Gary Anderson

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/21712291
A look at the F1 rule changes for 2013
By Gary Anderson
BBC F1 technical analyst Comments (33) There are only a handful of rule changes for the 2013 season, which is the last before a major new set of regulations are introduced next year , but what there are could have a big effect.

DRS RESTRICTION
Since the DRS overtaking aid - a moveable part of the rear wing that reduces drag and therefore increases straight-line speed - was introduced in 2011, its use was free throughout practice and qualifying. That has now changed.

It can now only ever be used in the 'DRS zones' - of which there will normally be two at each track.

In the race, nothing changes - drivers can only use it when they are within a second of the car in front. But in practice and qualifying, although they can still use it every lap, they can do so only in the places they would be able to in the race.

This will change the downforce levels people will run and it may affect how Red Bull, particularly, go about their races.

In the past, their philosophy has been to run the car with lots of downforce, which increases cornering speed and helps the tyres work well, and then to use the DRS to lose that drag on the straights.

Get on pole position, do one banzai lap, get out of the one-second DRS-activation zone and you're safe.

That won't work the same way this year because if a team run that much downforce they will have a performance deficit in qualifying. The car will have more cornering speed but they will pay the price on the straights.

When a team sets their car up, they run a computer simulation, which is downforce level - ie cornering grip - against straight-line speed. They get the two lines to cross so they have the perfect compromise - and then err slightly on the side of straight-line speed.

That's because they know they will always have the speed on the straights, whereas the driver will not always get the cornering speed out of that little bit of extra downforce.

Last year and the year before, everyone was able to say: "This is the maximum cornering speed we can get and because we can open the DRS we're not going to have the straight-line speed deficit."

Red Bull just took that a bit further than the others but they're not going to be able to do that this year. I think they're going to have to compromise their grip-level set-up to make sure they're not too slow on the straights.

DOUBLE DRS BANNED
Teams can no longer use the DRS to affect any other part of the car.

This technology was pioneered by Mercedes at the start of 2012, when they linked the DRS with the front wing , to reduce the downforce from that to help boost speed on the straights and balance the car in the corners.

That approach had flaws, but Red Bull - who were one of the teams who originally protested against Mercedes' system - found a much more effective use of the idea by using the DRS to stall the lower rear beam wing.

This made the approach we were talking about in the first part of this article even more effective and it led to Sebastian Vettel winning four races in a row and putting himself in a position to win the title.

Not having the double DRS system this year will, as a result, hurt Red Bull that fraction more than the other teams. That's why they're looking at the so-called 'passive DRS' system, which is triggering a stall on the rear wing through ducting on the car above a certain velocity.

It is very difficult to make these systems work, but Red Bull - unsurprisingly - have the best approach I have seen so far.

They are using the lower beam wing as the low-pressure area that triggers the system, and that is probably the best way to ensure consistent pressures, which is the problem with calibrating the system to work properly.

But there are two problems with passive DRS systems.

Firstly, the airflow does not re-attach as the car slows down at the same speed it detaches as the car speeds up; and secondly, because the car has to slow down to get the system to re-attach the airflow, then some performance is lost in the initial braking phase as the car initially has reduced downforce.

All in all, if there was much more than 0.1 seconds a lap in these systems, I'd be surprised.

But it would mean a team could run their car with a little more downforce, getting the tyres to work properly, and keep the same straight-line speed, or they could run the same downforce level as someone else and have an extra 2-3km/h in top speed to make it easier to overtake people.

Look at it like that, and you can see why Red Bull are pursuing it - it's exactly the philosophy they have been pursuing these last few years.

But there aren't that many tracks where you'd be able to use it effectively - you need long straights and mainly slow corners.

TOUGHER FRONT-WING TESTS
Front-wing tests are aimed at stopping teams taking advantage of the wing flexing to increase aerodynamic performance.

This has been a controversial area over the last few years, and the tests have become increasingly tough to prevent teams making the ends of the wing flex downwards at speed.

This year, the tests are aimed additionally at stopping teams making wings rotate backwards on their axis. They do this to 'back off' the wing.

As an F1 car goes faster, ideally you want the downforce to move rearwards. That allows you to have more front downforce in medium-speed corners, where there is always understeer, and less in high-speed corners, where you always have a nervous rear end.

To prevent teams playing with this, the FIA has changed the test from a load at one point roughly on the centre line of the wing, to loads at two points, one towards the front and one towards the back.

This will limit the amount the main planes of the wings can rotate, but there is still no test for the flaps backing off. They can still flex - and they will. So I'm sure there will still be controversy over front-wing flexing.

'VANITY PANELS'
To hide the ugly 'steps' that were on the noses of most cars last year, teams are allowed to use a thin piece of cosmetic bodywork to create a smoother shape. This is not allowed to affect performance.

Not everyone has decided to use one.

Lotus have a similar design to last year, although admittedly that was one of the less aggressive steps.

And Red Bull have used a vanity panel but only for about half the distance of other teams - so there is still a step, albeit a less steep one. Some people believe this makes their car less attractive in that area than last year, when it had a letterbox-shaped duct in that position.

Both those teams have decided that the extra weight up there - albeit minimal - is not what they want.

Sauber have a step disguised by two raised sides to the nose, and have continued with their duct which takes air from under the chassis on to the top.

Ferrari, McLaren and others have full vanity panels.

There's not a huge amount of performance in it either way, although teams will be trying to use whatever solution they have chosen for small gains, as always.

FORCE MAJEURE
The concept of 'force majeure' - circumstances beyond the team's control - has been removed from the regulations.

This was an issue in two similar instances last year, when Lewis Hamilton's McLaren in Barcelona and Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull in Abu Dhabi ran out of fuel at the end of qualifying.

Both teams tried - and failed - to argue it was force majeure that had led to the problem. Now, if teams stop on the in-lap of their qualifying run and the fuel quantity in the tank is not what is required to finish that lap they will be automatically disqualified.

