Gary Anderson

[Alfaster-F1]

Battle for F1 title boiling up nicely after Hamilton win
By Gary Anderson BBC F1 technical analyst

McLaren were pretty much assured of winning the Italian Grand Prix from the moment Fernando Alonso had a problem with his Ferrari in qualifying and ended up 10th on the grid.

Alonso was quick all weekend and would have been up there among the McLarens from the beginning of the race had he not suffered a rear anti-roll bar problem which stopped him fighting for pole.
Continue reading the main story

“There are 40-odd points between Hamilton and Button and McLaren are going to have to start making tough decisions pretty soon about whether Button should start sacrificing his results to help Hamilton's title bid.”

Once he was out of the picture, it was McLaren's race to lose and Lewis Hamilton nailed it. Jenson Button would have taken second place were it not for a problem with his fuel system.

Button felt he would have had a chance to chase down Hamilton in the second stint. It was a tall order for him to win it from where he was, seven seconds adrift of Hamilton, but it would have been nice to see them going at it because they are not bosom buddies any more.

They used to be pretty close but they seem to have drifted apart, probably as a result of their different characters.

Hamilton can be a bit of a spoilt kid at times and Button is a fairly grown-up man. That difference in characters does separate people.

You attack the job in hand from the position of the person you are. Hamilton is a very quick driver, but he seems in the last little while to have lost the person he used to be.

McLaren have had a couple of blips this season but they have on balance had the fastest car, and they should be able to carry that through to the end of the championship.

But there are 40-odd points between Hamilton and Button, and McLaren are going to have to start making tough decisions pretty soon about whether Button should start sacrificing his own results to help Hamilton's title bid.

The big problem with that is the situation between the drivers, as well as the question of whether Hamilton is leaving for Mercedes next year, as it appears he may well do.

It does not matter to McLaren whether Hamilton wins the race and Button finishes second or the other way around, because the team will still get the same points in the constructors' championship, which is what most teams care about most.
Play media
Lewis Hamilton

Italian GP: Lewis Hamilton praises 'incredible' McLaren after win

The drivers care about their championship but if push comes to shove I'm not sure McLaren will make the decision to back Hamilton in the drivers'.

So that might have to come from the drivers, and their relationship does not look like it is in a position where Button will help Hamilton out.

Button still believes he can win the title, and if he can string three strong races together, with Alonso out of the top two or three, he would be back in it.
ALONSO ON SONG AGAIN

Whether they can overhaul the wily old Spaniard at the top of the championship remains to be seen.

Alonso has a smile on his face and he is relishing the job he has taken on - to win the championship in a car that really shouldn't be capable of it.

He is driving at the very top level every weekend and produced another great race in Italy.

Alonso moved up from 10th on the grid, and although he had a damaged car after Sebastian Vettel pushed him onto the grass at 180mph, he was able to camouflage it.

Alonso is going to take some beating because unless the Ferrari has reliability problems, or he gets caught up in an accident like he did in Belgium, it looks like he will drag a decent result out of it at every race.

The last three races, in Hungary, Belgium and Italy, have been on tracks that have very specific characteristics.

The final seven are more stable in terms of the car-performance window they require.

So the championship may come down to who brings the best box of new bits to Singapore.
PEREZ MAKES A VIRTUE OF VARIETY

The most eye-catching performance in the race came from Sauber's Sergio Perez, who started on the 'hard' rather than the 'medium' tyre in 12th place, did not stop until lap 29 and then fought up past the Ferraris to finish second behind Hamilton.

The Mexican drove a very sensible race. Had he stopped a couple of laps earlier, his overall race time would have been quicker, but because he went so long to his stop meant he had the confidence to drive the wheels off his car in the final stint, when he was on the medium tyre and everyone else had switched to the hard.
Constructors' championship

Points won in last four races:
101 - McLaren
74 - Ferrari
73 - Lotus
56 - Red Bull
28 - Mercedes

Sauber have shown very strong race pace this season, but they often struggle in qualifying. They have a better car than their grid position is allowing them to show.

The team and drivers collectively are not able to get the best out of it consistently on low fuel in qualifying but once it has fuel in it the Sauber is clearly a very consistent car to drive and they are able to pull out a good result.
RED BULL RAGING

Monza was the first race at which Red Bull had not scored any points since Korea in 2010 and Sebastian Vettel retired with his second alternator failure in a race this year. It was also the second of the Italy weekend, after an earlier one in Friday practice.

I'm told the alternator was modified after it failed in Valencia but that Belgium, the week before Italy, was the first time they had run the new version.

The problem is one of excessive internal temperature - effectively a thermal overload because the alternator is working too hard.

Red Bull have not said why it is happening but their design chief Adrian Newey is well known for packaging his cars very tightly, and I'm sure that is true of the battery in the RB8.

