#F1 – Championship in the balance

As we reach the mid-season break in the 2016 Formula 1 racing calendar, I think it's fair to say the pendulum has swung emphatically back Lewis Hamilton's way.  Although Nico Rosberg's early dominance left Hamilton 43 points adrift in the title race – as Sky F1 commentator Martin Brundle described the German as a man "who cannot stop winning" – the incident between the two of them in Barcelona seems to have been a tipping point, allowing Hamilton to seize the momentum and precipitating a run of rotten bad fortune for Rosberg.

But such changes of fortune are, to an extent, to be expected in sport.  Any rivalry will ebb and flow – and although Hamilton has now overtaken his teammate to pull 19 points ahead as we go into the summer break, this year's World Championship still hangs very much in the balance.  Rosberg can fight back.

What he can't fight is an uneven playing field, and I fear that inconsistency in the way the rules are applied, and the way drivers are penalised for breaking the rules, is having too much of an impact on results.  Whoever ends up becoming the World Champion this year, that should not be because of discrepancies in the stewards' decisions, or slapdash application of regulations – as in any sport, the rules must apply equally and fairly to all, and every effort must be made to ensure that every driver is treated the same by those who decide what is fair racing and what isn't, and who hand out punishments when it is not.

At the moment, we are not seeing this.  We frequently see a driver penalised for a move a carbon copy of which another driver previously got away with.  And we are seeing the rules change from one weekend to the next; on track limits, radio communications, etc., the goalposts keep being moved.  This makes for race weekends where focus is being taken away from the action on track and diverted to lengthy discussions about the latest tweaks to the regulations – and it results in wheel-to-wheel racing where drivers are hesitant to make an overtaking move, as they cannot be sure whether their racing instinct will be applauded, or saddle them with a time penalty.

Uncertainty, inconsistency, and a completely lack of clarity – if you wanted a masterclass in how to ruin great racing, this is it.

Today at Hockenheim, Nico Rosberg was awarded a five second time penalty for an overtake on Max Verstappen, where it was deemed he "forced Verstappen off the circuit".  If those are the rules, then I suppose that's fair enough – but we have all seen other drivers make overtakes almost identical to Rosberg's, and not be punished in any way.  Perhaps most notably, Lewis Hamilton on Rosberg himself in the USA last year – the race at which the British driver clinched his third World Championship title.

One of these moves resulted in a five second time penalty.
The other warranted no action from the stewards.  Fair?

And speaking of Lewis Hamilton, a very interesting thing happened in Free Practice this weekend.  Hamilton was deemed to have been involved in an unsafe release from his pit box during the practice session; his punishment for this was a fine.  The only other time when a driver has been penalised with a fine for unsafe release in Free Practice – as opposed to being given a grid penalty or formal reprimand – was at the 2015 Brazilian Grand Prix, when the driver in question, Jolyon Palmer, couldn't be given a grid penalty because he was only a test driver doing a practice session and wouldn't be competing in the race anyway.

2014 Spanish GP, JEV 10 place penalty for unsafe release in FP
2015 Belgian GP, Kvyat reprimand for unsafe release in FP

— Jack/F1StatMan (@F1StatMan) July 30, 2016

2016 Australian GP, Haryanto 3 place penalty and 2 penalty points for unsafe release in FP

— Jack/F1StatMan (@F1StatMan) July 30, 2016

So why wasn't Hamilton given the same penalty that every other driver in that situation in recent years has been given?  Were the stewards just being soft on him?  Hamilton already has two reprimands this year; a third is serious – a guaranteed ten-place grid penalty.  But if other drivers got reprimanded for the same transgression, then he should too – otherwise, it simply amounts to special treatment.

I guess my big concern is that something like this will end up being the deciding factor in who gets the be World Champion this year – that the allocation of penalties is so random (and so completely baffling at times!) that a driver will end up being denied a race win or a Word Championship title because of shonky, off-the-cuff stewarding.  If we reach the end of this season, and we can look back and say "decision x was what meant that so-and-so won, or did not win, the title" that will not be in any way good for the sport.

It is time for transparency in rule-making, clarity of meaning, and consistency in application.  That is the only way we can ensure a level playing field for racing hard, but racing fair – and the only way we can ensure that the World Championship winner truly deserves his crown.

#F1 - A tyre-anny of Pirelli?

Well, if you're a Formula 1 fan, you'll already be well aware of the debate raging within the sport about Pirelli's current models of race tyres.  (And if you're not a Formula 1 fan, you probably won't enjoy this post that much!)  Red Bull's Dietrich Mateschitz claims that F1 has "nothing to do with real racing any more" and that too much emphasis on tyre-management is ruining the sport - and similar complaints have been heard from some drivers in the field, as well as many of the fans.

I actually raised this issue on this Blog two years ago, in May 2011.  I didn't like the attempts to "engineer" more excitement in the sport, and I used the example of two teams mates - one qualifying in the Top 10, and one starting from the back of the grid, whose final positions in the race ended up almost reversed - to illustrate how I felt the high degradation of the Pirelli tyres were having too much influence on the results of races.

Although I still feel that way about the Pirelli tyres, I can't help but feel that Red Bull are just having a bit of a moan.  For the past three years, Red Bull have had undisputedly the best car, designed by one of the best designers in the business, Adrian Newey.  This year, their car (while still very, very good) comes in behind several of the other teams in a couple of keys areas - one of these areas in the way the car manages the tyres; Lotus, in particular, and also Ferrari to a certain extent, have managed to design a car which is kinder to the tyres than the Red Bull.

What we are seeing from Red Bull now, of course, is nothing less than the petulance and querulousness I would expect.  Every team designs their car to the same set of regulations, so in that respect everybody starts from an equal footing - rather than accepting that, on this occasion, the chaps at Lotus have done a better job than they did, and trying to improve their own car through upgrades as the season goes on, Red Bull have demanded that the tyres which all the teams have to use be changed to suit them.

As far as I'm concerned, this cannot be allowed to happen.  Much as I would prefer tyres which aren't so unpredictable, it would not be right to change things part-way through a season, just because one of the teams has thrown their toys out of the pram.  By making the tyres more Red Bull-friendly, Pirelli will be effectively making life harder for Lotus and Ferrari - in this situation, it could be Pirelli who "choose" who they want to win the Championship this year.

No, having started out with these high-degradation tyres, we must stick with them for a whole season.  By all means, change them for next season (when the regulations on engines and car design will be significantly altered anyway, and all the teams will be starting again from scratch) - but changing the tyres midway through the year would be like changing the rules of football to allow goalkeepers to handle the ball outside the penalty area, just because one of the Premier League teams reckon they'd have a better chance of winning if that rule were different.  Red Bull need to be told that if you're not doing well enough within the current regulations to win, you simply have to try harder, or take a different approach - not ask the sport's governing body to change the rules to help make it easier for you!

If Pirelli do change their tyres, in response to Red Bull's complaints, how much more are we going to see of teams campaigning for changes to rules they don't like?  In the end, Caterham will kick up an almighty fuss and demand that the points system be changed so that you can only score points if you drive a green car, meaning that they'll end up as Champions unless all the other teams repaint.