LEWIS HAMILTON may have been awarded an MBE and had a £150,000 waxwork unveiled at Madame Tussauds this month, but Formula One's youngest-ever world champion would surely swap all of that for a car capable of finishing within a country mile of Ferrari. Or, for that matter, one that could match the raw speed displayed by newcomers Brawn GP.
There may even have been times when the dapper world champion would give his best Prada loafers to be able to leave Force India, the Reliant Robin of the F1 circuit, trailing in his slipstream as he
once did.
At one stage during the week at Jerez
, Hamilton's McLaren-Mercedes car was an embarrassing 2.5 seconds off the pace. Even on Wednesday, the penultimate day of testing, he was bottom of the timesheets again, running more than a second a lap behind the fastest car. McLaren boss Martin Whitworth couldn't bring himself to say that his clapped-out motor was ruinously slow, instead resorting to the euphemism that his team's MP4-24 car has a "performance shortfall".
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the YouTube clip of Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen giving McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen a huge head start on the practice grid and then accelerating past him as if he was standing still is worth several million. "To be honest, we have never seen McLaren so far back," said Ferrari's Felipe Massa of that test. "In many years I have never seen that."
The biggest surprise is perhaps that McLaren's travails have not come as a complete surprise to Hamilton. In an exclusive interview conducted just after testing had started in earnest, the world champion likened the feel of a car that "is so different to the previous year's car (but] handles a lot like last year's car", yet he had already seen enough to know that the competitive advantage his team enjoyed last year could disappear beneath a welter of new rule changes.
"This season's going to be very interesting," Hamilton told me. "It's too early to say how the changes are going to affect the teams and the drivers, but I had the first chance to experience part of the package yesterday in Portugal. Believe me when I say that it's going to be very interesting because the cars are not going to be easy to drive with less downforce. They won't be easy to control in either wet or dry conditions, and then there's the question of the slick tyres. All the teams are going to have a tough time because we're all starting from scratch again.
"As far as rivals for 2009 goes, there's obviously the guys that I was competing with at the front last year, especially the Ferraris, who had a great year last year and won the constructors' title. They're the ones for us to target and beat, especially as Felipe (Massa]'s obviously going to try to bounce straight back. Robert Kubica at BMW's a potential threat, but the new regulations have changed everything and you could easily find, say, that Toyota or BMW have done a better job adapting to them than anyone else and find themselves out in front."
Whether or not Johnnie Walker's responsible drinking ambassador is still feeling quite as sober and sanguine about the rule changes this week remains to be seen. Even on the final day of testing last Thursday, when McLaren set by far their fastest times of the week, Kovalainen was still more than half a second slower than the Williams driven by the lowly-rated Kazuki Nakajima, while Hamilton was over a second and a half behind the Japanese driver. Both teams set fast times, but then you'd expect that in the perfect sunny conditions rather than the dampness of the previous days.
The bookies certainly don't like the look of Hamilton's chances. The spread betting companies have him as a distant fourth favourite behind the Ferrari duo of Raikkonen and Massa, who are at the same price, with Renault's Fernando Alonso the third favourite and comfortably ahead of Hamilton. The champion's team-mate, Kovalainen, sits back in an incredible 12th place in the odds out of just 20 drivers.
Hamilton's odds won't have been improved by the decision to reverse FIA's edict that the drivers' championship would henceforth be won by the driver who wins the most races. That decision drew almost universal derision, with everyone from Michael Schumacher to Fernando Alonso and all the team principals lining up to denounce it, hence the controversial volte face.
The teams were right not to like it partly because, under that system, it was easy to foresee a situation where the drivers' championship would be over halfway through the season.
Yet it would have favoured teams like McLaren where one driver is a clear No.1 and where team orders can subtly be brought into play. With the exception of Renault, where Alonso is undisputed top dog, all of the other teams have two evenly matched drivers who will take wins off each other: Massa/Raikkonen at Ferrari; Kubica/Nick Heidfeld at BMW; Jenson Button/Rubens Barrichello at Brawn GP; and Jarno Trulli/Timo Glock at a newly resurgent Toyota.
If the decision to retain the current points structure for this season robs Hamilton of one potential advantage, the rule changes have also given him another much-needed fillip. Hamilton is one of – if not the – best overtaker in F1. The radically changed aerodynamics regulations that will make overtaking easier is a huge shot in the arm to the Englishman, as he implicitly conceded when I asked him what changes he would like to see this year. "I hope there will be more overtaking," he said. He undoubtedly got his wish.