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/22147074


Formula 1: Red Bull concerns grow after Chinese Grand Prix


By Gary Anderson
BBC F1 technical analyst
Fernando Alonso was pretty chirpy all through the Chinese Grand Prix weekend and he clearly had a good feeling about the Ferrari in Shanghai.
In the race, we found out why.
Ferrari had some new parts on the car in China, including a revised front-wing endplate, which may have helped the car a little bit.
He qualified well in third place and the car looked good as far as tyre management was concerned, and whenever you give Alonso an opportunity he tends to take it. He digs deep to get a result out of it.
The race he drove was exactly what I expected. In fact, I predicted on Saturday that he would win because you know that instead of just looking after the tyres, he drives them to the maximum they can take, without over-driving the car. And that is very important.
Continue reading the main story
“
Red Bull are still immensely strong but they do look like a team that is imploding a little
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Alonso reminds me of Alain Prost in the mid-1980s. If Prost was anywhere near the front of the grid, you kind of knew he was going to win because he had the tools underneath him to do it.
It's the same with Alonso. You can never count him out wherever he is on the grid, but when he's close to the front and the car looks good, you know he is going to be difficult to beat.
At the start, the 'soft' tyres went off that bit quicker on Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes than they did on Alonso's Ferrari. Alonso got into the lead and that gave him the momentum.
Good strategy, good calls from the team. Everything worked for him.
There was a lot of talk about Alonso having been out-qualified by Massa in the previous four races but there are two things about that.
First of all, the first two qualifying sessions in Australia and Malaysia were both affected by rain; secondly, Felipe Massa has always been quick in a good car. But, if the car is not quite there he makes mistakes because he is always driving a little bit out of control.
Massa complained about tyre graining in the race in China. But he'll be a good back-up for Alonso, and he's quick enough to keep him looking at the timesheets and on his toes.
Red Bull off the ball

It was very unusual to see Red Bull taking a cutting tool to the barge boards on Sebastian Vettel's car in the garage during Friday practice.

Red Bull driver Mark Webber gets a lift back to the pits after losing his right-rear wheel
That is an indication of a mild panic. They knew the pace was not quite there and they needed to work on it a bit harder to get more downforce out of the car, which is what they were trying to do.
But when you do that, you're working blind. I spoke to Mark Webber a couple of times over the weekend and he said: "The car feels good. It's just not quick enough."
China is quite an unusual circuit. It has a lot of long corners and it is what they call front-end-limited - in that the front tyres wear out quicker than the rears.
On that kind of circuit, the Coanda exhaust systems that all the top teams use to boost rear downforce are not as big an advantage.
It is more of an advantage on a track where the car has more rear-end problems, and the team want to work the rear tyres less by getting more load into them - such as in Bahrain where F1 is racing this coming weekend.
So the teams such as Red Bull that have better Coanda systems will not benefit from them as much. That's why China alters the competitive order.
Red Bull are obviously still immensely strong. But with all the stuff that's going on - including the team orders row in Malaysia and the various problems that hit Webber in China - they do look like a team that is imploding a little.
The problem that led to Webber not having enough fuel in the car in qualifying was exactly the same as the one that hit Vettel in Abu Dhabi last year. A top team should not have those sorts of problems twice. It's easy enough to prevent.
Then his rear wheel fell off in the race. Now, we all make mistakes but somewhere along the line you have to pull that sort of stuff back in again or it gets a bit of momentum going.
So Red Bull really need a nice tidy weekend in Bahrain and a solid result for both cars to get themselves back on the road again.
Still work to do at Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton's pole lap for Mercedes was very impressive, but the team again struggled for race pace.
They seem to be on the wrong side of the balance between getting the tyres to work well over one lap or over a race distance.


Chinese GP: Lewis Hamilton holds off Sebastian Vettel for third
The car is quick in qualifying but it does fall off a bit more in the race - the opposite of the Ferrari.
You have to have a compromise somewhere, and they don't seem to have the compromise biased enough towards longer runs.
If they adjusted it, would they lose out in qualifying? Probably, but it would give them a better average performance.
Hamilton finished on the podium, which is a good result, but he was still struggling with the tyres in the race. And that has been a problem for them for three years now. They need to find a way to make the tyres last a bit better in the race.
Rocket Ricciardo

We always said when we watched the Toro Rosso in testing that it looked like the rear end would give up first - just as on the Ferrari, actually. So it's not a huge surprise that they would have a good result in China given the nature of the track, which helps the car.
Daniel Ricciardo took it with open arms and did a very good job, qualifying and finishing seventh.
The big tyre debate

There is a bit of navel-gazing in F1 at the moment about whether the Pirelli tyres are preventing proper racing because the drivers have to drive within themselves to manage their performance.
But at the end of the day, the fastest three drivers in qualifying were on the podium, albeit in a different order.
Points from the China Grand Prix
1. Fernando Alonso - Ferrari - 1:36:26.945 - 25 points

2. Kimi Raikkonen - Lotus - 1:36:37.113 - 18 points

3. Lewis Hamilto n - Mercedes - 1:36:39.267 - 15 points

4. Sebastian Vettel - Red Bull - 1:36:39.470 12 points

5. Jenson Button - McLaren - 1:37:02.230 - 10 points

6. Felipe Massa - Ferrari - 1:37:07.772 - 8 points

7. Daniel Ricciardo - Toro Rosso - 1:37:09.636 - 6 points

8. Paul di Resta - Force India - 1:37:18.029 - 4 points

9. Romain Grosjean - Lotus - 1:37:20.368 - 2 points

10. Nico Hulkenberg - Sauber - 1:37:23.543 - 1 point

There are ways you could tweak the tyre rules to ensure people run in qualifying, which some did not in China and which definitely harms the show.
But in terms of the tyres themselves, I think they make teams think harder. Some make it work and some don't. There's nothing wrong with that.
You have to drive the car within its limits and the tyres are part of the car.
If Pirelli had gone to China with the medium tyre and the hard rather than the medium and soft, the most critical tyre would have done 25 laps. So it would have been a one-stop race. Is that what people want?
I ran three teams during the tyre-war era of the late 1990s and early 2000s, which some are saying was a time when drivers could push right to the limit all the time. But that's a fallacy. They could never go 100% all the time.
That was the era of refuelling, when the cars were never as heavy as they are in the first half of the race now, so they always looked after the tyres better.
The fastest way was a multi-stop race abusing the tyres. But if there was a one-stop race - such as was often case at Monza - you could not abuse the tyres, they would blister and fall off the rims.
F1 has never been any different in the 40 years I have known it. The only difference is the tyre-management aspect is more visible now and the complaints have developed a bit of momentum.
Whether F1 needs the DRS overtaking aid as well as the current tyres is a different issue - I would like to get rid of it and make the drivers fight more to overtake.
But F1 is a sport and, for the show, what we have now is very good.
And I guarantee that if we still had the Bridgestone tyres that were last used in 2010 and had become so good that the teams rarely needed to consider them, the viewing figures would be half what they are now.
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.

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Formula 1: Should Pirelli listen to Red Bull's calls to change tyres?


By Gary Anderson
BBC F1 technical analyst
Pirelli is believed to be considering changing the tyres it is supplying to Formula 1 this season in the wake of criticism that they may be too soft - but it's questionable whether that is the right thing to do.
The way the cars work on their tyres is a combination of car design and tyre usage and how the two are affecting each other.
Red Bull have been applying pressure on Pirelli to produce harder tyres, feeling that an inherent car advantage they have is being disguised by them having to compromise the car's pace to work best with the tyres.
Red Bull seem to have the best understanding of the aerodynamics of their car - and particularly the Coanda system that uses the exhaust gases to enhance rear downforce.

