking of luck, some people may well think that Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel has had his fair share of it over the course of the year, but perhaps in Monza he finally put the doubters to bed by doing something a few were questioning - pulling off a cracking overtake!
Vettel knew he had to get past Fernando Alonso's Ferrari for his race strategy to work, he managed it really early on, then delivered the lap times and the consistency to take another win.
I think that perhaps it was the race that finally broke his challengers and since then we've seen a few of Seb's rivals declare that he has now won the title.
Spa and Monza were the races where McLaren and Ferrari were expecting to challenge Red Bull, but Vettel won both. As for Seb's team-mate, Mark Webber, well, he only managed to collect 18 points to Vettel's 50.
So, with that in mind we had a meeting back at BBC HQ on Wednesday to discuss how we tackle the Singapore race weekend.
Our mantra is 'fail to prepare, prepare to fail'. With that in mind, we need to fly into Singapore fully ready to do justice to Vettel if he manages to win the title there.
I always enjoy Singapore. And if you want to read about how strange it is for us as a production team, as we stay on European time, which is eight hours behind where we are, my blog from 2009 will tell you about the perils of trying to get dinner when the city is asleep.
Before I sign off, I'm sure that there will be plenty of people reading this who are keen to know about our plans for the 2012 F1 coverage.
As soon as there is something concrete to announce, I know that the BBC will do that. However, I can tell you I am committed to helping the BBC make its F1 coverage next year as compelling as it has been for the last three years.
And thanks for your continued loyalty - all 5.8m of you who watched the race with us on Sunday.
Jake.
Lee McKenzie looks on as EJ and I check comms. It involves talking to each other while the team in the gallery talk at the same time to make sure the sound levels are workable
Roger Bines, our rigger, is our unsung hero. We wouldn't be on air without him and I've spent the past three years with him in the pit lane. He retired after 15 years in F1 on Sunday. We'll miss you, Rog!
Two minutes to on-air and Rob Smedley, Felipe Massa's race engineer, pops over to say hello and have a chat.
Post-race and I am busy noting down the race finishing order, the championship standings and any other notes I need close at hand for 45 minutes of unscripted, unplanned post-race analysis
I love this snap.. Eddie Jordan doing what he does best... having an opinion!
Whil you at home are watching the top three drivers' interviews, we decamp to the paddock, where Toro Rosso's Jaime Algersuari pops over to see what we thought of his charge into the points
This photo sums up the job for me, and I love it. The team, all four of us, owning the paddock as we go looking for stories. On screen it just seems to flow
The last photo I took on my way out of the circuit. The Monza banking is a reminder of how much has gone before us, and that F1 will continue to evolve long after we've left
Ferrari turn focus to 2012
As the curtain fell on the European season in the late summer sunshine of Monza, Ferrari also effectively drew a line under their 2011 campaign.
Team boss Stefano Domenicali explained, with an air of resignation, that another technical set-back had derailed Ferrari and Fernando Alonso's fight back.
"We have stopped the development [of the car]," Domenicali had said. "It is very, very, very, very, very difficult now."
With 13 races run - and just six to go - Alonso's victory in Great Britain in July remains Ferrari's only win of the season.
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Highlights of the Italian GP (UK users only)
At the time Ferrari had celebrated Silverstone as a significant turning point, laughing off suggestions the win might be a one-off because it happened to coincide with a one-race ban on so-called off-throttle blowing of the diffuser and also relied partly on an error at Vettel's second pit stop.
Ferrari were confident they were now able to interpret data from their wind tunnel correctly - something that had hit them in the early part of the campaign - and that a new package of upgrades was giving them strength in their previous area of weakness - high-speed, high-downforce circuits.
At the next race in Germany, Alonso kept up the charge, narrowly losing out to Lewis Hamilton in a three-way fight to the flag, before the wrong tyre strategy and a late spin relegated him to third in Hungary.
But following the summer break, Ferrari fell off the pace again when they were forced to abandon failed upgrades planned for Belgium and Italy.
"We were expecting a bigger step in our development in Spa," Domenicali revealed. "Unfortunately we discovered it was the opposite so we took a step back, and that was also a step back for Monza."
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Ferrari say this time muddled wind tunnel data was not to blame, simply that the upgrades - which focused on a new exhaust system - did not deliver what was expected of them.
Domenicali is optimistic the gap between Ferrari and rivals Red Bull and McLaren will be smaller on Singapore's street circuit, a race Alonso won last year - but closing the gap completely is now a task for 2012.
