British GP Race Analysis

Meanwhile, amid the hype over the 50th anniversary of Ferrari's first win, and facing the prospect of equalling Alain Prost's record, Michael Schumacher put in an uncharacteristically low-key 'percentage' drive - after choosing an unlikely strategy that confused his main rivals.

After the race I asked one top Ferrari guy what had gone wrong, and he seemed nonplussed by the question. The feeling in the team was that on a day when title rival David Coulthard failed to score, second and third was a pretty good result on the home track of McLaren and Williams. That was an opinion shared by Ron Dennis: "If I had my worst weekend and had a second and a third, I'd probably be pretty happy."

Finally, having challenged for victories over the past three races Williams also seemed strangely satisfied with a humble fourth place, 68s behind the winning car. As I said, an oddball race....



It was soaking wet on Saturday morning, which created some interesting issues. It was the first properly soaked session at a Grand Prix meeting since race day in Brazil. While there have been wet test days (including some induced by artificial means), this was the first time since Interlagos that we could get a proper update on how the tyre brands compared. And it was also the first time we'd had an official wet session in the era of traction control.

As expected Bridgestone had the upper hand, and the Japanese company's intermediate tyre proved particularly impressive even in fairly wet conditions (bear that in mind if it rains in upcoming races). Michelin still has some work to do in this area. A full session of wet running also meant that nobody could conduct any set-up or tyre comparison work for the race, and more importantly, they could not do any tyre preparation work for the race.

This was a big problem for the Michelin runners, who have been starting on tyres with 10 or more laps on them. Thus on Saturday mornings much effort has gone into putting miles on tyres that are earmarked for the race, a process that carries on into the warm-up (remember that tyres used on Friday cannot be saved for later in the weekend).

With Saturday morning wiped out, it meant that the teams would end the day with more new rubber than they knew what to do with; of their seven sets, three would be untouched, and the other four would each have just the three laps of a qualifying run on them.

This was a perfect situation for the Bridgestone guys, who were only too happy to have three fresh sets to play with in the race. But it would leave the Michelin runners with an awful lot of work to do in the Sunday morning warm-up. And if that turned out to be wet, and the race was dry, then they'd be in big trouble...

As Patrick Head noted after the French GP, life would be a lot easier if Michelin came up with a tyre that could be used successfully when new. During the dry running on Friday it was discovered that the harder tyre matched that description. Williams thus felt comfortable in choosing it for qualifying and therefore the race, a decision emulated by Benetton and Minardi. It was a conservative option, even if a little qualifying pace had to be sacrificed - perhaps 0.5s a lap, a Williams insider observed.

"Obviously with the rain on Saturday morning we really didn't have particularly good data," said Head. "We could have run either tyre in truth, but we decided to go for the safer, harder tyre."

And while the tyre wasn't the only cause of the team's dip in form, it certainly contributed to the fact that Montoya and Schumacher qualified only eighth and 10th. Ralf was a massive 1.8s off pole, the position he occupied at the last race, while the Jaguars and Jean Alesi's Prost, all on the softer Michelin, were much closer to Williams than previously.

At the front there was a familiar look however, as Michael Schumacher just edged out the McLarens, with Mika ahead of David for the sixth time this year. Bridgestone's latest rubber clearly worked well, and a gamble in bringing a tyre that had not previously been tested paid off, as it did at Magny-Cours. More specifically Mika Hakkinen felt very comfortable with the tyre, which helped to dial out the understeer that has been troubling him this year.



At last year's British GP the best strategy appeared to be that adopted by McLaren, with Coulthard and Hakkinen making one stop on laps 31 and 33 respectively, just after halfway. On that occasion Michael Schumacher, who made a bad start and had a troubled day, went as far as lap 38. Others tried two, with varying degrees of success.

However, after the French GP Ross Brawn had suggested that this year Silverstone was likely to be a two-stopper, a prospect he looked forward to because Ferrari is not keen on any race that involves a long first stint, and therefore is a test of fuel tank capacity.

