Peter Windsor

[maripi]

Full British Grand Prix Race Analysis


July 2011 – Mark Webber was emphatic about it on Saturday evening: “Either Fernando or me will win this one. Ferrari are strong; they’ve got the pace.”

That pace was clear and bright on Saturday morning, in Free Practice Three (FP3) – when the sky, too, was kind of clear for the first time in what seemed like aeons. I was watching at Becketts, at the entrance to the dramatic left-right-left-right high-speed sequence that still spells “Silverstone”. Michael Schumacher was out first, piercing the dry line in his Mercedes – and then came Mark Webber, all reflexes, flashes of blue and yellow and rasping Renault throttle. The RBR7 was the standard; it always is when seventh-gear corner entries give way to quick snicks down to sixth or fifth.

Then came Felipe Massa, flat in seventh on metres of road over which Mark had been feathering, his Ferrari glued to the newly-lain surface as if it was…an RBR7. Could it be? Was it real? Surely Felipe had been on Pirelli options….

Fernando Alonso was a little tentative at first, feeling, as he was, the dry grip for the first time that morning; but then he settled down and began to sculpt. He was flat through Maggotts – and then flat into the first right-hander, extending the full-throttle moment a few metres more even than Massa. The Ferrari sat square and evenly-balanced, riding an inside kerb as if it was a Fiat Punto and allowing Fernando room even for a lateish apex as he finally left the complex.

And this time we knew, for we had remembered to spot the tyres: the Ferrari was indeed on Pirelli primes.

A new world was upon us, bringing with it a concept that was about as plausible as Fernando Alonso suddenly forgetting how to correct an oversteer moment: to wit, the Ferrari F150th at Silverstone seemed to be right there with the RBR7 on fast corners.

The Ferraris were quick on those Pirelli primes, too; that was the underscoring thing. Most of the oppo picked up a good 1.5 – 1.8 sec per lap when they bolted on the options on Saturday morning; Ferrari found but 1.2 sec – and that wasn’t because they were slow. Their margin of improvement was healthily small because their prime tyre base line was abnormally good. Pirelli confirmed that.

Yes, Red Bull Racing would go on to lock out the front row in qualifying. This time, though, it was a closely-run thing. Mark Webber on primes in Q1: 1min 32.670 sec. Felipe Massa on primes in Q1: 1min 32.760 sec. Seb Vettel on primes in Q1: 1min 32. 977 sec. Fernando Alonso on primes in Q1: 1min 32.986sec. RBR-Ferrari-RBR-Ferrari – all on hard tyres. With no-one else in sight. The Spanish GP might just as well have been an age away. Pat Fry’s new aero programme is working…

In the end, on options, Fernando qualified third, beaten only by the margin of a tenth or so. Mark took the pole on this occasion, following Seb V on his first run in Q3 and beautifully managing a scary millisecond at Becketts, when his DRS was a fraction late with downforce on entry. For his part, Seb V was again visually clean and compliant but blew it with a mis-timed upshift out of the last corner: he hit the rev-limiter in third and was thus a fraction late with his paddle-shift to fourth. And then it rained. He had lost the pole by 0.032sec.

Fernando was a near-perfect third but Felipe made an error or two on his Q3 blast, which left him fourth; still, though, he qualified comfortably ahead of the fastest McLaren-Mercedes. For that, you can probably cite the weekend’s politics – a non-stop farce in innumerable acts that may or may not have defined the off-throttle mapping regs for the remainder of the season. McLaren seemed to need to make more exhaust/diffuser layout changes than most teams in response to the latest (top secret!) TDs (Technical Directives) that flowed freely from the FIA and so took a decision on Saturday morning not to compromise their race prep with a last-minute change. The latest, race-defining TD wasn’t due until about 11.30 at the earliest and so they locked themselves into the best possible happy medium.

