#F1 – Radio blah-blah

Last weekend's Mexican Grand Prix will be remembered more for what happened on the radio, and on the podium, than what happened on the track.

For those who didn't see it, in the closing laps of the race Sebastian Vettel in fourth place was closing down Max Verstappen in third, and in trying to keep the Ferrari driver behind him Verstappen pushed too hard and ran wide, cutting the corner.  Verstappen had clearly 'gained an advantage' by running outside the limits of the racetrack, and even his own team boss came on the radio advising him to give the place up to Vettel – but Verstappen did not yield the position, and no official instruction came from Race Control telling him to let Vettel through.

Verstappen crossed the line in third, but was retrospectively penalised, before he had a chance to stand on the podium.  Sebastian Vettel was belatedly award third place – but, by this point, Vettel himself was the subject of heavy criticism, for his angry outbursts over team radio after Verstappen had refused to give up third place to him on track, and particularly his use of foul language.

Personally, I have no problem with a driver swearing on the radio.  In the heat of battle, when you're giving everything to beat the next guy and bring home points for your team, your emotions pour out of you; when you are frustrated, you show it.  We've all done it.  I'm not a global superstar in a multi-million pound arena, but I compete in local sports leagues – and I do get exasperated when things aren't going my way, and in the heat of the moment I sometimes let those feelings out…

What I can honestly say I've never done, though, is to aim that at anyone in particular – be that a competitor, a teammate, or a match official.  Vettel was out-of-line in what he said; he went beyond simply venting his frustration, and he directed his tirade at both a rival driver and race director Charlie Whiting.  That's not on – and he, too, was rightly punished.

But for me, these events have thrust the issue of broadcasting team radio communications back into the spotlight once again.  It's a fascinating part of watching racing, and it lets us see another side of drivers who, in interviews, are always so composed and 'rehearsed'.  But it can also be a double-edged sword, in that respect…

I have remarked before on the difference between Lewis Hamilton's language in interviews and his demeanour over team radio.  Out of the car, Hamilton is always careful to say all the right things – always thanking his engineers, paying tribute to 'the team', and so on.  But in middle of racing, with a hundred other things going on around him at two hundred miles-per-hour, he isn't thinking of maintaining his carefully polished media image, and we sometimes hear him snap at his engineers on the pit wall, getting cross that they're either not giving him enough information, or that they are distracting him by talking when he's trying to race.

And it isn't just Hamilton.  I often feel that the way drivers speak to their engineers over the radio differs markedly from the pro forma lip service they pay the team in interviews and press conferences, when they know the eyes of the world are upon them.

One of the reasons I've not taken to the relatively recent development of having a 'celebrity' interviewing the drivers on the podium after the podium ceremony is how staged and 'fake' it all feels.  They don't talk about racing; they rattle off some prepared jokes, and repeat the same platitudes about 'atmosphere' and 'fans' that we've all heard a thousand times before.

"Lewis, tell us a specific thing about the race?" / "Well… Fans, atmosphere, amazing, so blessed, blah, blah…" – every podium interview. #F1

— Kit Marsden (@manek43509) July 24, 2016

But I, and many others, want to see real people and real racing.  And real people get angry.  Team radio has given us some memorable racing moments, and not just this last weekend – who remembers "Leave me alone! I know what I'm doing!" for example? – but I do worry that maybe it results in putting drivers under a microscope a little too much.



In these situations, it is almost as if we are broadcasting the driver's internal monologue to the whole world.  Other sports don't do this – sportsmen might get angry, but their thoughts and words are not broadcast live, 'in the moment', like that.

I don't want to 'sterilise' drivers, in pursuit of the perfect image, or because teams are worried about offending people.  I don't want every last drop of passion and emotion wrung out of them, in case they say the wrong thing.  Bland automatons in shiny race suits are the last thing this sport needs.  I don't think that's what anyone wants – but too much scrutiny of radio communications could mean we end up there, all the same.

The stewards were right to punish Sebastian Vettel for his outburst.  He crossed the line, and that behaviour cannot be acceptable in F1.  But I very much hope this won't lead to yet another area of racing feeling too 'scripted'.  Let's keep racing – and drivers – real.

#F1 – Red Bull's woes

The talk recently has been of Ferrari being a team 'in crisis' – all of which has let the issues at Red Bull slip a little under the radar.  Performance has dropped off in the past couple of seasons, and Red Bull – a team which had become so accustomed to winning not so long ago – are now much more used to fighting midfield battles, and high-profile fallings out with longstanding engine supplies Renault have only compounded the team's decline.

However, Red Bull's problems have come to the fore in the past couple of days, as it was revealed that Max Verstappen will be promoted from the junior Toro Rosso team to drive for Red Bull for the rest of this season, in place of Russian Daniil Kvyat.

It is a decision which comes close to completely incomprehensible.  As I remarked on Twitter on Thursday when this news first broke, when even a current driver (and former World Champion) in the shape of Jenson Button is laying into a team's decision-making process, you have to think that something is going seriously wrong.

Really? one bad race and Kyvat's dropped, what about the podium in the previous race? #Shortmemories https://t.co/8YDBZPDP3v

— Jenson Button (@JensonButton) May 5, 2016

The decision is baffling for so many reasons.  Not least because, despite a rocky couple of races this season, Kvyat hasn't really done that much wrong.  He has made mistakes, yes – but no worse than plenty of other racing drivers have made.  He needs the opportunity to learn from those mistakes.

Two first lap incidents in consecutive races is maybe a sign that the team should sit down with him, have a chat about being slightly less aggressive into the opening corners of a race, and encourage him to race smarter and come back a stronger, more intelligent racer in the Grand Prix ahead.  It shouldn't be the end of his Red Bull career.

Of the current field of drivers, I am a big admirer of Romain Grosjean – whom I think is a huge talent, and a very exciting driver.  It wasn't that long ago, though, that he was having his own issues with incidents on the first laps of races – issues which were far more serious than Kvyat's this year have been.

I wrote at the time how Grosjean could be a force to be reckoned with if he could fix the first lap gremlins, and I like to think that this stance has been vindicated in more recent seasons.  Despite a two-race ban for causing a first lap crash Belgium in 2012, his team (then Lotus Renault) kept faith with him, and gave him a chance to come back from the race ban as demonstrate he had learnt his lesson, calmed down, and matured on track.  It should be clear, now, that this was the right decision by the Lotus team, as Grosjean made the most of that opportunity and went on to score points and podium finishes for them, becoming a respected figure on the F1 grid in the process.

I believe Red Bull should give Kvyat – who is still only young, and learning his trade in Formula 1 – the same opportunity.  His recent incidents have been unfortunate – and of course frustrating for Sebastian Vettel, who always seems to be on the receiving end of them! – but not serious enough in my view for Red Bull to replace him so summarily.  Of course, we don't know the whole story – there could be other issues going on behind the scenes which have contributed to Kvyat losing his seat at Red Bull – but on the face of it, the whole situation looks very harsh on the Russian.

The other consideration is the affect that this will have on Max Verstappen, the driver who will be replacing Kvyat after only one season in F1.  Verstappen (son of former F1 driver Jos Verstappen) has universally acknowledged to be a future star after his debut season with the Toro Rosso team last year.  He is young, talented, and has superb racing instincts.  He's not without his own incidents either, of course – normally brought about by inexperience, and the impetuousness of youth – but no one who watched the 2015 season could've failed to be impressed by the young dutchman.