The consensus before the race was that while it was close, two stops was indeed the way to go this time, especially for drivers at the front. It was a little more complicated for those in the middle of the field, who risked getting caught behind someone on a one-stop and therefore slower. Thus one stop seemed like a good bet for the Williams duo, who were potentially faster than some of the cars that had qualified ahead, but would not be able to fulfil their potential if they got caught in a traffic jam.

As we've discussed previously, the warm-up doesn't always provide a solid clue as to what might happen, but in retrospect this time it did. The McLarens were at the sharp end, and Michael was 1.4s slower than pacesetter Coulthard, while Ralf and Rubens were 1.6s off DC. That performance reflected their ultimate choice of one stop. Proving that the Sunday morning session doesn't tell the full story, Montoya was 12th, and a whacking 2.2s slower than David. Did that convince the Colombian to go for two stops?



When the cars went to the grid it was apparent that the choice of hard tyre had made life a little easier for Williams; Montoya was on all new tyres, something that no Michelin runner has been able to contemplate for some time. However, Ralf had still opted for scrubbed fronts, lending a further twist to the complex tyre situation. Usually that's to avoid the drop-off in performance that is a characteristic of the French tyres. On this occasion it was more a question of balance and driver preference.

"They had a slightly different balance," said Sam Michael, chief operations engineer at Williams. "Juan had a slightly more nervous car, so the new tyres helped him, whereas Ralf had a little graining on the front. You probably could have achieved it with a new set or a mechanical change on the car. The main thing you get the performance from is a new rear, and as long as he was in a position to run a new rear, it wasn't a big thing really."

As we've come to expect the leading Bridgestone runners had new tyres all round, while those on the softer Michelin had various combinations of scrubbed rubber.



How would this season have turned out if McLaren had two competitive cars at the end of the opening lap of every race? Five times one or other of the MP4-16s has had a glitch at or before the start. Throw in DC's wobbly suspension in Canada, and you've got a sixth problem. At Silverstone we had drama number seven...

The clash that claimed Coulthard can only really be described as a racing accident. Jarno Trulli has a habit of getting involved in first lap incidents, but perhaps DC, who for obvious reasons had to get a move on, didn't help himself. Whatever, the bump at Copse went a long way to spoiling the race. It was a double whammy for Jordan as Heinz-Harald Frentzen was also badly delayed, while others made huge gains amid the chaos. Here is how that first lap panned out:

 M Schumacher
 Hakkinen
 Montoya
 Barrichello
R Schumacher
Raikkonen
Heidfeld
Frentzen
Alesi
Villeneuve
Verstappen
de la Rosa
Button
Bernoldi
Irvine
Burti
Fisichella
Coulthard
Alonso


This table shows just how much the two Williams drivers gained from their initial good starts and from being in the right place at the first corner. Further back it's perhaps no surprise to see Verstappen and Alesi gain places - you wouldn't expect either man to be fazed by heading blind into a cloud of dust and tyre smoke! Button also did well, and made full use of having launch control on his Benetton for the first time.

At the front it seemed to be business as usual. Michael didn't have a great initial getaway (as we would find out, he had a very heavy fuel load), but he made it to the first corner in front of Mika Hakkinen, and the incident behind gave both men a break.

But the most notable feature of the opening laps was the way Mika stuck to Michael's gearbox, a situation that was reminiscent of the early stages of Monaco. Not only was Schumacher unable to get away from the Finn, at the start of lap five he appeared to run wide at Copse, and left the door open. Hakkinen needed no second invitation, and swept through. He then began to pull away at a rate that suggested the German had a serious problem - in fact it looked as though he had one hand tied behind his back...



