Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

As Fernando Alonso chased Nico Hulkenberg in the early stages of the Brazilian Grand Prix, it was apparent that on the long climb at the end of the lap the Ferrari was making little impression on the Williams, and you had to be impressed by what Cosworth has achieved this season. Rubens Barrichello suggests that ‘driveability’ isn’t all it might be, but on horsepower – so long as the engine is reasonably fresh, anyway – it apparently lacks for little. Pretty impressive, you’d have to say, for what is supposedly a ‘customer’ engine, supplied to four teams: whatever else Lotus, Virgin and HRT have been short of in their debut season, it hasn’t been grunt.

Alonso found himself in the unusual position of chasing Hulkenberg because the young German – although swiftly dispensed with by the Red Bulls – had succeeded in putting his Williams on pole, and it was pleasing that this should have occurred at Interlagos, where the team’s last victory – by Juan Pablo Montoya – was scored six long years ago.

The manner in which Hulkenberg achieved his pole position reminded me rather of qualifying for the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch in 1975, when Jody Scheckter – in freezing conditions – threw his Tyrrell around with such vigour that he alone got decent temperature into his tyres, and achieved a time no one else could approach. In the case of Hulkenberg, a wet Interlagos was drying out by the end of qualifying, and he – one of the first out on slicks – drove as quick an out-lap as he dared, got his tyres up to temperature, and went for it, setting a time more than a second faster even than the Red Bulls.

As we saw so often in the season past, Adrian Newey’s wonder cars duly waltzed it in the race, but Alonso wasn’t very far behind Webber at the flag, and might have been able to exert a little more pressure had he not lost a significant amount of time behind Hulkenberg in the early laps. The importance of qualifying is perhaps even greater today than at any point in the past.
Most would agree, I think, that on many occasions in this era of Formula 1 the highlight of the weekend – in terms of excitement – is Q3, that final 10-minute period when only the 10 fastest cars are out, and the track is relatively uncluttered. Since refuelling was dropped, thank God, so the need to ‘qualify with fuel for the first stint of the race’ has gone with it, and thus the cars are in pure, ultra-light ‘qualifying spec’.

Think of Singapore. Alonso stole that race from the faster Red Bull of Vettel because he drove a perfect qualifying lap, and Sebastian, heading for pole on his final run, lightly clipped a guardrail. That meant starting second, and although he pressured Fernando for the entire race, second was where he finished, too. Saturday, in other words, decided Sunday, and often it has been that way because overtaking, as we know, is extremely difficult with F1 cars of the contemporary era.

The top six drivers in the 2010 World Championship represented three teams. At Red Bull, Vettel out-qualified Webber 12-7, at McLaren Hamilton beat Button 14-5, and at Ferrari Alonso was ahead of Massa 15-4. Ten times Vettel started from pole, followed by Webber (five), Alonso (two) and Hamilton and Hulkenberg (one apiece).

No wonder the young man looked so gratified in Brazil. It’s a tragedy that financial considerations – Hulkenberg isn’t loaded down with personal sponsorship – have obliged Williams to part with him, but Nico will surely get a drive elsewhere for 2011. Most drivers, after all, go through an entire F1 career without once starting from the front.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

I’ve been thinking. Yeah, I know, but bear with me. As the days get shorter, we approach the penultimate race of this extraordinary season of Grand Prix racing. The year 2010 will surely be recorded as one of the great seasons, and certainly it has been the most exciting since this century began.

We can’t wind the clocks back – actually, we’ve just done that in the UK as we move into our ‘winter’ time zone. But, if you skate back over the season so far, even a cursory glance at the races brings to mind one of the most oft-used words in the lexicon of motor racing. If. A short word, but one with so many ramifications.

If Massa had not been forced to allow Alonso to overtake at Hockenheim. If Alonso had not hit the barrier in Monte Carlo. If Button had not left the pits with his radiators blanked. If Hamilton had not crashed at Monza and in Singapore. If Vettel and Webber had not collided in Turkey. If Webber had not thrown it away in Valencia and in Korea. If…

It is a season almost defined by what ifs, and perhaps more so than for many a year. This may be explained by the constant pressure, the constant excitement, or the batch of top drivers in top cars we have right now. Whatever, not once since March has it been clear who would take the 2010 title. Not to me, anyway.

And, even more remarkably, it is barely any clearer as we approach the Brazilian Grand Prix. There isn’t a sport on earth that would not be revelling in such a cliffhanger. And you can bet your salary that Bernie Ecclestone, not to mention the television companies, are doing just that.

OK, it does look a tall order for Button and Hamilton. And to a lesser extent for Vettel, lesser because he has the best Formula 1 car we’ve seen this season. So, it’s down to the wire between Alonso and Webber, right? Wrong. Because we are going to São Paulo, where the weather is fickle and where there is almost invariably some kind of drama.

The great Grand Prix circuits, of which Interlagos is indubitably one, have the elements of drama, tragedy and comedy ingrained into the very asphalt itself. There is the grid, painted onto a steep gradient, and then there is the first corner. There are those long, long corners with their tricky cambers and terrible drainage. There is the crowd, a seething, passionate mass of people who just love this sport to bits. The rickety grandstand opposite the pits trembles with anticipation on the warm-up lap. I am not joking. The drummers and the dancers, draped in national flags, are there at dawn. It is Grand Prix racing at its gladiatorial best.

Yeah, but Alonso will do it for Ferrari, Massa will help him, and Webber will have some kind of stupid failure. Wrong. Anything can happen, as we wait for the lights next Sunday afternoon. What happens at Interlagos, I do believe, will decide the season. A week later, in Abu Dhabi, things will simply be quietly confirmed.

