Sidepodcast

It would appear that Christian Horner is no longer sugar coating things now that David Coulthard’s tenure at the team is almost up. Having had a very difficult season, Horner admits that the blame is somewhat one-sided:

David has unfortunately had a disappointing year. Nothing has gone his way. Before this year he’d had only a couple of accidents with Red Bull Racing. I think this year he has had 10 and that has cost us and David very dearly in points. Too often we have been relying on one car and that’s been very hard for us.

He adds that the whole team is looking forward to the injection of a bit of enthusiasm from a certain German youngster, and they basically can’t wait for 2009 to roll around.

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• Length: 3:36 
• Size: 3.4 MB 
• File: forgotten2.mp3 
• Transcript: forgotten2.pdf 
• Torrent: forgotten2.torrent 

You’re listening to Sidepodcast and this is our latest mini series, Forgotten F1 Teams. It’s all very well talking about BMW, Honda and Williams, but there are teams out there who are important to the history of F1, and yet are not very well known. Sidepodcast wants to address this problem. Yesterday we talked about Simtek, today it’s the turn of Pacific Grand Prix.

Pacific had been around for a while, racing in some of the lower categories, and they’d done a pretty good job. Team boss Keith Wiggins had experience of racing and as a mechanic, and the moment he set up his team, he had acquired sponsorship from Marlboro, signed up a good Norwegian driver, and secured entry into the Formula Ford championships.

The progression was slow but steady, through F2, Formula Ford, F3, and F3000. Pacific’s final year in F3000 saw familiar name David Coulthard driving for them, fighting for the title. He didn’t manage it, however, and Wiggins set his sights on another, more exciting championship – Formula 1. The original aim was to participate in the 1993 championship, but a recession delayed the entry for a year. However, when 1994 arrived, it was full steam ahead. Engine supplier Ilmor were providing a pair of two year old engines, and Wiggins was using some of the leftovers of another failed F1 entry. Early testing signs were not good, the engine didn’t seem to be able to cope, and the chassis had structural problems, but at the opening round in Brazil, Pacific out-qualified Simtek with one of their cars. They only managed three laps of the race before a collision, but this was progress.

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In David Coulthard’s latest column for ITV, he talks about yet another missed opportunity in Germany, the comparisons between Toro Rosso and Red Bull, and the future of KERS. But my favourite piece in his column, is just a couple of small paragraphs.

As an aside, I notice that the rear wing fell off the Toyota at Silverstone and it was a right-rear suspension failure that caused Glock’s crash at Hockenheim.

I didn’t hear of any investigation into the structural integrity of the Toyota – but presumably that will happen because when we had a suspension breakage in Malaysia we came under the spotlight of the FIA in a way that was publicly uncomfortable for the team.

Now, my first reaction to this was: “That’s because the Toyota didn’t smash into a billion tiny pieces!” Thinking about it, however, Coulthard does have a point. If there is a structural problem with the Toyota that has caused these last two failures, then it probably should be looked at.

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Something we failed to mention in this week’s show, and something I’m sure we’d have had a lot to say about, is the Toyota pit stop bungle.

Glock and Coulthard had a coming together in Spain, as anyone who gets near Coulthard runs the risk of doing, and there was some damage to the Toyota. Therefore, the mechanics all scrambled to the pit box, ready to receive their car and make the necessary fixes.

Only, they called in Trulli instead.

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It’s a running joke in almost every single conversation about Formula 1 that Mark Webber is the unluckiest man on the grid. If he’s leading a race, his engine will blow up. If he’s in front of his home crowd, he will spin off spectacularly. If he needs the points, he’ll have someone crash into the back of him. If it’s just a regular day, his gearbox will fail.

My heart goes out to the guy, but I’ve been doing some thinking. It seems to me that he has made the biggest mistake of his life by joining Red Bull. The unluckiest man in F1, joining the unluckiest team?

Let’s discuss.

First, I’d like to wow you with some facts and figures.

In 2005, running two cars, RBR suffered 9 retirements. In 2006, it was 12. In 2007, it was up to 14. One race in to 2008 and they’ve already notched up 2. (Yes, alright so did a lot of teams, but stay with me, here.)

Sister team Toro Rosso had 8 retirements in 2006, 17 the following year and 1 so far this year.

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David Coulthard sat out yesterday’s test in Barcelona because he’d “tweaked” a muscle in his neck. I’m assuming that’s not the medical term for it, but it will do. He was back in action today after some treatment and a good rest.

Sebastian Vettel was given the golden opportunity to move up from Toro Rosso to Red Bull for the day, as STR were only running the one car. Vettel did pretty well, no major incidents and ended up 7^th. Personally, I’m happy he got the chance, as I’m a Vettel fan. However, it does leave some questions in place.

The first question is why Vettel? Why not Bourdais? Autosport’s reporting of the event said:

“…it was an obvious decision to draft in Vettel to run alongside Mark Webber.”

Why obvious? Vettel has slightly more experience than Bourdais, and perhaps they didn’t want to risk any smashes. Maybe it was a reward for all the hard work that Vettel put in last year.

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