Mika crosses line on Michael's tail
Mika takes lead on the exit of Copse and pulls out 1.997s
+ 3.646s
+ 5.760s
+ 8.004s
+ 9.936s
+ 11.610s
+ 13.468s
+ 15.324s
+ 17.086s
+ 18.764s
+ 20.576s
+ 22.114s
+ 24.432s
+ 27.577s (Montoya moves into second)
+ 28.970s
+ 30.493s
Mika pits

This astonishing margin of 30s was built up in just 16 laps - there had to be some logical explanation for it. And there was, for Michael had started on a one-stop strategy and was effectively carrying twice as much fuel as his rival. In fact he had effectively copied last year's unsuccessful strategy, but this time ran to 39 rather than 38 laps...

But even that didn't tell the full story. Quite simply Ferrari had not perfected the set-up, and as in Brazil, Michael was not happy. Totally out of character, he seemed quite content to drive at his own pace and let Mika win as he pleased. He may also have been under orders to take it easy on the engine, something he could not have done had he been on a two-stopper and in the mood to charge. Interestingly some observers on the pit wall noted that from time to time the Ferrari sounded a little odd, and it occasionally passed the startline speed trap well down on its usual speed.

"He wasn't very comfortable with the car," said Ross Brawn. "We didn't quite get it on the button. It was good enough obviously to finish second, but it was better when the fuel load lightened. With a heavy fuel load it was a bit tricky."



Mika could not believe his luck. When he came out of that first stop he was still over five seconds ahead of Michael (although Montoya briefly kept him out of the lead until pitting). Through the second stint he continued to open up the gap, albeit not at the rate we saw previously, as Michael's fuel load came down and Mika was informed that he did not need to drive flat out.

On lap 39 Mika made his second and last stop, and Michael made his first and only. This gave us an interesting opportunity to make a direct comparison between the merits of their one and two stop strategies to this point. At the end of lap 38, their last flying lap before the stops, Mika was 20.3s ahead, despite the time he'd spent in the pitlane...

In this last stint they both had 21 laps to run, and thus had identical fuel loads and new tyres. The gap stayed at around 22s for several laps, before easing out to as high as 34.2s on the penultimate lap. It was a strange situation, for neither man had any real reason to press on; Michael had clearly accepted his fate and was content to cruise to second. Mika had to ensure that he didn't stress the car but also didn't lose concentration.

If anything Michael had even more reason to lose interest, because he was under no threat from team mate Barrichello. Rubens had to run all the way to lap 42 before making his single stop. He eventually earned a respectable third, but it took some retirements ahead to help him out, and it could have looked a lot worse.

There's not much to say about a fine drive by Mika, and a great effort by McLaren after a string of recent problems. But even Dennis admitted that the team was flattered by the main opposition's strange afternoon.

"I think we have genuinely improved our performance, but not as much as the race indicated. I just think that Ferrari did a particularly bad job, and that made us look even better..."



So what on earth was Ferrari up to?

"Most certainly their strategy was completely wrong," said Dennis. "I don't think anyone in the team would argue to the contrary, and it's a bit of a mystery to us why they even considered it."

"It was a little bit of a conservative strategy," admitted a slightly sheepish Ross Brawn, "which I think there's a question mark over. I think for that strategy to have worked, Michael would have had to keep Mika behind him at the beginning of the race, and that was too risky. Mika was very quick and there was no point in taking a risk in that situation, with David out of the race. So Michael quite sensibly let Mika past and then it was concentrate on coming home second."

It seems that Ferrari took a long, hard look at its options, and decided that, for once, it was impossible to beat McLaren on pace. Using a one-stop strategy, as Brawn hinted, was a sort of last resort 'spoiler' technique. The idea was to keep the quicker McLarens, or perhaps more specifically DC, behind. But it seems that the team underestimated the pace of the fired-up Mika, and did not predict the severity of the handling problems that Michael would face, especially when running with double the fuel load of his rival.

Usually overtaking isn't especially easy at Silverstone, but that 39-lap fuel load made a massive difference. It might have been more logical to make a stop at halfway rather than two-thirds distance (as the McLarens did last year), at least giving Michael and Rubens a more manageable load. Incidentally, Dennis confirmed that Coulthard would have run a similar strategy to Mika.