Red Bull they are having to compromise the pace of their car to work best with the tyres
Their car has been designed around using the Coanda to the best effect, and Sebastian Vettel has adapted his driving style to go with it.
The Pirelli tyres do not like to brake and turn at the same time. Vettel comes into the corner on the brakes, which generates understeer on entry because of the tyres. Then he comes off the brakes, which generates a lot of front grip and makes the rear end nervous, and gets back on the throttle, using the downforce from the exhaust gases to keep the rear stable.
That technique works particularly well on 90-degree corners, such as the ones which abound at this weekend's race in Bahrain.
But it works less well in a long corner because there is not the immediate transition from turn-in to exit; there is a delay when the driver is just sitting there as a passenger for a while. So he can't carry the front downforce that Vettel likes to use on the car because the car is too nervous.
China, the last race, has two long corners that are critical to lap time - so it's perfectly logical that Red Bull would not show as well as it might at other tracks.
“
If Pirelli wants to help the teams, it should change the tyres, but I don't think that's what Pirelli should be doing.
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China is also what is known as a front-limited track - the front tyres wear out more quickly than the rears and the predominant handling characteristic is understeer. When the car understeers, you can't get back on the throttle quickly enough to take the benefit from the Coanda exhaust system.
On the evidence of last year, all the teams will have been developing their cars to enhance the Coanda exhaust effect to benefit a weak rear tyre.
But now it is the front tyres that are the weak point, and the Coanda is making up for a problem that no longer exists. With these tyres it will be tough to get the most out of the Coanda system and they do not allow that development direction to work.
That's why Red Bull want the tyres changed.
The state of play elsewhere on the grid

Red Bull's rivals have different characteristics. Mercedes have a car that is good in qualifying and less good in the race - their tyres have been going off too quickly.
Ferrari have a car that is quite good in both conditions with a better balance between the two overall, and they had the quickest car in the race in China, at least in winner Fernando Alonso's hands.
The concern for Ferrari is that if the car is good in both areas, you have to move the whole package forward.
Whereas if there is a specific problem - such as on the Red Bull or Mercedes - you can focus on fixing that by focusing on getting the tyres to work well in whichever condition they are weakest.
Play media

F1 tyres, DRS and Kers explained
Ferrari need to pay attention to whether their Coanda exhaust system is good enough at the circuits with 90-degree corners.
Lotus, like Ferrari, are pretty good in both qualifying and race - they understand how the car and tyres work with the circuits. And, like Ferrari, they need to move the package forward.
McLaren have been very poor in qualifying but a lot faster in the race. That means they just cannot get the tyre working for qualifying but speed is in there somewhere and that is what they need to focus on.
So if Pirelli go off and do a different tyre, it will be playing into the hands of some teams and not all.
Is that right? I don't think so because when you introduce a tyre at the beginning of the year the challenge for the teams is to pick up that performance and re-hash their car to suit the rubber. The tyre company should not pander to an individual team that has a bit of a negative.
And don't forget that all the teams had some experience on these 2013 tyres in Friday practice in Brazil at the end of last season and all pronounced themselves happy.
Last year, Pirelli felt it had been too conservative towards the end of the season and the races were devolving down into one-stop strategies.
Pirelli switch tact
Pirelli will not use their soft tyres at the Bahrain Grand Prix this weekend after concerns about how quickly they wear out. No driver managed more than seven laps on soft tyres in China last week. Instead, the medium and hard tyres will be the compound of choice this weekend.

It introduced a softer tyre for this year to stop that happening, and the move has succeeded, but now the discussion is to change it around again. There is no logic in that.
Pirelli has already made a similar step for Bahrain this weekend - by abandoning the idea of using the soft and hard tyres and bringing the medium instead of the soft.
But the change in what the tyre requires of the car - the focus now on needing more front grip not more rear grip - is not to do with the tyres being softer, it is to do with them being a different construction.
If Pirelli wants to help the teams, it should change the tyres, but I don't think that's what Pirelli should be doing.
At the moment, Lotus and Ferrari have been strong, Red Bull have been good in particular tracks. It has been moving around and it will continue to do so at the tracks that are coming up. It won't just be one winner all the time.
Change the tyres and that might not be the case.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/22...ce=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

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Gary Anderson: McLaren to blame for Button-Perez Bahrain scrap


By Gary Anderson
BBC F1 technical analyst
Sebastian Vettel drove to a very dominant win at the Bahrain Grand Prix - but let's not forget there are two Red Bulls out there and the other one finished seventh in Mark Webber's hands.
Vettel started second on the grid and the Ferraris ran into problems. That helped him a bit as he did not need to fight that battle through the race, and he really got away, aided as well by Kimi Raikkonen's Lotus having to fight up from ninth on the grid.
Everything was in Vettel's favour.
There was no tyre durability issue. They were reasonably consistent. It is a track where lack of grip at the rear dominates performance, and the Red Bull's downforce-producing Coanda exhaust system is probably the most effective on the grid.
Bahrain GP top 10 finishers
1. Sebastian Vettel (Ger) Red Bull 1hr 36min 00.498secs

2. Kimi Raikkonen (Fin) Lotus +00:09.111

3. Romain Grosjean (Fra) Lotus +00:19.507

4. Paul di Resta (GB) Force India +00:21.727

5. Lewis Hamilton (GB) Mercedes +00:35.230

6. Sergio Perez (Mex) McLaren +00:35.998

7. Mark Webber (Aus) Red Bull +00:37.244

8. Fernando Alonso (Spa) Ferrari +00:37.574

9. Nico Rosberg (Ger) Mercedes 00:41.126

10. Jenson Button (GB) McLaren +00:46.631

The Coanda system gives more downforce when the drivers get on the throttle, which helps traction. As long as the traction is good enough in the first place, it's a sort of double whammy. And that helps with the thermal degradation of the tyres.
The car still has to be driven within the tyre but Red Bull have the tools on the car to give them the extra grip off the corner.
I said before the action started that this race suited Red Bull, and so it turned out.
Vettel got the fastest lap by just 0.109secs from Adrian Sutil's Force India and by 0.243secs from Fernando Alonso's Ferrari so it was not a runaway win; it just looked like that.
He won it by a long way and was able to get back out again in the lead after the second of his two stops.
But bear in mind the guy behind him was on a two-stop and also that on lap nine Raikkonen was 11 seconds behind Vettel and he finished nine seconds behind.
Yes, Vettel was controlling his pace, but for Raikkonen the race was lost when he qualified poorly and got stuck in traffic.
Behind Vettel, there was some racing going on in terms of moving up through the field.
Raikkonen used a two-stop strategy to great effect to move from eighth on the grid to second, while Paul di Resta managed to take fourth after driving very well on the same strategy as Raikkonen.
Between them at the finish, Raikkonen's team-mate Romain Grosjean raced well from 11th to move up to third.
The rest of the race behind them was a bit like Nascar stock car racing - there was a lot of activity and overtaking but much of it for nothing.
It was great to watch, just battle after battle for no real reason. It wasn't racing to overtake and get to the front, most of that was done in pit stops with Raikkonen and Grosjean, it was just the same people constantly battling.
PEREZ V BUTTON

