My thoughts on Australia

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Well done Adrian

First of all, I was very pleased to see Force India re-sign Adrian Sutil.

If only it had rained prior to Adrian’s second pit stop, he could have restarted on intermediates with the rest of the field still behind him. Whether or not he would have held off Fernando for 10 or 12 laps in the wet is another question. Since the rain never came, he was forced to run his final stint on the supersoft tires, which didn’t seem to agree with him even on a lighter fuel load in the closing laps.

Nevertheless, clearly Adrian drove impressively and hasn’t lost anything despite a year’s absence from the sport.

I thought the Australian Grand Prix was rather boring. With the majority of the field running on the exact same strategy, there just wasn’t a lot of guessing to be done as to who’s doing what. Only four drivers (Sutil, Perez, Riccardo and Maldonado) actually started the race on the prime tires, which the other 18 running on options for their opening stints. Also, of the 18 drivers who finished the race, all but 5 of them (Raikkonen, Sutil, DiResta, Guitierrez, and Charles Pic) were on the a 3 stop strategy. There just wasn’t enough variety for me.

Raikkonen made it look easy. One could argue he also won this race on pit strategy. The 12 second gap between him and Fernando, while sizable at first glance, still needs to be compared with the pit stop delta. Would he have run faster lap times on a 3 stopper? He would likely have needed to in order to still win, although he probably would have been on the podium regardless. But this is as speculative as what Adrian could have accomplished on inters in the wet if it had rained for his final stint.

Verdict: Raikkonen won decisively, Fernando drove solidly, and Adrian absolutely nailed his comeback race. And thus we have the official winner, a runner up, and a moral victor for the day. But perhaps the real winner in Australia was (Pirelli Motorsport Director) Paul Hembery.

On to Malaysia.

Things I want to see 2013

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photo credit: Sergio Perez, Instagram

1. Sergio Perez has a good season
McLaren’s decision to sign Sergio Perez was a controversial one. For many, it remains to be seen whether or not Sergio Perez has the total package. Can McLaren mold this master of the one-stopper into a complete driver? If McLaren has a good year, I want to see Perez come within two wins of Jenson Button’s total for the season in the same car. If McLaren have a bad season, I want to see Perez on the podium a handful of times and win at least one race. In my eyes, McLaren will have made the right decision if Perez meets these goals.

2. Mark Webber has a great season

Whether or not he was misquoted is yet unknown, but Red Bull “advisor” Helmut Marko has been quoted in the media making some disparaging remarks about Webber’s form, and it seems the media is ready to pounce on that and bring Webber’s future at Red Bull into question. It would seem that Red Bull want to build a franchise around Sebastian Vettel and it wouldn’t surprise me if they more or less openly adopted an “A and B driver” philosophy a la Scuderia Ferrari. In a sense, Vettel has earned this status, for sure. But I also believe that Webber has earned his place in the team. I think Webber deserves to stay in F1 and under the right conditions is an asset to any team. Ferrari seemed to believe as much, considering both sides acknowledged they had talks last season and one of the main stumbling blocks to these discussions was Webber being too tall to fit into a car designed for Fernando Alonso.

I think Webber deserves a place in the history books and hope he continues driving for a few more years. For 2013, I would like to see him silence his critics and outperform Vettel. I don’t expect to see it, but that’s what I want.

I also wouldn’t mind seeing Webber (and Helmut Marko, for that matter) be a little less outspoken in 2013.

3. Lewis Hamilton does well
Hamilton’s decision to leave McLaren and drive for Mercedes made me cringe. I think he has made a mistake, and I would not be surprised to see him find in Nico Rosberg a more formidable rival than meets the eye. I hope I am wrong and Hamilton’s decision to move to Mercedes proves to be a good one.

4. Nico Rosberg wins once again – or twice

It was good to see Rosberg finally get his first win last season. It would be nice to see him get another one or two this season, and compare favorably to Hamilton’s pace in the same Mercedes.

5. Protest-free Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
Formula 1 is embroiled in enough of it’s own politics and controversy to get ensnared in those of its host countries.

6. 1st time winner at Singapore
Like many of the drivers themselves, I am not a big fan of the Singapore street circuit. In fact, I find it almost difficult to watch. At Valencia last year, Alonso’s charge through the field made for an exciting race at otherwise boring circuit. Lets hope someone – anyone – does the same for us at Singapore this year.

7. Grosjean does well
I don’t believe Grosjean needs to change his driving style – at all. He just needs to pay attention. Whereas Maldonado tends to be overly aggressive, clearly most of Grosjean’s accidents have resulted from honest mistakes. He just needs to make less of those in 2013. I think he is a naturally quick driver, and on his good days he compared pretty well with Kimi Raikkonen last season. Hopefully he’ll have more good days than bad days in 2013.

8. Massa does well
Like his predecessor Rubens Barrichello, Felipe Massa’s #2 status at Ferrari makes him a perennial underdog. For this reason alone, I’ll always want to see Massa rise above that demarcation. I would like to see 2013 be a year where Massa returns to the form that almost made him a world champion. I would like to see Massa drive well enough in the first half of 2013 to earn another year with Maranello in 2014. I do not want to see a repeat of 2012 where Massa was driving for his career. He’s a much better driver than that and hopefully in 2013 he’ll silence his many critics. A competitive Felipe Massa in 2013 would make a great comeback story and I love comeback stories.

9. Button does well
2012 wasn’t the greatest year for Button or McLaren. I would like to see Button on the podium a lot in 2013 and would love to see him win at least one more championship before he retires. I don’t think he should go in the history books as a one time champion.

10. Hulkenberg does well
After watching him completely decimate the field at a very wet A1GP race in Malaysia several years ago, I began to view Hulkenberg as a champion in the making. Then as time went by, I began to question that assessment. Honestly, I really thought I had been wrong about Nico until his surprising performance in the wet in Brazil this last season.