On paper, it has to be Webber. He has the best car and is the man in the lead. On paper, it has to be Alonso. He is the best driver. On paper, it has to be Vettel. He is the man in form, arguably the bravest.

Every Grand Prix at Interlagos is a wonderful event, a thrilling experience, and this year – one way or the other – will be one of the best of them all. If…

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Renault – in more ways than one – has had a poor time of it in Formula 1 over the last couple of years. True, Fernando Alonso returned to the team, after a single season with McLaren, but even the world’s best driver can do little with a fundamentally uncompetitive car, and although Alonso invariably gave 100 per cent (for that is his way), he won only two races in two seasons – and one of those was the controversial affair at Singapore in 2008. His victory in the next race, at Fuji, was from the top drawer, but there were to be no more, and in ’09 Fernando really struggled, his Renault frankly nowhere near the pace.

As he left for Ferrari, so Robert Kubica – on the market following BMW’s withdrawal – took his place, but through the late months of last year rumours abounded that Renault, too, might follow the lead of Honda, Toyota and BMW, and disappear from F1. Theoretically, therefore, Kubica might have been on the street once more – and, frankly, I was surprised that during that period any team signed any driver before being certain of Robert’s situation.

For my money, he is one of the top four drivers in F1, and some go further than that. His close pal Alonso has said he considers him the best, while even Lewis Hamilton has – privately – admitted that Kubica is the driver he most fears.

When Renault announced that, while the team would be continuing under the same name, a considerable chunk of it had been sold, Kubica declared that he now considered himself free to walk, should he choose to do so. After being reassured that it would remain a serious F1 operation, he said he would remain – but his original contract was for one season only, and there has been speculation that he could well join Alonso at Ferrari in 2011.

It could be that Kubica will have a frustrating time of it – again – this year, but still it astonishes me that when pundits consider the prospects for the coming season, frequently they omit to mention him. In all probability, this is because they do not expect very much from Renault, but if the car is even half-decent expect to see Robert in there, pitching. He might not look the part as much as some, but potentially this is a great Grand Prix driver.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Much has been written about Nelson Piquet Jr’s deliberate accident at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix, which, lest anyone has forgotten, precipitated a safety car period, which in turn created a situation that handed the race on a plate to Piquet’s Renault team-mate Fernando Alonso.

It was, by general consent, an appalling happening, and draconian punishments were forecast and – in some cases, anyway – duly handed down. Flavio Briatore was banned from motor racing for life, and Pat Symonds for five years; Renault, the company, got away with a suspended ban (i.e. nothing) and Piquet himself – said by many to have been the instigator of the idea – got not even that, having been granted immunity for turning in his ex-colleagues when the moment suited him (i.e. when he had been fired, and had a powerful thirst for revenge to slake).

“The worst example of cheating I’ve ever known,” commented Stirling Moss at the time, and few would take issue with him. What Piquet et al did that day was to cause an accident with the intention of gaining from it, right?

Right. And all sorts of things – some of them a touch hysterical, in my opinion – were said about the danger, the risk involved, both to Piquet and to other drivers, marshals and so on. I’m not attempting to play down the gravity of the offence, but the incident occurred at the exit of a slow corner, and the Renault finished up flush with the inside wall, well off the line. It was not nothing, by any means, but nor – to my eyes, anyway – was it quite the potential catastrophe described by some.

Now let’s go back a couple of years before the Singapore incident, to Monaco in 2006, to the dying seconds of the final qualifying session. Michael Schumacher had the all-important pole position, but feared that Alonso, out on the circuit and going for it, was going to beat him. Therefore, in the most cack-handed manner imaginable, Schumacher contrived to ‘have an accident’ at Rascasse, thereby blocking the track, so as to thwart Alonso.

Why cack-handed? Well, for a start because it wasn’t even vaguely believable. Michael came into the corner off the pace, and off his normal line. He then put the brakes on hard, locked up – and stopped, a couple of feet from the barrier. As Keke Rosberg said at the time, “Jesus, he could at least have knocked the nose off…” The Ferrari was completely undamaged.

Outrage in the paddock was extreme, and the stewards announced that they would investigate. Who knows why, but it was late that evening before they concluded that Schumacher should be… not banned for life or for five years or even for one race. No, he would start from the back of the grid. Wow! Was that hard-hitting or what? On race day he duly came through to fifth place, and four points.

Now, was what Michael did greatly different from what happened in Singapore? Was not the intention the same in both cases – namely, deliberately to ‘have an accident’ in the hope of benefiting from it? All right, Schumacher didn’t actually hit anything, but his car was in the middle of the road, engine dead, and a carambolage could have occurred behind it.

Perhaps his sin wasn’t as great as Piquet’s, but still he cheated with thoughts of gain in mind (and not for the first time, either). Of course the argument was that Michael’s action wasn’t planned, wasn’t preconceived. Probably so, but it didn’t keep him from spotting an opportunity, and deciding instantly to act upon it. And the discrepancy in the punishments handed out for the two ‘crimes’ seems to me more than a touch absurd.

None argued Schumacher’s case more trenchantly than Jean Todt, but he was then of course a Ferrari man, doing right by his team and thinking of nothing else. Now he is the president of the FIA, and the hope must be that now the interests of ‘the sport’ are uppermost in his mind. On the face of it, sundry announcements made in the wake of December’s World Motor Sport Council meeting give cause for optimism – not least those proposing fundamental changes in the way FIA stewards conduct themselves at a Grand Prix. A most encouraging start to the new regime in Paris, I thought.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine