If the FIA ran football, so the saying goes, we’d have square balls and round pitches.
Yesterday’s announcement regarding the FIA’s revised plans for Formula One race stewards didn’t come as much of a surprise, given that grandprix.com highlighted the expected change over a week ago.
The new plan is to bring three random stewards to each race, plus Max’s right hand man, Alan Donnelly. Last year’s permanent steward Tony Scott Andrews has stepped down from his role, so the consistency that a regular face brought to the table has now been nullified.
Strangely this new structure is supposed to speed up the decision making process, although one fails to see how it could? A cynic might suggest that the introduction of Donnelly is just another way for Max to exert yet more control over the sport.
As grandprix.com points out, Donnelly isn’t exactly a model of impartiality either. His company Sovereign Strategy currently list Formula One Management Ltd as a client. It’s not hard to imagine the sport’s commercial interests being taken into consideration when looking at future rule infringements. Would last year’s embarrassing ‘cool fuel’ episode have gone as far as it did if Donnelly had any say in the matter?
Welcome to Sidepodcast’s Days that Shook the F1 World, a series sharing some of the more pivotal moments in F1 History. Today, the 27th May 2006.
Michael Schumacher had already won twice in 2006, but was still struggling for form against defending champion Fernando Alonso. In the back of his mind he might have known this would be his last season and therefore his last race in the principality.Desperation may be been starting to set in.
Qualifying began as it always did, with the first of the three sessions. Notably, Felipe Massa crashed out in the sister Ferrari, causing red flags and plenty of chaos. Whatever help Michael may have expected from Felipe was immediately out of the window, and Ferrari’s race strategy was further compromised because Massa would likely start last in Sunday’s Grand Prix.
The second session passed without event, and the majority of the third session evolved predictably.
As the session drew to a close, Schumacher began his last attempt at a flying lap, but he lost two tenths somewhere in the middle sector.Aware that he could not make up that kind of deficit in the remainder of the lap and aware that his closest rival was behind him on the track, he got out of shape around the hairpin at Rascasse, pulling to a stop inches from the barrier.
The Ferrari was stuck in a dangerous position, so marshals had to wave their yellow flags, ensuring that a following Fernando Alonso had no choice but to slow down and abort his lap. How convenient.
The big question was: did Schumacher do it deliberately or was it merely a mistake?
Ferrari absolutely denied the former. It was an accident, a pure racing incident with no malice intended.
The entire pit lane rallied against this claim. How could it be an accident? The man was a master at Monaco, he missed the barriers by inches, meaning Alonso’s lap was ruined while the Ferrari suffered no damage. Surely an act of evil genius?
The stewards investigated, ruled Schumacher had done wrong, and pushed him to the back of the grid meaning both Ferraris would start from the back row, making it the teams worst ever qualifying position. During the race, Schumacher wowed everyone by fighting his way through the traffic and ended up in the top eight. No one denied the man could drive.
But that didn’t matter. The event caused a reaction completely unprecedented in the F1 World.Previous attempts to disrupt the course of a GP weekend by Schumacher and/or his team were now viewed in a new light. How could you believe that his accidents with championship rivals Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve in previous years, were simply mistakes? Fans were instantly reminded of his other misdemeanours, and now excuses were much less credible.
If he did do it on purpose, it revealed an enormous amount about Michael Schumacher’s character. Being a seven times world champion clearly wasn’t enough, and even though he claimed to always want to win everything fair and square, a little underhand technique every now and then wasn’t completely out of the question.
Prior to Monaco ‘06, when an incident occurred where questionable tactics had been used, the pit lane traditionally stayed quiet, had some time to think about it, and then responded via press releases and lawyers. After this event though, no one was backwards in coming forward. The entire pit lane erupted with scorn and derision, crying “cheat” and demanding action. Of course, they got what they wanted, and a new precedent was born. If you have an opinion on any subject, better to share it immediately, loudly, and to anyone who cares to listen.
Most importantly though, this event took place as fans were becoming more vocal too. Bloggers were just waiting for a controversial event to get their teeth into, and Michael Schumacher well and truly delivered. Everyone had an opinion, whether for or against the German, and now everyone could have their say.
Coverage of Formula 1 was changing, and this was the first major event to have everyone call it – cheater, evil genius or genuine mistake?
That’s all for our fifth important date. Join me tomorrow for another Day that Shook the F1 World.
Pit stops are a funny thing – absolutely necessary to keep the cars running for the length of the race, but ultimately a bit of an inconvenience.
The pit lane runs alongside the start/finish straight, with the entrance just before and the exit just after the line. The teams set up their garages there, with mechanics waiting to assist their team and engineers monitoring all that is happening out on track. Given the amount of people milling around the pit straight, a speed limit is imposed to try and improve safety.
The pit crew is not insubstantial. Some teams have as many as 22 people ready and waiting for each pit stop, including three on each wheel, two on the fuel rig, two with jacks, some people clearing the sidepods and the lollipop guy. In a normal racing pit stop, the car will be flagged to come into the lane via radio. It used to be that signs were held out by the pit crew over the race track, but technology has made that all but redundant. You do find the odd occasion when the radios aren’t working and someone is risking their arms out on the pit wall.
Anyway, the car comes in to the pit lane and crosses a white line signalling an immediate reduction in speed. Drivers are often penalised for speeding in the pit lane. The lollipop man will be furthest away from the garage, indicating to his car where to pull in, and the driver will pull to a stop in the marked box. Immediately, the car is jacked up so that the wheels can be changed, and it will also be refuelled, and any adjustments made to tyre pressures and wing positions.
The average pit stop is probably about 6-8 seconds, and to get through the pit stop and out in front of your opponent, you probably need a 30 second advantage.
Teams can run any combination of pit stop strategies, fuelling their cars longer to run a one-stop strategy, or keeping the weight of the car down but having to stop two or even three times. There is no limit to the number of times a car has to pit, but the size of the fuel tank dictates that they must stop at least once during a race.
Sometimes, pit stops occur more often than the race engineer planned. When a car is in trouble and can manage to get back to the pit lane, mechanics can try their best to fix it and get it back out on track, albeit further down the running order. Often a car will limp into the pits and retire, if it makes it back to the garage at all.
If a driver breaks a rule, the stewards can impose a drive-through penalty which means the car has to visit the pit lane without stopping at his garage. Because of the speed limits within the pit lane, this can be disastrous.
The sport of F1 is notoriously lacking in overtaking – when it does happen it’s usually quite an event – and so a lot of the jostling for position takes place in the pits. It can be based around strategy, but for those cars at the front of the grid, a good lead is essential. Each lap that you stay out longer than your opponent, will gain you a few seconds advantage. That’s because you will still be running light, whilst the other driver will be full of fuel and heavier. So, of course, decisions need to be made about how heavy you will run to start with, which in turn impacts on your qualifying position as well.
It’s then that you start to see what a rich tapestry the sport really is, where seemingly off-hand decisions can result in a podium position or a retirement from the race. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the pit lane.
In our fourth instalment of the Sidepodcast Guide to Formula 1, we’ll be looking at how a Formula 1 car is different to that car out in your garage.