The trouble with the stars of the future is that Formula 1 teams have an unfortunate habit of trying to make them the stars of now – often before they are ready.  It is something I think we have seen before, most recently with Sergio Pérez's disappointing season at McLaren.

Trying to promote young talent into teams with winning cultures and high expectations can end very badly indeed, and can damage the career of the young driver promoted before he was ready – the pressure of driving for Red Bull will be vastly more than the pressures of driving for Toro Rosso, and I fear Verstappen may struggle to cope with the hype of being 'the next big thing', and having to deliver results for a team with the recent history of success Red Bull has, at such a young age and so soon in his racing career.

Maybe Max Verstappen will rise to the challenge and will be on the podium before the end of this year.  If so, congratulations will certainly be in order!  But it is an enormous risk to pile pressure – particularly in such an unexpected and sudden way as this – on a young rookie driver, no matter how talented or hungry for success he might be.  I hope Red Bull don't live to regret this decision.

#F1: Swingapore

What a difference!  Ferrari and Red Bull the dominant teams, Mercedes fighting behind the top four, before eventually retiring one car after Championship leader Lewis Hamilton lost power to end up 40mph slower through the speed trap.  Singapore certainly provided a change from what's been the norm in Formula 1 this season.

Hamilton's lead in the Championship is still assured, and I can't see anyone else taking the title this year.  It was definitely interesting to watch a race playing out without Hamilton fifteen seconds ahead of everyone else, though.  Sebastian Vettel proved he hasn't lost his touch when it comes to controlling a race from the front, as he led from Pole position to take a third win this year in his Ferrari.  His teammate Kimi Räikkönen, on the other hand, finished third but seemed unable to match Vettel or Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo for pace.

Räikkönen seems to turn the car in differently from Vettel at the entry to the corners.  It's hard to see exactly what's going on there without access to more slow replays of the two of them (I might look some up later and do some more analysis when I can compare them more thoroughly), but Vettel is able to squeeze a bit of extra grip in the turn where Räikkönen can't.  Ferrari's upgrades this weekend have helped them a lot, though, and as I remarked on Twitter their capture of technical director James Allison from Lotus is looking ever more inspired – and ever more of a loss for the Enstone-based team.

Speaking of Lotus, it was another weekend to forget, really.  They were not quick at this circuit, but Romain Grosjean managed to deliver a surprised top 10 Qualifying position.  He had a possibility of picking up some points, as well, running in the lower end of the top 10 most of the evening – but I think the team got his strategy wrong.  They were the first to stop for tyres at each Pitstop window, and I think this ended up costing them as his tyres were older than everyone else's in the last few laps of the race, leaving him unable to defend his position from two hungry young Toro Rosso drivers on considerably fresher (and softer) tyres.

It was the Toro Rosso pairing of Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz Jr. who stole the show, and had everyone talking during the post-race analysis.  However, I was less than impressed on a couple of occasions.

Let's go back to the battle with Grosjean, for a minute.  Max Verstappen passed Grosjean to take eighth place, and did an excellent job of it (although there were a nervous few moments where I half expected a repeat of Monaco, where Verstappen misjudged his braking and run straight into the back of the Lotus driver!), but when it was Sainz' turn to line up Grosjean for an overtake, I felt the Lotus man was rather hard-done-by.  Sainz' overtaking move was brave, and well-executed – but the TV replays showed clearly that he had all four wheels off the circuit as he did it.  He should've had to give the place back.

What irked me even more was that Martin Brundle's commentary for Sky F1 seemed to say that this did not matter.  He claimed that it was a good move, and it would be wrong to penalise drivers for trying to make overtakes.  It's not wrong to penalise drivers for breaking the rules, though, and Sainz clearly did.  I wrote just last week about how important it is for rules to be applied fairly and consistently – especially the 'track limits' rule – and here is a commentator and big motor racing personality advocating that we waive punishment for a clear infringement of the rules just because it looked cool.  That is utter nonsense, and makes a mockery of the sport.

As I remarked on Twitter, this is akin to a footballer hitting a fantastic strike from thirty yards out, only to see his shot rebound off the goalpost – only for the referee to say he is awarding a goal anyway, because it was such a good strike.  Yes, Sainz was driving extremely well – but rules are rules, and no matter how nice a piece of driving his overtake on Grosjean was, it was an illegal move as defined by the 'track limits' rule, and that rule should've been upheld accordingly.  (Ironically, Grosjean himself was involved in something similar in Hungary a few years back, when he passed Felipe Massa with a brilliant piece of skill – and was then told he had to relinquish the position because he had gone fractionally outside the limits of the circuit in making his move stick.  As I have said time and again, inconsistent applications of rules ruins racing, and this was another case in point.)

Sainz' teammate Max Verstappen may have made a legal overtake on Grosjean, but his conduct towards his team was less than exemplary.  In the final laps, running eighth with Sainz behind him in ninth, Verstappen looked less and less likely to find a way past Sergio Peréz in front, and his team instructed him to switch with Sainz so the other driver could have a go at getting past the Force India and claiming seventh place for the team.  Verstappen refused.  In this instance, his team boss Franz Tost later said that Verstappen was right to ignore the orders, but I wonder what kind of precedent this sets within that team.

Verstappen's engineer asked him twice to swap places with Sainz.  When Verstappen remonstrated after the first request, the response from the pit wall was a curt "Max, just do it."  How did Verstappen know that this order wasn't for a more serious reason?  Contrast his petulance with Hamilton's professionalism in Monza; a few laps before the end of the race, when he seemed to be cruising to certain victory, Hamilton's race engineer instructed him to pick up the pace and pull out a further gap to Vettel in second place behind him.  "Don't ask questions, just do it – we'll explain all later" said Hamilton's engineer.  The Championship leader complied, without hesitation.  He could obviously tell that the team knew something he didn't (we later found out they had been made aware of an issue, and were anticipating a potential time Penalty which could have taken the win away from Hamilton unless he finished more than twenty seconds ahead of Vettel), and that the situation was urgent.  He responded in a calm, professional manner, doing what was asked of him and securing maximum points for himself and the team.

Verstappen, on the other hand, was supremely lucky.  As it turned out, nothing bad happened as a result of his insubordination (not in terms of the race result, anyway), but how was he to know at the time that there wasn't something more serious behind that request?  The endorsement of his actions by Franz Tost as well makes the situation worse, in my mind.  It has set a precedent at Toro Rosso for ignoring the team, if you think you know best, and just ploughing your own furrow.  Don't expect Sainz to do his team any favours in future Grand Prix after that.  Might that end up hurting their points tally, come the end of the season?  I wouldn't rule it out.

Ultimately, one of biggest deciding factors for those mid-to-lower grid teams was the timing of the Safety Car.  In my view, the Safety Car spent too much time on-track in Singapore today; we could quite easily have had a couple of laps fewer behind the Safety Car on both of the occasions it was called into action.  In the first incident (when Massa and Hulkenberg hit each other), the initial response from Race Control was a Virtual Safety Car.

Now, I like the idea of the Virtual Safety Car.  I see what they are trying to do here, and I think it is laudable.  You control the pace of the cars and allow marshals time to clear the track without bunching up the field too much and having all that nonsense of backmarkers unlapping themselves taking up time.  But it is fairly clear quite early on whether an incident is serious enough to warrant the use of the real Safety Car – especially on a street circuit – and if it is we need to see the Safety Car come out much sooner.  In this instance, we wasted several laps under Virtual Safety Car conditions before Race Control realised the shunt had been bigger than that and plumped for the real Safety Car anyway.

