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Warrior Alonso bides his time


Andrew Benson | 12:15 UK time, Sunday, 7 October 2012

Almost Fernando Alonso's first act after what must have been the huge blow of seeing Sebastian Vettel slash his world championship lead to just four points at the Japanese Grand Prix, was to quote that country's great swordfighter and philosopher Miyamoto Musashi.

"If the enemy thinks of the mountains," Alonso wrote on his Twitter account, "attack by sea; and if he thinks of the sea, attack by the mountains."

That the Ferrari driver can reach for the words of a 17th century kensei warrior and strategist in a moment of such strain reveals a lot about the manner in which he combines an indomitable fighting spirit with a status as possibly the most cerebral Formula 1 driver of his generation.

But it will take more than relentlessness and clever strategy for Alonso to hold on to a lead for which he has struggled so hard this season, but which has now dwindled to almost nothing.

The 31-year-old, who spun out at Suzuka with a puncture after being tagged by Kimi Raikkonen's Lotus on the run to the first corner, has carried his Ferrari team on his back this year.

Alonso has won three races and taken a series of strong points finishes to establish what was until recently an imposing championship lead in a car that has never once been quick enough to set pole position in the dry.

He did so by driving, in terms of consistency and lack of mistakes, one of the most perfect seasons there has ever been - a feat made all the more impressive because it was done in not the best car.

Fernando Alonso leads Sebastian Vettel in the Championship by four points. Photo: Getty

Yet now, through no fault of his own, Alonso has failed to finish two of the last four races and in that time Vettel has made hay, taking 37 points out of his rival's lead.

Heading into Japan, it was already beginning to look as if Vettel was going to be hard to resist.

While the Red Bull has been a forbiddingly quick race car all season, the team did not in the first half of the season find it very easy to get the best out of it in qualifying.

But since mid-summer they have found consistency, and started to qualify regularly at the front of the grid as well. At the same time, luck has deserted Ferrari and Alonso.

More than that, Red Bull also appear in recent races to have made a significant step forward in the performance of their car.

Vettel looked very strong in Singapore two weeks ago, trading fastest times with Lewis Hamilton throughout the weekend and taking victory after the Englishman's McLaren retired from the lead with a gearbox failure. And in Japan the Red Bull looked unbeatable from as early as Saturday final practice session.

How much of this is to do with the new 'double DRS' system which came to light in Suzuka is unclear.

Team boss Christian Horner said he thought it was more to do with the characteristics of the track suiting those of the Red Bull car. Perhaps, but the 'double DRS' certainly won't be doing any harm.

Unlike the system that Mercedes have been using since the start of the season, which uses the DRS overtaking aid to 'stall' the front wing, Red Bull's works entirely on the rear wing.

What it means is that they can run the car with more downforce in qualifying without the consequent straight-line speed penalty caused by the extra drag, because the 'double DRS' bleeds off the drag.

This does bring a straight-line speed penalty in the race, when DRS use is no longer free. But as long as the car qualifies at the front, this does not matter, as it is quick enough over a lap to stay out of reach of its rivals.

It is not clear how long Red Bull have been working on this system at grand prix weekends, but to the best of BBC Sport's knowledge, Japan was the first time they had raced it. Coupled with a new front wing design introduced in Singapore, it has turned an already strong package into an intimidating one.

Vettel used it to dominate the race in the fashion he did so many in 2011 on his way to his second-consecutive title. As he so often does in the fastest car when he starts at the front of the grid, he looked invincible.

Alonso, though, is not one to be intimidated easily and will take solace from the fact that Ferrari's pace compared to Red Bull was not as bad as it might appear at first glance.

Alonso may have qualified only seventh, but he reckoned he was on course for fourth place on the grid before having to slow for caution flags marking Raikkonen's spun Lotus at Spoon Curve.

And judging by the pace shown by his team-mate Felipe Massa in the race, Alonso would have finished in a sure-fire second place had he got beyond the first corner. He might even have been able to challenge Vettel, given how much faster the Ferrari has been in races than in qualifying this year.

Alonso's problem for the remainder of the season is that salvaging podiums is no longer enough - he needs to start winning races again. Which means Ferrari need to start improving their car relative to the opposition.

Meanwhile, spice has been added to an already intriguing final five races by a seemingly innocuous incident in qualifying in Japan.

After slowing as he passed Raikkonen's car, Alonso continued on his flying lap, but when he got to the chicane, he came across Vettel, who blocked him.

Ferrari reckoned this cost Alonso somewhere in the region of 0.1-0.2secs, which would have moved him up a place on the grid. The stewards, though, decided to give Vettel only a reprimand.

They justified this on the basis that they believed Vettel had not known Alonso was there - and they let him off not looking in his mirrors because they felt he had reason to believe no-one would be continuing on a flying lap following the Raikkonen incident.

But some would see that as flawed thinking. Alonso was one of several drivers who had at that point not set a time in the top 10 shoot-out, and all of them were likely to be continuing their laps because whatever time they did set was going to define their grid slot.

Although there is no suggestion Vettel held up Alonso deliberately, the Red Bull driver is a sharp cookie, and almost certainly would have known this.

Even if he did not, his team should have warned him. And on that basis, it can be argued that Vettel's offence was no less bad than that of Toro Rosso's Jean-Eric Vergne, who was given a three-place grid penalty for delaying Williams's Bruno Senna in similar fashion earlier in qualifying.

Ferrari were distinctly unimpressed by the stewards' verdict, but Alonso being Alonso, he has not mentioned any of this publicly. Alonso being Alonso, though, he will have lodged it away for the future.

In the meantime, before heading to Korea for another potentially pivotal race next weekend, might he be studying Musashi a little more?

You must "know the times", Musashi wrote. "Knowing the times means if your ability is high, seeing right into things. If you are thoroughly conversant with strategy, you will recognise the enemy's intentions and thus have many opportunities to win.

"If you attain and adhere to the wisdom of my strategy, you need never doubt that you will win."

Raikkonen in rude health

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Andrew Benson | 19:58 UK time, Sunday, 4 November 2012

Kimi Raikkonen already had a bottle of beer in his hand by the time he joined his Lotus team for the now-traditional group photo following a grand prix victory.

Knowing Raikkonen's reputation, it will almost certainly not have been the last drink that passed his lips in Abu Dhabi on Sunday night as he celebrated his first win since returning to Formula 1 this year after two years in rallying.

"For sure we're going to have a good party today," the sport's most famous hedonist said on he podium, "and hopefully tomorrow, when we are feeling bad after a long night, we will remember how we feel."

How long will you celebrate for, he was asked.

"I have almost two weeks," he said. "As long as I manage to get myself to the next race I think the team is happy. I try to get home at some point."

The party is well deserved. Raikkonen's comeback year has had its ups and downs, but a win has looked a probability since the start of the season, and in many ways the big surprise has been that it has taken so long.

Raikkonen has been remarkably strong and consistent in races this season, but until Abu Dhabi his best chances of victory had been squandered by starting too far down the grid.

Raikkonen has now taken 37% of his career victories after starting from outside the top three on the grid. Photo: Getty

He is the first to admit that he has made too many mistakes in qualifying. Indeed, for the first half of the season he was generally being out-paced over one lap on Saturdays by his novice team-mate Romain Grosjean.

But in the second half of the season his qualifying pace has edged forward, the mistakes have dried up, and this weekend everything came together to produce the result the team and he undoubtedly deserve.

Out of the car, Raikkonen is about as uncommunicative as they come. He simply refuses to engage in the media game. That can be frustrating for journalists who are searching for insight from an undoubtedly great driver, but still there is no mystery about his true character.

The radio messages that caused such amusement during the race sum him up.

His poor race engineer was only doing his job when he informed him of the gap to Fernando Alonso's Ferrari behind him, and some may find it rude that Raikkonen would respond by asking him to "leave me alone, I know what I'm doing".

But that is Raikkonen all over. He's a no-nonsense character, and he just wants things the way he wants them. And if he is not comfortable in the spotlight, he was born to be in a Formula 1 car at the front of a grand prix.

"Kimi is a man of few words but he's all about racing," McLaren driver Jenson Button said, summing up the Finn's unique appeal.

"It's good to see him have a good race here and collect the victory. He does deserve it. He is back for the racing. That's what he loves and it's good to see that."

For all his impressive performance, Raikkonen owed his win to Lewis Hamilton's wretched fortune at McLaren.

Yet another failure - this one in a fuel pump on the McLaren's Mercedes engine - cost Hamilton another victory. It's the second time it has happened in five races and it is the story of his season.

Hamilton said on Sunday that he had "been at my best this year" and so it has looked, but he also made a pointed reference to McLaren's myriad problems throughout the season: "We have not done a good enough job to win this championship."

For the men who can win it, it was a weekend of wildly fluctuating fortunes.

Following Sebastian Vettel's exclusion from qualifying because not enough fuel had been put in his Red Bull to provide the requisite one-litre sample, it appeared that Alonso had a golden opportunity to close down some of the advantage the German had eked out with his four consecutive wins through Singapore, Japan, Korea and India.

But after a wildly topsy-turvy race and an impressive drive by Vettel, the German joined his Spanish rival on the podium.

All three podium finishers gave an object lesson in racing to the many drivers who crash-banged into each other behind them, including each of their team-mates, and while Vettel's drive quite rightly stood out, so too was a little luck involved.

Vettel damaged his front wing against Bruno Senna's Williams on the first lap, but was able to continue and overtake the rabbits at the back of the field.

Then, not for the first time in his career, he made a mistake behind the safety car, misjudging the pace of Daniel Ricciardo's Toro Rosso as the Australian warmed his brakes, veering to avoid him, and finishing off the front wing against a marker board.

The mistake forced Red Bull to pit Vettel when they were not going to and the fresh tyres he fitted at the stop meant he had a grip advantage over the drivers he now had to pass.

Again, he sliced rapidly through the backmarkers - this time without incident - so that he was up to seventh by the time the pit-stop period started for those in front of him.

By the time the leaders had all stopped, Vettel was in second place, and suddenly it looked like he might have a chance of pulling off a sensational victory.

Raikkonen's Lotus team, for one, thought Vettel would not be stopping again, but Red Bull were concerned enough about tyre wear to want to play safe, and the 20 seconds he lost in his second pit stop were then wiped out by another safety car.

Fourth at the re-start, the fastest car in the field and on fresher tyres than Raikkonen, Alonso and Button ahead of him, it again looked like he might win.

In the end, though, Button's clever defence kept him behind long enough to ensure that although he could pass the McLaren, third was as far as he was going to go.

BBC F1 chief analyst Eddie Jordan said Vettel's ability to salvage a podium finish from a pit-lane start must feel like a "dagger in the heart for Ferrari" but if Alonso was disappointed you would not want to play poker with him.

He talked about his pride at finishing second in a race Ferrari had expected to deliver a fifth or sixth place - and as Red Bull team boss Christian Horner pointed out, Alonso celebrated on the podium as if he had won the race.

For a while now, Alonso has been saying Red Bull's winning run would end, that eventually they would have some bad luck.

Well, in Abu Dhabi they had it, and still Alonso could gain only three points on Vettel, and it was noticeable that the tone of his remarks after the race shifted slightly.

In India two weeks ago, he said he was still "100% confident" of winning the title. After Abu Dhabi, though, he did not repeat that remark.

"Without the problem for Sebastian we were thinking we would exit Abu Dhabi with 20 points deficit or something and we are 10 (behind)," Alonso said. "In the end it was a good weekend for us.

"They will have the fastest car in the last two races. There is no magic part that will come for Austin or Brazil. But as I said a couple of races ago, they have the fastest car, we have the best team. So we see who wins."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/...dhabi.html

Sebastian Vettel & Fernando Alonso 'are two of the greatest'




Two of the greatest drivers in Formula 1 history are battling for the honour of becoming a three-time world champion at the Brazilian Grand Prix this weekend.

Whether the victor is Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel, the favourite, or Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, it will be an outstanding achievement.

Either would become the youngest triple champion in history.

Vettel would have achieved his three titles in five full seasons of F1, in 101 races - a success rate comparable with that of Sir Jackie Stewart. The German has racked up 26 career victories.

