A Few Conclusions From The Bahrain GP

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Sunday 6th April 2008

Renault's telemetry may absolve Fernando Alonso, but it damns then. And as for the damned head of F1...

The ITV Commentary Actually Did Alonso A Favour By Slandering Him
Had Martin Brundle not voiced what, at a guesstimate, 90% of Bahrain GP viewers were thinking then the accusation of 'brake-testing' would have remained festering on F1 forums and Renault probably wouldn't have deigned to comment. Instead, as one of the most respected pundits in the sporting arena made the allegation, the team had no choice but to publicly refute it and supply evidence to absolve Fernando.

Whether or not that will be sufficient to quell the British press remains to be seen, however. At present, it appears that only Autosport have been given access to the telemetry which they claim, along with Renault, clears Alonso. The team should certainly give serious consideration to inviting Brundle to study it.

Then again, it would be understandable if Renault were not keen on putting their telemetry in the public domain. Brundle thought ill of Alonso because he couldn't believe the speed differential between the two cars could be anything but the consequence of Alonso deliberately slowing. The reality that Renault are asserting - namely, that the two cars really did have such a vast discrepancy in speed without any sinister interference - damns them as it requires a leap of the imagination for it to be understood.

According to Autosport, the data provided by Renault 'shows that the Spaniard was flat on the throttle from the exit, did not touch the brake and gained speed in a totally predictable manner.'

And still Hamilton was able to close in on Alonso from so far away so quickly. Renault's defence of Alonso is that they are dangerously slow.

Renault Are Worse Than We Thought
If Jenson Button hadn't suffered a puncture on the first corner then one of this week's conclusions would probably have been that the World Champions of 2005 and 2006 are the eighth-fastest team on the grid. Which, given that there are only eleven teams, would also mean that Renault could be written down as the fourth-slowest.

Although the Autosport analysis is stiff competition, perhaps the most frightening summary of Renault's performance in Bahrain was provided by Fernando Alonso when he confirmed that his crash with Hamilton made no difference to the performance of his car. The two Renaults were so slow that they were even slower than the Force India car piloted by Giancarlo Fisichella - an irony of sorts given that he was jettisoned by the team at the end of last season.

Renault's season now hinges on the forthcoming test at Barcelona. There is no other team on the grid with so much work to do in Spain - and their Spaniard knows it: "All our hopes are pinned on the improvements we have for Barcelona. If that goes wrong, then we are going to have to start to worry for the rest of the season."

Mosley's Refusal To Resign Proves He Shouldn't Be In Charge Of The FIA
In not resigning, Max Mosley has proved that he isn't fit to remain as FIA President and should be forced out.

With the indecency of his private life revealed on successive weekends, Mosley's subsequent failure to do the decent thing in public reveals another dark aspect to his character - specifically, that his position as the head of motorsport matters more to him than motorsport itself.

His stubborn, bloody-minded failure to acknowledge that his position has become untenable, and that his failure to resign is only serving to drag F1 and motorsport into the gutter, itself makes his position untenable. Given that he should be serving motorsport, and not debasing it, his refusal is thus trenchant cause for his dismissal.

Had he resigned last Monday, Mosley would have departed the sport with some sympathy and a vestige of dignity. Instead, by clinging on to power, he has persuaded the News of the World to publish a new batch of humiliating allegations and lost any support he may have received. PF1 isn't alone in reflecting that the �1m it will cost the FIA to hold the extraordinary general meeting that Mosley has summoned in order to present his defence of the indefensible should have been spent on worthier causes.

Max Has Already Wrecked His Own Defence
The statement published by the FIA announcing that Mosley had called for an extraordinary general assembly read as follows:

'The full membership of the FIA will be invited to attend the meeting at which the widespread publicity following an apparently illegal invasion of the FIA President's privacy will be discussed. The FIA has noted that Mr Mosley is preparing legal proceedings against the newspaper in question.'

The statement is worth dwelling on because of its implication that Mosley will defend his position on the basis that the case against him is founded on illegally-obtained material.

McLaren made a similar plea when they faced the FIA last summer after being accused of a different kind of cheating in the Stepneygate saga.

The response, published by the FIA in their transcripts of the hearing, was unequivocal:

"The World Council's only concern is whether that list is accurate and truthful. We are not concerned with whether there are issues over how that is obtained. Unless there is evidence that it is forged or inaccurate, we will take it on its face value. We do not enter a debate about Italian law; we have neither the time nor the skills for that."