In the second Safety Car period, it was brought out straight away, in response to a bizarre situation of a member of the public casually sauntering along the track.  That was totally fair enough, of course – but long after he'd disappeared off the scene, we were still trundling around behind the Safety Car, as backmarkers unlapped themselves (or, in the case of Manor F1 debutant Alex Rossi, didn't quite), and the pack shuffled itself into order.

This ended up being the root cause of much of the late drama in the race (including the Toro Rosso brouhaha I have mentioned above, as well as a collision between Pastor Maldonado and Jenson Button), as the cars bunched up behind the Safety Car and were held up from restarting the race.  My opinion is the racing could've resumed a couple of laps sooner (at least), and the luck of simply being in the right place at the right time when the Safety Car is deployed (always a factor to some extent, of course, due to the nature of racing) would've had a less significant influence on the outcome of the race than it ended up having.

Next week, in Japan, it will be very interesting to see whether Mercedes return to their usual dominance of proceedings, or whether Ferrari's new upgrades will continue to shine.  My feeling is Mercedes will be back on top, but Ferrari will be closer to them in the past; Red Bull will fade away after being very competitive in Singapore (which is one of their favourite tracks); and we will see yet more inconsistent rules and Penalties unfairly influencing the racing action.

#F1: Pressure's on in Monza

A few significant talking points dominated the Italian Grand Prix at Monza yesterday.  The first, and most obvious in terms of the World Championship, was how unassailable Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes look.  With Hamilton stretching the gap over his teammate to an enormous 53 points, I think there's no way anybody will catch him for the title now.  As for Rosberg, he looks a shadow of his 2014 self as the effects of being schooled by Hamilton every weekend begin to take their toll, and I am starting to doubt whether he will ever win a World Championship.

But Hamilton was also at the centre of one of the more contentious issues from yesterday's race.  Shortly before the end, Hamilton's race engineer instructed him to put in some flying laps – an odd decision, considering that he was cruising to almost-certain victory with a gap to Sebastian Vettel in second place of over twenty seconds.

Why the sudden need to hurry?  Speculation was rife that Mercedes were worried about an issue, and that they needed enough time between their man and Vettel's Ferrari to be able to squeeze in an extra pitstop if necessary – but if Hamilton's tyres were going off, he would've felt that in the car and said something to his team before they had picked it up, and if it were an engine issue the sensible precaution would be to slow down and nurse the car to the end (there were fewer than five laps to go, at this point), rather than push the machinery even harder.

All soon became clear, however, as it was revealed that Mercedes were under investigation for having left rear tyres (on both their cars) which were suspected of being below the minimum tyre pressure, as set by F1's tyre manufacturer Pirelli.  A lower tyre pressure is supposed to give the cars more performance, but Pirelli had raised their stipulated minimum pressures considerably from the previous race in Belgium, following criticism from teams and drivers regarding tyre failures at Spa Francorchamps.

As Hamilton celebrated victory on the Monza podium, in front of the usual crowd of passionate Italian racing fans, we waited to see if he would be disqualified for being 0.3 PSI below the required pressure in one tyre.

In the end, the enquiry exonerated Mercedes, and Hamilton's win was allowed to stand.  To me, though, it looks awfully like getting off on a mere technicality.  As I understood the rule, what mattered was the outcome of whether the tyre pressures were legal or not, not the procedures the team followed – and yet Mercedes were let off because they had done the right things, even though it had still produced an illegal result in one of Hamilton's tyres.  Their defence, essentially, seems to have been "well, we didn't mean to!"  That might count for something, of course – but ultimately, breaking the rules is breaking the rules, regardless.

Regardless also of the fact that Hamilton didn't actually gain an advantage from the infringement.  This was another common defence from fans on Twitter, and a point raised in Hamilton's interview immediately after the race on Sky Sports; once again, however, breaking a rule should carry a punishment, whether you actually benefit from breaking it or not.  If not, why bother to have the rules at all?

I think, though, the main culprit in all of this is Pirelli themselves.  Their tyres are simply not good enough.  I have said this before, and it remains my position that the sooner this disastrous 'high-degradataion' tyre experiment is ended, the better it will be for Formula 1.  The only reason we were in the situation at all was because tyres had failed at the previous Grand Prix in Spa, and so Pirelli had to take emergency action to make sure their shonky product didn't end up hurting anybody.  I don't see that as a tenable situation for F1, which is supposed to be a byword for the very best in the world – the best drivers, engineers, machinery, technology, and yes, tyres.

There is no excuse for teams or drivers not following the rules – and if they don't, they should be punished accordingly.  But when those rules have been hastily cobbled together to spare the blushes of a tyre manufacture whose product ca be trusted to operate properly within the existing regulations, that hardly seems fair either.  A serious overhaul of tyres in F1 is needed.

The other main thing which seemed to be on everyone's minds throughout the Grand Prix weekend was: would F1 be coming back to Monza next year?

Sebastian Vettel's thoughts on this were pretty clear…

I agree with him completely.  This is a classic race; it is steeped in motorsport history.  If Monza is allowed to go the way of Magny Cours, Imola, Hockenheim, and other classic circuits with more racing heritage than a hundred soulless specially-built compounds in the middle of the desert could ever hope to have, it truly will spell the end for Formula 1.

#F1 in Spa

Apologies for being a little late with a post about Sunday's Belgian Grand Prix at Spa Francorchamps – and also for having missed writing about the last couple of races altogether.

Spa is a classic circuit, and always a favourite with the fans.  Sadly, this probably means its days are numbered – like Monza's, Hockenheim's, etc. – so it can make way for another brand new sterile complex in the middle of nowhere in a country where no one's heard of Formula 1.  (But that's a rant for another time…)

Lewis Hamilton, as he has been practically all of this season, was sublime in Belgium.  He has his third World Championship all but in the bag already – it will take an extraordinary set of circumstances now for him not to win it again this year.  Teammate Nico Rosberg, by comparison, is lacking in confidence and doesn't truly believe he can compete with Hamilton on an equal footing.  We are seeing this especially at race starts – the Mercedes is not the quickest car off the line, but Rosberg's starting in the past few Grands Prix has been abysmal.  In Belgium, he slipped from a front row grid slot down to about fifth, being overtaken by several slower cars behind him.

I think the only thing that will 'save' Rosberg now, if he ever wants to be a World Champion, is to change teams.  If he stays at Mercedes, and continues to partner Hamilton, he will always feel outclassed – and so, he will always be outclassed.

Another team where is noticeably better than the other is Lotus, who had their best race for quite some time at Spa.  Following a dismal 2014, their car this year has been quite a lot better, but they haven't really been able to recapture the form they showed in 2012 and 2013, when Kimi Räikkönen and Romain Grosjean were both podium regulars.  Grosjean's inspired drive in Belgium was his and the team's best result, and first podium finish, since the USA Grand Prix in Austin in 2013 and it was good to see him back on the podium after all this time, beaming from ear to ear and enjoying to the full a thoroughly well-deserved third place.

I have long considered Grosjean to be a very talented driver, and always felt he would 'come good' even during his troubled period when most dismissed him as a 'first lap nutcase' (in the words of Mark Webber, who was then driving for Red Bull – when the chip on his shoulder didn't slow him down too much).  But, as I have said before, Lotus are continually suffering from only having one driver who seems able to compete for points on a regular basis.