The fight between McLaren drivers Jenson Button and Sergio Perez created some controversy. I blame the team; they should have the authority to say what to do.
Hard racing is OK. But the guy has to respect his team-mate.
If Perez is quicker than Button, the team will know and they should tell Button to let him by, or tell Perez to go ahead. If he's not quicker and he's just having a bit of argy-bargy, tell him to stay behind. But the team has to do that.
McLaren say they don't use team orders, but that's not team orders, it's trying to get the best result possible at the end of the race.
At halfway through the race like that, everything could have been lost.
Play media

Bahrain GP: McLaren's Jenson Button and Sergio Perez battle on the track
In the end, Button dropped back because he had rooted his tyres and needed to make an extra stop. Well, that means Perez was quicker, so why not tell Button to let him through and Perez might have got another place?
They need to look at the bigger picture, which is how many points you can drag in at the end of the race when you haven't got a chance of winning.
I'm not a great believer in blaming the drivers, just as I'm not keen on blaming Vettel for passing Webber in Malaysia. Red Bull should have been strong enough there to say 'look, this is the way it is' and in Bahrain McLaren weren't strong enough either.
FERRARI

Ferrari have thrown away big points twice now. They did it in Malaysia by not pitting to change a damaged front wing on Fernando Alonso's car; and now in Bahrain by not telling Alonso not to use his DRS overtaking aid after he had pitted to have it closed.
The wing failed. The hydraulics open the rear wing, and whenever the pressure is released it springs shut. But the angle the flap went up to, it went over-centre and flipped itself upside down.
So Alonso had to pit to get it shut back down again but there is no logic at all in Ferrari not telling him not to use it again.
That extra pit stops cost 19-20 seconds. He finished 37 seconds behind the leader. Grosjean was 19 seconds behind Vettel so Alonso would have finished third even with no DRS.
Ferrari have a quick car this year and they're making really bad decisions; last year they had a slow car and they were making really good decisions.
It's happened before - when they're fighting at the front, they can trip up over themselves.
They need to have a little chat with themselves to see why that's happening because two races in and major points thrown away in two of them is really not good enough.
THE MERCEDES CONUNDRUM

I was surprised not to see Vettel on pole but on one lap, on new tyres, the Mercedes is quick. The problem is, it uses the tyres too aggressively.
There is a balance between one-lap performance and race pace and they are at one end of it.
You could see Nico Rosberg starting to fight that battle as early as lap two. This is the fourth year in which their car cannot keep the rear tyres alive. They do overheat them more than anyone else and apparently they have no idea why.
There's a compromise between making the tyres work for one lap or over a race distance. Some cars do both. The Mercedes doesn't.
For Rosberg it was probably pretty disappointing, but I also don't understand Lewis Hamilton's race. For half of the grand prix he seemed to be asleep; he was ninth, 10, eighth, and then suddenly he came alive and finished fifth.
He said something happened in the car and he doesn't know what. The same thing happened last year in Japan - he had a clunk in the back of it and away he went. It's like he's released the handbrake but I don't know how that can happen.
FORCE INDIA

Force India have been strong all year and have been quietly getting better. Paul di Resta drove well to take fourth in Bahrain but there is room for improvements.
Play media

Bahrain GP: Paul Di Resta positive after finishing fourth
Force India undercut Raikkonen at the first pit stop and kept ahead but then Raikkonen did the same thing to them at the second pit stop. They should have reacted.
They might have ended up with the same result but they let a possibly even better result get away from them at that point - if Raikkonen had been behind them that would have been another car Grosjean had to get by.
Nevertheless, the speed of the car is there and for a small team they are doing a mega job.
TYRE CONCERNS

There are two issues Pirelli will want to look at.
First of all, there were a lot of graining problems in China - where the tyre tears and loses grip - and I think they have a good handle on that. There is an agent in the tyres that only operates after the tyres get up to a certain surface temperature. It seems that needs a tweak.
More worrying were the three tyre failures; one for Hamilton in final practice and two for Felipe Massa in the race.
Play media

Lewis Hamilton suffers tyre failure in third practice in Bahrain
Hamilton's tyre threw the tread off. Pirelli say it got cut. If a tyre gets cut down to the carcass it can peel off the carcass but for that to happen it needs to be cut right across so I don't really buy into that.
Pirelli mentioned two issues with Hamilton's tyre - being cut and overheating. I would say the bonding between the carcass and the tread is a bit critical.
Pirelli say Massa's first tyre was cut right across the tread by debris and the second had a cut in the sidewall
Lots of things could cause the failure - such as going over the kerbs, for example - but it shouldn't happen. When the tread comes off it does a lot of damage.
They will have the tyre data, pressure, internal and external temperature.
You have to look at that stuff and be really honest with yourself about whether there is a problem, and if there is you have to get on and fix it because it is quite a tricky situation when a tyre fails.
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/formula1/22246192

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Gary Anderson: F1 title between Alonso, Vettel & Raikkonen


By Gary Anderson
BBC F1 technical analyst

Fernando Alonso dominated the Spanish Grand Prix and now, five races into the championship, Ferrari have had three extremely strong results and two more lost through unreliability or errors.
As a whole package, balancing qualifying and race, the Ferrari is obviously a pretty good car. The form of Alonso's team-mate Felipe Massa, who was third on Sunday, backs that up.
Three stops - which Lotus used with Kimi Raikkonen and Red Bull tried to make work with Sebastian Vettel before being forced to back out of it - was the faster strategy in Spain on paper.
But four stops, which Ferrari chose with Alonso and Massa, was only seven seconds slower. That is nothing and it gives the driver the chance to push the tyres harder. If you find you can stretch the stint length, you can convert to a three-stop.
As soon as Alonso made his second stop on lap 21, everyone in the pit lane knew he was doing a four-stop and no-one reacted.
For Alonso, knowing he was committed to a four-stop strategy, it was doubly important to make places early on. He knew he had to nail his lap times to make the plan work and the more cars he had in front of him, the harder that was going to be.
He and Vettel are always very strong on the first lap - they know they have to make up ground to make the race work for them, to use the pace of their car.
Alonso could not afford to get stuck behind a car that was slower or - even worse - was doing three stops.
He made a great move around the outside of Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes at Turn Three on lap one and the race unfolded perfectly for him from there.
The Ferrari does not quite have the qualifying pace of some, but there is always a compromise to be had between that and race pace and Alonso understands the points are handed out on Sundays.
THREE-WAY TITLE RACE - CAN LOTUS KEEP UP?