Alonso, meanwhile, has produced one of the most remarkable seasons in memory. In a year with only one wet race, he has not once had the fastest car in the dry - and usually very far from it - yet he has won three grand prixs and finished on the podium a further nine times.

The Spaniard's career win tally stands at 30, fifth in the all-time list. It has come from nearly twice as many races as Vettel, but having spent a far smaller proportion of his career in the best car.

It is no accident this is the second time in three years these two men have been disputing the championship in the final race of the season. Along with Lewis Hamilton, they have operated for a number of years on a separate level beyond the reach of their rivals.

In 2010 in Abu Dhabi, it was Vettel who came out on top against the odds - overturning a 15-point deficit thanks to a dominant victory and a catastrophic strategic error by Ferrari, without which Alonso would have been champion despite having an inferior car.

The Ferrari is still that, but this time the mathematics are almost exactly reversed - Alonso is 13 points behind Vettel going into the race at Sao Paulo's scruffy but atmospheric Interlagos track.

In a car in which he has taken four wins, a second and a third (from a pit-lane start) in the last six races, all Vettel needs to do is finish fourth and the title is his - even if Alonso wins the race, something the Spaniard has not done since the German Grand Prix in July.

“The track nestles in a natural amphitheatre and it boils with a claustrophobic atmosphere born of the nearby favelas, the jam-packed, cheering, jeering crowd and the intoxicating, febrile ambience of Brazil itself”

Andrew Benson

If Alonso is second, Vettel needs only to be sixth. If Alonso is third, Vettel needs only a ninth. Any finish lower than that for the Ferrari driver is no good.

On paper, then, it is hard to see how Vettel can lose. But Interlagos is an unpredictable place. It is a venue for the ages, one that has hosted F1 on and off since 1973, and uninterrupted since 1990.

The track nestles in a natural amphitheatre and it boils with a claustrophobic atmosphere born of the nearby favelas - the jam-packed, cheering, jeering crowd and the intoxicating, febrile ambience of Brazil itself.

Even in good weather, odd things can happen, the racing is close and exciting. And quite often the weather is not good. In fact, rain is predicted for this weekend, through Saturday and Sunday. The only question seems to be when it will come.

And rain would change the form book. While the Red Bull is the fastest car in the dry, in the wet the Ferrari is much closer and perhaps its equal. Perhaps the rain disguises the Italian car's shortcomings.

Whatever it is, in two wet qualifying sessions this year, Alonso has been on pole position both times - albeit with the Red Bulls right behind him. And he won the single wet race.

Rain, too, turns the Brazilian Grand Prix into a lottery. In 2003, in a mixed-weather race cut short by a terrifying pair of crashes involving Alonso and Vettel's current team-mate Mark Webber, Giancarlo Fisichella took an unlikely victory in the uncompetitive Jordan.

In 2008, Hamilton needed only to finish fifth in a McLaren to tie up the title, even if his rival Felipe Massa of Ferrari won the race.


Massa duly won at a canter, but Hamilton - he and McLaren hamstrung by a fixation on achieving the bare minimum rather than racing freely in conditions in which he normally excels - started the last lap sixth. Agonisingly close but not close enough.

The Englishman gained fifth place only at the last real corner of the race, and then only because Toyota's Timo Glock, who Hamilton overtook, was struggling for grip having not changed his dry-weather tyres for treaded rain rubber.

A year later, Jenson Button, then at Brawn, qualified only 14th in a damp session, and Vettel, one of his two rivals, was two places behind him in the Red Bull, then as now the best car.

In a dry race, both recovered well to take strong points finishes, and Button did indeed tie up the title, but not before spending some worrying moments the night before.

One could go on and on; the point being that there is nothing easy about achieving even the most modest result at a circuit where the corners come thick and fast, bumps are ever-present and the racing is as action-packed as you will ever see.

Vettel and Alonso, Red Bull and Ferrari, know all this and will be doing their best to treat it as any other weekend. It is, as they keep reminding us, only one of 20 races, and they all count.

"We've just got to approach the next race as we have the previous 19," says Red Bull team principal Christian Horner. "Get the best out of ourselves, the car, the drivers, strategy, reliability. Its good to be going there with a lead and we go there determined to try to close the job off. There may be different weather there; hopefully we can have a strong weekend."