It remains a source of confusion for me that, of the two Lotus drivers, Pastor Maldonado is the one who is already a race winner, not Grosjean.  But that one win of Maldonado's, from his time with the Williams team, is something of an anomaly compared to the rest of his record in F1.  It's not that Maldonado is without talent – he certainly has his moments, and can be a very quick driver – but his 'moments' are few and far between, and he is far too inconsistent a driver to be of much worth to the Lotus team.  Grosjean has scored 38 points so far this season – more than three times Maldonado's current tally of 12 – and has only retired three times this season, compared to Maldonado's seven retirements.

Grosjean's third place last weekend allowed Lotus to climb to fifth in the Constructors' table, one point above mid-grid rivals Force India – but they're not going to stay there.  Force India have, in Nico Hulkenberg and Sergio Pérez, two drivers capable of scoring points regularly; Lotus are relying on one driver to bring home the lion's share of their points, and this is going to end up hurting them in their battle to come out on top of a tightly-packed, highly competitive midfield.

The other issue which dominated the Belgian Grand Prix was tyre failures.  Nico Rosberg's Qualifying (and possibly his confidence for the race the next day, as well) was ruined by a tyre failure, and Sebastian Vettel's dramatic tyre explosion only a couple of laps before the end, as he fought with Grosjean's Lotus for third place, was a big talking point immediately after the race.  The two schools of thought are as follows…

Some people are saying that Ferrari were running the tyre right on its limit by trying to do a one-stop race, and that it was dangerous for them not to bring their driver in and change the tyres instead of letting him drive around on tyres already so old and worn – and also that Vettel was consistently running wide over the kerbs at Eau Rouge in his efforts to keep Grosjean (who was considerable quicker, and on newer tyres) behind him in the final few laps of the race.

On the other hand, Vettel's post-race interview showed him being absolutely livid with Pirelli for the tyre bursting – he said the company keeps making excuses for tyres failing (it was debris, there was a cut, you went wide, etc.), and that these things are to be expected during a Grand Prix race and so Pirelli should make tyres able to cope with them.

Personally, I can see both sides of the coin here.  I think Vettel is right in that the margin of error in the tyres' durability should not be so fine that a single piece of debris, or an adventure on the kerbs, is enough to cause a potentially extremely dangerous accident.  But then, I have long been a vocal and exasperated critic of the disastrous experiment with 'high degradation' Pirelli tyres!  I also think, however, that Vettel claiming (as he did in his interview) that he wasn't running wide, when we clearly saw him on TV doing exactly that several laps in a row, is laughable.

The application of the 'track limits' rule is so sloppy and inconsistent I, frankly, wonder why they bother to have it at all.  The rule refers to 'gaining an advantage' by driving outside the stated limits of the racetrack; if the guy behind you is quicker, and braking later for the corners than you are (as was the case as Grosjean hunted Vettel down in the last part of last weekend's Grand Prix), and you're consistently cutting a corner in order to keep yourself ahead of him (as Vettel did at Eau Rouge), there's no way anybody can say you haven't 'gained an advantage' by doing so!  It is 'an advantage' to stay in third instead of slipping to fourth place – and Vettel should have been punished by the stewards for going outside the track limits in order to keep from losing the place to Grosjean.

#F1 – Why does it always Bahrain on me?

When I wrote about last week's Chinese Grand Prix, the focus was entirely on Nico Rosberg's psychological struggles, and how disadvantaged he's been compared to his teammate so far this season.  In Bahrain, Rosberg seemed happier and more relaxed – and as a consequence, he drove better.  He still had to settle for third in the end, though…

Hamilton was relatively comfortable throughout the race, and he led most of the laps.  Ultimately, I don't think the win was ever in doubt, for him.  However, Ferrari showed that their resurgence in Malaysia at the start of the month was not a flash in the pan – they really have got a package which can challenge Mercedes, and two drivers capable of scoring points and podium finishes.  That makes them genuinely threatening.

In the first three races of this year, it has been Sebastian Vettel who has been doing the business for Ferrari, taking the fight to the Mercedes of Hamilton and Rosberg; Kimi Räikkönen, by contrast, has been a little disappointing – often through no fault of his own.  It has been interesting to see Vettel in this role of 'challenger', actually, after he was so frequently criticised during his time at Red Bull as being too reliant on Adrian Newey's masterful engineering, and only being so dominant by dint of having by far the best car on the track.  This theory was borne out last year when Red Bull were no longer the dominant team, and Vettel seemed to fall away as his young teammate Daniel Ricciardo was the one to cease victory from Mercedes on a few occasions.

This season, however, Vettel has definitely answered his critics – and emphatically.  This year's Ferrari is a very good car, but it still plays a meek second fiddle to the might of the Mercedes.  Vettel has been able to match Mercedes, and beat them, in the second-best car.  The answer is that Vettel is not a race winner only when he has the best car – but he is a race winner when he has a car in which he feel comfortable.  Last year's Red Bull was not a car Vettel enjoyed driving, and his performances demonstrated that; at Ferrari, Vettel feels happier, and so he is driving better.

Räikkönen, too, feels much better in this year's Ferrari than he did in last year's car – and this time out, he showed that he is also a threat to the pace-setters at Mercedes.  Räikkönen was his usual, laconic self – but I expect that he will secretly be quite pleased to be back on the podium, and to seem more on level terms with a multiple World Championship-winning teammate in a way he never managed when he was paired with Fernando Alonso at Ferrari last season.

Further down the order, Williams' race was compromised by Felipe Massa's failure to launch for the formation lap, but Valteri Bottas drove an excellent race to keep Vettel behind him and finish fourth.  Daniel Ricciardo is still the real deal, hauling the Red Bull into sixth place where its Renault engine doesn't really deserve to be.  However, his teammate Daniil Kvyat has had a troubled start to this season, with the Bahrain Grand Prix being no exception, which leads me to question Red Bull's strategy of promoting young drivers from their junior programme so soon – I'm not sure whether Kvyat wouldn't have benefited more from a second season at Toro Rosso, rather than being fast-tracked into the senior team, with all the added pressure that entails, at just twenty years old.

For Lotus, a vastly improved car and a switch from Renault engines to Mercedes engines has brought more consistent points finishes – but only from one driver.  Romain Grosjean has brought home all the team's points so far, while Pastor Maldonado has failed to finish a single race this year.  Now that Lotus have a competitive car again, they need two competitive drivers if they are to amass points and realise their potential – there is only so long that Maldonado's erratic ways can be tolerated by a team fighting in a packed midfield.

Finally, I have felt for a long time that it is not right to try and make Formula One 'more exciting' artificially.  Obviously, we all hope races will be exciting – but occasionally they aren't, and that's just a part of the sport.  Much was made of the spectacle created by titanium skid plates sparking against the tarmac during the Bahrain Grand Prix – this does have a practical function, but it is also true that this was a decision made with improving 'the show' in mind.  I am quoted in this BBC Sport article on the topic (rather amusingly described as 'a purist' – they must've read my previous F1 posts!) which goes into more detail in this area.  I will admit that the sparks did look pretty awesome – what worries me, though, is that sparks cease to be a by-product of parts of the car touching the track surface for whatever reason, and start to become an aim in themselves…

If engineers are being required by the rules of the sport to design and create cars which look good, it starts to become theatre, not racing.  Racing cars should be designed to go as quickly as possible (within the rules), and however they look is how they look.  All that matters is the performance.  If designers have to consider aesthetics as well, this could impact negatively on the performance and therefore on the quality of the racing, and this would not be a good thing.