As it turned out, the set-up was unhappy and rare – rare in the sense that McLaren were strangely far away even from Ferrari. Lewis Hamilton came to Silverstone looking for a change in fortune; instead, he would look at nine cars ahead of him on the grid, his first Q3 run additionally spoiled by a non-new set of options. (They had done one, drizzly lap in FP3 and so for “banker-lap” tyres they were perfect; thing is, there were no “hot” laps in the closing minutes of Q3 thanks to the rain.)

Thus Mark’s comments about the likely two winners. He didn’t include Seb Vettel, of course, because Aussie Grit was not going to finish behind Seb at Silverstone in 2011; that was about as clear as the upcoming weather forecasts for raceday showers.

Said precipitation left the grid sunny and dry but the northern end of the circuit – Luffield, Woodcote, Copse, Becketts – rooster-tail wet. Sergio Perez mowed down a bollard or two on his reconnaissance lap. That spooked everyone into starting on blue-lettered Pirelli intermediates. Everyone. (I was astonished, I have to admit: I thought someone down the back would at least take the gamble – or play conservative, depending upon how you looked at it.)

Mark Webber was later to say: “Oh yeah. The start. I think in those greasy conditions it was probably better not to be on the ‘clean’ side of the road. Not that it made any difference. What happened at the start had no impact on the result…”

What might have made an impact, as Mark again trudged slowly way from another pole, fiercely won, was the sight of that pesky Seb Vettel again disappearing into yet another early-lap lead. It was one thing to be slow away; it was another again to have to follow that superbrisk kid of a team-mate…

That was for later in the afternoon, however; for now, it was Seb V where we invariably see him – ahead of the rest, the master of the F1 universe. Mark fell into a familiar back-up role, heading the Ferraris and the McLarens, amongst which Lewis Hamilton was aggressive and fast, especially where visibility was low and the grip level poor.

Then the track then began to dry and the sun to shine. The capacity crowd stirred. Pit stops loomed.

Still the RBR7s led the race. Lewis rose to third, fighting hard to subjugate Fernando, who was cautious in his first laps on slicks (Pirelli options). Then Fernando found his rhythm and sparred back. Close enough at the hairpin to use DRS on the “club” straight, Fernando must have smiled as Lewis moved left, onto the wet, to protect the inside line under brakes. Annoyed with himself, Lewis immediately stopped early (lap 24) for his second set of options.

It was a decision that would define the race.

Mark Webber stopped for his second set of options on lap 26 (no primes would be raced thanks to the opening-lap phase on intermediates). That left Fernando in second place, 5.8 sec behind Seb V. Close enough, in other words, to be able to track him.

Fernando thus followed Seb into the pits on lap 27. He pulled carefully into the Ferrari “box”. Ahead, Vettel’s RBR7 was already on its jacks. Fernando sat quietly, awaited his signal and then perfectly engaged hand clutch against revs. Then he was momentarily distracted: ahead of him, to his very pleasant surprise, he could see Seb’s car still up on its jacks….

The rear jack had gone in slightly at an angle and had sheared against the undercar stop. As is their way, the RBR boys went into back-up mode. A second, spare jack was rapidly inserted. Seb was out, accelerating neatly, with only eight seconds lost. This – seen in recovery – was an F1 team at its slickest.

Even so, you’d have thought that Mark Webber would now be leading. He had been ahead of Fernando; his pit stop had been the usual Kenny Handkammer blur of movement and speed.

Mark, too, had lost time, however. A massive slide at Becketts coloured his in-lap; and then, in the pit lane, maybe he dumped the clutch too hard, or gave it too many revs – or maybe there was another tyre warmer issue, as in China: whatever, he just sat there, once the jacks were released, spinning his rear wheels. He was back in fourth place, still behind Seb, by the time this pit stop cycle was complete.