It's still early days in the championship - we are now a quarter of the way through the season - but it's looks already as if it is between Alonso, Raikkonen and Vettel.
The next couple of races may change that but it looks already as if they are the men on the move.
The big question is whether Lotus have the resources to keep up. It's not always about big budgets; it's about spending the money you do have wisely.
Lotus are shrewd enough to do that but the big question is whether anyone has their finger on the pulse as effectively as their former technical director James Allison, who is leaving the team.
Short term it will be OK in terms of performance but in the short term you are also setting your future development plans.
MERCEDES

Mercedes had a very disappointing race, despite putting a huge amount of work into trying to solve their problems with excessive use of rear tyres.
Nico Rosberg was able to lead until his first pit stop, without being threatened seriously, but Mercedes threw away their chances by trying to do a three-stop strategy.
They managed it, with Rosberg driving like a granny to try to look after his tyres, but when you know your car is harder on tyres than everyone else it is counter-intuitive to try to do fewer stops.
Hamilton did do four stops and was dreadfully slow because his car was eating up the tyres. But in the long runs in Friday practice, Rosberg's degradation and pace was stronger than Hamilton's by a considerable margin.
But even Hamilton started off trying to do a three-stop and when you have a car that bad on its tyres I do not understand that.
The problem with driving to suit three stops is you are throwing away the lap time too early in the race and you cannot go the other way. But if you aim for a four-stop you can always go the other way if the tyre usage is better than you expect.
It is a different situation for Raikkonen and Lotus. That car does not quite have the out-and-out pace and they know they have an advantage in the way it looks after its tyres, so they are trying to use that to eliminate the extra pit stop time.
And I do not think Raikkonen had the pace to challenge Alonso had he done a four-stop - especially after dropping behind him on the first lap.
THE BIG TYRE DEBATE

The large number of pit stops in the Spanish Grand Prix has reignited the debate about whether the fragile Pirelli tyres are good or bad for F1.
The tyres are part of the car and some teams are using them better than others.
Barcelona is always very tough on the tyres - and back in the tyre-war days sometimes you would get two or maybe three laps out of the softer tyres and then be five or six seconds a lap slower for the next four or five laps before they cleaned up and you could push again.
Tyre management has always been part of F1, no matter what anyone will tell you, and there has never been a time when a driver could push flat-out for the entire race distance.
Having said that, personally I think four stops is too many.
Pirelli want to have two or three stops and that would be about right. Any more and it gets confusing for people who are not following the race that closely - which, in reality, is most of the audience.
The last thing we want is a choice between one or two stops. That would be horrendous at some tracks - boring, processional races.
Of more serious concern is that there were more tyre failures in Spain - on Paul di Resta's Force India in practice and then Jean-Eric Vergne's Toro Rosso in the race - to follow the three in Bahrain. And Alonso had a puncture prior to his final pit stop which Ferrari caught before it caused a problem.
Pirelli has admitted it is concerned about the situation.
They are blaming cuts in the tyre but I do not buy into that. There is no reason if that was the case for the rubber to sheer off in the way it is.
At each grand prix, 616 sets of dry-weather tyres are used. To date there have been four tread delamination failures from the 3,080 sets of tyres used in the first five races. That is not often enough for it to be an inherent design problem. I believe it is more to do with quality control.
Pirelli tyres have always had some internal blistering, where the inner rubber of the tyre overheats.
This year, the carcass of the tyre has been reinforced to keep more of the tyre in contact with the track, with the idea of reducing the wear on the inside shoulder that was being seen last year.
But that means the tyre has a very different working environment at high speed.
At high speed, the rubber tread is subject to very high centrifugal forces. With the reinforced carcass, the tread-to-carcass bonding is put under increased stress. With the elevated temperatures some cars suffer from, it goes too far and the rubber can peal off the carcass.
The fastest cars are a second a lap quicker than they were last year - a performance increase of just over 1%.
A lot of sheer-load is going into the tyre. There is so much cornering force - more than 5G - and braking force - 6G - and I think in some cases that, combined with the centrifugal forces, is proving too much for the tyres to cope with.
DID THE UPGRADES CHANGE ANYTHING?

The Spanish Grand Prix is traditionally a race many teams enter with high hopes of making progress thanks to new parts designed to improve their car's performance.
For struggling teams, this takes on extra meaning and as ever in Barcelona there were differing results.
Toro Rosso had a new floor, sidepod and exhaust design which seemed to be a significant step forward - they were on the verge of the top 10 all weekend and Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne qualified 11th and 12th just 0.039secs apart and Ricciardo finished 10th.
Williams' package has apparently not done anything - Pastor Maldonado and Valtteri Bottas did not even make it out of first qualifying.
At McLaren, Sergio Perez produced their best qualifying performance of the year with ninth place, but that seemed to surprise even him and the team, and their race form and the team's general demeanour suggested the developments had not worked.
If a car has problems, sometimes you do not know what to develop first. I think that is McLaren's situation.
In my opinion, they should be looking at the front wing.
Up and down the grid, the trend is for more and more elements at the outside edge of the front wing. But McLaren have gone the other way this year.
While Ferrari and Red Bull each have seven separate downforce-producing flaps on the wing, McLaren have only three. For most of last year - for much of which they had the fastest car - they had four, and for the last two races - which they won after introducing a new front wing - they had five.
Fewer elements means more total downforce, but it also means the wing is more critical and more prone to lose more performance when it 'stalls'. So the driver will have more inconsistent grip levels and lose confidence.
When you have a car problem, that is the last thing you want. McLaren need to stabilise the aerodynamic platform of the car, even if it is at the expense of a bit of total downforce, and work out what is going wrong.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/22505695

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Vettel's Canada dominance down to circuit layout - Gary Anderson


By Gary Anderson
BBC F1 technical analyst
Sebastian Vettel's domination of the Canadian Grand Prix was all about the circuit layout.
The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is fundamentally a traction track. There is only one quickish corner and the lateral forces are low. To be quick, a car needs good traction coming off the corners and for the tyres not to grain - where the surface starts to tear.
All that plays to the strengths of the Red Bull and minimises its weaknesses - there are none of the high cornering forces that caused them such trouble in Spain, one of only two places so far this season where Vettel has not been on the podium.
As with Monaco, Canada is a unique track with unique demands. So, impressive as Vettel's win was, it does not necessarily mean he is going to carry on like that for the rest of the season.

Having said that, there is no denying that the Red Bull is a good car and Vettel's early laps in the race were like so many of his victories have been - blistering pace to take him out of the DRS range. The difference this time was that he kept pushing afterwards as well, rather than just managing the gap.
It was interesting that Vettel's team-mate Mark Webber had a fairly major part of his front wing knocked off but continued to be competitive, even setting the fastest lap of the race. That is an indication of the lack of high-lateral-force corners in Canada. Had there been, Webber would have killed the front tyres with that damage.
FERRARI NEED MORE DOWNFORCE

As far as Vettel's title rival Fernando Alonso is concerned, Canada provided the same lessons as so many races over the past couple of years - the Ferrari is a quick race car but they need to get more pace out of it in qualifying.
If Alonso had been on the front row with Vettel, could he have disputed the win? He certainly lost a lot of time fighting with other cars - he did not get past Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes into second place until seven laps from the end.