The 'look' of the race should always be secondary to the actual competition of racing; if sparking and other excitement is genuine, that's great – but if it isn't, we shouldn't try to add it in artificially.

#F1 – Mercedes unsettled, Ferrari resurgent

Quite a few interesting things to have come out of yesterday's Malaysian Grand Prix in Sepang.  The big headlines were the first Ferrari victory since Spain 2013 – and the return of Sebastian Vettel to the top of the Podium, after a win-less season in 2014.  But we'll get to that…

In his interview for the BBC ahead of the race itself yesterday, Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg spoke of the disappointment of narrowly losing last year's Championship title to teammate Lewis Hamilton; however, he also said that he was 'over it' after just one day.  I'm sorry, Nico, but I'm just not buying it!

When you look at his driving (both yesterday, and two weekends ago in Melbourne), Rosberg is still very clearly feeling the effects of having lost out to his teammate at the end of the 2014 season.  Where Hamilton appears relaxed, confident and assertive on track – clearly a driver who is enjoying himself, and who has found a rhythm in the car – Rosberg seems cowed and nervous by comparison.  On several occasions, Rosberg has pulled out of overtaking manoeuvres, or has seemed half-hearted under braking, in a way which would've been quite uncharacteristic of him last year – and the way in which he is so frequently asking his team for information about other cars and other teams over the radio makes him seem jittery and unsure of himself.

To me, it seems obvious that Rosberg has not yet recovered psychologically from the toll of the 2014 title battle, and the damage which losing to Hamilton caused him; he won't truly be back to his old self until he can take the fight to Hamilton on track – and win – to start building his confidence back up.  Unfortunately for him, there seems little chance of his actually achieving this, at the moment – Hamilton has looked in another class so far this season, and he has made Rosberg (himself an exceptional racing driver) look naïve and ordinary by comparison.  Rosberg knows this too, and as a consequence Hamilton has him beaten before they even get into the cars.

However, for all his confidence, and all his momentum so far this season, Hamilton has his weaknesses too.  And this is where Vettel comes back into the picture…  I don't think Hamilton and the Mercedes team expected such a robust challenge from Ferrari this weekend, and I think the result was the Vettel caught them napping slightly.  For an élite racing team, that's pretty poor.

Once Hamilton realised he had a fight on his hands in the shape of Sebastian Vettel's Ferrari, he became agitated and surly, snapping at his race engineer over the radio and appearing to criticise the team for strategy decisions in public.  For all his tremendous natural racing flair, Hamilton is a driver who is quick to react when he believes he has been wronged – I wrote last year that his achilles' heel as a sportsman is how quickly he allows himself to descend into a 'victim' mentality when he feels things aren't going his way, and we saw signs of this again towards the end of yesterday's race, as he began to see a Vettel win as the most likely outcome of the afternoon's racing.

Hamilton can complain all he likes that he was put on the wrong tyre by his team, and that this is why he lost the race to Vettel, but this is just sour grapes – Vettel looked the better driver for the vast majority of the Grand Prix, and the Ferrari was clearly the fastest car in a straight line.  Hamilton could have been on any tyres, and it wouldn't have made a huge amount of difference, Vettel was just too strong for him.  Vettel thoroughly deserved to win in Sepang yesterday.  He was confident and self-assured, and he is obviously loving life at Ferrari!  I wonder whether this story strikes anyone else as familiar, though?  A confident, young German driver with a ruthless competitive instinct and forensic attention to detail who already has a few World Championships under his belt moves to a Ferrari team who've spent a few years in the wilderness, drifting aimlessly along while other teams take the glory – before long, Ferrari become a force to be reckoned with once more…

So, is Vettel the new Schumacher?  Well, more than one thing contributes to a racing team's success – that much is obvious.  But the fact that Vettel has been a positive influence at Ferrari, and that their return to form is at least partly linked to his arrival at the team, is (to me) self-evident.

But credit must also go to the designers – in particular, James Allison, poached from Lotus a couple of seasons ago.  It is worth remembering that when Schumacher left Benetton for Ferrari at the end of the 1995 season, he took with him the technical team of Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne who had made the Benetton team so successful; although he didn't come from the same team as Vettel, or at exactly the same time, Allison seems now to be filling that rôle, and the car he has designed for this season is better than anything Ferrari have produced for a number of years.

In short, for the first time in quite a while, we are seeing a Ferrari team with purpose and direction – a Ferrari team hungry to achieve success once more.  The link between this upturn in performance and the arrivals of Allison and Vettel is too strong to ignore; their influence is clearly having a big affect on Ferrari.  So where does this leave Kimi Räikkönen?

Räikkönen had a pretty torrid season last year – his first back with Ferrari after his sabbatical, and subsequent stint with Lotus – and played a poor second fiddle to Fernando Alonso throughout the season.  Although I would give the edge to Alonso on pure racing ability, Räikkönen is a great driver in his own right (and a former World Champion too, let's not forget!), and I do not think the gulf between him and Alonso is anything like as large as it seemed to be last year.  The 2014 Ferrari did not suit Räikkönen one bit – it was a pretty weak effort all-round from the Italian team, to be fair, but somehow Alonso was able to wring its neck to a greater extent than his Finnish teammate, who often found himself languishing outside the points as a result.

This year, Räikkönen is obviously much happier with the car he has been given, and his performances and attitudes on track have borne this out.  And yet, he still doesn't seem to get the joy his teammate does, in terms of race results.  Is Kimi the unluckiest man in Formula 1?  I would say there are plenty of candidates for that title, but Räikkönen's name has to be up there.

In Australia, Ferrari were running strongly, but had a few issues with pit-stops; those issues all happened when Räikkönen was in the pits, and never when Vettel was stopping for tyres.  In the end, Räikkönen had to retire due to safety concerns regarding a wheel which had not been put on properly during a stop, and he scored no points while Vettel went on to take his first Podium finish in Ferrari red.  Yesterday, Räikkönen was matching Vettel's laptimes during qualifying – until he got caught out by the rain.

The weather had a much bigger effect on the Finn than on his teammate, simply down to when they had gone out on track, and he ended up qualifying in eleventh place, nine grid slots down from Vettel in second.  And this meant that, at the start of the race, Räikkönen had traffic to deal with – he suffered an early puncture, and although a Safety Car period shortly after helped nullifying some of the time he lost as a result of the puncture, that set the tone for him, in a race where he was always trying to make up lost ground.  Fourth place was a decent result behind a flying Sebastian Vettel and the two Mercedes of Hamilton and Rosberg, but could he have tried for a Podium place if he hadn't been beset by yet more misfortune?  Surely his luck will have to turn soon?

I hope so.  A strong, confident Kimi Räikkönen is good for Ferrari, and good for F1 in general.  With Ferrari coming back into the picture, Mercedes still strong, and a mid-grid of exciting young talent and teams who have certainly improved hugely on their 2014 cars (which leads me to wonder whether Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat felt a little like they were both back at Toro Rosso this weekend, as both of their junior team's rookie drivers finished ahead of them?), this should be a fascinating season to watch as it unfolds.

#F1 - Keep fighting, Jules

This is about the time I would normally sit down and write my Formula 1 column about the weekend's race - that's quite difficult to do on the back of the news about Jules Bianchi's crash and surgery for head injuries, though.

