Why McLaren and Ferrari have a long way to go

While watching the United States Grand Prix a number of things frustrated me, first on the list being McLaren.

Jenson Button failed to escape Q1. As he said, it's a team effort, so let's just have a look at what it tells us about the team.

The fastest lap in that phase of qualifying was a 1m36.2s, so to that you add your own estimated warm-up lap time, which we'll say is 1m50s. This means you do not want to leave the pits for your final run in a qualifying session until there's less than 3m26s remaining.

If a car goes out too early, it runs the risk of another leaving the pits and being on its warm-up lap when you catch it. This is exactly what happened - with several slower cars in Button's case. Yes, they are supposed to get out of the way, but they can't simply vanish.

Button started his final qualifying lap with 2m05s on the clock, but if you add the warm-up lap time of 1m50s to that, it means he left the pits with 3m55s to go.

That's too early and gives plenty of time for other cars to leave the pits, do a warm-up lap and still get across the startline in plenty of time to do a qualifying lap after getting in Button's way.

The ideal point to leave the pits is at less than twice the fastest lap time, so any time before 3m12s runs the risk of being caught in traffic.

McLaren was totally responsible for Button's early departure in qualifying, so I have to ask the question, what has happened to this team that has so much success behind it? We hear that Ron Dennis is about to be replaced, but at the moment I don't think anyone is actually in charge.

I also have to say that Fernando Alonso commenting over the radio during the race about losing one-and-a-half tenths on the straight needs to be addressed.

If that is the case, then McLaren needs to look at its aerodynamic efficiency levels before component sign-off. Don't just keep blaming Honda. If you need confirmation of that, just look back to Suzuka where the car and not the power unit was a dog.

Speaking of underperforming giants, once again Ferrari underwhelmed both in qualifying and the race, and there's no doubt the team isn't doing everything it could be to get the most out of the car.

Around lap 36 Sebastian Vettel was warned about rear-wing drop-outs. This is when the undersurface airflow detaches and the wing stalls, leaving the driver with a huge loss in rear downforce.

The onboard camera showed Vettel having some lurid moments, including a dramatic one in the esses early in the lap, which he did well to catch. This can very quickly sap a driver's confidence.

Ferrari put this problem down to rubber caught on the rear wing, probably in the slot gap between the main plane and the flap. This could, and should, have been cleared out during a pitstop, even as a precaution earlier in the race before the problem got out of hand.

To produce maximum downforce, the front and rear-wing surfaces are working at 99.99% of their potential, so it doesn't take much to tip them overboard.

Perhaps what happened at Austin suggests that Ferrari should dial it back to 95% to give the car that window of aerodynamic consistency.

Then there was the problem with Kimi Raikkonen's unsafe release as he was sent out with his right-rear wheel potentially still loose. For a team that's expected to win world championships, these mistakes shouldn't happen. But they've been happening for some time.

Apparently Raikkonen was given the green light to leave his pitbox prematurely. That was the cause of the incident in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix when Felipe Massa set off down the pitlane with the fuel hose still attached - an error that arguably cost him the world championship. So this is not the first time there's been a problem of this type!

Going back even further, I remember my old friend Eddie Irvine - who was in the fight for the world championship - sitting in the pits during the 1999 European Grand Prix waiting for his fourth wheel to arrive so it could be fitted to his car and he could continue.

These problems must be eliminated, but despite Ferrari saying the right things, it seems they are just accepted.

This can only be symptomatic of a team that's not applying the rigorous standards needed to be a Mercedes or a Red Bull. Until that changes and Ferrari shows it can at least get the best out of the car it does have, then it's hard to see it being a credible title threat.

As for Vettel, he seems to be a shadow of what he was in his Red Bull pomp - his time at Ferrari has broken him. Raikkonen being able to outqualify and outrace him simply shouldn't be happening, and it's getting worse.

THE DANGEROUS GAME OF TEAM MANAGEMENT

Given what Ross Brawn has said in his new book, it's clear that leadership is critical to how a team performs.

If people are looking over their shoulders constantly to see when the knife might be inserted between their shoulder blades, they will not be doing the best job possible.

The team principal usually has the whip hand. In the past, this was traditionally the team owner, with the technical director the first to have his head on the chopping block.

