2014 FORMULA 1 ROLEX AUSTRALIAN GRAND PRIX Hello F1 Girls and Boys. We’re back in Australia for the start of the 2014 season and with the biggest raft of technical changes in living memory and some pretty interesting team line-ups, we could be in for a ripper. Traditionally, Albert Park heralded the end of the F1 season, and it often rained, but now it is the traditional warm, sunny season opener, with the chance of showers. The race starts late in the day, so the early evening autumn sun can catch drivers out. The track itself is a street circuit, though relatively smooth it has the usual street artefacts of slippery white lines, man-hole covers (which are all glued down, in case you were wondering). The consistent corner placing makes it easy to learn from the drivers’ point of view, though the lack of any real straights means that the cars don’t really hit flat out. The first corner is where most incidents occur, and most overtaking happens at the narrow turn 3 after the second DRS zone. As before there are two zones, one after the other. Pirelli have new tyres for this year that will degrade less than before, all the tyres are slightly harder but are closer in terms of performance, so that there will be less of a difference between the softer and harder compounds, this also means that the working range of the tyres is closer. For come circuits, Pirelli will bring compounds with a separation (e.g., medium and super-soft) to provide a noticeable difference in performance, whereas other circuits may be better served by, say, hard and medium compounds. One of the changes this year is that drivers get to choose their car number, between 2 and 99, which will stay with them for their entire F1 career (1 stays with the current World Champion). This makes it much easier for TV commentators to easily identify who is who, and also to allow for a level of driver branding. The Last Place betting site has been updated to reflect this. After the pre-season testing, Mercedes seem way out ahead and have by far the best mileage and performance stats. Ironic it is then, that the first car to fail in FP1 was Lewis “Hammster” Hamilton, who made it as far as turn 9 before his car failed, he made up for it in FP2 by topping the timing sheets, with his team-mate Nico “Rozzer” Rosberg coming in second. The unchanged driver line-up of the Silver Arrows has Hammster running as car 44 -- like most of the drivers, this was his number while karting and Rozzer has gone for 6, his lucky number. It’s all change at McLaren; “Big Ron” Dennis’ coup d’etat restored him as Thunderbirds team boss, his first act being to replace the highly likeable Martin Whitmarsh with the highly Belgian Eric “Le Chef” Boullier, poached from a successful run at Lotus. “Our Boy” Jenson Button is much happier with this season’s car, which put in many good laps in testing and has been up near the top of the timesheets in both Free Practise sessions this morning. He has opted to run car 22, which was his number when he won the World Championship with Ross Brawn in 2009. He is joined by rooky Kevin “Minion” Magnussen, son of former McLaren driver Jan, the 22 year old Dane is Renault 3.5 World Champion and ran car 20 in that series, so it is no surprise that he will keep the number for his F1 career. McLaren lose Vodafone as their title sponsor, but have taken on Asos, the online fashion retailer, so their replica kit should get cheaper. Also running the Mercedes power train, Force India have been very strong in pre-season testing and look to be contenders this season. With a completely new driver lineup, they have acquired Sergio “Checo” Perez and his associated sponsorship money from McLaren driving his old Karting number of 11. The team have also very sensibly taken back German Nico “Hulk” Hulkenberg from Sauber, giving the team a very strong driver line-up. Hulk has chosen 27 as his number, which is interesting at many levels, not least because it has adorned, at one time or another, the cars of Giles Villeneuve, Alesi, Senna, Prost, Jones and Mansell. It is also a key mystical number, appearing in various cabalistic systems in both the East and the West, suggesting that the Hulk may be a secret handshaker. A former Renault team, Williams seem to have made the right choice this year by also opting for a Mercedes plant, and this has yielded them a much better looking package than last year’s abysmal effort. They have good mileage in pre-season testing and are up there on the timesheets after FP1 and FP2. New technical director Pat Symonds has clearly delivered the goods. Much maligned Brazillian Felippe “Move-over” Massa brings his not inconsiderable experience, and his long time friend and engineer Rob “Smedders” Smedley to the team to give them a real competitive head-start this year. He also uses his karting number 19. Finn Valtteri “Lucky” Bottas stays with the team from last year, and has gone for 77, part of his twitter hashtag ‘BO77AS’. Williams is not only run by a woman, Frank’s daughter Claire, but has also retained the services of Suzie Wolffe, racing driver and wife of the boss of Mercedes racing, Toto. So no inter-team stress there then. So to the Prancing Horses; Ferrari have been quite strong in pre-season testing – they needed to be as the last few seasons have not been kind to them and it was tearing the company apart. Their star driver, and he is admittedly very good, Fernando “Spiteful Spaniard” Alonso