"Pragmatically speaking," says Stefano Domenicali, Horner's opposite number at Ferrari, "we know the result has to be better. We have to be in front of Sebastian and we have to have some drivers in the middle.

"We know it is not easy. He drives very well; he has a very quick car. But it doesn't change what we have to do. We focus on our job and see what will be the outcome of the race."

All very sensible. But Interlagos has a tendency to throw the cards up in the air, and they do not always come down as you might expect.

All things being equal, it should be Vettel - but there could yet be a sting in the tail.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/20439332

Brazilian GP: Jenson Button wants Fernando Alonso to win title




By Andrew Benson
Chief F1 writer McLaren's Jenson Button said he would rather Ferrari's Fernando Alonso won the title this year than his rival Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull.

Vettel goes into the final race of the season in Brazil this weekend as favourite, 13 points clear of Alonso.

“I said after the first race I don't think [Alonso]'s got a chance, but he's done a great job”
Jenson Button

Asked if he was bothered who won, Button said: "Fernando has been the most consistent this year.

"We all know how important that is, so probably Fernando. Just because he hasn't really made any mistakes."

Alonso's Ferrari started the season 1.5 seconds off the pace. It has improved since then but has never been the quickest car in the dry, yet the Spaniard, a two-time champion, has produced what he himself says is his best season to stay in contention throughout the year.
Button said: "I said after the first race I don't think he's got a chance, and I didn't think he did. He was a second off in qualifying, or even more. [Ferrari] have done a good job and he's obviously done a great job as well. Play media
Formula 1's great final-day showdowns
"He's been consistently quick and done a very good job in the car he has.

"Seb has been more inconsistent. The last few races he has been fantastic, with a great car.

"If you look at the season as a whole, consistency really does mean a lot and it's good to see that Fernando has been that good at every race.

"Very impressive, actually, to see that performance at every race."




http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/20452607

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/20640255



How Formula 1 is going green for 2014
By Andrew Benson Chief F1 writer

Formula 1 enters a brave new world in 2014, embracing energy efficiency through a new engine design, changes to the cars and a fuel limit.

But the new rules, which aim to reduce fuel consumption by 35%, have so far had a bumpy ride.

A plan to switch from the current 2.4-litre V8s to 1.6-litre turbo-charged V6s is going ahead despite the vocal opposition of F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone - but not before the original plans for four-cylinder engines were revised to soothe Ferrari's objections.

“The biggest visible change will be at the front - the high noses that have become de rigueur in recent years will be outlawed”

Likewise, a proposal to alter fundamentally the philosophy by which cars are designed was abandoned after teams said they could achieve the same efficiency gains with tweaks to the current rules, reducing both costs and the risk of the new rules being a mistake.

So, straight fours became V6s and a major change to car aerodynamics was abandoned - that was already two big changes to the original plans for a new 'green' F1.

Then, on Wednesday, F1's governing body the FIA put out a statement saying: "Changes made to bodywork design, originally aimed at reducing drag and downforce for increased efficiency, have reverted to 2012 specification."

Was this another change of tack? Was the much-vaunted 'green' F1 being abandoned? Had Ecclestone quietly won another political battle with FIA president Jean Todt?

Well, no, as it turns out.

The choice of wording was perhaps a touch misleading, but it refers to ongoing attempts to ensure the new rules meet their original targets - which were to ensure the new cars in 2014 are no more than five seconds slower than they were in 2010 as well as being much more efficient.

As the teams began work on the new designs, simulating the car layouts and projected engine performance, it began to become apparent that lap times might well be slower than had been intended.



So teams were tasked with looking independently at what elements of current car design could be maintained without losing sight of the intent of the new rules to produce aerodynamic downforce with as little trade-off in drag as possible.

The FIA's initial intention had been to strip the cars of all the extraneous bits of curved bodywork that have begun to sprout in various parts of the car, on the assumption that these must be inefficient. But as the effect of these parts was investigated, it turned out they were not as pernicious as at first thought.