Going way back to my days at Jordan in the 1990s, we had a similar problem with our alternators on the Peugeot engines. We solved it by producing a housing for them with a water jacket and used the engine water to keep the temperature stable. This works better than just cooling it with air.

It is definitely a packaging problem and between Red Bull and Renault they have to have a look at it and get it fixed quickly because in this championship teams cannot afford to throw away races.

We saw Alonso not score any points in Spa and suddenly the lead for which he had worked so hard appeared to be disappearing pretty quickly. It has come back again now because Vettel did not score in Italy.

Behind Alonso, there are only two points between Hamilton, Lotus's Kimi Raikkonen and Vettel for second, third and fourth in the championship and Mark Webber is not far behind.

Alonso may well not need any extra help but he might get it anyway because the McLaren and Red Bull drivers will be fighting with each other for a while, taking points off each other.

It would not take much for there to be a bit of an implosion at either of those teams.

Alonso is going to be rubbing his hands about that.

Fuente.

[Alfaster-F1]

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[maripi]

Gary Anderson column: Red Bull’s secrets revealed

Sebastian Vettel dominated the Indian Grand Prix to make it four wins in a row and the question on everyone's lips in Formula 1 is: how have his Red Bull team turned around their performance so dramatically?

They have been there or thereabouts all year, always competing close to the front, but Vettel's last victory before his current run was in Bahrain in April, the fourth race of the season.

Now, however, the topsy-turvy form of the first half of the season that saw seven winners in seven races has been replaced by total Red Bull domination.

I'm going to try to explain how they have done it.

Red Bull's recent form is founded on a package of upgrades that started at the Singapore Grand Prix and has been refined ever since.

The effect has been to take a car that had good race pace but which the drivers were struggling to consistently qualify at the front and put it unfailingly at the front of the grid. From there Vettel can control the race.

Much of the secret lies at the back of the car.

“Red Bull's strategy is only guaranteed to work if they qualify at the front and then break free in the opening two laps before DRS use is allowed. If it does not qualify at the front - or if Vettel makes an error in the first two laps and drops back - he would have a problem”

There, chief technical officer Adrian Newey has found a way to recover more of the rear downforce that was lost through the banning of exhaust-blown diffusers at the end of last season than anyone else.

Exhaust-blown diffusers, and Red Bull's mastery of that technology, was what helped Vettel to his domination in 2011. The huge boost in rear downforce required a counter-intuitive driving style.

Normally when a car oversteers, a driver corrects it by lifting off the throttle and/or applying opposite lock. But the extra rear downforce created by the exhausts blowing along the rear floor and 'sealing' the gap between it and the rear tyres meant that by applying extra power when the car slid, it would grip again.

That downforce was lost with the banning of exhaust-blown diffusers. But Red Bull, under chief technical officer Adrian Newey, have been working away all year at trying to get as much of it back as possible, to allow them to run their car set-up - and their races - as they were in 2011.

So have all the other teams of course but, finally, Red Bull has unlocked the door. The new design is nowhere near as effective as an exhaust-blown diffuser but it is closer to it than anyone else has managed.

A revision of the rear bodywork has changed the direction of the exhaust gases and the way they interact with the rear aerodynamics.

The gases are guided down channels inside the rear wheels, sealing the gap between the tyres and the diffuser sides.
Play media
Sebastian Vettel

India win was not easy - Vettel

That means the diffuser creates higher levels of downforce at the high rear ride-heights and large degrees of car rake (front down, rear up) that Newey likes to use.

The benefit of running a car with high rake is that at low speed the diffuser, or rear underfloor of the car, gives more downforce - as long as it can be made to work properly.

But there are difficulties to be resolved too, and it is doing so that has put Red Bull in their current position.

Firstly, at high ride heights the diffuser leaks more air, which reduces downforce. So it only produces more downforce than a car with less rake if there is a mechanism to stop that happening.

In 2011, Red Bull did that with the exhaust-blown diffuser, by pumping the exhaust gases into the gap between the tyre and the diffuser. This works the aerodynamic devices on the rear brake ducts much harder, and they in turn 'seal' the diffuser - stopping air spilling around its edges.

The second problem is that when the car goes closer to the ground, as it does at higher speed with downforce acting upon it, a diffuser that works at high ride-height will stall earlier because the airflow cannot stay attached as the air pressure under the car decreases.