Ultimately, Alonso took away the maximum he could have done considering he started sixth. Ferrari have to make the car fast enough to enable him to start alongside Vettel so he can go racing with him. And for that, they need more downforce.
If he starts higher up, Alonso will be OK. Ferrari are good on the tyres, but he needs to be able to push the Red Bulls to make them use their tyres harder.
MERCEDES' TYRE CONUNDRUM

Force India's Paul di Resta did a fantastic job to climb up to seventh from 17th on the grid on a one-stop strategy. The Scot went 57 laps on a set of medium tyres - and that was from the start of the race, when he was on a full fuel tank.
Had Hamilton gone for a one-stop strategy in his Mercedes, he would have had to do 50 laps after his first stop to make it to the end of the race.
The Englishman had an 8.3-second lead over Alonso when the Ferrari made its second stop, to which Mercedes immediately responded. Had they kept Hamilton out there, his lead would have been 23 seconds with 22 laps to go.
Would that have been worth trying? Did they look at the fact Di Resta was in very good shape after a very long run?

Mercedes have more problems with their rear tyres than any other team - Pirelli said they were running 20C hotter than on the other cars - but, even so, they might have had a look at it. Higher temperatures are a problem, but the new set would suffer in the same way as the one he already had on. So do you drive conservatively and try to protect a lead, or put on another set and have them overheat within two laps anyway?
Hamilton pitted when his lap times were still competitive. Had he done a one-stop, he might have been able to hang on ahead of Alonso.
I think Mercedes knew Alonso was going to have Hamilton if they both did the same strategy - the Ferrari is simply a quicker race car. Opting for a different strategy might have been a chance to throw the dice. But then Ferrari and Red Bull did try that in Canada last year and it failed to come off.
Beyond that, it's difficult to understand why Mercedes can't get on top of that tyre problem.
The controversial test they did with Pirelli at Barcelona, which has led to their forthcoming disciplinary hearing in front of the FIA international tribunal, has obviously not helped them with that. So that was an opportunity gone begging, and they got a lot of flak for it, too.
McLAREN IN A MESS


sigue






http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/22844748

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BBC F1's Gary Anderson: How to set up for Hungary

The Hungarian Grand Prix is a tough race for the Formula 1 teams and drivers on a number of levels.
The first is the Hungaroring track does not get used a lot, so it is always very dirty and the circuit improves a lot through the weekend.
So the teams that have the best belief in their simulation tools are at an advantage. It's very easy to confuse yourself by what they call 'chasing the track' in Friday practice - ie making too many changes to the car to suit the circuit in the condition it is then, when it is going to change dramatically as it gets cleaned up through the weekend.
If you do that, by Sunday you can end up losing yourself, and the car's set-up will be nowhere near what you need.
It is a very demanding track for both drivers and cars, because of the long corners and the fact there is very little room for a breather.
Driving a lap

At both the start and end of the lap there are two 180-degree corners one after the other; and the middle sector is just one long succession of medium-speed corners, broken up by a chicane.

That makes it very difficult to prepare the tyres correctly for the optimum qualifying lap.
It is hard to get the front tyres up to the right operating temperature at the start of the lap, so it is very easy to make a mistake, run wide and lose time in Turns One and Two.
But if a driver does have the tyres working at the beginning of the lap, it is very easy to have overworked them before he gets to the last two corners.
So tyre management in qualifying is vitally important and that will be made all the harder this weekend because the teams are using a new specification of tyre at a race for the first time, introduced to prevent the multiple failures at the British Grand Prix.
What the car needs

The Hungaroring is a high-downforce track, but not quite as much as in the past.
It used to be very much like Monaco, in that you bolted on as many downforce-producing parts as you could, no matter what the penalty in drag.
But a layout change in 2003, which lengthened the pit straight and removed a chicane after Turn 11, has changed the emphasis slightly, so the teams are now looking for maximum efficiency of highest downforce, and the drag penalty of parts is taken into account more than it was.
For a fast lap time, a car needs to have good front-end grip, while traction and an ability to ride the kerbs are also very important.
That is one of the reasons Red Bull always go well there. Their car produces a lot of downforce at low speed, which is what you need for the Hungaroring.
The Red Bull runs with a lot of rake compared to the other cars - ie the front is a lot lower than the back.

That is what helps their car at low speed. It gets the front wing lower down, which makes it work more effectively at lower speeds, and the wedge shape underneath the car improves the underbody aerodynamics.
And their effective use of the exhaust gases to blow in the area where the floor meets the rear wheels 'seals' that gap and means they can run the rear high without the floor 'leaking' and losing downforce.
Equally, the way Sebastian Vettel drives is very good for slow-speed corners - he uses the brakes to get the nose pointed into the apex and then stamps on the throttle early to gain the rear downforce and traction from the exhaust gases working the aerodynamic parts at the back of the car.
However, we saw in Monaco that the Mercedes is also very good on that type of track - but high temperatures are forecast for the race, as they often are, which is not going to make their ongoing struggle to stop the rear tyres overheating any easier.
Heat makes it harder

The heat adds to the demands on the drivers that are already there because of the track layout. There is no rest on that track. The same goes for the brakes - it's important to keep the average temperature under control as they don't get much of a rest either.
The brake temperatures also influence the tyre temperatures, which may help the teams who are better at keeping the tyres cooler - such as Lotus, Ferrari and Force India.
And because everyone has very little experience on the new tyres, this race will be a journey into the unknown for everyone.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/23428253

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Gary Anderson: Critics should reflect on Sebastian Vettel's career


By Gary Anderson
BBC F1 technical analyst
Comments (120)
Sebastian Vettel does not deserve the boos he is now getting consistently on podiums after grands prix - and which he received again after his win in the Italian Grand Prix on Sunday.
Love him or hate him - that's an individual's choice. But the guy deserves respect for what he has done. Nobody wins three world championships just by luck.
After winning on Sunday, Vettel is now on the brink of a fourth title and his Red Bull team appear to be getting stronger as the season goes on.
This is the fifth year of this set of regulations and, other than being caught out by not spotting the controversial 'double diffuser' that helped Brawn to the world title in 2009, Red Bull have had the best car throughout.
I believe Mercedes' performance earlier this year woke up Red Bull's design chief Adrian Newey and made him realise that they needed to get on and continue to look for improvements.
Play media
Sebastian Vettel
Italian GP highlights: Sebastian Vettel wins convincingly at Monza
Red Bull have been playing with small details on the car and it has been making all the difference in pulling out that little bit more performance.
Vettel has become the first driver to win two consecutive races this year with his victories in Belgium and Italy and that has coincided with a slight change in approach from Red Bull.
In the past, they have gone for ultimate lap time and compromised speed on the straights to get it.
This year, in response to the possibility of being out-qualified by Mercedes, they have realised the car needs to be faster on the straights on low-downforce tracks such as Spa and Monza so they can overtake if they need to. They have the car with less downforce and longer gears - and they have found that it can still produce the lap time.
Whether that will turn into the same sort of domination in the next seven races is always difficult to say. But part of what we have seen in the last two grands prix is Mercedes dropping the ball as well.
Lewis Hamilton was on pole in Spa, but that was partly the luck of the draw. And in Monza, they were never that competitive and the car never looked comfortable.
So, yes, Red Bull have been very fast, but they have looked more so because some of their main rivals have slipped back a little.
CONFUSION AT FERRARI

