Op-Ed: Should the real story from Turkey be McLaren’s resurgence?
May 31, 2010 by SJ Skid
Filed under F1B Op-Ed, Prime & Option, SJ Skid
I’m going to give a rare “tip of the hat” to the official Formula 1 site for suggesting this idea: “the real story was the fact that Red Bull’s opposition – notably McLaren – has closed the gap on the once dominant team.”
Interesting, indeed.
On one basic level, you can check this out. Constructor’s championship? McLaren has 172 points. Red Bull? 171.
But more on point, it is clear that these two teams were the class of the weekend. The quartet streaked out to a commanding lead, somewhere in the 35 to 40 second range at the time of the Red Bull collision. Think about it. Mark Webber was far enough ahead of Michael Schumacher to bang up with Sebastian Vettel, make his way to the pits, stop and get a new nose and still come back out on track ahead of the now-fourth-place Schumacher.
That’s a comfortable lead.
Except… the Red Bull’s shared it with McLaren. And I have to wonder if that really isn’t the story of the weekend, for two reasons:
1. As noted above, it looks like McLaren has found those magic few tenths of a second on Red Bull. Canada should prove very interested, not to mention the rest of the season as these teams battle it out. (And as Mercedes tries to catch up, plus Ferrari tries to right its ship and, maybe, Renault sees where it can sneak some more good finishes in.)
2. I wonder how much McLaren ultimately can be “blamed” for the RBR crash. If Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel were having internal strife and chafing while just fighting for first between themselves, I have to think that McLaren sticking itself into the mix had to be unsettling. It isn’t hard for me to imagine Seb thinking something along the lines of: “Now I’ve got more than just than danged Aussie to work about. I got to get to the front.” And for his part, Webbo might have been thinking: “McLaren’s back on pace. I need this win. Don’t try a thing, Seb.”
Webber is still first in the drivers championship, but the ranks are closing on him:
Pos Driver Nationality Team Points
1 Mark Webber Australian RBR-Renault 93
2 Jenson Button British McLaren-Mercedes 88
3 Lewis Hamilton British McLaren-Mercedes 84
4 Fernando Alonso Spanish Ferrari 79
5 Sebastian Vettel German RBR-Renault 78
6 Robert Kubica Polish Renault 67
7 Felipe Massa Brazilian Ferrari 67
8 Nico Rosberg German Mercedes GP 66
9 Michael Schumacher German Mercedes GP 34
10 Adrian Sutil German Force India-Mercedes 22
11 Vitantonio Liuzzi Italian Force India-Mercedes 10
12 Rubens Barrichello Brazilian Williams-Cosworth 7
13 Vitaly Petrov Russian Renault 6
14 Jaime Alguersuari Spanish STR-Ferrari 3
15 Sebastien Buemi Swiss STR-Ferrari 1
16 Kamui Kobayashi Japanese BMW Sauber-Ferrari 1
17 Nico Hulkenberg German Williams-Cosworth 1
18 Pedro de la Rosa Spanish BMW Sauber-Ferrari 0
19 Heikki Kovalainen Finnish Lotus-Cosworth 0
20 Karun Chandhok Indian HRT-Cosworth 0
21 Lucas di Grassi Brazilian Virgin-Cosworth 0
22 Jarno Trulli Italian Lotus-Cosworth 0
23 Bruno Senna Brazilian HRT-Cosworth 0
24 Timo Glock German Virgin-Cosworth 0
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Great article SJ. I’m not sure if the story of the weekend is Mclarens resurgence or Ferraris poor performance. Ferrari really do seem to be nowhere whilst Mclaren show again that they can develop a car very well throughout the season.
I’d not be too far out on a limb now to suggest that the title races seem to between four drivers and two teams now. Ferrari are flattered in their respective positions due to RBR’s poor reliability early on.
Pre-season I’d have been quite happy for any of RBR or Macca drivers to tke the WDC but Vettels dropped off my list. Go Mark!