But Red Bull now have a way to stop this happening.
Indian GP top 10

1 Sebastian Vettel - Red Bull 1:31:10.744

2 Fernando Alonso - Ferrari +00:09.437

3 Mark Webber - Red Bull +00:13.217

4 Lewis Hamilton - McLaren +00:13.909

5 Jenson Button - McLaren +00:26.266

6 Felipe Massa - Ferrari +00:44.674

7 Kimi Raikkonen - Lotus +00:45.227

8 Nico Hulkenberg - Force India +00:54.998

9 Romain Grosjean - Lotus +00:56.103

10 Bruno Senna - Williams +01:14.975

They have two ducts - letterbox-shaped horizontal holes - in the transition between the two levels of the floor of the car, the 'step plane' and the 'reference plane', which let air through into the diffuser. This aspect is similar in some ways to the double diffusers of 2009.

These ducts are fed by air coming through the coke-bottle shape between the rear wheels, and when the low pressure under the car gets to a certain level it sucks in air and keeps the airflow attached.

So that gives the car better speed in both low-speed and quicker corners. But the system is made even more effective by Red Bull's 'double DRS system' on the rear wing , which no-one else has.

That interacts with the airflow from the diffuser so that on the straight, when they don't want that extra downforce under the car, the airflow across the lower rear wing and the diffuser is changed so that the downforce is reduced and the car goes faster in a straight line.

So the whole back end of the car is a very clever application of two technologies that have been banned but in a new way that is legal under the current rules. It's less effective than a double diffuser or an exhaust-blown diffuser, but it's a similar principle.

Hence the step-change in Red Bull's performance since they introduced it at Singapore and then developed it further into Japan and through Korea and India.

There is, though, one potential flaw in Red Bull's entire approach.

Because in the race the 'double DRS' system can only be used when a driver is within a second of a car in front in a dedicated zone, the Red Bull is potentially vulnerable in the race because of its lack of straight-line speed.

So the strategy is only guaranteed to work if they qualify at the front and then break free in the opening two laps before DRS use is allowed.

In a car that good, and with Vettel at the wheel, that can be taken pretty much as a given.

But if it does not qualify at the front - or if Vettel makes an error in the first two laps and drops back - he would have a problem.

The way he and Red Bull are operating at the moment, however, the problem is all their rivals'.

Gary Anderson, BBC F1's technical analyst, is the former technical director of the Jordan, Stewart and Jaguar teams. He was talking to BBC Sport's Andrew Benson.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/20118852

[maripi]

Sebastian Vettel dominated the Indian Grand Prix to make it four wins in a row and the question on everyone's lips in Formula 1 is: how have his Red Bull team turned around their performance so dramatically?

They have been there or thereabouts all year, always competing close to the front, but Vettel's last victory before his current run was in Bahrain in April, the fourth race of the season.

Now, however, the topsy-turvy form of the first half of the season that saw seven winners in seven races has been replaced by total Red Bull domination.

I'm going to try to explain how they have done it.

Red Bull's recent form is founded on a package of upgrades that started at the Singapore Grand Prix and has been refined ever since.

The effect has been to take a car that had good race pace but which the drivers were struggling to consistently qualify at the front and put it unfailingly at the front of the grid. From there Vettel can control the race.

Much of the secret lies at the back of the car.

“Red Bull's strategy is only guaranteed to work if they qualify at the front and then break free in the opening two laps before DRS use is allowed. If it does not qualify at the front - or if Vettel makes an error in the first two laps and drops back - he would have a problem”

There, chief technical officer Adrian Newey has found a way to recover more of the rear downforce that was lost through the banning of exhaust-blown diffusers at the end of last season than anyone else.

Exhaust-blown diffusers, and Red Bull's mastery of that technology, was what helped Vettel to his domination in 2011. The huge boost in rear downforce required a counter-intuitive driving style.

Normally when a car oversteers, a driver corrects it by lifting off the throttle and/or applying opposite lock. But the extra rear downforce created by the exhausts blowing along the rear floor and 'sealing' the gap between it and the rear tyres meant that by applying extra power when the car slid, it would grip again.

That downforce was lost with the banning of exhaust-blown diffusers. But Red Bull, under chief technical officer Adrian Newey, have been working away all year at trying to get as much of it back as possible, to allow them to run their car set-up - and their races - as they were in 2011.

So have all the other teams of course but, finally, Red Bull has unlocked the door. The new design is nowhere near as effective as an exhaust-blown diffuser but it is closer to it than anyone else has managed.

A revision of the rear bodywork has changed the direction of the exhaust gases and the way they interact with the rear aerodynamics.

The gases are guided down channels inside the rear wheels, sealing the gap between the tyres and the diffuser sides.
Play media
Sebastian Vettel

India win was not easy - Vettel

That means the diffuser creates higher levels of downforce at the high rear ride-heights and large degrees of car rake (front down, rear up) that Newey likes to use.

The benefit of running a car with high rake is that at low speed the diffuser, or rear underfloor of the car, gives more downforce - as long as it can be made to work properly.