So, for example, 'turning vanes' - the curved bits of bodywork that sprout behind the front wheels or under the raised noses - are very efficient. That is, they produce downforce but very little drag.

Likewise, the wide front wings that were introduced as part of the last major rule change in 2009 will stay, albeit they will be a little narrower than they are now.

By contrast, some teams were campaigning to keep what is known as the lower rear beam wing - a downforce-producing device at the bottom of the rear wing where it is attached to the back of the car. But this turned out to be very 'draggy', so it will be dropped as planned.

But the key point is this - the main visual and philosophical changes that were planned for the cars in 2014 have been retained.

So how will they look?

The biggest visible change will be at the front - the high noses that have become de rigueur in recent years will be outlawed.
Fast fact

This is fundamentally for safety reasons - high noses are considered more dangerous when they hit another car because of the increased likelihood of driver injury, and also make it more likely that a car will be launched in an impact. But it will also restrict downforce and make the cars slower.

How much lower will the noses be? In 2012, F1 cars had a maximum front nose height of 550mm above the floor of the car. In 2014, that is being reduced to 185mm - a reduction in height of 365mm.

Likewise, although the wide front wings will stay, they will be reduced in overall width from 1800mm (the same as the maximum width of the car) to 1650mm.

This will almost certainly fundamentally alter the overall aerodynamics of the cars.

Airflow over the car stems from the front wing, as the first part to hit the air. Designers are currently focused on using the ends of the wings to turn air around the outside of the front wheels. But in 2014 there will be 7cm of front wheel outside the wing, so getting the air to go around it will be that much more difficult.

This challenge will be made even harder because of new rules restricting what can be done with the front wing end-plates, the vertical bits at the outside edge of the wing.

Less obviously, but also important in the context of the last couple of years, will be a new rule governing exhaust exits.

Using exhaust gases for aerodynamic effect has become a central feature of F1 car design since 2010.

In 2011, so-called exhaust-blown diffusers, where the exhausts pipes were situated on the rear floor of the car and the engine programmed to blow gases out of them at all times, gained the top teams at least a second a lap.

For 2012, these were banned, engine mapping restricted and exhaust outlets moved forwards on the car and higher up. But teams still managed to use the gases to enhance aerodynamics by directing them at the gap between the floor and the rear wheels using what is known as the 'Coanda' effect.

Red Bull's progress in this area in late September was decisive in Sebastian Vettel beating Ferrari's Fernando Alonso to the drivers' championship.

But for 2014 there will be no more 'Coanda' effect - exhausts will have to exit between 3-5cm forward of the centre line of the rear wheels and no more than 25cm from the centre line of the car. From there, it will be impossible to blow them at the edges of the floor.

Equally, the overall efficiency targets will remain the same - whereas now use of fuel is free, it will be metered from 2014. Currently, cars use about 150kg of fuel (about 195 litres) in a Grand Prix; in 2014, they will be allowed to consume no more than 100kg (130l).

In summary then, the revolution is still very much underway; it's just the fine print that has changed.

F1 history has been shaped by the smallest of marginsComments (223) As the 2012 Formula 1 season fades into the distance, the fact that the sport has a new three-time world champion - and what that means - is sinking in.

Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel is not only the youngest of the nine men to have won three or more F1 drivers' titles, he is also only the third in history to have won three in a row, after Juan Manuel Fangio and Michael Schumacher. As Vettel is still only 25, Schumacher's all-time record of seven titles seems within reach of the precocious German.

These achievements have led to deserved plaudits for Vettel, the latest of which was to be called the sport's new "yardstick" by none less than F1 commercial boss Bernie Ecclestone in a recent interview.

F1's champions' league
•Michael Schumacher - 7
•Juan Manuel Fangio - 5
•Alain Prost - 4
•Sebastien Vettel - 3
•Jack Brabham - 3
•Jackie Stewart - 3
•Niki Lauda - 3
•Nelson Piquet - 3
•Ayrton Senna - 3
Vettel is undoubtedly a rare and precious talent, but whether winning three titles in a row makes him the measure by which all contemporaries are judged is another matter altogether.

He and Red Bull are undoubtedly the ones to beat next year - in the sense that he is the driver who has made best use of the best team and usually the best car over the last three years. But that's not the same thing.