There were plenty of talking points from yesterday's Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka, and lots of off-track drama to discuss, too - including the news that four-time World Champion Sebastian Vettel will leave Red Bull, the which gave him such extraordinary success over the last few seasons, at the end of this year.  However, none of this is quite as important as the health and wellbeing of our drivers.  It was poignant to read reports that the other drivers - such fierce rivals on-track - were all at the hospital with Jules after the race.

Now is not the time to analyse, to evaluate, to speculate, or to blame.  Now is the time for the entire world of motorsport to send Jules Bianchi positive thoughts - and hope that we will see him race again sooner, rather than later.

#F1 Singa-Poor joke in the title

I suppose it was about time Lewis Hamilton had the rub of the green, so-to-speak, in terms of reliability issues.  With Nico Rosberg in trouble from from the formation lap, Hamilton drove a faultless race from pole to capitalise on his rival's woes, bringing home twenty-five points to edge ahead of Rosberg in the World Drivers' Championship standings.  Talk of the race in Monza two weeks ago being 'a turning point' was not entirely misplaced, it would seem.

At least we get a chance to knock some of the nutty conspiracy theories on the head.  Earlier in the year, a few people were convinced Hamilton's mechanical issues were being orchestrated by the Mercedes team because they decided Rosberg would be a 'more fitting' World Champion.  Patently ridiculous though that is, it echoes the sort of nonsense we got used to hearing from some fans of Mark Webber who were convinced Red Bull were deliberately sabotaging Webber's car in order to favour Vettel.

Mercedes aren't deliberately going to fix one of their cars to have to retire from the race - costing their team, and one of their drivers, a decent haul of points.  They weren't 'sabotaging' Hamilton earlier in the season, and consciously favouring Rosberg for the title; I'd have thought that was obvious to everyone - but just in case it isn't, the issues on Sunday show that, more often than not, these issues do 'even out' over the course of a season.

However, this Championship is still wide open.  The momentum may have swung Hamilton's way; having taken the lead, he may well be the favourite for the title now - especially given his performances in the last two races, where he has looked absolutely unbeatable.  One statistic I'm not overly fond of seeing, however, is the comparison in the number of races won - Hamilton has won seven races this season, against Rosberg's four.  However, you don't win Championships by having more race victories than your teammate; this is a race series, not a one-off event, and Rosberg understands as well as anyone the importance of consistency over the course of an entire season.

What's going to be interesting now is Rosberg's response.  He seemed calm enough in the immediate aftermath of his retirement in Singapore, but this is the first time the reliability issues within the Mercedes team have really hurt his side of the garage, and with Hamilton inching ahead in the title race it will be fascinating to see how Rosberg handles the pressure.  I think he has the mental steeliness to cope well.

Ultimately, it could be the mechanical reliability which decides this Championship.  Is that fair?  Possibly not.  But Formula 1 has always been about designing ultimate racing machines - about technical prowess, as much as driver skill.  To say that the quality and durability of the cars shouldn't play a part in the competition is to misunderstand the sport.  Whether Hamilton or Rosberg ends up being crowned 2014 World Champion - because it will be one of those two drivers, whatever the Red Bull team say - can you really say whichever one of them wins it in the end won't be a worthy Champion?

#F1 - the latest 'team orders' controversy

Today's Malaysian Grand Prix ended in controversy and anger, as Sebastian Vettel took the win ahead of teammate Mark Webber, despite team orders from the Red Bull garage to hold station behind Webber in second place, following the team's final round of pit stops.  The post-race interviews and analysis dwelt on the subject extensively, and almost 1500 people have posted comments on the BBC's post-race report, the vast majority of which are also concerned with the topic of team orders.

One of the interesting things about today's race was the stark contrast in the ways in which the 'team orders' situation was handled by the Red Bull drivers, when compared to Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg at Mercedes.

But first, let's talk about team orders in general, for a minute...

Every time an issue like this rears its head, we (as F1 fans) have to put up with reading streams of Blogs, articles and comments about how team orders are "ruining the sport", and how F1 is "not real racing" because of team orders, and other things.  Let's not forget that team orders are only of use to teams in a few specific situations - ie. when your team's cars are in adjacent positions in the race, and also on the same pit-stop strategies (two stop, three stop, etc).  Red Bull's team orders came into effect around Lap 43/44, when Webber was leading the race, and Vettel was close behind him in second - but at the start of the race, Vettel started from Pole position, while Webber was fifth on the grid.  How did they get from fifth and first to first and second without "real racing"?

Fans who claim to be fed up of "stage-managed" races seem to forget that team orders can only manage two of the twenty-two cars on the track.  No amount of team orders can stop another car from another team putting a spanner in the works of your carefully-managed performance.  (Unless you believe the conspiracy that F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone stage-manages the performances of all the teams - in which case, why are you even watching the races at all?)

Formula 1 is an unusual hybrid of an individual and a team sport - and, in the end, there are trophies (not to mention significant financial rewards) for both.  It is also a sport which is spread out over a period of many months, and divided into nineteen individual races, all of which contribute to the whole of the Championships; for the teams, and the drivers, it is important not to lose sight of the bigger picture - when the title is decided, it's the total points over the entire season which counts, not who won each individual heat.

Of course, as fans and spectators, we want to see close action, high drama and exciting wheel-to-wheel racing at every race.  In my opinion, however, there is room in F1 for team orders and close racing to coexist.  The close racing aspect, however thrilling, is only one side of the F1 coin; there is another side to F1 (which, for my part, I find equally gripping) - the intrigue of tactics and strategy, of design, and of two drivers (often with hugely contrasting styles or personalities) fighting for points not only for the team, but also within the team.  Add to that the fact that the regulations state that a finite number of engines (eight) and gearboxes (one every five races) may be used by each car throughout a season, and it therefore necessary sometimes to conserve power in order to make these components last, rather than going all-out on track at all times.  It is a fine balance, yes - but that's what makes this, in my opinion, one of the best sports in the world.

So how does this all relate to today's events...?

Well, let's talk about Mercedes first.  Despite starting fourth and sixth, Mercedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg found themselves in a very strong position behind the two leading Red Bulls - indeed, for much of the race, they were keeping pace with Webber and Vettel, and looked like they may be able to challenge for a top-two finish.  Unfortunately, the team had made a miscalculation regarding how much fuel to put in the cars at the start (possibly down to the belief that more of race would be run in wet weather conditions than actually ended up happening) and towards the end of the race Hamilton's car in third, especially, was running on less-than-maximum power in order to save fuel and ensure they didn't run out before the end of the race.

Rosberg, in fourth place behind Hamilton, was also saving fuel, although to a less critical degree, asked his team on the radio whether he should overtake his team mate, and was told "no".  After remonstrating with the team, and being told "no" twice more, Rosberg accepted his fate, and cruised home in fourth place, behind Hamilton.  Team Principal Ross Brawn's explanation on the radio to Rosberg was about fuel consumption (Rosberg would burn more fuel by the overtaking Hamilton - and both cars would burn more fuel by racing each other rather than cruising, and would risk not making it to the end of the race at all, effectively turning 27 points for the team into 0) and also about safety.

Whatever you think of this decision, and the way it affected the end result of the race (Hamilton and Rosberg finishing third and fourth, instead of fourth and third - and Mercedes getting 27 points, instead of 27 points), the way it was handled by the drivers showed maturity and class.  Rosberg acted like a team player, and brought the car home in fourth place (which is still an excellent result, 12 World Championship points, and two places gained him his grid position) while Hamilton credited his team mate during his interview on the podium.