But there are difficulties to be resolved too, and it is doing so that has put Red Bull in their current position.

Firstly, at high ride heights the diffuser leaks more air, which reduces downforce. So it only produces more downforce than a car with less rake if there is a mechanism to stop that happening.

In 2011, Red Bull did that with the exhaust-blown diffuser, by pumping the exhaust gases into the gap between the tyre and the diffuser. This works the aerodynamic devices on the rear brake ducts much harder, and they in turn 'seal' the diffuser - stopping air spilling around its edges.

The second problem is that when the car goes closer to the ground, as it does at higher speed with downforce acting upon it, a diffuser that works at high ride-height will stall earlier because the airflow cannot stay attached as the air pressure under the car decreases.

But Red Bull now have a way to stop this happening.
Indian GP top 10

1 Sebastian Vettel - Red Bull 1:31:10.744

2 Fernando Alonso - Ferrari +00:09.437

3 Mark Webber - Red Bull +00:13.217

4 Lewis Hamilton - McLaren +00:13.909

5 Jenson Button - McLaren +00:26.266

6 Felipe Massa - Ferrari +00:44.674

7 Kimi Raikkonen - Lotus +00:45.227

8 Nico Hulkenberg - Force India +00:54.998

9 Romain Grosjean - Lotus +00:56.103

10 Bruno Senna - Williams +01:14.975

They have two ducts - letterbox-shaped horizontal holes - in the transition between the two levels of the floor of the car, the 'step plane' and the 'reference plane', which let air through into the diffuser. This aspect is similar in some ways to the double diffusers of 2009.

These ducts are fed by air coming through the coke-bottle shape between the rear wheels, and when the low pressure under the car gets to a certain level it sucks in air and keeps the airflow attached.

So that gives the car better speed in both low-speed and quicker corners. But the system is made even more effective by Red Bull's 'double DRS system' on the rear wing , which no-one else has.

That interacts with the airflow from the diffuser so that on the straight, when they don't want that extra downforce under the car, the airflow across the lower rear wing and the diffuser is changed so that the downforce is reduced and the car goes faster in a straight line.

So the whole back end of the car is a very clever application of two technologies that have been banned but in a new way that is legal under the current rules. It's less effective than a double diffuser or an exhaust-blown diffuser, but it's a similar principle.

Hence the step-change in Red Bull's performance since they introduced it at Singapore and then developed it further into Japan and through Korea and India.

There is, though, one potential flaw in Red Bull's entire approach.

Because in the race the 'double DRS' system can only be used when a driver is within a second of a car in front in a dedicated zone, the Red Bull is potentially vulnerable in the race because of its lack of straight-line speed.

So the strategy is only guaranteed to work if they qualify at the front and then break free in the opening two laps before DRS use is allowed.

In a car that good, and with Vettel at the wheel, that can be taken pretty much as a given.

But if it does not qualify at the front - or if Vettel makes an error in the first two laps and drops back - he would have a problem.

The way he and Red Bull are operating at the moment, however, the problem is all their rivals'.

Gary Anderson, BBC F1's technical analyst, is the former technical director of the Jordan, Stewart and Jaguar teams. He was talking to BBC Sport's Andrew Benson.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/20118852

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Cuidado con esta gente

[maripi]

Gary Anderson Column: Vettel gives Red Bull pause for thought
By Gary Anderson BBC F1 technical analyst

Sebastian Vettel's rise from a pit-lane start to a podium finish at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix might make Red Bull stop and think about the way they approach Formula 1.

Red Bull's philosophy is to run short gears for best acceleration, gain as much downforce as they can to maximise cornering speeds and go for the ultimate lap time in qualifying.

The idea is to start at the front of the grid and blitz the first few laps, get out of the one-second window so their rivals can't employ DRS and control the race from there with the fastest car.

But it's a strategy that has inherent risks - fail to qualify at the front, or make a mistake, and it's a bit more tricky. Overtaking will be hard. As Vettel's team-mate Mark Webber proved with his incident-packed race in Abu Dhabi after losing places at the start.
Play media
Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel

Vettel delighted with battling third

This is why Red Bull decided to start Vettel from the pit lane rather than the back of the grid following his exclusion from qualifying . It meant they could change the set-up.

They gave him longer gear ratios and less downforce to give him more straight-line speed and help him overtake as he climbed back through the field.

Vettel went from 23rd fastest in the speed traps in qualifying to fourth in the race, 10km/h faster than he had been on Saturday. And even so, he was still the fastest car in the race, and set the fastest lap on the final lap.

He climbed through the field because the car was quick, the set-up allowed him to and he drove really well - apart from his two mistakes in damaging his front wing.

So I think Red Bull will go away from Abu Dhabi scratching their heads a little about the philosophy of how they run the car.

