Hamilton and Vettel: the ultimate bullfight

What does Formula 1 mean to you? Multi-million pound, cutting edge high-technology sport pushing back new frontiers of professionalism in every area?

It can be. But sometimes it isn't.

There have been some comedy moments in the F1 paddock during the past couple of race weekends. Lewis Hamilton's trip down the pitlane to see Christian Horner after qualifying in Canada was one such.

Okay, so one might have bumped into the other, had a chat, exchanged pleasantries, who knows? But it certainly couldn't be serious business slap bang in the middle of the paddock, could it?

Suppose you're the 2008 world champion, the guy rated as the quickest in the world by a goodly number, and you've fallen out of love with the team that made you champion fresh out of nappies. You fancy driving for the team currently building the fastest car. What do you do?

If I had an instantly recognisable face and didn't want to make waves, I'd probably put a call through to Horner in Milton Keynes, request a football-style meeting at a motorway services and turn up in a hoody. Or else just let him know what was on my mind via the blower.

But it seems that Lewis was pretty disgruntled at where he qualified in Canada, a race he probably reckoned on winning, and evidently decided he could wait no longer. So he got in touch with a catering girl he knew at Red Bull and asked if she could fix a meeting.

Things went something like this: "Err, Christian, I've got Lewis and he wants to know if he can speak to you."

"Lewis who?"

"Lewis Hamilton."

"Pardon? What the heck does he want? Yes, no problem, tell him to come down."

Unfortunately, a table of photographers is sitting nearby in Red Bull's 'energy station' and overhears what's happening. One of them tells my colleague Jonathan Noble.

No sooner has the meeting taken place than Noble arrives chez Red Bull and asks Horner, with a smile, "How'd the meeting with Lewis go?" Never has Horner's flabber been so gasted! It's not long before the story is on AUTOSPORT.com, which sends Fleet Street into meltdown.

Hamilton has rarely led Vettel in 2011 © LAT

Melting too, no doubt, are Simon Fuller and his 19 Entertainment associates, who signed up to manage Hamilton in March this year. They're in Montreal and they know nothing about Lewis's escapade. Apparently.

Fast forward to Valencia and the Lewis gossip is a bit old hat. Everyone's speculating about whether the ban on trick engine maps and exhaust blown diffusers - introduced in two stages at Valencia and Silverstone - will change the competitive picture.

Nobody knows. Or at least they say they don't. This is where F1 differs so much from a sport like football. The more you delve, the more complex it gets. No great shake-up in the order was predicted for the Valencia engine map changes but Silverstone might be different.

At the moment, many of the throttles are still 100 per cent open when a driver is off the pedal, increasing exhaust gas and hence diffuser effectiveness. At Silverstone though, the FIA will stipulate that when the driver has zero pedal, the throttles have got to be a maximum of 10 per cent open at 12,000rpm and 20 per cent open at 18,000rpm. Commentators and journalists need to talk about this and so Charlie Whiting put himself up for a media Q & A session in Spain.

In truth, it seems odd to embark on all of this in the middle of a season and so naturally everyone starts to wonder what the agenda is. Purely technical, says the FIA. Engines and exhausts are to be used for combustion, not as aerodynamic devices. Things have gone too far.

But is that really all there is to it? Are we sure it's not political? Is it not a means of trying to slow down the Red Bulls to liven up the season and make sure TV viewers don't switch off and that people keep paying at the gate?

Whenever something like this happens e.g. the sudden banning of Renault's mass damper in 2006, there is widespread paranoia as everyone seeks to unravel what's really going on and who's driving it. Whiting actually alludes to that very case as a good analogy to the current situation.

"The mass damper use, when first introduced was fairly benign when it came to aerodynamics, but the more it got developed, the more extreme the designs were," he explains. "There were four, five, six mass dampers on the car clearly being used for aerodynamic reasons. These things escalate to the point where something has to be done. The mass damper was a perfect example."

Whiting was grilled on the blown diffuser issue © LAT

Media sessions are sometimes a good opportunity for even the teams to find a few things out. 'Friendly' journalists are primed and often you only have to look at their nationality to gauge who's really asking the question.

"You brought up the example of the mass damper," a German journalist says to Whiting. "Everyone knows which team [Ferrari] made pressure to stop it. Is it the same team stopping this system because they are not able to build a winning car?"

No loosening up there, straight in with the short-pitched delivery.

"No, I don't think so," says Whiting. "Because everybody is doing this to some extent. Obviously some are doing it more extremely than others and you could even say that some are doing it better than others. But everyone is doing it. There are real extremes out there but I'm not at liberty to say how extreme."

"But was it one team making pressure?"

"One team wrote to me asking if they could do a certain thing."

"But was it the same team as the mass damper?"

"No."

As it goes on, everything Whiting says appears to make perfect sense and you can't help finding yourself thinking that if all this really is political, then as a technical man Whiting is doing a consummate job as a politician. He could almost be Max Mosley!

But just as you sense that people are starting to get a handle on all this, and you understand that the FIA has looked at historical data to decide suitable throttle limitations, a curved ball is chucked in and it emerges that a throttle is not just a throttle.

"A lot depends on engine architecture," Whiting says. "For example, we have to be very careful not to disadvantage users of barrel throttles versus butterfly throttles, because they have a distinctly different way of working. If it's quite clear that in 2009 one engine with a butterfly throttle only needed 15 per cent opening but the same engine with a barrel throttle needed 20 per cent, then we could make a distinction because we don't want an across the board figure that will affect one team more than another."