Winning an F1 title, after all, is about more than talent alone. A driver has to have a fast car; it has to not break down too often; and he has to be lucky.

In different circumstances, it's not hard to imagine a quite different table of F1 champions.

Schumacher could have 'only' five titles; Alain Prost, who won four, could be on six or seven; and Fernando Alonso, who lost out to Vettel this season, could have four rather than two and Vettel one instead of three.

“Winning an F1 title is about more than talent alone. A driver has to have a fast car; it has to not break down; and he has to be lucky”
Let's look at Schumacher as an example.

First of all, his five consecutive titles for Ferrari from 2000-4 came about at a time when he had the best car, the richest team, bespoke tyres and unlimited testing to develop them. For much of that time, the others simply didn't have the resources to compete.

Schumacher's superiority was created by the combination of a great talent with the most ruthless and effective winning machine ever devised, which re-wrote the rules about what was achievable in F1.

Before that, Schumacher won in 1994 after driving into Williams's Damon Hill at the final race in Australia. The move put both men out - but had Hill been able to continue the Englishman would have been champion instead.

Likewise, Schumacher's 2003 title was won after the Michelin tyres on the cars of rivals McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen and Williams's Juan Pablo Montoya were suddenly and controversially declared illegal. After several months of there apparently being no problem with them.

The change of heart by F1's authorities came after an intervention by Schumacher's Ferrari team, and necessitated a re-design that undoubtedly affected the chances of Raikkonen and Montoya. Neither won again that season.

And what about Prost? He won his titles in 1985, '86, '89 and '93, but a more reliable car would have made him champion in '82; he was overhauled in '83 only after the late introduction of a controversial new fuel by Nelson Piquet's Brabham-BMW team; and the half-point deficit by which he lost in '84 to McLaren team-mate Niki Lauda would have been wiped out but for any one of a number of bad breaks.

How about Ayrton Senna? The man who recently topped BBC F1's greatest drivers poll - and who routinely heads similar lists - won three world titles. But might have won, too, in '89 had he not been controversially disqualified following a collision with Prost in the penultimate race that year.

Senna did, though, win 'only' three titles. Does that make him less than half as good as Schumacher? Of course not.

Yet in some people's minds the fact that Schumacher has won more championships and more grands prix than anyone else automatically makes him the greatest driver of all time.

Most, though, realise the argument is more nuanced than that.

A driver's standing is dictated at least partly by what he achieves in what he has; how consistently he maximises his machinery's potential; even whether he can win occasionally when not in the best car, which is perhaps the most demanding test of all.
Take the current era. Vettel won his first and third titles at the final races of the 2010 and 2012 seasons, in both cases relegating Alonso to second place.

But in 2010, only a catastrophic strategic error by Ferrari prevented the Spaniard taking the fourth place he needed in the final race in Abu Dhabi to become champion.

And this year, when Alonso lost out by three points, he would have comfortably won had his car not been assaulted at the start of the Belgian Grand Prix by the flying Lotus of Romain Grosjean - the man who Vettel's team-mate Mark Webber memorably dubbed the "first-lap nutcase".

Did those events reflect on the qualities of Alonso or Vettel as drivers in any way? Of course not.

“Had history turned out differently and Alonso had by now won four titles and Vettel one, would it make either a better or worse driver than he is?
”
None of this is to diminish a remarkable achievement by Vettel, or to downplay the talent of a man who will clearly be a central figure in F1 for the next decade.

But if one is forced to pick a yardstick for modern-day F1 drivers after the 2012 season, it would be hard to look beyond Alonso after the year he has just had.

In a demonstrably slower car, the Spaniard took the title to the final race of the season and - even allowing for the Spa incident, among others - would still have won had Vettel not been fortunate in being able to continue following a first-lap crash, for which he was at least partly to blame, that might have inflicted terminal damage to his car.

Likewise, Lewis Hamilton was in superlative form for McLaren, but poor reliability and operational mistakes by the team stopped his title challenge short. Does McLaren's poor reliability reflect badly on Hamilton's ability?

Let's put it another way. Had history turned out differently and Alonso had by now won four titles and Vettel one, would it make either a better or worse driver than he is?