There are two races to go, they will decide the championship between Vettel and his rival Fernando Alonso of Ferrari and neither driver can afford a bad race.

Red Bull need to cover their back. If for whatever reason they don't qualify on pole, they need to be sure they can race well, and Vettel's race proved they can do that with a different set-up and still be really quick.
THE ROOT OF FERRARI'S PROBLEMS

The big mystery of this season has been how the Ferrari can be a second off the pace in qualifying and only a tenth of a second or two off it in the race. I think I've figured out what the problem is.

It is a rear wing and diffuser problem, but it's a little complicated to explain, so bear with me.

In qualifying, the DRS overtaking aid can be used all the time. A driver comes off a corner and opens the DRS as soon as possible, reducing the drag and the wing wake, which gives extra straight-line speed.
Abu Dhabi Top 10 Results

1 Kimi Raikkonen - Lotus 1:45:58.667

2 Fernando Alonso - Ferrari +0.852

3 Sebastian Vettel - Red Bull +4.163

4 Jenson Button - McLaren +7.787

5 Pastor Maldonado - Williams +13.007

6 Kamui Kobayashi - Sauber +20.076

7 Felipe Massa - Ferrari +22.896

8 Bruno Senna - Williams +23.542

9 Paul di Resta - Force India +24.160

10 Daniel Ricciardo - Toro Rosso +27.463

As the car goes faster, the rear gets closer to the ground and that 'stalls' the diffuser, which is the underfloor which curves upwards at the back of the car. 'Stalling' means the airflow is not attached to it any more, and that reduces the downforce it produces.

When the driver brakes for the next corner, the car changes attitude - the rear comes up.

I am 99.99% sure that at that time, on the Ferrari, the diffuser does not re-attach immediately.

Because of that, the airflow at the back of the car is different, so the rear wing does not re-attach either.

So on initial corner entry, 18 or 20 times a lap in qualifying or whatever, the rear of the car has less downforce and therefore is unstable for a given amount of time until the diffuser and rear wing re-attach.

This rear instability on corner entry is what the Ferrari drivers are complaining about.

To reduce rear instability, you run less front downforce, but that gives understeer - less front grip - when the diffuser re-attaches. As it happens, less front wing also means less overall downforce.

The braking duration for a lot of these corners will be about a second. If the diffuser is not re-attaching for 0.2-0.3secs, that is a problem.

In the race, though, the DRS can only be used in specified zones and when the driver is within a second of the car in front.

So during the race on the non-DRS straights the diffuser will still stall but the rear wing is still working, which means when the driver brakes the diffuser re-attaches more easily. So in the race the driver has rear stability other than when he is braking after using the DRS.

That means in the race the Ferrari is more consistent.
Play media
Kimi Raikkonen

Formula 1: Abu Dhabi Grand Prix highlights

You'll probably find that the stall-point on the diffuser in the race is at a lower ride-height (a higher top speed) than in qualifying, when it will stall earlier because the DRS is open on every straight.

So my suggestion to Ferrari would be to have a slightly less aggressive DRS system. They have one of the biggest gains in top speed when the DRS is open compared to when it is closed. I would reduce that a bit but make sure the rear-wing airflow is a bit more robust.

With the resources Ferrari have, that is something they could do very quickly if they got on with it - certainly in time for the next race.

They are using four or five rear wing designs and chopping and changing between them, so they are going round and round the problem but not actually fixing it.

This lack of consistency may also explain why Alonso was not able to improve on his final run in qualifying last weekend.

He made a point in Abu Dhabi of saying the fact he did the same lap time on three different runs in qualifying meant he had got the most out of the car.

Normally, that would be wrong - a driver should improve on his final run because up until then it is all about 'banker' laps. He should save the 100% on-the-limit lap until the end. Also, in Abu Dhabi the ambient temperature was dropping all the time as night fell and that would give more engine power.

But perhaps the instability at the rear of the Ferrari limits its potential.
Winners of the Abu Dhabi GP

2012 - Kimi Raikkonen - Lotus
2011 - Lewis Hamilton - McLaren
2010 - Sebastian Vettel - Red Bull
2009 - Sebastian Vettel - Red Bull

The driver can only increase his effort level if he has the confidence to do so. If he doesn't have confidence on the corner entry, then he's stuck. The driver can't go quicker because he is at the limit of what the car will respond to.

The contrast with the Red Bull is interesting - Vettel nearly always goes faster on his final qualifying run. But while that car moves around and needs a lot of driving, it does respond to extra effort from the driver without doing anything nasty.

That means it is predictable, gives the driver confidence and the driver can find a tenth of a second or two.