Pat Fry, who replaced technical director Aldo Costa when the Italian stood down in May, says he is already tackling the development of next season's Ferrari at the team's Maranello headquarters.
Top of the Englishman's to-do list is to improve the car's "absolute downforce" levels and to help with that he says the team will still drip through small developments to the 2011 car for analysis.
Ferrari's failure to effectively interpret new regulations in time for the start of the season has seen them come unstuck in 2009 and 2011.
But with technical rule changes only focussing on the design of the car's exhaust in 2012, Fry is cautiously optimistic that Ferrari can hit the ground running.
"The stability should help," he said. "But it does not mean that automatically you will be able to catch up your opponents.
"We know we have a gap to recover in terms of performance and we need an extra effort to get rid of it: this is one of the main targets of the winter time."
Some F1 experts have ear-marked the former McLaren engineer as the brains behind McLaren's "F-duct" which quickly became 2010's must-have aerodynamic device.
Whether Fry was the anonymous figure behind the creation or not, innovation and fresh-thinking at Maranello will be key when it comes to matching the grey matter of Red Bull's chief technical officer Adrian Newey.
"Adrian's Red Bulls have been the quickest cars in the last two or three years," said Fry, who worked alongside Newey at McLaren in the Nineties.
"[But] to be honest I do not think this is a man-against-man sport, not at all. It is a very complex sport in which a very talented engineer cannot make everything along as he needs the support of many people to succeed.
"At the moment, Red Bull are the reference; our aim is to win, whoever will be our opponents."
President Luca di Montezemolo underlined Ferrari's task when he stalked around the team garage during the Italian Grand Prix weekend and casually strolled across the open pit lane to shake his fist at the tifosi in a gesture of intent.
"I am not happy," said Di Montezemolo, who became founder Enzo Ferrari's right-hand man when he joined the team nearly 40 years ago. "Next year, I expect a competitive car with a clear interpretation of the rules. I hope to win the championship again."
For Fry and Ferrari - and at rivals McLaren where the team are also running over the first interpretation of their 2012 car - the hard work has already begun.
Volkswagen Phaeton replacement coming in 2015?
Reportedly being developed under the VW631 codename, the 2015 Phaeton is expected to be a four-door coupe with a lightweight chassis and an efficient engine lineup.
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Porsche 911 GT2 gets the art car treatment
Masterminded by Jorge Gómez, the exhibit features 19 bonnets created by artists from South America. 
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Saturday, September 24, 2011
Twenty years of Schumacher
At Spa-Francorchamps
For the first time since he started his comeback at the beginning of last season, Michael Schumacher was the centre of attention as the Formula 1 circus rolled into the spectacular Spa-Francorchamps circuit ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix.
Twenty years ago this weekend, the man who would go on to become the most successful racing driver of all time made his debut here for the Jordan team, which was also in its first season in the sport.
It did not take long for him to catch the eye - a stunning qualifying performance put him seventh on the grid, several places ahead of his vastly experienced team-mate Andrea de Cesaris. And although he retired after a few hundred yards with a broken driveshaft, Schumacher had made his mark.
By the time of the next race, Benetton had stolen him from under Eddie Jordan's nose - and the legend that culminated in seven world titles and 91 race victories began.
Although it is - as Red Bull's Mark Webber pointed out - only Schumacher's 17th season in F1, on account of the three he missed during his 'retirement', this weekend has partly been set aside to honour his achievements.
His Mercedes team are planning an event on Saturday, while Ferrari, with whom he won five of his seven titles, have promised "a little something to mark the occasion".
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However you count the years, Schumacher's achievement came into sharp perspective when his rivals were asked whether they remembered his debut.
Most of them were too young to have any recollection of it at all, picking a later point in his career as the time they first became aware of him.
Most, though, were more than happy to pay tribute to his remarkable achievements, with the most glowing reference coming from Fernando Alonso, the man who ended Schumacher's run of five consecutive titles in 2005 and then won a memorable mano-a-mano duel between them the following season.
"Michael, I have great respect for him," Alonso said. "He is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, in the history of our sport. There are numbers there it will be impossible to repeat for any one of us.
"It has been a great pleasure to drive with him all these years. I will always remember all the battles with him and for me it was a privilege to drive against Michael Schumacher. It will be something I always remember. Then he decided to stop and come back.