And the author of those quotes? Yup, you guessed it, none other than Mr Max Mosley.

'A Large Number' Of People Can Make A Heavy Silence
In his statement of defiance released last week, Mosley cited a "a very large number of messages of sympathy and support from those within the FIA and the motor sport and motoring communities generally".

Who these people are remains a mystery. PF1's exhaustive searching has so failed to locate a single voice of influence in the motorsport community speaking up in support of the FIA President. Bernie offered tepid endorsement at the start of the weekend but even he went quiet by Sunday.

To quote Times F1 correspondent Edward Gorman: 'At the risk of repeating myself, there is not a single voice in the paddock here raised in his favour apart from Richard Woods, the FIA spokesman (who is not having a very good week at the office) and Alan Donnelly (an unofficial spokesman for Mosley). As one team principal representing a large multi-national put it: "There is no way back and we want this dealt with quickly."'

F1 Teams Can Apparently Complain To The FIA Without Complaining At All
In another entry on his excellent blog, Gorman also provides an interesting account of the decision to move McLaren to the bottom of the pit lane and the reasoning behind it.

After quoting Bernie Ecclestone saying that he received a letter from Mosley in which it was explained that, following the F1 ringmaster's decision to put McLaren in the fifth set, "I have had a lot of complaints from people" and the "teams are complaining", Gorman set about discovering which of the teams had complained. So he 'conducted a one-end-of-paddock-to-the-other survey of the teams' in which the source was 'what you might call "very senior" [and ] in the cases of Ferrari (Luca Colajanni) and Honda (Nick Fry) the response was on the record.'

Asked specifically, "Did you complain to the FIA about the McLaren garage allocation?", each of the eleven teams gave an identical one-word answer: No.

We Still Don't Know How Much Quicker Ferrari Really Are
Having very rarely gone head-to-head in winter testing, McLaren and Ferrari are apparently intent on avoiding a straight fight in the new season. After the Scuderia self-destructed in Australia, McLaren have since picked up the everything-that-can-go-wrong-will-go-wrong baton in Malaysia and Bahrain. The result is that with a third of the year expired, we have only an impression of the balance of power and not a definitive set of results.

Even on Sunday, in a race that Ferrari dominated from start to finish, there was a sting in the tale with Heikki Kovalainen setting the fastest lap of the race with a time that was half-a-second better than the best of either Massa or Raikkonen.

BMW Have Achieved Their Breakthrough
And then there's BMW to consider. In just two years, the former Sauber team has been transformed into an outfit that is now challenging Ferrari and McLaren. Their demonstration of what can be achieved when a hefty budget is allied with competency and ambition puts Toyota's own improvement in its proper perspective.

BMW are the team that Toyota ought to be and Ross Brawn's Honda aspire to be.

Kimi Raikkonen Knows How To Win World Championships
So much for the theory that Raikkonen was heavily-fuelled in qualifying. In fact, the Finn was carrying less fuel than team-mate Massa - a discrepancy which emphasised not only how well Massa drove this weekend but also Raikkonen's depression.

Not that it mattered very much. As he observed afterwards, "We look at a bad weekend and we finished second, so never mind." Massa won but Kimi only lost two points and took the lead of the World Championship in the process. Even on a bad weekend he prospered.

There's an adage in football that winning while playing badly is the hallmark of champions and much the same could be said of World Champions in F1. Kimi knows this better than most. Despite the post-Brazil revisionism that occurred once he was crowned champion, it is widely accepted that Raikkonen drove badly surprisingly frequently last season. As in Bahrain this weekend, it did not matter much because the failings of others combined with the superiority of the Ferrari meant that he was nevertheless still able to collect a hefty haul of points.

Whether that meant he was an undeserved World Champion is a moot point. What the argument does highlight, however, is the scale of Massa's under-achievement in the opening two races of the season and the task that now awaits him in his quest to be crowned World Champion. As another DNF will probably be one too many, Massa has to ensure that any bad weekends from here to November still finish as good weekends.

Lewis Hamilton Knows How To Lose
No excuses, no accusations, no hiding.

So at least he was impressive in one respect on Sunday then.

Pete Gill