So it was very instructive to see that on a weekend when Vettel missed nearly all of final practice, he not only did not get pole, but he also was beaten by Webber. He didn't have the confidence in the car he normally does.

That's a problem Alonso is probably facing every weekend.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/20210164

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[maripi]

Gary Anderson column: Ferrari getting left behind
By Gary Anderson
BBC F1 technical analyst Formula 1's return to the United States was a resounding success in Austin, Texas, at the weekend.

The Circuit of the Americas is a fantastic facility. There was concern that it would be a bit of a bore, and overtaking very difficult, but it didn't turn out that way at all.

A big crowd turned up and they loved it. They cheered, they saw a lot of action and plenty of good racing. I was very impressed.

Brazil permutations
•Alonso must finish on the podium to stand a chance of snatching the title from Vettel
•Victory for Alonso would give him the title if Vettel finishes lower than fourth
•Second place for the Spaniard would mean he would only win the title if Vettel failed to make the top seven
•Third spot for Alonso would require Vettel to finish lower than ninth

Pirelli understandably made a conservative choice on tyres at a new track, which meant grip was very low for everyone, but as it turned out that was probably a good thing. It suited the circuit as it was.

The circuit, being so new, was very slippery off line, but because the tyres were so hard it was quite slippery on the line, too. So the disparity between the two was not as great as it would have been with softer tyres, which made overtaking a bit easier than it might otherwise have been.

Coming back next year, though, there needs to be a more aggressive tyre. The circuit will have bedded down by then, the winter rain will make it easier to put rubber down on it.

GREAT WIN FOR HAMILTON
There was some excellent racing at the front. Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel were in a battle of their own. The writing was on the wall about that from the practice sessions and qualifying.

They were ahead of their team-mates and their confidence levels were very high. It's a circuit the drivers love and you could see the glint in their eyes.

Vettel was pretty cross when he lost the lead to Hamilton after he was delayed through the first sector of the lap by Narain Karthikeyan's HRT but it would be wrong to blame the traffic.

That's part of the game. He was just the unlucky one. The reality is he met up with a slow car in a place where it couldn't just disappear.

Could Vettel have planned that differently, seen it there and backed up a little and made sure he caught him at a different place? Who knows. But blaming the traffic is not correct.

What I would do is partially blame Red Bull and the way they set the car up.

Play media
'One of the best wins' for Hamilton
Think back to Abu Dhabi and the way they set the car up after Vettel's exclusion from qualifying.

Normally, Red Bull run short gears and lots of downforce for the ultimate lap time and try to win from the front.

But in Abu Dhabi they took some downforce off it, changed the gear ratios and gave the car faster straight-line speed so it was easier to overtake. But the lap time was still very strong in spite of that.

I thought they might look at that and compromise a little for this race to keep their options open, give Vettel a set-up that meant if he didn't get pole or got tripped up in the race - as he did - he could still recover with enough straight-line speed to pass people.

But they didn't do that. They were slow on the straight in qualifying, with the DRS overtaking aid open. Hamilton was six km/h faster than them.

In the race, the leader defending his position does not have the use of DRS but the guy chasing him does. DRS gives you about 15km/h so that's a 21km/h advantage in speed for Hamilton, so Vettel was helpless.

Then, once Vettel was behind, his advantage even with DRS open was only nine km/h, so there was no hope of him recovering from a difficult situation.

In Brazil, they might need to abandon that philosophy of going for ultimate lap time at the expense of straight-line speed.

It's very easy to get caught up in someone else's incident, have a bad start, drop some places, and then you can't get back up there again.

FERRARI IN LAST-CHANCE SALOON
Fernando Alonso has to make up 13 points on Vettel to win the title in Brazil this weekend, which means that even if Vettel does not finish, Alonso still has to come third.

With the performance we saw from McLaren in the US, and the Lotus cars in Abu Dhabi, that might not be easy even without Vettel in the race, because Ferrari haven't improved their car enough.

In Austin, McLaren and Red Bull both had new front wings, which worked. Ferrari had a new diffuser for Alonso and he qualified behind Massa on merit for the first time all season, which suggests that the diffuser did not work.

Ferrari are getting left behind. The car, I believe, is too sensitive aerodynamically around the diffuser and rear wing.

It's a problem that is most obvious in qualifying because it creates instability at the rear on corner turn-in that is worsened by the use of the DRS overtaking aid, as I explained in my last column.

Standings heading into the last race in Brazil
1. Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull, 273 points

2. Fernando Alonso, Ferrari, 260

3. Kimi Raikkonen, Lotus, 206

4. Lewis Hamilton, McLaren, 190

5. Mark Webber, Red Bull, 167

6. Jenson Button, McLaren, 163

7. Felipe Massa, Ferrari, 107

8. Romain Grosjean, Lotus, 96

9. Nico Rosberg, Mercedes, 93

10. Sergio Perez, Sauber, 66

Ferrari are not qualifying close enough to the front and you can't usually win races playing catch-up - they have to be gifted to you. In Brazil, Ferrari have to get their car to qualify at the front.