Ah, okay then, so it's going to be open to interpretation, a factor guaranteed to spread even more paranoia throughout the paddock. Some of the world's motorsport media, no doubt including any who've partaken of a glass of red at lunch time, have already glazed over. But this is getting interesting.

There's still varying opinion about how much the Red Bulls will be affected at Silverstone. And it's also worth remembering that the track might not be a good barometer for the rest of the season given how ballistic the current generation Red Bulls have been around Northamptonshire over the past three years.

Red Bull says it has not been 'hot blowing' its diffuser during 2011 © LAT

Talking about an exhaust-blown diffuser, Horner says: "For sure it's worth a few tenths of a second, but some teams have optimised it in different ways. Some have been blowing hot air, which is a bit more potent, and some have been blowing cold air. We've been blowing cold air for example, so it's impossible to predict the effect it will have."

The assertion that Red Bull has not been hot-blowing (burning fuel in the exhaust off-throttle via spark advance) was met with scepticism by one of F1's more experienced technical men, who thinks Horner may be insulting our intelligence and points out that they use the same engine as the Renault.

Horner, however, is adamant, alleging that Red Bull has obviously tried hot-blowing but can't do it because they roast their rear tyres.

On Saturday I spoke to an engine man who said that the subject of calibration is massively, massively complex. A bright man himself, he admitted that his calibration guys speak a different language. Which just made me wonder anew, despite Whiting's explanations, why anyone would open such a potential can of worms mid season.

When the subject shifted to Canada, rain and starts behind safety cars, it got a whole lot easier for Whiting. Someone - no names, no pack drill - asked why the race had been started behind the safety car.

The principal concern was visibility due to the standing water on the track, Whiting said.

"But it wasn't raining," the questioner followed up.

Standing water on the track, Whiting repeated.

He was then asked whether in the future he might provide some explanation behind such decisions.

Probably a little irked, but admirably managing to keep a straight face, Whiting said: "Well, I didn't think I needed to explain that. Can you think of another reason it might have started behind the safety car? But if you do think it needs explaining, I can do it, if you want."

The same fellow was in a post-race scrum around McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh, who had just seen Hamilton finish 45s behind the winner, with Jenson Button - minus KERS for half the race - even further behind.

"Both drivers have said, Martin," the question started off, "give us more aero and give us a faster car."

Down the wicket came Whitmarsh and smacked the ball straight back over the bowler's head for six.

Hamilton has not matched Red Bull in 2011 © LAT

"That's unusual for a race driver, isn't it. You always come up with the dumbest questions, don't you! But go on then, carry on."

The chap looked a bit taken aback but, to put it into context, it was a revealing moment. Aside from the fact that Whitmarsh was probably answering the same thing for the fourth time since the end of the race and was clearly intent on promptly heading for the airport, he probably didn't need to hear again something he is only too well aware of.

Valencia, actually, is not about downforce; witness the fact that the Ferrari finished a close second. In McLaren's case it was more about a lack of traction, overheating tyres and oversteer. So it will have irked to hear the 'D' word again. It's not as if the team is not spending every hour of every day looking for more downforce. You can't pop down to the supermarket and buy some.

Earlier in the weekend I'd had cause to interview Whitmarsh with a stock set of questions on behalf of a Japanese magazine I work for, wanting to know, among other things, his best moment in F1.

One of them was Brazil 2008 and seeing Hamilton go from a young boy to achieving his dream of becoming world champion. On another subject, he talked about the depth of high-quality, ego-free people he has working at McLaren these days. He made a point of stressing high quality 'people' irrespective of their technical qualities.

Within that, you would imagine that he might appreciate, not to say expect, a little more respect and a bit more of a two-way street than he seems to be getting from Hamilton at the moment.

Hamilton currently doesn't seem to be thinking things through as much as simply reacting. It's probably quite simple as far as he's concerned. He's the best, but at the end of 2011 he won't have won a title in three years. Sebastian Vettel is stealing his thunder.

It could be that McLaren turns up with a race-winning car at Silverstone and suddenly they all love each other again. But it's doubtful. Some are saying that once a relationship is broken, end it and move on.

Hamilton is under contract to McLaren for 2012, but so was Fernando Alonso for 2008. And I don't doubt that Red Bull's Dietrich Mateschitz has pockets deep enough to buy out Hamilton's contract if that's the direction that all parties decide it needs to go.

Vettel v Hamilton in the same car. Do Horner and Adrian Newey need the grief? It could be Senna and Prost all over again. Don't expect that the German would remain the all-smiling boy next door if Hamilton was sat across the other side of the garage and going quicker.

But would he be quicker? And, even if he was - even by a smidgen - would he ultimately overcome a man that Peter Sauber rates as one of the most intelligent drivers he's ever seen in a race car?

McLaren will not want that, Horner may not even want that, but think how many cans of Red Bull that Hamilton and his showbiz buddies would shift. Mateschitz would love it. And for a promoter - Bernie Ecclestone - it would be heaven. As in 1988, it wouldn't matter if someone had a quicker car; the driver war would be the story - the German v the Englishman.

Boxing fans tell you there is so much money in Floyd Mayweather versus Manny Pacquiao that it simply has to happen. Interestingly though, it hasn't, yet. You can see Vettel and Hamilton at Red Bull rapidly taking on the same sort of momentum.