While Ferrari did do the main pre-GP test in June (and had some problems), the rain that affected the actual race weekend cost crucial dry track time. The team did not have enough local knowledge to draw on in terms of how a 'green' track responds and what changing temperatures and wind conditions can do.

"It's a bit of an excuse, but we don't test here very often, and we didn't have the confidence in the set-up of the car for the race," said Brawn. "It was quick over one lap, but of course running with fuel and so on needs to be done to get the race set-up correct. And with the weather and one or two other things, we hadn't done that. It didn't work out as well in the race as we'd hoped, but I think if we have a bad day and score six or rather 10 points in the championship it's not so bad.

"One of the problems with Silverstone is that it's a very short testing day. You only get from 10am to 1pm, and 2pm to 5pm, so there's only six hours a day. And there are not that many tests, and for us to travel over here and get what for us are effectively short days has to got to be held in balance with all the other circuits that we go to. We'll never test here as much as the British teams. And you need to test here in the right weather conditions and so on. As I say it's a bit of an excuse, so I don't think it's the only reason..."

The curious thing is that while Brawn suggested that going for one stop was a conservative strategy, in some ways it was the total opposite. As he said himself, to succeed Michael would have had to keep Mika behind for longer. Fair enough, but what if Schumacher had lost out to one or even both McLarens at the start? Game over. Considering Ferrari's relatively sluggish getaways of late, that was not an impossible scenario, especially when carrying such a heavy fuel load on the grid. 'Conservative' is not the word that comes readily to mind...



The Ferraris and the surviving McLaren were not the only cars to have contrasting ideas on fuel strategy. All kinds of combinations were tried up and down the field, and this is how things unfolded for the leading runners:



Hakkinen:
M Schumacher:
Barrichello:
Montoya:
Raikkonen: (59 laps)
Heidfeld: (59 laps)
Frentzen: (59 laps)
Villeneuve: (59 laps)
Irvine: (59 laps)
Verstappen: (58 laps)
R Schumacher: (projected)

Williams hedged its bets and sent Ralf out on one stop, and Montoya on two. As noted previously, the latter was a bit of a gamble from Juan Pablo's lowly grid position, because he risked getting caught in a queue of slower cars and would thus be unable to make use of his potential speed. The Colombian clearly felt that he could get away well and make a few early passes. But even he didn't expect to emerge from the first corner in third, and that good fortune set him up for a potentially good result.

Initially he fell back a little from Schumacher and Hakkinen, but by lap 13 he was just one second behind the Ferrari. Five laps later he pulled past on the pit straight, and it looked as though Michael had decided to let him by. He opened up about eight seconds on Michael before pitting on lap 25; the fuel hose jammed slightly, and a little time was lost. When he emerged he had dropped to around 18s behind Michael.

With both men now due one stop, this indicated that Montoya was not really a threat to the German over the full distance. And while it's easy in retrospect to question Ferrari's strategy, one presumes that the team had expected the battle with the McLarens to follow a similar pattern, but Mika spoiled it by getting past so soon.



Montoya's first stop set up a fascinating scenario, for he emerged behind Barrichello and Ralf, who were battling for third. Just as the start had played into his hands, so he now faced the downside of a two-stopper, as he got caught behind his rivals.

Although both men now had a lot less fuel on board than they had at the start, Montoya was on a very short middle stint and therefore his weight was comparable with that of Barrichello, and he had perhaps only six laps' worth more than Ralf. His brand new tyres, and the momentum he'd built up in the first third of the race, should have given him an advantage. But he wasn't able to use it:

Emerges from pit stop
1m24.639s
1m25.232s (catching Ralf)
1m25.414s (on Ralf's tail)
1m26.335s
1m25.655s
1m25.743s
1m25.176s
1m25.293s
1m25.803s (Ralf pits)

Although on lap 27 Montoya still had the benefit of new tyres, that lap gives some indication of what he was subsequently losing while stuck behind his team mate, who was of course in turn right behind Barrichello. In fact Rubens was doing a good job to keep these potentially quicker cars behind, and proving that the same strategy might have worked better for Michael.