showed his usual form by throwing his toys out of the pram and generally upsetting everyone around him in the team as he struggled with the car last year. The team’s re-signing of Lotus driver and former World Champion Kimi “Iceman” Raikonnen is a clear message that his #1 status in the team is no longer a given. Spiteful Spaniard is another who has picked his kart number of 14 while Iceman, in typical fashion, could not be bothered to change his number from last year – “I had seven on my helmet already so I thought it is easier just to leave it there”. Sauber, also running the Ferrari power-plant, have shown similar reliability so far. They have taken Adrian “Convict” Sutil, former friend of Hammster, to head the team and retained Esteban “Gutsy” Gutierrez to fund it with his uncle Escobar’s drug sponsorship money. Convict chose the number I would have picked -- 99. Gutsy chose 21, which was how old he was when he started F1. Scudera Torro Rosso are the third Ferrari team and look to retain their mid-pack position. Jean-eric “Eric” Vergne has been promoted to team leader and chooses number 25, again, his first Karting number but more significantly his birthday, which is April 25. He is joined by Russian rookie Daniil “Cat” Kvyat, (pronounced “k’w-ee-a[t]” apparently) who, somewhat co-incidentally, celebrates April 26 as his birthday and ran number 26 in his karting days. This makes STR one of only two teams to have consecutively numbered cars. And so to the woe that is Red Bull – Renault. The flying Drinks Machines have had a torrid start to the season with a beautiful Adrian Newey aerodynamic wonder chassis that completely failed to work with the overheating Renault power plant. All the Renault powered cars struggled during testing, Red Bull more than most. Indeed current World Champion Sebastian “Klaus” Vettel has had more time in the car for FP1 and FP2 than he did for all three weeks of Pre-season testing. He picked 5, his karting number and the number on his car when he first won the championship in 2010, however will run with 1 on the car this year as reigning World Champion. He is joined from Torro Rosso by the ever smiling Australian Daniel “Koala” Ricciardo, whose refusal to look glum has kept the team in good spirits throughout the dark nights of winter. He also picks his karting number 3. The car is looking much stronger this weekend, and it does seem that Red Bull will overcome their troubles to race again this season. Lotus never even made it to the first test, and are definitely on their back foot at the moment, not just due to suffering with the Renault engine, but also having haemorrhaged technical and leadership personnel and also losing their star driver due to money problems. It is a shame, because the team did very well last year and at one point looked to be the contenders for the title. Romain “Nutter” Grosjean becomes team #1, and he only made it out of the pits to do 12 laps of FP2 before crashing into a wall. Like his former teammate, he is sticking with the number he has last year – 8 -, but this is also his wife’s December birthday. He is joined by another well funded bad-boy Pastor “Bishop” Maldonado, whose temperament on track is similar to a that of a Venezuelan wild-pig on heat. He has defied F1 convention by choosing 13 as his car number. Lucky for him? Maybe not as his car didn’t even leave the garage today. Another team not to make it out of the garage today is Caterham. Both cars remain in bits, and word in the paddock is that they will also miss FP3 and go straight to Qualifying to minimise the chances of the car breaking the Renault badged bits. They also had the least mileage of any team in pre-season testing. An all-new driver line-up sees the very popular return of our old friend Kamui “go-buy-sushi” Kobayashi, who is paying the team to drive car 10, the number on his Toyota when he first drove in F1 in 2009. He is joined by Swedish rookie Marcus “Sony” Ericsson, who somewhat cleverly decided to pick number 9, the number ahead of his team-mate and which would traditionally have indicated the senior driver. And finally, and possibly at the back for the last time, Cosworth powered Marussia have had quite a good time in testing, and whose cars, though at the back of those that went out, did at least get laps on the board in Free Practise. Contrary to what everyone thought they would do, they are the second and only other team to retain last-year’s driver line-up. This will please the journo-cougars of the paddock who dote on brooding Frenchman Jules “Jules II” Bianchi, and of course rich boy and all-round best loser Max “Chiltern-Windows”. Lovely boy; like Bottas, he has chosen number 4 as it matches his twitter tag of “M4X”. The Frenchman really wanted 7, or 27 or even 77. But because he was at the back of the grid, they all got taken, so he is stuck with 17. So, did you get all that? Mercedes look to be the dominant package, chased by Ferrari and with Renault really struggling for reliability. But nobody will really know until the chequered flag waves some time before 8am London time Sunday. As things stand, maybe half the field, 11-15 cars, will actually finish the race, leaving the likes of Marussia with a real chance of earning their first points in F1 if they can hang on to the line. M4X has come good so far!
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 12:17:29 +0000
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