"I'm sure he missed the adrenaline and the F1 show. Now he is in the second part of his career, the car is not competitive, but he is still enjoying [it].
"There are some criticisms about his return and results now, but I don't agree with those.Michael three years ago was watching F1 at home. Now he is doing seventh or ninth but I'm sure he is happy every morning because he is doing what he wants to do."
When Alonso was racing Schumacher before his comeback, the German was the benchmark, so beating him gave the Spaniard's titles the ultimate stamp of credibility.
There are no questions about Alonso's greatness now, standing as he does alongside Lewis Hamilton as the new benchmark against which all drivers are measured.
For Schumacher, though, these are very different times, and the last 18 months or so have been punctuated by ongoing questions about the merit and wisdom of his return.
Last year, he was by and large pasted by team-mate Nico Rosberg - a man who for all his undoubted potential has yet to win a race. This season there have been signs of progress - while the younger German still comfortably has Schumacher's measure in qualifying, the veteran has looked more competitive in the races
It is clear, though, that Schumacher is not the driver he was.
Where once he appeared to dance at will on a limit beyond almost all his rivals, he now appears too often to be searching for that rarefied high wire, usually without success.
But the man who was famous for his willingness to do almost anything to win says he is satisfied with his current lot, scraping around for lower-ranking points as Mercedes battle to catch the top teams, while still insisting he wants to repay the German manufacturer for funding his debut and "return race wins and championships back to them".
His anniversary has given him a chance to reflect on a career that is still remembered for its many controversies as much as it is for his great success.
And in an interview with BBC F1 pit-lane reporter Lee McKenzie, which will be broadcast as part of the race build-up on BBC One on Sunday, he went as far as to admit he had regrets about some of the incidents that in so many minds went beyond the boundaries of respectability.
"Certainly I would do things differently," he said. "After 20 years in F1, you have a few regrets but, quite honestly, if I think it was 20 years, the few spots I have, you have to make mistakes to learn from them - and I think I do learn."
Asked if any of his mistakes stood out, he picked this race in 1998, when he lost a certain victory in the wet after crashing into the back of David Coulthard's McLaren. Once he had made it back to the pits, convinced the Scot had slowed deliberately to take him out, Schumacher charged off to the McLaren garage and had to be restrained from physically assaulting him.
"Maybe I should regret to go for an attack to David after he spoiled my race in 1998," he says. "We had this mysterious misunderstanding, I had a certain reaction, I think it was the first and only time I have been like this, I am normally a very balanced person."
It is perhaps revealing that of all the many incidents in his career, he should choose one for which he was not at fault, rather than his two title-deciding collisions with Williams drivers Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve in 1994 and 1997, or his decision to 'park' his car in Monaco qualifying to prevent Alonso beating him to pole position.
He still refuses to answer questions about the last incident and is resigned to the fact he will always - at least outside Germany - be a man who is more admired than loved.
"Everybody forms his own opinion about any person," he says. "I think I just want to be treated fair, that's the only think I look for. Who likes me or loves me, I'm happy about. Who doesn't, I understand, because you can't be loved by everyone."
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Kimi and Williams F1
Jenson Button produces Hungarian masterclass
On Saturday evening in Hungary, Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso were two of the luminaries who joined Jenson Button to celebrate the occasion of his 200th grand prix. Twenty-four hours later they stood either side of the McLaren driver as he celebrated another superb win in the tricky wet-dry conditions in which he excels.
Every one of Button's four wins since he joined McLaren at the start of last season has come in wet-dry races, conditions which reward the deftness of touch and exquisite feel for grip levels that the 31-year-old has displayed from the very beginning of his Formula 1 career.
"I'm always pretty lucky in these conditions," Button said in the news conference after the race, but it has absolutely nothing to do with good fortune. It is about skill and judgement.
It was a drive as perfect as the symmetry that saw him take his second win of the year at his 200th grand prix and at the same track where five years ago he finally took his first victory at the 113th attempt, also in mixed conditions.
Button has something of a sixth sense, a way of feeling the limits of what is possible in conditions where the track is damp but not soaking wet, that goes beyond that of nearly all his rivals, and he demonstrated it vividly again at the Hungaroring on Sunday.
Perhaps only Button's team-mate Lewis Hamilton has the same deftness and certainty of touch in rainy conditions - the younger McLaren man also has a clutch of brilliant wet wins on his CV. But even he was caught out by the tricky combination of a low-grip track surface and a sprinkling of mid-race rain.