I felt like the story of the weekend was an interesting amount of intramural strife at the front of the pack. Even Hamilton and Button went wheel to wheel for a while. They just had the luck to not put each other into the gravel trap doing it. “There but for the grace of god go I.” Perhaps the unwillingness of the pack leaders to name a number 1 driver — same issue has popped up with Ferraris headed to the pits earlier this season — leaves room for a little bit of inefficient and potentially disastrous intramural jousting. You may have the two strong drivers you need to compete for the title, but like with Rubens and Jenson last year, they will each think it’s their title run, not the other guy’s…….how can you have team orders without a clear hierarchy?
@SJ – Even if there was no late race drama of the Redbull crash and almost repeat of the same in McLaren, the way the four cars remained in same frame of camera lap after lap with merely few tenth of second separating them, does tell something about the kind of supremacy these two teams had over rest of the field. It was further highlighted by the fact that Webber had lots of time on hand to take the extra pit stop change the damaged nosecone of his car and still emerge ahead of Schumacher.
McLaren indeed have shown that they have effectively bridged the gap between themselves and Redbull and true the same can’t be said about both Mercedes and Ferrari, while the Ferrari upgrades clearly didn’t bring anything to the table, it was hilarious to see Schumi and Rosberg emulating the Toyota drivers of 2005-06 by bunching up rest of the field behind the Schumi train.
I suspect, more desperate changes the Ferrari team is making to their car they are going further south reminds me of ways of my Favorite team Williams and their car development measures over every season…
BTW here is chart of the fastest laps of the race, of course Petrov and Alguersuari have put their fastest laps late in the race on fresh set of tyres. But still its a good indicator how the teams were faring on speed when the race ended.
1. V Petrov Renault 1:29.165
2. M Webber Red Bull 1:29.195
3. J Alguersuari Toro Rosso 1:29.535
4. R Kubica Renault 1:29.580
5 S Buemi Toro Rosso 1:29.588
6. M Schumacher Mercedes GP 1:29.810
7. J Button McLaren 1:29.895
8. A Sutil Force India 1:29.959
9. N Rosberg Mercedes GP 1:29.977
10. F Massa Ferrari 1:29.996
11. F Alonso Ferrari 1:30.011
12. L Hamilton McLaren 1:30.075
I think the real story is Mclaren alright, but IMO not the performance on tack but rather what went on between Button and Hamilton. Don’t you think that there was more to the pitwall getting very excited over the radio, the fact that Hamilton was fuel saving and didn’t expected to get passed, their discussion prior to the podium which was abruptly cut off as soon as they spotted the cameraman, and his (non-) reaction on the podium afterwards ? Or am I just taking the conspiracy theory thing a bit too far..
F1-Kitteh – you are on right track, I have voiced that in my posts elsewhere. I was pleasantly surprised the way Lewis has discreetly handled the situation. Visit to LA was not just to watch Nicole win the dancing with the stars and get his ears pierced I guess :D
PS – I had read somewhere tradition of piercing ears among Indians(Asian Indians), is associated with imbibing wisdom and knowledge, hence they pierce ears of babies (irrespective of gender). I guess Lewis controlling his vocals is good proof of validity of that tradition LOL
My impression is that, yes, there was a certain amount of unhappiness between Hamilton, Button and the rest of the McLaren team at the end of the race. We saw, however, that the two drivers were determined to put on a good show of being friends. Everything since the end of the race (“there was a misunderstanding, but it’s sorted now”) suggests that this is not going to be a long term problem.
McLaren has certainly found some speed – no doubt about that. I can almost guarantee a repeat of the Red Bull incident at McLaren by the end of the season. The “our drivers are sensible” comment will come back to bite them.
I am a little suprised about the progress ( or lack of ) at Mercedes GP. The car is cetainly quicker each race, but the gap to McLaren and Red Bull is growing. It appears that Ross Brawn and company got it wrong over the winter. The basic design concept / balance was flawed. Right now the car is drivable , but slow. Renault could actually be quicker in race pace.
I agree McLaren is on the upswing. An interesting point is that if Hamilton had finished two more laps in Barcelona he would be leading the championship now.