In France Montoya also got caught behind Ralf, who was struggling with a bad set of tyres, and on that occasion team orders were stuffed by an inconvenient radio problem. This time Schumacher Jr heard the message loud and clear, but he insisted that he could himself find a way past Rubens, so there was no point in letting Montoya through. But he failed to pass the Ferrari.

Juan Pablo was not going to do himself any favours by trying an aggressive move on his team mate, so he had to sit there. Inevitably this scenario led to a degree of consternation on the pit wall, as Patrick Head admitted: "For Juan it was quite good until after his first stop he came up behind Ralf, who was towards the end of his long run on the one-stop strategy. I don't think there was any deliberate attempt by Ralf to hold Juan back, but when we radioed Ralf to say that it would be better if he let Juan by, Ralf said, 'I'm faster than Rubens, I won't have a problem overtaking him.' But as the next five laps showed obviously he did have a problem overtaking him..."

The question of whether team orders should be followed in such circumstances is a difficult one - with neither driver having senior status - but at this point in the race Montoya did seem to have the better chance of improving his overall position. One can't blame Ralf for failing to consider the bigger picture, but Ferrari must have viewed the situation with some amusement...

Ralf finally pitted on lap 35. The fuel hose had proved a little reluctant at Montoya's earlier stop, but this time the guy had a real struggle to get it off, possibly due to something sticking. Two or three crucial seconds were lost, but that meant nothing as almost immediately he stopped with an engine problem.

For six more laps Montoya sat behind Barrichello, and he too failed to find a way past as a low fuel load allowed Rubens to pick up speed. The Colombian was stunned when the Ferrari continued to circulate. Montoya simply ran out of time, making his second stop on lap 41 - and there was still no sign of Rubens making his first! But could he have found a way past had Ralf waved him through earlier?



That's the $64,000 question as far as the Williams camp is concerned. "If you're going to attack someone it takes you three or four laps to work out where to do it," said Sam Michael. "He (Juan Pablo) did a good job on Michael. But he said Michael had a lot less traction than Rubens, so that enabled him to get a good run out of the last corner."

The Brazilian finally came in on lap 42. This was obviously a critical moment, but Montoya had already made things difficult for himself. As he came into the pit he sensed that he was going to slide a little long, but compensated too much and actually came to a halt two feet too early. The mechanics had to shuffle sideways, and in the panic there was a problem with one of the wheels (and once again the fuel hose proved a little difficult to remove). Some 2-3s was lost, and this was absolutely crucial, for it allowed Rubens to get out of his stop - one lap later remember - still in front.

Montoya now had 18 laps in which to find a way past Barrichello for third, but equal fuel loads and new rubber for both men meant that it would not be an easy task. In fact through the final stint Juan Pablo gradually faded away, as he was not happy with his final set of tyres.

This was a similar scenario to that faced by Ralf in France, except here the explanation was less clear. At Magny-Cours Ralf had used scrubbed rubber, so differences between two 'second-hand' sets were at least possible; at Silverstone Juan used new tyres all the way through, so there was no obvious reason for the discrepancy.

From eighth on the grid to fourth was not a bad result, but bear in mind that two cars were out, one (Frentzen) was massively delayed, and you can see that the only cars Montoya really beat on merit were the Saubers. With due respect to the Swiss team, whose young guys are doing a great job this year, you'd have to say that Williams should be beating them, even on a off day.

As I said at the start, this was an oddball race, but I don't think that the it will have much bearing on the likely form at Hockenheim, a very different type of track. Nevertheless it will be interesting to see how Hakkinen fares in the upcoming races. Traditionally Germany, Hungary and Belgium have been quite kind to him...