Play media
Ferrari's Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso
Formula 1: Who will drive for Ferrari in 2014?
For three years now Ferrari have tried to gain an advantage in qualifying at Monza by getting Fernando Alonso to run in Felipe Massa's slipstream and yet again I think it failed, although they say it didn't.
They are obviously trying to make up for a pace deficit in the car. Monza was not the wrong place to try it, but they did it in the wrong way.
It was a valiant effort to do something, but done badly - like most of the stuff Ferrari are doing at the moment.
If you have team-mates willing to do that, you can't do it when they're both on qualifying laps.
They have to be far enough apart through the final corner Parabolica - say 350m or so - so as not to disrupt the airflow over the car behind and make the lead driver lift off the throttle just at the exit of that corner so the driver behind can pick up the tow.
The car behind then catches all the way down the straight towards the first chicane and then they do it again out of the first chicane until the guy in front pulls to the left out of the way before the second chicane.
Getting all that right is very difficult.
Ferrari's strategy in the race was confusing, too.
When Sebastian Vettel pitted, they left Alonso out and brought Felipe Massa in for his pit stop, when they should have left Massa out.
Leaving Alonso out cost him a second a lap for four laps - and he lost the race by five seconds while Vettel was nursing a gearbox problem.
Had they left Massa out, Vettel would have returned to the track about 12 seconds behind him. That would not have taken long to close down with Vettel on new tyres and Massa on old, so in a few laps Vettel would have been trying to pass the Ferrari.
You don't have to hold him up, but you can make it difficult for a couple of laps.
They're not seeing the big picture and it's been going on for four years now. So they need to do something about that.
ALONSO MAKING WAVES

Alonso analysis
Image of Andrew Benson
Andrew Benson
Chief F1 writer
Ferrari's Fernando Alonso says he has not given up hope of winning the World Championship this year but he will need Sebastian Vettel to run into problems.

The Spaniard finished second to his Red Bull rival in Sunday's Italian Grand Prix and is 53 points behind in the F1 title standings with seven races left.

He said: "We need to be realistic now there's a very big gap.

"We don't have enough races or probably the speed to win some consecutive races and reduce the gap by just pace."

Read more about Alonso
The difficulties Ferrari are having with their car and with the way they operate the team are what is causing Fernando Alonso to stir things up a bit there.
He is a man who carries the credentials of being as good as anybody out there and he is a different character from last year.
He had a spring in his step in 2012; this year his shoulders are down - and everyone has picked up the critical radio message he gave during qualifying.
Unlike last year, Ferrari started this season with a car that was quick enough to challenge at the front, but it has dwindled away from them.
Its no disgrace - they are second in the championship - but this was supposed to be the year for Alonso to knobble Vettel and it's not going to happen for him because the team is falling apart. They are not doing the development they need on the car and they don't seem to be on top of things operationally either.
Alonso is desperate and he is trying a different route. It's good cop-bad cop.
Alonso is very political and he will have a focus on how he tries to motivate the team.
Last year he was all positive and supportive, he led the championship but it didn't quite work; this year he has decided to kick them where it hurts whenever he can in an attempt to get a response out of them that way.
But that can cause problems at Ferrari, with president Luca Di Montezemolo being the way he is and all the politics of the situation.
Who knows whether this will cloud Ferrari's decision as they finalise their driver line-up this week. If it was me, I'd go for Nico Hulkenberg without a doubt.
He is quick. Give him an opportunity and he will take it with open arms. Drop him in a position in a race where he shouldn't be and he'll stay there - like he did on Sunday; like he did in Brazil last year in the Force India.
I just think Hulkenberg is a great talent. He is the future, whereas Kimi Raikkonen is good for today but maybe not tomorrow.

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Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull are a perfect fit


By Gary Anderson
BBC F1 technical analyst
Sebastian Vettel has now won three grands prix in a row. He is dominating Formula 1 and it is not all down to his Red Bull. It is the driver and the car.
The Red Bull fits Vettel like a glove, much more so than team-mate Mark Webber, who is not able to get the same performance out of it.
It reminds me of Jenson Button's title-winning year with Brawn in 2009. Button had been in F1 for nine years before he got that car and had won only one race.
Suddenly, he found himself in the perfect car for him and he was away - winning six of the first seven races and subsequently the title.
Vettel is part of that team and he has worked with them to develop the car in the way he wants.

All drivers say they would like the car to behave in a certain way, but if you fix it for them, you rarely get that much lap time out of it.
With Vettel, if Red Bull build the car to suit what he wants, they do get lap time out of it. That gives a team so much confidence to go forward and continue with a development route because they know it will be worth the effort.
Vettel is getting stronger and you have to respect that. There is no luck involved.
In second practice on Friday, Vettel was one second-per-lap faster than the Mercedes. If you add up the leads Vettel built up during the race in a safety-car interrupted race in Singapore at various times, it adds up to 63 seconds. In a 61-lap race. A second a lap in other words.
So that one-second margin on Friday was real.
The summer break gave everyone had a bit of time to think about what to with their cars, and Red Bull have clearly exploited that opportunity best. Their performance since the season re-started in Belgium at the end of August has been phenomenal.
Unless Vettel slips on a banana skin, I think we all know where the championship is going.
FERRARI NEED TO FIX QUALIFYING WOES

Fernando Alonso drove another fantastic race to finish second after starting seventh on the grid.
His pure racecraft is second to none, but there is a bit of a theory developing in F1 at the moment that there is more time in the car in qualifying.
Some have concluded that means Alonso is not as quick in qualifying as he is in the race. I wouldn't go along with that, but I do think there must be a reason why the combination of him and Ferrari together is not doing better in qualifying.

If you watched the BBC coverage over the weekend you may have seen the shots from an infra-red camera on the Ferrari showing the temperatures of the rear tyres, which were very high on the inside of the tread.
All the teams are trying to exploit the exhausts gases for aerodynamic effect by blowing them on downforce-producing surfaces at the back of the car.
But Ferrari don't seem to be getting as much out of that as they could do because they are losing a lot of the energy the exhausts create on the brake duct by making it hit the tyre.
The effect of that in qualifying will be to heat the rear tyres up, but that's not good because generally teams struggle to get the front tyres up to temperature in qualifying.
If you heat the rears up, then it makes it the problem of getting the front tyres up to temperature bigger.
Alonso started seventh and was third after the first-corner complex. If he could start third, he could be leading at that point.
He's exceptional in the race and there has to be something stopping him doing better in qualifying. If I was Ferrari I'd be focusing on the exhausts.
SHOULD ALONSO LEAVE FERRARI?

