Tag Archives: Norbert Haug

F1 2012 So Far, Part 2 – The Teams

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Formula One 2011 Rd.2 Malaysian GP: Narain Kar...

Formula One 2011 Rd.2 Malaysian GP: Narain Karthikeyan (HRT) during the second practice session on Friday. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the previous post I rated the relative performances of the drivers so far in 2012.  This time it’s the teams’ turn.  Which teams’ members are punching the air and which are punching each other?

Top Bananas

HRT: If you take a conventional points, podiums and wins point of view, then it would be difficult to place HRT in the upper echelons.  However, considering their change of ownership, move to Spain and failed crash test, turning up and being well within the 107% hurdle by race 2 is a significant triumph.  They’re maybe not Champions, but nor are they a real embarrassment.

Lotus:  setting aside all the Group Lotus/Team Lotus kerfuffle last year and the black and gold paintwork, the current “Lotus” has absolutely nothing to do with the legendary Team of Colin Chapman, Jim Clark, Jochen Rindt and Mario Andretti. It does, however, share its DNA with Senna’s Toleman, Schumacher’s Benetton and Alonso’s Renault and seems, now, to be remembering that.

Sauber:  2012 has shown both the very best and worst of Sauber.  For a Team that was left for dead by BMW a couple of years ago to be pushing near the front is impressive. However, when the moment came in Malaysian, the Team’s instinct was for caution and consolidation, not to go for the win.

Williams: After its worst ever season in 2011 it would have been challenging for Williams not to have performed better this year.  I still have my doubts about the driver pairing, but it would be churlish not to acknowledge the Team’s competitive revival.

Orange Squashed

Marussia:  The Team may have lost its Virgin status, but nothing else seems to have changed.  Is there any point in being the second worst team in F1?

Caterham:  The Caterham Team are a bit like the scenes in the cartoon Scooby-Do when Scooby and Shaggy start running away from the old caretaker dressed as a mummy; there’s lots of energy and effort but they don’t seem to make any movement forward.

Toro Rosso:  You have to judge a Team by its own purpose and criteria for success. Toro Rosso exists as the Red Bull kindergarten.  On that basis, neither Ricciardo and Vergne have yet been able to establish themselves as potential promotees.

Mercedes:  On the one hand, that Chinese win was a huge step forward for the Mercedes Team, as demonstrated by Norbert Haug’s Champaign and tear soaked grin on the podium.  However, taken as a whole, the season hasn’t proved yet whether the Silver Arrows can be consistent Championship challengers.

Sour Grapes

Force India: [This commentary has been left deliberately blank under instruction from FOM]

Red Bull:  If only there was a Germanic equivalent of the word schadenfreude.  It was delicious hearing Sebastian Vettel’s desperate enquiries during the Chinese GP practice, “Is it enough? Is it enough”.  No, it wasn’t.  Like a reverse Williams, Red Bull really had nowhere to go but down after their 2011 season and we have all been the beneficiaries, so far.

Ferrari:  1962, 1965, 1969, 1973, 1980, 1991-1993, 2009 – In its long history, Ferrari have had substandard performances and have recovered.  However, I doubt that is much consolation to Fernando Alonso.  At least they didn’t try and use the Malaysian win to paper over the cracks.

McLaren:  I have posted separately about the trials of the McLaren Team.  Is McLaren basically the fastest car, undermined by the vagaries of the Pirelli tyres and a few fumbled pit stops, or is there some more fundamental flaw in the Woking set up?

The good news is, based on 2012 so far, it’s likely that this post will fall out of date very quickly, which wouldn’t have been the case in 2011.

FORMULA ONE MUM

VETTEL VS KARTIKEYAN – AN UNEQUAL CONFLICT

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Cucumber Castle

Cucumber Castle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As the old saying goes, if you tangle with an HRT you’ll end up looking like a Marussia.

I have nothing but respect for Sebastian Vettel’s talent and achievements, but you have to wonder at the wisdom of him engaging in verbal jousting with Narain Karthikeyan.    Vettel might consider the Indian make-weight to be a “cucumber” following their Malaysian contretemps, but the World Champion is beginning to look like a prize turnip.

For the leading drivers, the likes of HRT are usually of no consequence, they are in a different race, if you could even call it that.  They are just the blur that you whiz past against a background of waved blue flags.  However, where the back and the front of the grid do come together, literally, history usually suggests that the best advice for the leading driver is to walk away and preserve his dignity.

Here are some “don’ts” for drivers at the sharp end who find themselves blunted by a slow coach:

Don’t threaten to end the other driver’s career.  Ron Dennis and Norbert Haug didn’t follow this advice after Enrique Bernoldi’s Arrows legitimately held up David Coulthard’s McLaren for lap after lap in the 2001 Monaco GP.  If a driver is no good he’ll disappear soon enough with no outside assistance from the likes of Dennis or Hough.  If he is any good he might just come back to bite you.

Don’t gesture to show your displeasure.  Andrea De Cesaris was leading the Long Beach GP in 1982 when he was held up by Raul Boesel’s March.  In the time it took him to shake his fist he missed a gear and Niki Lauda’s McLaren slipped past to win the race.

Don’t bring photographic proof of the other driver’s guilt to the next race.  Jarno Trulli did this following his crash with Adrian Sutil at the Spanish GP in 2009, achieving nothing but a big bill from the photo developers.

Finally, and most importantly, don’t leap out of your car and start trying to perform prostate surgery on the other driver using your racing boots.  It certainly didn’t add much to the prestige of his role as World Champion when Nelson Piquet set about the hapless Eliseo Salazar when a failed  attempt to lap the Chilean at the 1982 German GP resulted in both cars ending up in the tyre wall.

It’s much better to follow the example of Jenson Button, who owned up to his own crash with Karthikeyan, or Ayrton Senna.  At the Italian Grand prix in 1988, McLaren’s perfect record of victories was destroyed when the Brazilian tripped over one-hit blunder Jean-Louis Schlesser’s Williams.  After the race, when a tearful Schlesser apologised, Senna reportedly accepted it with good grace, although I doubt that Ron Dennis was quite so sanguine.

FORMULA ONE MUM