The 2013 Formula One World Championship has got off to an inauspicious start. There have been problems from the get go, and after the recent Malaysian Grand Prix, things look like they are about to get worse.
The first and probably easier problem to deal with is tyres.
Pirelli have brought brand new rubber to this season and pretty much every driver hates it. The tyres deteriorate to the point where they resemble the back end of a bogan’s Commodore within five laps.
When Pirelli were asked about this, their answer (accompanied with a slightly cheeky grin), was that it was intentional; an in-built challenge for the drivers.
The drivers have taken a different view.
Australia’s Mark Webber stated after the last race that drivers are racing at 80% in order to look after the tyres.
This is not in the spirit of F1. Fans want to see drivers pushing the limits for the whole race.
They don’t want to see them driving around at speeds that Miss Daisy would approve of.
In the words of one of my favourite internet phenomena of recent time ‘aint nobody got time for that.’
I’m not advocating a return to the bad old days of F1 where drivers careened into walls with abandon. There hasn’t been a death since the great Ayrton Senna in 1994 and long may it continue.
However, the tyres can and should be good enough to allow these highly engineered machines to push the envelope of physics. The cars are a pinnacle of design and engineering.
All of the genius and hours that have gone into these vehicles is rendered impotent by the below-par rubber that Pirelli have brought to the party.
It’s like having a shindig at the presidential suite of the Waldorf Astoria and the only thing to eat is pig offal washed down with home brand cordial.
In addition to the fact that the tyres are, in a word, pants, the spectre of team orders raised itself from a grumpy slumber to soil motor racing yet again in Sepang.
There were two incidents, and while completely opposite in the way they played out, they show up the farce that is the start of the 2013 season.
I’ll start with the easy one. The Mercedes team got the race strategy for Lewis Hamilton wrong, almost as wrong as his choice of pit box when he paid a fleeting visit to his old mates from McLaren.
As a result, Hamilton had to save fuel very early on. This meant that he was very slow in the second half of the race.
His teammate, Nico Rosberg, got it right and was able to push harder and drive faster for longer.
Both drivers knew this. The team principal, Ross Brawn, refused to allow Rosberg to pass.
This raises an interesting question: is it usual behaviour for a racing driver to ask permission to overtake a slower car when you both share the same team colours?
Regardless, Nico was denied permission and he dutifully stayed behind Hamilton for the remainder of the race. I’m sure there were occasions when Rosberg could have got out of his car and pushed it faster than Lewis was going.
The second example of controversial team orders was in the Red Bull camp.
The undoubted winners of the day, both cars ended the race undamaged, earning maximum constructors’ championship points. However, the team didn’t come out of the weekend completely unscathed.
They crossed the finish line mechanically intact but bearing deep public relations wounds which will take time to heal.
Sebastian Vettel is the reigning world champion, an accolade that he has won three times.
After all the pit stops had worked themselves out, Mark Webber (the perennial sidekick to the heroic German), held a lead over Vettel.
In true gutsy, bordering-on-dangerous, style, Sebastian chased down and overtook Mark.
This battle between two elite drivers was racing at its entertaining best. Vettel wound up standing in the middle of the podium and therefore was the better driver.
No doubt the Red Bull bosses were a little peeved at the fact that both cars could have ended up like carbon fibre jigsaw pieces.
When the race finished it was the most uncomfortable after party I have ever witnessed. It all started in the green room before the podium celebration.
I expected Webber to be a little unhappy but thought he would accept that Vettel had beaten him fair and square. Surely the camera being pointed at the drivers would have made them aware that anything they said would be recorded.
This is when things got interesting. Lewis Hamilton looked like he didn’t want to be there, quite rightly. Vettel was receiving a somewhat stern and subtle talking to from Adrian Newey. Webber walked in and said the now infamous line, ‘Multi 21′.
This opened up a can of worms.
Both drivers were informed after the last round of pit stops that the race was essentially over, and that they should turn down the settings on the cars and save the engines and tyres. This is what ‘multi 21′ means.
This apparently was a sign to Mark Webber that he had won the GP and that he could relax and bask in his square-jawed brilliance.
Vettel had other ideas, ignored the order and overtook his antipodean teammate. Considering the amount of times Webber has stepped aside for Vettel you can understand why he was disappointed.
So the world has rallied behind Webber.
In defence of the big Australian, he was told that he wasn’t racing any more. However, when he realised that Vettel was trying to overtake him, the fact of the matter is he wasn’t good enough to keep Sebastian behind him.
If motor racing is an individual sport, then Mark Webber simply wasn’t good enough and Vettel has every right to the top step.
If it’s a team sport then Sebastian Vettel behaved badly. Essentially, it was the equivalent of Buddy Franklin smothering a shot at goal by Jarryd Roughead, only to kick it himself in order to take the lead in the Coleman Medal.
The Malaysian Grand Prix threw up an interesting juxtaposition.
In the case of Mercedes the public is unhappy that the faster driver was not allowed to pass his slower teammate. In the case of Red Bull the public is unhappy that the faster driver overtook his slower teammate.
It clearly depends on your view of the sport.
Tactically and strategically, Red Bull Racing’s Christian Horner and John Newey got it spot on.
Their car is beautifully put together and will take some beating.
Their pit crew is a ballet of precision that changes four tyres on the car in a staggering 2.6 seconds.
As a team they were close to perfect over the race weekend–despite the fact that they have a win-at-all-costs, and debatably selfish, driver in Sebastian Vettel.
I’m sure that in the build up to the race the Red Bull team will put on a face of solidarity.
However when the red lights go out, I wouldn’t be surprised if Webber puts Vettel into the wall at turn one.
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