They are going to have to scratch their heads but there are things they can do. You don't always have time to look at it in the wind tunnel; you have to look at it logically.

My focus would be on the diffuser. They could adjust the way it behaves and small alterations will change it dramatically. I've done that myself in the past using body filler, believe it or not.

The chances of making the progress they need are virtually nil but they are in a position where they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying.

If Ferrari can do something to make that area work a little better, they could get a big step forward out of it. If you give the driver confidence, you can gain the amounts of lap time and I don't think they are giving the drivers confidence in qualifying.

RED BULL GIVE FERRARI HOPE
Having said all that, Brazil is a unique track. It is at reasonably high altitude so the engines lose about 65bhp.

The Kers power-boost system is therefore commensurately more important, and Red Bull's is not only less powerful than Ferrari's but also less reliable.

Red Bull also have a concern over the reliability of their alternators following the failure on Mark Webber's car.

Red Bull were using an alternator in the same specification as the one that failed on Vettel's car in Valencia in June.

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Vettel happy to win team title
They were running one spec of alternator up to Valencia, but when that failed Renault lengthened the armature to get more output at low revs because they thought that was causing the problem, that it wasn't charging enough.

But then that new spec failed on Vettel's car in Monza because of the lengthened armature so Red Bull went back to the pre-Valencia spec but built with tender loving care.

But those bits were running out so Renault designed a new one, trying to improve the areas where it had failed.

The other Renault-engined teams were running the new alternator in Austin. Everyone was supposed to run it but Red Bull decided to stick with the old one because it had been reliable.

But in Austin the new-spec alternator ran without problems on the Lotus, Williams and Caterham, and Webber's pre-Valencia spec one failed.

So now Red Bull have a big decision to make as to which one to use in Brazil.

That's the thing in F1; there are so many things that can go wrong. Thirteen points is a lot, but the title is not sewn up by any means
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/20391729

[maripi]

Alonso struggled with his Ferrari while Vettel mastered his Red Bull By Gary Anderson
BBC F1 technical analyst Ferrari's Fernando Alonso did not lose the world championship to Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel in Brazil on Sunday - it was gone long before that.

Thirteen points is a lot to make up in one race. Alonso almost managed it - he ended the season just three points behind - but in the end it was too much to do.

The Brazilian Grand Prix was a lottery; races run in changeable conditions always are.

It could have gone many different ways. Winner Jenson Button did two stops, Alonso did three, and Vettel did four. That sort of thing can change the outcome of the race dramatically.

Everything went wrong for Vettel - although he was lucky he did not have to retire as a result of his first-lap collision with Williams's Bruno Senna - and Alonso could very easily have walked away with the championship.

“Alonso got [Ferrari] into a position they should never have been in. They got to a point where he was bringing in decent points and had a 40-point lead in the championship and I think they stood back a bit”

Ferrari might look back and wonder whether they might have won the race - and the championship - had they played it differently.

Alonso - like Vettel and Lewis Hamilton - came in to the pits to fit intermediate tyres when it started to rain after about 10 laps. But Button and Force India's Nico Hulkenberg did not. A few laps later, Alonso and the others needed to come back in for dry tyres.

That lost Alonso 40 seconds to the leaders in a race he really needed to win, even if that deficit was wiped out by the safety car later.

He would have had to have beaten a faster car in the McLaren and in Button a driver who excels in such conditions. But 40 seconds is a large amount of time to throw away.

Alonso and Ferrari
There are two championships in Formula 1 - the constructors' and the drivers'.

With Red Bull's two drivers, and their total commitment to development of the car, they certainly deserve to win constructors. But there is a sense that Vettel won the drivers' championship because the Red Bull was a better car than the Ferrari and was better developed.

That's OK, because that's what happens, but if Alonso had won the championship it would have been a true drivers' championship because it would have been in a car that wasn't worthy of it.

The Ferrari was really not very good at the start of the year but, in all the confusion the teams were having over how best to use the new Pirelli tyre, Alonso was able to pull some results out of it.

F1 2012 drivers' championship
1. Sebastien Vettel - 281 points

2. Fernando Alonso - 278 points

3. Kimi Raikkonen - 207 points

4. Lewis Hamilton - 190 points

5. Jenson Button - 188 points

6. Mark Webber - 179 points

7. Felipe Massa - 122 points

8. Romain Grosjean - 96 points

9. Nico Rosberg - 93 points

10. Sergio Perez - 66 points

He was very good at picking up the characteristics of the tyre. He just knew what to do with it.