I have been there, so I know more about this kind of situation than most.

When I left Jordan in mid-1998, Eddie Jordan was the team owner. The car was not performing as any of us wanted in the first half of the year, and no one felt the pressure or disappointment any more than me.

I didn't have a problem with Eddie, but I did have a problem with some of the other people in the management structure.

Don't get me wrong, Eddie was still responsible because he let it happen, but we should have stuck together and worked our way through it, so Jordan would have been a stronger team going forward.

As for Stewart, it changed to Jaguar under Ford ownership at the end of the 1999 season. When Jackie Stewart relinquished the reins, it was like a light-switch went off. The new management knew nothing about F1.

The problem was that Ford believed it knew it all. They were the people that should have been replaced, but unfortunately they were making the decisions and were not about to put their own heads on the block.

This was one of the first situations in F1 where a team principal was not an owner, but basically an employee just like all the others involved with the team. The main problem was that they had the power to make or break the company, and they chose to break it.

This, in reality, is what Brawn is saying. To get the best out of anyone you need to give them the confidence that they can do their job without being second-guessed, that the people in power are behind you and not just waiting to throw you to the sharks to protect themselves.

This is what he thinks Toto Wolff and Niki Lauda did to him. He was building a team and if he thinks they undermined him, he was right to walk away.

Mercedes is still reaping the reward of his efforts, so let's see how they fare when it all turns around.

FORMULA 1'S UNFUNNY JOKE

The United States Grand Prix showed track limits regulations to be a joke. Something must be done.

Take tennis as a simple example. At Wimbledon they have Hawk-Eye technology to determine if a ball was out or not. The ball can be on the outside of the line, just as long as it touched the line. Yet F1 drivers seem to be able to drive where they want.

Someone in the FIA has decided that they know enough to define if a driver was taking a faster line than staying on the track. Well, if it wasn't faster or put less load on the tyres, then drivers wouldn't use it.

It can also be that a driver can be more aggressive on corner entry than they would normally be.

If there wasn't that potential to use the runoff area at the exit of the corner, the driver's skill level would be more influential. If using the corner exit doesn't bring with it a penalty, then drivers will exploit the limits.

This needs to be consistent so the viewers understand the sport a little better. At the moment, it's a joke. And not a very funny one.

INCONSISTENCY IS INFURIATING

The big question in F1, and it's the one nobody seems to have the answer to, is 'what makes an event exciting?'

Let's look at the 100-metre sprint and take that as an example of how one person can dominate a discipline.

Normally it's a very close-run event, usually won by less than a few centimetres or hundredths of a second. But when Usain Bolt runs and backs off before the line, does that make it less exciting?

No, because everybody watching knows they have just seen the best individual athlete in that discipline doing what they do best.

In Formula 1, the car now has far too big an influence. If you need any confirmation of this, the grid was again like Noah's Ark - more or less two-by-two.

The hero drivers like Ayrton Senna have gone, and until a formula is found that brings that element back, I think F1 will lose followers and viewers.

I would also like to ask why Kevin Magnussen received a penalty for pushing Daniil Kvyat off the road, and Alonso got away with doing exactly the same to Felipe Massa.

He drove Massa off the road when he steamed down the inside and had no hope of making the corner without using the full track on the exit.

I would also say that Alonso looked like he was overdriving. He was pushing hard and with that came lots of mistakes. His eventual pass on Carlos Sainz Jr came after using DRS to get him on the run down to Turn 12, but he carried too much speed, locked up and went off the track, rejoining ahead. And yet the pass stood.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about aggressive overtaking, but it's time we had consistency.

I've complained for most of the season about not having adequate tyre information on-screen, and as I expected nothing has happened.

It's like not having the times beside a driver's name. Can't someone understand that this information is vital for the viewer to get an insight into what's going on? It would take so little to do this.

Last weekend, with the two Mercedes cars and Verstappen using softs in Q2 when everyone else was on super-softs, showed how important this information really is.

AND FINALLY...

It's time for the cameras to stay out of the cool-down room. There's very little dialogue between the drivers, especially Hamilton and Rosberg, who act spoiled.

These guys should be setting an example to the kids of tomorrow, but instead are degrading Formula 1 and bringing it down.

Lighten up chaps. It's only a sport.