Which meant that Fernando was in a dream position: Seb V had rejoined just behind Lewis Hamilton, whose options were good and hot now because of that early stop. Seb, looking for grip, could do nothing in early response. It wasn’t until around lap 33, by which time Fernando was a good eight seconds in front, that Seb was close enough really to annoy Lewis Hamilton. And this time, of course, Lewis was not going to make the same mistake. He stayed right on the dry line as they braked for Luffield: Seb, he knew, would try nothing down the inside on the still-damp Tarmac. On one lap, so relatively good was the RBR’s traction out of Woodcote, Seb was right up and alongside Lewis as they blasted down towards Copse. Millimetres from contact, Seb eased his right foot a little. The capacity crowd was exultant. For Seb, though, the race was quickly disappearing.

All that was left, then, was for Fernando to continue to shine, like Silverstone in the afternoon sun, on this special day for Ferrari. RBR pulled in Seb early for his final stop, giving him some new track position and front wing angle – but the call was only half-right: behind Lewis, the feedback had been turbulent. The front wing adjustment made little or no difference. He “undercut” Lewis okay, but the mountain ahead was steep: Seb, needing to gain about 12 seconds in ten laps in order even to catch the Ferrari, backed away to finish a safe second.

Except that Mark Alan Webber had a different perspective: he had won the pole and he had had his fair share of dramas. Now, in these dying stages, he could see that he was catching Seb with relative ease. Who knew what could happen? Maybe Fernando would have a problem. Maybe the race with Seb would be for the lead….

He quickly closed a four-second gap, oblivious to frequent radio instructions to “hold position”. Seb knew only of the diminishing margin; he imagined that Mark would catch him but would then hold station.

It erupted as Mark began to dart off-line over the last two laps. Seb suddenly realized that he was racing Mark – just as Gilles Villeneuve appreciated too late at Imola, 1982, that Didier Pironi was not playing games. And it made uncomfortable viewing from the RBR garage. On neither car were the Pirelli options in great shape. Mistakes could be made – just as Seb made an error on the last lap in Canada. Seb defended beautifully on this occasion; Mark attacked creatively – and like that they finished. It could, though, have been ugly. Hours afterwards, the drivers and the RBR management were still behind locked doors, hammering away at an issue that has been around since they day RBR decided to sign the two quickest drivers they could find.

There was a skirmish in the closing laps, too, between Felipe Massa, who had been racing for much of the afternoon with a debris-damaged floor, and Lewis Hamilton. Felipe pulled off the pass as they braked for the last, tight left-hander – but then Lewis retaliated by giving Felipe a nudge as they exited Club. They were separated by 0.4 sec as they crossed the line, Lewis ahead – with the Stewards, surprisingly perhaps, quickly deeming the touch a “racing incident”. Flags and caps against a still-blue sky.

And so Mark Webber was right: Fernando won. The signs were there in FP3 and qualifying, when Ferrari were so good on fast corners that Fernando now thinks they need to work on their slow corner grip, for Pete’s sake; and the win was consummated when Seb Vettel, for once, had a pit stop drama, albeit an amazingly organized one.

The win came, too, on the 60th anniversary of Jose Froilan Gonzalez’s first victory for Ferrari – at Silverstone, in 1951. Fernando Alonso drove Gonzalez’s sister car (the Alberto Ascari chassis) on Sunday morning at Silverstone, sliding it into oversteer drifts that would have brought a smile to the face of the tough old Pampus Bull, who at 88 was watching the TV feed live in Buenos Aires, courtesy of Fox Deportes. For once, despite the years of politics and “commercial issues”, the F1 industry had allowed a famous circuit to touch its famous past.

For once – amazingly – F1’s heritage had won the day.

Silverstone will be discussed in detail this Wednesday on ‘The Flying Lap with Peter Windsor’. ‘Live’ at SmibsTV this week at 1900UK, 1400ET: http://theflyinglap. Craig Scarborough from ScarbsF1′s Blog will join us in-studio. Special guest Nico Hulkenberg, Force India test and reserve driver, will be joining us online from Switzerland.