So while the changes should favour Hamilton, the bookies have gone cold on him. Why? That's almost exclusively down to the disastrous testing in Jerez. To make matters worse, one of the rules brought in this year means that McLaren aren't allowed to carry out in-season testing so they can no longer simply throw money at the problem. They will be able to do lots of work on the simulator, but, as Hamilton conceded, it's not the same as being out on the track.
There's very little margin for error for any of the teams. With a whole raft of innovations introduced at once, the potential for getting it wrong is huge, and McLaren appear in danger of being the biggest casualty. Their situation is particularly acute because the problem with the car isn't the engine, which is more easily fixed, but the chassis, which is not.
We know the engine is not the culprit because the former Honda team , which has emerged phoenix-like as Brawn GP, has the same Mercedes engine as McLaren yet has been burning up the grid in spectacular style. By the end of testing on Wednesday Barrichello was over a second quicker than the next fastest car. Crucially, Brawn GP also has two fast, experienced drivers in Barrichello and Button. It's no surprise that the odds on a Brawn GP title have slimmed from 150-1 to 12-1 or that Bernie Ecclestone has backed Button to win the drivers' crown.
Although Ferrari remain strong favourites to lift both the drivers' and constructors' championships, the ranks of serious challengers has swollen considerably this year, thanks in no small part to the extent of rule changes.
At Renault, Alonso has been boosted by some fast times in testing, the BMWs look to have great straight-line speed, big-spending Toyota's Trulli and Glock have posted times that finally represent value for money, while Red Bull's German tyro Sebastian Vettel – who won last year's Italian GP in a Toro Rosso – is an exceptional driver in a car that's good enough to spring more surprises this year.
The rule changes undoubtedly mean more drama, more overtaking and less predictability. Hamilton, for one, says that's what he wants: "It's more of a challenge, which is what I like. Every year has been an incredible challenge: the last two years have been very challenging for the team but this is perhaps even a step up because of the changes. But we love it when it gets harder."
What was that about being careful what you wish for?
Rule changes for the new seasonAERODYNAMICSIN AN effort to spice up Formula One, to increase the possibility of overtaking and to significantly cut costs, a raft of new rules have been introduced. Here are the key changes which will be seen for the first time in Melbourne on March 29:
In early 2007 the FIA set up the OWG (Overtaking Working Group) to think up ways of making F1 more attractive, or to be more precise, to identify areas where change was needed to make overtaking easier. The principle problem lay in the massive amounts of downforce cars lost once the distance to the car in front dropped below around two seconds. This "dirty air" whipped up by the preceding car significantly diminished the effect of the front wing in particular, causing pronounced understeer. As a result, changes in position were more frequently the result of strategies in the pit lane than overtaking manoeuvres out on the track.
The OWG looked into the situation and it has led to radical changes, especially as far as aerodynamics are concerned. The front wing has grown in width from 1,400mm to 1,800mm, making it as broad as the car as a whole, while it is also fixed lower down than before. Via the aid of a button, the flaps on the front wing can also be adjusted twice per lap – once to raise or lower, and secondly to return it to its original position – to make it easier to get up close behind the car in front.
TYRESA move that has delighted all the drivers is the return to slicks away from the grooves of recent years. These will deliver increased front-end grip, which encourages moving more weight to the nose of the car. A driver is also able to gain more feel of a circuit.
KERSOr to give it its full name, "Kinetic Energy Recovery System", and one that has caused considerable consternation among the teams, primarily due to the cost of implementation. The electrical device stores energy under braking, and then via the touch of another button at the driver's disposal on his steering wheel, he can provide his car with an 82bhp boost for 6.6 seconds. It is an ingenious system, but all the teams have had their share of problems in recent months, and only a handful – if that – will be using it in Melbourne.
ENGINEIt was only nine years ago that teams used one engine in practice on a Friday, one for qualifying on the Saturday, and another for the race itself on a Sunday, sending costs soaring. But to significantly reduce budgets, the life of an engine for this season will double, with each car and driver combination allowed to use just eight for the entire year.
TESTINGAgain to slash costs, both the teams and the FIA agreed to a ban on extensive in-season testing from this year. Last year there were eight tests, lasting three or four days, with the season ongoing. However, teams have the opportunity to conduct eight one-day aerodynamic tests on a FIA-approved straight-line or constant radius site between now and the final race of the season.
The full article contains 1935 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