And that's the point. Statistics don't mean everything. In fact, in the big picture, they mean very little. They're just numbers. They can't be ignored, but the real truth lies elsewhere.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula-one/21291534

Ferrari F138 launch: Domenicali urges strong performances
By Andrew Benson
Chief F1 writer in Maranello Ferrari have unveiled their new Formula 1 car admitting that they have to change their recent trend and perform from the start of the season.

Fernando Alonso's 2012 title campaign was hindered by a car that started the season 1.5 seconds off the pace. He lost out on the title by three points.

Team boss Stefano Domenicali said: "The key objective we have is of immediately delivering a competitive car."

Gary Anderson
BBC F1 technical analyst "There are some very positive aspects of the new Ferrari - and some that I'm not quite as excited about.

"The rear-end treatment, from the back of the engine, looks like a positive step forward.

"I was very critical of their car in that area last year - it was messy, with radiator outlets disrupting the airflow.

"It's much cleaner this year, with a much more aggressive treatment of the 'coke-bottle' area where the bodywork sweeps in between the rear wheels, an area they neglected in 2012. And it looks as if they have a very small gearbox, because the bodywork at the back is very low.

"That's all good for keeping the airflow as effective as possible in a crucial area and it looks like a big step forward.

"Forward of that, I'm less sure. The coke-bottle starts early, which is a very aggressive pursuit of downforce, but can lead to problems. I might have stayed clear of that and I think Ferrari might be the only team doing that.

"I looked at the new McLaren and saw a lot of positive points. The list of obvious gains is smaller on the Ferrari but we'll have to see how it goes on the track."

Alonso said the big teams will dominate and Ferrari "have to be one of them".

The Spaniard, 31, said he did not expect a repeat of last season, when seven drivers from seven different teams won the first seven races.

"It will be very difficult to repeat what we saw last year with seven winners in the first seven races," he said.

"I think it was a one-off as a result of the regulation changes [banning exhaust-blown diffusers]. Now, with things a bit more stabilised, we saw at the end of the season the top teams emerge and so I think it will be highly unlikely we will have seven races and seven winners.

"There will be three teams who win all the races and we have to be one of those teams."

Alonso lost out last year in an intense battle with Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel, the second time in three years he and Ferrari had narrowly been beaten by the German.

Ferrari have restructured the team and changed their approach to aerodynamic design work in the wake of problems last year.

The wind tunnel at the Maranello factory gave confusing results and this has been taken off line for improvement. The new F138 car has been designed exclusively using the former Toyota F1 tunnel in Cologne.

Domenicali said: "Unfortunately in recent years we have at the beginning of the winter unfortunately not been able to be right on top of what we are doing.

"We have tried to look at our organisation to be much more effective in the preparations over the coming week."

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Ferrari F138: Italian team unveil new F1 car for 2013
"We have come from a season that has been intense to say the least. To come second at the last race is always difficult.

"But we have already forgotten those things which left us with regret last year and we have started improving on the positive aspects of 2012, such as reliability and strategy during the races.

"There are plenty of things that allow us to look forward to the new season."

He said the first pre-season test in Jerez, Spain, next week would "not be to get performance immediately but to check out the things we have developed in our offices".

Alonso is skipping that test and leaving the work to team-mate Felipe Massa and development driver Pedro de la Rosa before starting his pre-season driving work at the second four-day pre-season test in Barcelona, which starts on 19 February.


Gallery: Formula 1's new cars of 2013

"I will follow the tests with great interest and all the information that comes back from Jerez of course I will be looking at," Alonso said. "In these next few weeks I will certainly be concentrating on preparing for the championship.

"I think it is right to step back and prepare a bit so I am 100% from [the first race in] Australia right through to [the last in] Brazil.

"We are lucky in this team to have a really good entente - we trust each other implicitly. Pedro and Felipe [and me], we are one person and the same."

................cuando Alonso perdió por tres puntos, se habría ganado con comodidad no hubiera sido asaltado su coche en el inicio de la Gran Premio de Bélgica por el Lotus de vuelo de Romain Grosjean.

Esto lo ha dicho un ingles.