It was not, though, Hamilton's lap 47 spin at the chicane that lost him the race, nor the decision five laps later, while disputing the lead with Button, to stop for intermediate tyres. By then, the writing was already on the wall.
No, the critical moment for Hamilton was his third stop on lap 40.
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McLaren fitted another set of the super-soft tyres to Hamilton's car, while Red Bull - whose cars stopped on the laps immediately before and after him - fitted the harder prime tyre, the idea being to run it for the final 30 laps of the race. Button, who stopped two laps after Hamilton, did the same.
Of the front-runners, only Alonso did the same as Hamilton - and the Ferrari driver needed to gamble to try to clear the Red Bull of Mark Webber, which had been holding him up for much of the race.
Once that choice was made, Hamilton's only hope of winning was to use what should have been the extra grip of the softer tyre to quickly pull out enough of a lead to make the additional pit stop he was going to need, as the super-softs were never going to get him to the end of the race.
Instead, with rain starting to fall, Button started closing at about a second a lap. Who knows, perhaps that was what prompted Hamilton's spin. Perhaps, feeling the race slipping away, he was pushing just that little bit too hard.
The incident led to a diverting - and thoroughly entertaining - couple of laps as the two McLaren team-mates passed and re-passed each other, showing fantastic judgement and respect as they raced wheel to wheel for the lead.
But a diversion was all it was.
Up in the stewards room, they were about to hand Hamilton a drive-through penalty for forcing Force India driver Paul di Resta - producing yet another impressive drive - to take avoiding action as the McLaren spin-turned back into the race.
Meanwhile, out on the track, Hamilton, struggling with a radio problem that meant he could hear the team but they could not hear him, was called in to change to intermediate tyres, and he obeyed. Right behind him, Button got the same call, he revealed on the BBC post-race forum on the red button, but ignored it.
On that decision hung the victory. Had Button come in, he would have needed to stop again for dry tyres - as did Hamilton and Webber, who also changed to intermediates during the shower - and Vettel would have won the race.
As it was, the German took second place with a calm, mature, understated but effective drive that has made his grip on the championship even more vice-like than it already was.
Vettel has not won for three races now, and there is no doubt that Red Bull are slightly on the back foot, but still he left Hungary with a bigger championship lead than he had when he arrived.
Vettel is now 85 points ahead of second-placed Webber rather than 77, with Hamilton a further three points back, Alonso one behind the Englishman and Button 100 points, four clear wins, adrift in fifth.
Nevertheless, the man who has scored the most points in the last four races is Alonso, even if Vettel's impressive consistency means he has notched up only three points fewer despite not winning since Valencia at the end of June.
The Ferrari was genuinely fast again in Hungary, and Alonso had the pace to contest the lead battle had not a difficult opening lap led to a messy first half of the race stuck behind other cars.
Alonso did not help himself - he had to pass both Mercedes drivers twice because he made mistakes after overtaking them the first time and let them back in front. He then spent the second stint with Webber blocking his progress, before his tyre gamble got him some free air.
Had it not been for Webber's mistake in fitting intermediates and Hamilton's penalty, that strategy call would not have paid off, and Alonso would have ended the race still stuck down in fifth.
Nevertheless, Alonso, like the McLaren drivers, has sensed a shift in the balance of power and that is something all the protagonists will be pondering in the three-week summer break before the Belgian Grand Prix.
"The second part of the championship should be good for us," Alonso said. "Spa, with medium- and high-speed corners, should suit the team, and then Monza is our home race."
Red Bull, it is clear, are vulnerable in the races, and wins are there for the taking. But unless some kind of disaster befalls Vettel - or all his rivals start finishing ahead of him all the time, rather than just the odd one or two - the championship is already gone.
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57' GMC 4x4
I was getting bored with some current projects, so I started this to break from the norm...Here are the victims...
The body is in the shop...
More soon...vette
Alex SolerRoig Raymond Sommer Vincenzo Sospiri Stephen South
Friday, September 23, 2011
Jenson Button: ?I didn?t do much running today??
Hello from ALASKA!
I'm just settling in for winter and am starting a monogram 1/8 scale jaguar XKE I built one in 1979 and won the Anchorage fur rondezvous model contest I still have parts of old when it was a yellow model now it is red I will be doing it in black and a red and black interior if any pictures are out i would love to see them I love to get crazy with details.
Hamilton quickest in Singapore FP1
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Launching McLarens in Singapore
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