At Red Bull, however, it was a rather different story!  After the final pit stops, Webber was ahead of Vettel, and the team instructed both their drivers to turn down their engines and bring the cars home safe and intact.  Webber complied with this instruction; Vettel didn't.

Vettel attacked Webber, and passed him.  Webber - understandably very angry about this - refused later to interact with Vettel, either before or during the podium ceremony.  Vettel apologised during the drivers' press conference, but Webber refused to accept his apology.  I'm not surprised.

As ever, the internet is awash with comments about this - and, as ever, a huge number of them are anti-team orders.  "What's the problem?" people ask.  "Vettel and Webber are racing drivers - we want to see them race, not just follow each other around!"

I want to see them race too - but not when one of them (Webber) has turned his engine down, under the impression that the other (Vettel) would do the same (as agreed), only to find he's being attacked and can't defend himself because he's running on less power.  That's not fair - and it's not "real racing" either.

What Vettel did was not the "ruthless" drive of a Champion who "just wanted it do badly", as some people would have you believe - it was reckless, foolish, and above-all, disobedient.  He gambled a guaranteed 43 points for the team on the chance that he might win it - as it happens, he did win, but if he had taken both the Red Bull cars out of the race (as in Turkey in 2010), the repercussions would've been huge.

Vettel, however, believed he had some sort of God-given right to win this race.  Never was this more clear than when listening to his radio message to the team earlier in the race:  "Mark is too slow - get him out of the way!"

He instructs the garage to issue team orders which work in his favour, yet petulantly ignores any that don't.  He expects to be given a free pass to the lead of the race (which, in the end, was effectively what happened, as he made a pass on a team mate who was powerless to fight back) and he expects to be able to get away with disobeying his team boss, despite risking putting the whole dynamic of the team (and, therefore, their hopes of a fourth consecutive World Championship double) in jeopardy.

As I've said, Formula 1 is a long game.  The race doesn't end at the Chequered flag in Malaysia - it ends in Brazil, in November.  There are many, many factors to take into consideration during the season, and the fall-out from this incident is going to be one of them.  Vettel may have grabbed the win here, but how will he feel in November if he watched another man walk away with the title of 2013 World Champion, and looks back at today's race thinking maybe this moment of hot-headedness was a turning point?  Will it have been worth it?  I doubt it.

I was never the biggest fan of Sebastian Vettel - but I have even less respect for him, after today's happenings.  However, I won't deny that, from a fan's point-of-view, this certainly sets us up with a fascinating situation going into the Chinese Grand Prix in three weeks' time.

Unlike the Mercedes drivers, who handled their team orders with grace and maturity, and just knuckled down and got on with things, even if they weren't entirely happy about it, like true professionals, the Red Bull team is imploding in front of our eyes.  It is impossible to know exactly how things will play out from here, but it looks as if the events of today's race will change the face of team orders at Red Bull for a good long time - possibly for the rest of the season.  The consequences of this could be very far-reaching indeed.  We could potentially end up with a situation where other teams are able to manage their cars to maximise their points haul, and to ensure the most efficient use possible of resources like gearboxes, fuel and tyres, while Red Bull are unable to do so.  Yes, Sebastian Vettel's rashness today could come back to haunt him in a big way.

But back to the central issue - that of team orders - now...

Many people believe that without team orders, Formula 1 would be more exciting.  Considering that they're all everyone's been talking about since this race, it seems that - on this occasion, at least - it was their very presence which has made it exciting.

Anyone who thinks that today's race was 'boring' because of team orders clearly didn't see the seemingly ongoing scrap for places between Lotus' Kimi Räikkönen and McLaren's Sergio Pérez, the drama of the front wing coming off Fernando Alonso's Ferrari on the first lap (and his inexplicable failure to come into the pit lane, resulting in a retirement from the race soon after), the chaos in the pit lane with Force India, Toro Rosso and McLaren all involved in some way or another, and the very promising showing from Jules Bianchi and his Marussia team.

The fact is that team orders are a part of the sport - whether you like it or not - but they are not a big enough issue on their own to "ruin" a whole sport.  Formula 1 is a very complex business, and it has many elements which make it up - team orders are but one of these elements.  My advice to anyone who hasn't been watching Formula 1 for very long, or who is thinking of watching it for the first time, is not to get too hung up on any one of these details in isolation, but to enjoy the glorious tapestry of the  sport in its entirety.

Formula 1 may not be perfect - but, in my opinion, anyone who thinks it's boring must be watching with their eyes shut.

#F1 - Red Bull in Abu Dhabi

Yesterday's Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi was a very exciting race indeed - one of the classics, in my opinion.  It was a race which had everything - and it was a race in which we learnt a lot too, I felt.

I was impressed with Kimi Räikkönen and the Lotus team, of course, getting the win which they fully deserved (indeed, I believe that they have actually deserved more wins and podium finishes than they've achieved this year) and I was impressed with Lewis Hamilton, who was supreme on-track, and mature and gracious off-track.

I was unimpressed with almost everything about Red Bull's race weekend, however; I felt they really showed their true colours over this weekend, and they looked like a team who are desperate.  Over the course of the race, as more and more things went wrong for them, they became more and more desperate, and more and more determined to win, at any cost.

The arrogance of Red Bull Racing is something I should've expected - but which somehow still managed to shock me.  Everything that could go wrong for them, did, and they rushed around plugging leaks and pulling strings, refusing to accept that, maybe, this just wasn't their day.

Let's start with Mark Webber.  Webber has gone down in my estimations already this year, following interviews in which he smeared other drivers (particularly Romain Grosjean) and tried to shift blame for poor performances and incidents in races.  This trend continued in Abu Dhabi.

Webber started from the front row, but after his customary poor start, he ended up fifth by the end of the first lap, and spent the rest of the race trying to make up ground.  On Lap 23, Webber was trying to take third place away from Williams' Pastor Maldonado, but in trying to pass him around the outside of the corner, touched his wheels and spun his car onto the run-off area.  I've been pretty critical of Maldonado's driving, in the past, but it's easy to see that it is Webber who's to blame here - as BBC commentator (and former F1 race winner) David Coulthard said at the time:

"You can't just go 'round the outside, and expect the car on the inside to disappear!"

Webber turned in on Maldonado's car, even though he knew he was there.  He later radioed back to his team, saying something like "all the fault of Maldonado" - which is a bit rich, quite frankly, coming on the back of his comments about other drivers.  As the BBC's technical expert, Gary Anderson pointed out:

"If that were Romain Grosjean, we'd be shouting about what a big mistake he's just made.  Mark Webber did that all himself!"

Anderson is right - some drivers (Grosjean, yes, and indeed Maldonado himself - I would also throw Michael Schumacher into that mix) would have taken a lot of stick for doing what Webber did there, and would probably also have received a penalty from the Stewards.  And yet, Webber expects that, just because he's a Red Bull driver, he can shift the blame, and not take responsibility for his own on-track mistakes, born out of desperation and a desire to impress his team, whatever the cost.

Following that incident, Webber ended up down in seventh place, behind Ferrari's Felipe Massa.  Trying, again, to rush past and gain back his lost positions, Webber tried the same move, at the same place, to get past Massa - and made the same mistake again!