I would love to see Alonso in a Red Bull alongside Vettel. It would be a real dog fight. But I don't think that's ever going to happen.
Does Alonso have to go somewhere else to win the title again? McLaren are very keen on persuading him to rejoin them but I don't think that would be the right move for Alonso to make. They seem to be a bit lost in the wilderness at the moment.
Moving risks doing something stupid just because it's not quite come together at Ferrari yet.

They are recruiting at the moment, and they are recruiting good people, including their highly rated new technical director James Allison, who worked with Alonso before at Renault.
Next year there is a big regulation change, in the power train and the car design, although there are carry-overs in philosophy on the chassis.
If I was Alonso, I would stick with Ferrari and give Allison a chance to exert his authority.
The most important thing Ferrari can do is give Allison the chance to make a difference, not make him work the Ferrari way. Because the Ferrari way isn't working. They have to give him carte blanche.
MCLAREN NEED AN ALONSO

While I believe it would be wrong for Alonso to go to McLaren, I can see why McLaren want Alonso.
Button can be exceptional in the right circumstances, but he is not always at that level. Last year, he went on holiday for the middle third of the season when he just could not get the car to do what he wanted. Meanwhile, Hamilton, then his team-mate, was wringing its neck and getting results.
Button found the car balance he needed by the end of the season and was back on form. He needs a car that suits him to perform at his best.
And Sergio Perez is not going as quickly as Button. In the Sauber in 2011 and 2012, Perez wrung its neck when the car was good.
Sergio Perez
Sergio Perez has struggled at McLaren since replacing Lewis Hamilton
I don't think he knows how to make the car good, but when it's quick, he drives it fast. That doesn't seem to be happening for him consistently this season.
So McLaren must have a question mark over how good their car is.
McLaren do need to develop their car, and I have been harping on about their front wing philosophy all season.
But they need a benchmark driver. Someone who can get in the car and have a wide performance band - an ability to cope with it however it is behaving.
They need someone like Alonso, in other words. Or Vettel, Hamilton or Kimi Raikkonen.
LOTUS BOUNCING BACK

Raikkonen took third in the race after qualifying only 13th because of a problem with his back. And his Lotus team-mate Romain Grosjean would almost certainly have been third, with Raikkonen fourth, had he not suffered a lack of engine air pressure and been forced to retire.
Lotus were, on balance, Vettel's closest challengers in Singapore, and they seem to have stepped up their game now F1 is back on high-downforce circuits after a couple of shaky races at high-speed Spa and Monza.
Can they maintain it? I think they probably can. So they are going to be painful for Alonso.
His points deficit to Vettel is obviously huge, but the last thing he needs is other cars ahead of him. So a strong Lotus would hurt Alonso more than anyone else.
Lotus might even get a couple of race wins, but Vettel wouldn't mind that so long as Alonso is behind him.
Vettel got pole, victory and fastest lap in Singapore. He likes to get a 'full house', but repeating that is not going to be easy in the last six races because he needs to be careful not to throw one away.
Doing that would give Alonso hope again, and he certainly needs some help.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/24207970

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/24422038


Ferrari have been pretty average for three years - Gary Anderson


By Gary Anderson
BBC F1 technical analyst
Fernando Alonso's hopes of winning the world title effectively ended with his sixth-place finish in Korea.
The Ferrari driver still has a mathematical chance, but realistically it is all over and Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel, victorious at Yeongam, will probably win it.
He'll do so in either India or Abu Dhabi, or perhaps even Japan next weekend.
Korea was a poor race from Ferrari and to have any chance of the championship, Alonso needed to win it, or at least be ahead of Vettel.
The car was not quick enough and Alonso never looked comfortable with the situation.

He was off the road far more than is usual for him, and it looked a little like he was rattled.
Ferrari have lost quite a lot of performance in recent months but even with that they have tended to go forward in the races compared to qualifying.
In Korea, they even lost that.
Ferrari needed to show after the summer break they knew how to make progress with the car - and they still do.
For three years now, since the start of 2011, they really haven't proved capable of effectively developing their car to a level that will allow them to fight for world championships.
They progressed a little early in 2012, but that season started so badly there was a lot of room to go forward.
Over that three-year period, you would have to say Ferrari have been pretty average, and that's not a good place to be when there is a new car for next year that has to be designed under a new set of regulations.
In that situation, if you're telling yourself you're going to do well next year, you're telling yourself a lie to help you get to sleep at night.
I'd be telling myself I needed to find a solution on this car first.
Worries for Ferrari's future

There is a reasonable difference between the chassis regulations this year and next but if you don't know what's going on with what you have after five years under one set of rules, there is no obvious reason you'll know under the next.
Ferrari have made it clear they feel they are behind on the technology through which teams use exhaust gases for aerodynamic effect, which Red Bull do better than anyone.
Red Bull use their rear bodywork to keep the exhaust gases attached all the way to the area they want them.
Lots of other teams - including Ferrari - have it blowing across a hole and when you do that, the gases just get swept away by the mass airflow.
It's much harder to get them going in the right place.
The result from Korea is not a coincidence; Red Bull, Lotus and Sauber finished ahead of everyone else and they are the only teams who use that bodywork philosophy.
Exhaust blowing will not be a feature in the same way next year because the exhaust pipe has to exit high up in the centre of the car.
But the fact teams such as Ferrari - and McLaren and Mercedes - have not adopted Red Bull's solution suggests there is something awry in their modelling of how the car will work.
Teams base their design decisions on data - so the data those teams are getting on that must be wrong and they need to look at that.
The benefits of the right design

Korea was a perfect demonstration of how that exhaust design works.
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Sebastian Vettel
Vettel wins incident-packed Korean GP
There was a bit of a kerfuffle before the race about Red Bull allegedly having traction control because their traction was so good in Singapore.
But good traction is exactly what allowed Sauber's Nico Hulkenberg to stay ahead of Alonso and Lewis Hamilton in Korea, and it comes down to the exhausts giving better rear downforce coming off the corners - and therefore more grip.
Sauber have a Ferrari engine - while Red Bull and Lotus use Renault - so there is no magic Renault engine mapping.
Sauber struggled earlier this year with the rear of the car giving up in corners. But since they switched to their new rear bodywork configuration around the Belgian Grand Prix, that problem has gone away and their performances have improved enormously.
That has to be down to the exhaust system.
It allowed Hulkenberg to get on the throttle early and get good traction out of Turn One so, even with the help of the DRS overtaking aid, Alonso and Hamilton could not get close enough to pass him into Turn Three.