Unlike others, I don’t consider his move from Force India to Sauber to be a sideways move, at all. I think it will prove to be a good move and I would like to see him capitalize on it and have his big breakthrough year.

With all the media speculation involving his future at either Ferrari or Red Bull in 2014, I wonder how much of a microscope he’ll be under this year at Sauber. I honestly don’t want to see either Webber or Massa lose their seats at their respective teams, but it would be nice to see what Hulkenberg does in a competitive car sometime in the near future.

11. Somebody – anybody – announces they’ve signed Kamui Kobayashi to drive with them in 2014

Although I understand the rationale behind Sauber’s decision to drop Kobayashi in favor Guitierrez, that doesn’t make it any less tragic in my opinion. After many years of lesser Japanese drivers having the red carpet rolled out for them into race seats, now perhaps the greatest driver in Japanese history has had the carpet pulled out from under him.

Hopefully we haven’t seen the last of Kamui Kobayashi. He deserves to be in Formula 1.

12. Fernando wins the championship

Like many, I believe that Fernando Alonso is the most complete driver in the world right now. To an extent, I also view Vettel as being a product of his team environment, whereas Alonso has succeeded in spite of Ferrari’s woes. Vettel had an Adrian Newey designed car, Alonso struggled with poor aerodynamics all year. I think Alonso is the best driver on the grid, and if the history books were closed today, his two championship don’t do justice to what he has accomplished in Formula 1. Hopefully Ferrari will overcome their wind tunnel issues and produce a solid car for both Fernando and Felipe. I’d like 2013 to be the championship year that Alonso probably would have had in 2012 were it not for Ferrari’s aerodynamics and his accident at Spa Francorchamps.

Give Perez time

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photo credit: Vodafone McLaren Mercedes

A newly-minted McLaren man, Sergio Perez is living the dream, still a shade under 23 as of this writing, and driving for one of the top teams in Formula 1. Inevitably, comparisons will be made between whatever Perez does in the opening races with what Lewis Hamilton achieved during his rookie season. I think this would be a mistake.

Hamilton and Perez are different drivers, perhaps even opposite drivers. Hamilton is known for his raw speed, while with Perez, raw speed is perhaps the biggest question of them all. And I have asked the same question myself: can Perez deliver if asked to simply drive flat out on a conventional pit strategy? This remains to be seen. However, I would also argue that Perez is a victim of his own success: the media have turned Perez, to his detriment, into almost a mascot of tire management and the one-stop strategy. But in my opinion, his mastery of the one-stop strategy shows a certain degree of race craft beyond his years in Formula 1. Rather than label him a tire management savant, I think it demonstrates a certain level of feel and instinct behind the wheel which may serve him quite well if McLaren can harness it.

Also regarding the question of raw speed: he actually out-qualified his teammate last season. Perez qualified higher than Kobayashi 11 times in 2012. Kobayashi out-qualified Perez 9 times. One could argue these results are about equal, but he still out-qualified his teammate last year, which contrasts sharply with the endless swirl of questions surrounding his qualifying ability. Let his record against his teammate speak for itself. If he starts qualifying several rows behind Button next season, the questions will have proven their merit. But for now, I think these questions are overdone and a lot more speculative than most would acknowledge.

These questions of Perez’s raw speed and ability to perform outside of a one stop strategy will ultimately be decided by Perez himself.

I am optimistic about Perez’s development at McLaren, and I think he’ll ultimately prove worthy the chance McLaren have given him. The question is whether or not the media will give him a fair trial. It’s simply not fair to compare anyone’s debut with a major team against Lewis Hamilton’s unprecedented 9 consecutive podiums in his 2007 debut. Hamilton had years of preparation leading up to his McLaren debut. Perez isn’t in anywhere near the same position as Hamilton was in that regard. I think what’s more important is how Perez develops over the season, rather than his first couple of races. And I think that over the course of his 3 year contract with the team, his development may surprise a lot of people.

Clearly Jenson Button will the undisputed #1 at McLaren this coming season. I think if Perez can prove himself to be a solid, reliable #2, both he and McLaren will have done very well.

Blogging

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Whatever compelled me to start an F1 blog, the motivation to write is gone after doing all this work hitting a few buttons to set up this WordPress site.

Team Orders is an ugly word in F1, although I am not really against it at all. So if my blog were to gather any steam get one or two people to read it occasionally, inevitably my pro-team orders bias would come to the surface. The problem is, this blog is not about team orders at all. I simply could not think of a better name, and this was available under .co.uk, which is not a bad tld to start an F1 blog from. However, if I were to keep writing, my efforts to make this look like the generic F1 blog it is intended to be would inevitably be hampered once the end of the season draws near and I’m writing that I see no problems with Rob Smedley telling Felipe Massa “Fernando is faster than you”. At that point, the reader concludes this to be a blog about team orders, which is not my intention. Honestly the only other name I could think of was teammatevsteammate dot com, but then that’s a name with even narrower connotations – the reader merely expects me to write about Perez’s performance relative to Button, with a lot of numbers, charts, and lap data.

Then there is the whole .co.uk thing. Being an American, it’s just weird, but there are many F1 blogs under that TLD, like wtf1.co.uk.

I’ve always loved writing and like to pontificate on the various things I am interested in. But this blog is having all the makings of a false start.

About our name….

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The idea for this site came first. Next came the hunt for a memorable domain name that was somehow connected to Formula 1. The term “team orders” was available under the .co.uk tld, and Team Orders F1 was born.

Although there are no plans to focus this site on the actual issue of team orders in F1, at all, “team orders” is a memorable term known to F1 fans around the world, and hopefully the controversial nature of the term will help visitors remember the address and come back often.