Only three laps later, on Lap 26, Webber again tries to overtake around the outside, and again touches wheels with the car on the inside (this time, that's Massa's Ferrari).  Webber runs off the track, and rejoins ahead of Massa, but knows he will have to give the place back after passing Massa outside of the confines of the circuit - however, on rejoining the track so close in front of Massa, he forces the Ferrari driver to take avoiding action, which in turn causes him to spin on the track!

Webber then doesn't give the place back to Massa, who has lost several more positions following his spin, and continues to race in sixth place.  However, it was pretty clear to me that Massa's spin was as a direct result of Webber rejoining the circuit after having hit the Ferrari in trying to overtake, and Red Bull should have been handed a penalty for that incident - or, if not for that incident, or the one before with Maldonado, then certainly for the two of them combined, as Webber had done the same thing to two different drivers, and, in my opinion, needed to be taught a lesson.  The fact that no penalties were given for any of these incidents was poor, in my opinion, and will only serve to strengthen Red Bull's view of themselves as being above the law in Formula 1.

On the topic of "passing outside the confines of the track", let's now turn our attention to Sebastian Vettel.  Having been disqualified from Saturday's Qualifying for a fuel irregularity (a nice example of consistency from the Stewards, who gave Lewis Hamilton the same penalty for the same problem earlier in the year), Vettel started from the Pit Lane on Sunday, and had to work his way up through the field from the very back.  Aided and abetted by fresh tyres, a change of gear ratios, a generous helping of Safety Car, and the fact that the first eight car (or so) he'd have to pass were positively gastropodian in comparison with his Red Bull, Vettel made good progress, and quickly climbed towards the front of the pack.

As early as Lap 16, however, Vettel found himself with a serious challenge, in the form of Romain Grosjean.  Having had an early puncture (from purely a racing incident, I am at pains to point out), Grosjean also found himself out of position, towards the back of the pack, with a lot of overtaking work to do.  Driving the a car identical to the one which would eventually go on to win this race, Grosjean (like Vettel) was considerably faster than those around him, down in 17th place.

Vettel launched down the inside at Turn 8, and thought he had completed the pass, but Grosjean came back at him, and was still ahead on the next straight.  Then, as Grosjean and Vettel drove down the straight together, with barely a hair's breadth between the back of the Lotus and the front of the Red Bull, Vettel deliberately pulls to one side, off the track, accelerates, and passes Grosjean's car, with all four of his wheels outside the painted white lines which define the track area to be used to be racing.

This was not a racing incident, or a mistake, or anything like that - Vettel knew exactly what he was doing, and he knew it was outside the rules.  He deliberately cheated - he gained an advantage by going off the track, and perhaps hoped that, because he drives for Red Bull, he would be allowed to get away with it.  However, the Lotus team radioed to their driver immediately, telling Grosjean that they would "be talking to Charlie [Whiting, Race Director] about that" and Vettel then gave the position back to Grosjean without any prompting from the Stewards, before re-passing him in a more legal manner, which is as clear an admission of guilt from Red Bull as any.

Sticking with Vettel, let's jump back to Lap 12, which was during the first period under the Safety Car. Vettel, at this point, was in 12th place, behind Daniel Ricciardo's Toro Rosso.  Ricciardo was trying to keep his tyres warm, while running comparatively slowing behind the Safety Car, and Vettel was caught out by him.  Vettel failed to break to avoid the weaving Toro Rosso, and ended up ploughing straight through a marker put by the side of the track, causing further hurt to his already damaged front wing.  Vettel radioed to his team:

"What is he doing?!  He keeps stopping all the time!"

On the radio, Vettel sounded petulant and childish, angry with Ricciardo for something which wasn't really the Toro Rosso driver's fault.  Again, he seemed to feel that, as a Red Bull driver, these things were meant to happen to someone else, not to him, and he couldn't take the fact that, for once, things weren't all going his way.

As David Coulthard pointed in his commentary (actually when referring to an earlier incident with Bruno Senna, which was where the initial damage to Vettel's win occurred):

"I don't think you can apportion blame here, but it's really the responsibility of the car behind to keep his nose clean."

Ricciardo didn't actually do anything wrong - he was weaving a lot, and was driving slower than normal, yes, but that is to be expected when the Safety Car is out, leading a long line of cars around the circuit at considerably slower speeds than when they're racing for real, and he didn't contravene the rules about following the Safety Car at all.

We've seen Vettel have issues with the re-start when behind the Safety Car before, even when he's been at the front.  Perhaps he should just accept that this is actually something at which he's not the very best?

Of course, we can hope, but I don't think we will.  All of the examples which I have laid out here demonstrate how Red Bull, and their drivers, see themselves as invincible, and untouchable.  And when things don't go their way, they either cheat and bend the rules to suit themselves, or they become stroppy and angry, and throw a hissy fit until they get what they want.

When Red Bull win, it's entirely down to their brilliance - but when they don't, it's always somebody else's fault.

#F1 - Vettel's no Legend (yet)

So, another race victory for Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel in Korea this week, and another seemingly impressive statistic to go with it.  Last week in Japan, we were gleefully informed that Vettel had equalled Juan Manuel Fangio's record of race wins, and this week he equalled Jim Clark.

So Vettel's a true great of Formula 1, then - just like Fangio, Clark, and others?  Well, no - not really.

I'm not saying he doesn't have the potential to be, or that he won't be.  He's still very young, at only twenty-five years old, and already has an impressive portfolio, so it's clear that he has a bright future in the sport.

In my opinion, however, equalling or surpassing previous records of race wins is a fairly meaningless statistic...  Much as I'm a sucker for a bit of classic F1 history, what relevance does a comparison with Fangio's or Clark's era have, when the sport has changed so much since then?

In simple terms, there are more races these days.  So yes, of course the modern-day F1 driver (providing he's good, which Vettel unquestionably is) will eventually win more races - purely because there are so many more races available to be won.

In 1951 (when Fangio won his first World Championship), there were eight races on the calendar.  By 1963 (when Jim Clark took the first of his two World Championships), only two races had been added to the calendar, making ten in total.  This year, we have already had sixteen, with another four still to come - twenty races in total, which is two-and-a-half times the number Fangio raced in 1951.

With so many more opportunities to win races in the modern era, is it any wonder that successful drivers rack them up so quickly?

A better measure of these things, in my opinion, would be the overall percentage of wins.  This allows us to take into account the wildly different amount of races contested by drivers from different eras, and tells a rather different story...

Despite only having participated in fifty-two F1 races throughout his entire career, Fangio leads the board with twenty-four wins, giving him a win percentage of 46.14% - a full 7% ahead of second-place man and rival to Fangio, Alberto Ascari, who won 39.39% of races in his F1 career, making Fangio the only man ever to have won over 40% of his races.  (Apart from anything else, this just goes to prove what a tough sport Formula 1 really is, as even the very greatest in the sport's history always lose more races than they win.  No one has ever won over 50% of their career races.)  Jim Clark is next in third, with 34.25%.

Other legendary F1 names predictably make an appearance in the Top 10 - including Michael Schumacher, and Jackie Stewart.  Sebastian Vettel is currently in 8th place, with 25.77%.

Of course, this is still not entirely conclusive.  More has changed in Formula 1 over the years than just the amount of races in a season.  Comparisons across so many years will always be shady guidelines, and little more.

Is Vettel a legend of Formula 1?  No, not yet.

Will he be, one day?  Quite possibly, yes.