The Pirellis don't like it when a driver tries to brake and turn in at the same time. Alonso picked that up in no time and adapted himself to it.

So he was able to pull out some really good results even though the car wasn't competitive.

Through Spain, Monaco and Canada, the Ferrari had a bit of an update that made it reasonable. That was really the package with which they should have started the season.

From there on, it was down to Ferrari to find the solutions to the car's problems.

It's strange that while Alonso's team-mate Felipe Massa was struggling with the car at the start of the year, he was able to drive it well at the end.

Massa's biggest problem is probably that he over-drives the car - so he ends up making a lot of mistakes.

But Ferrari's development direction through the season gave them a car Massa could drive and at that point Alonso fell back a bit, in terms of being able to use his talent to drag something out of the car.

That suggests that initially they had a car with very peaky downforce but that if you had a driver who could feel it - ie Alonso - it was quicker relative to the opposition.

It seems Ferrari made the car more driveable but lost out-and-out performance. They need to worry about having made Massa into as good a driver as Alonso. I believe Alonso is better, so it's strange that is the case.

Fernando Alonso GP wins 2012
•Malaysia
•Europe
•Germany

They need to regroup for next year and understand what happened, because for the last third of the season you'd have to say they probably threw away the championship by not developing the car enough when Red Bull were coming on strong.

Alonso got them into a position they should never have been in. They got to a point where he was bringing in decent points and had a 40-point lead in the championship and I think they stood back a bit.

They have been fiddling about with the rear wing since the Singapore Grand Prix, trying to fix an aerodynamic problem at the rear of the car.

The wing they ran in Brazil has been around for five races on and off and last weekend was the first time they'd actually raced it.

If it was good to race it in Brazil, it was good to race five races ago. It looks like they don't understand how to fix the problem they have, and are just poking around a bit.

Alonso did have some bad luck in crashing out in Japan and Belgium when it was not his fault.

But Vettel had two alternator failures in races. OK, they are things the team have influence over but he still lost as many races as Alonso.

Equally, Red Bull allow their drivers to race early in the season, whereas Ferrari have a defined number one. If you take Red Bull and give Vettel their big points from every race, Vettel thrashes Alonso comprehensively.

But Ferrari shouldn't go away from Brazil unhappy. They definitely have some good stuff on that car somewhere, even though there is a lot of stuff that's not good.

Vettel and Red Bull
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Sebastian Vettel joins F1 elite with third world title
Vettel has won his three championships in three different scenarios.

In 2010 he won from behind, keeping his head down and delivering the results after losing points to reliability problems and errors early in the season.

In 2011 he won it from the front, which is a different set of pressures.

In 2012 it was a bit of both - he had to catch up, did and then took the pressure on the way.

Red Bull started 2012 poorly by their standards. Their toys were taken away, in the form of the exhaust-blown diffuser around which the aerodynamic philosophy of their car was developed.

As a result of that, the car lacked out-and-out performance on new tyres in qualifying which affected their philosophy of how they run the car, which is to stick it on pole and control the race from the front.

At the start of the season, they didn't have a car to exploit that approach. But they turned it around and that's what it's about.

You're going into a new season and if you haven't shown you can turn it around, how can you have confidence in what you're doing?

Vettel turned around his season compared to Webber, who was a bit stronger in the first half of the season.

Red Bull developed the car to suit Vettel, as they're always going to do.


They are Vettel fans. He drives the Red Bull concept - he turns in on the brakes, which gives understeer, then when he gets the brakes off, the front grips, the car rotates around the nose and he nails the throttle because he's got confidence that the rear aerodynamics will make the back grip.

Alonso could drive like this, too. But the Ferrari doesn't have the rear downforce to allow it.

Following the big developments at the rear that Red Bull made from Singapore onwards, that's what happened with the car again, even if not to the same extent as in 2011. That's what design chief Adrian Newey told Vettel would happen if he drove that way - and Vettel believed him and did it.

But Webber does not have the confidence to drive that way - it's counter-intuitive.

Mc L aren

McLaren ended the season as they started it - locking out the front row and Jenson Button winning the race.

Overall they had the quickest car and so should have a lot of confidence for next year.

I would imagine they'll raise the underside of the chassis so it is as high as on other cars - there is still a tenth of a second or two in that for them.

McLaren have lost their strongest asset in Hamilton but Button proved in 2009 that if you give him a car he likes he's a rocket ship and now they only have one driver to listen to.

For the last three years they had two - but Button and Hamilton drive their cars differently, and you have to believe in one driver to follow a development direction. So in some ways Hamilton leaving might help.
F1 should be a contest between Red Bull and McLaren next year - if Ferrari can do anything to get on to the back of them they haven't shown it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/20501817