CHI: Rubens leads red army into China

Even as a sport with an uncanny knack of producing irony and incongruity, last weekend Formula 1 surpassed itself. By far the most extravagant racing venue ever built the new Shanghai track's sheer scale blew everyone away. A more blatantly decadent capitalist enterprise couldn't be imagined, and yet here it was in a communist country, immaculate purpose-built roads cutting a swathe through the rice fields. But as the sport apparently glittered in a surreal new level of luxury, teams were potentially falling out like flies, no longer able to afford participation. These are strange times.

That was the big picture. Meanwhile, the speed ferrets - the men on the ground, the engineers, drivers, designers, mechanics - went about their business as usual, blinded to the irony by the competitive necessity of the moment. Another track, another set of equations.

The Bridgestone tyre engineers wondered about how the combination of the Hungary construction, a brand-new family of compounds and their latest track simulation might pan out. The drivers pondered over the track's layout and the riddles it posed in both driving and set-up. Which line for the never-ending, ever-tightening Turns 1/2/3? How to balance traction with straightline speed? The car engineers wondered which way the delicate pivot of balance was going to shift as the circuit got faster and faster - and then, in final qualifying, slower.

There are 'green' tracks and really green tracks that not only have never before been coated by racing rubber, but whose pores are still sweating. It made for a volatile competitive situation regarding tyres.

Normally, you might expect a green track to favour Bridgestone over Michelin. Here, however, Bridgestone's new compound family (in a range of five) was initially susceptible to heavy wear and graining of the left front. Because of this, the Ferraris hadn't looked great on Friday (with Rubens Barrichello and Michael Schumacher seventh and 15th in session one). Generally, they had understeer, but compensating with set-up changes wasn't easy as the track continued to change.

"It was like trying to hit a moving target," said Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn.

But by Saturday morning, with a track further rubbered-in very much to the taste of the Bridgestones, the team began to get some sense out of the car. In final practice, Schumacher and Barrichello went one-two, more than three seconds quicker than they'd been the day before. Schuey repeated the achievement in pre-qualifying, putting himself in the favoured final slot for qualifying proper.

Now out came the German for his run, a very slow out-lap so as not to overburden the tyres early on, thereby avoiding overheating them in the final sector. He had his team-mate's 1m34.012s to beat. Full attack through Turn 15, the deceptively fast entry onto the pit straight, and the Ferrari's rear wheels fell awkwardly off the camber of the exit kerbs, Schuey's hands a blur of correction as he kept his foot in it to begin the lap. But that was nothing. As he committed into the 190mph entry of Turn 1, the Ferrari's rear tyres were having none of it and the car spun into the gravel. It appeared for all the world as if he hadn't brought the rubber up to temperature.

"I guess it was down to the part between the fuel tank and the steering wheel," said Schumacher humbly.

In the Ferrari pits, long faces. Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo had already positioned himself on the pitwall to celebrate his driver's pole. Suddenly he had no reason to be there, and he walked away leaving behind the ghost of a stillborn gesture. Neither Brawn nor Ferrari sporting director Jean Todt could hide their disappointment. That their other car was on pole seemed barely to register!
"I was shocked when I saw Michael spinning," said Barrichello. "I didn't say anything for about 20 seconds. The lap was good. I had a bit of graining through sector three, but it was okay. The car responded well to new tyres, although it had a bit of understeer."

Schumacher's spin, as well as confirming Barrichello on pole, left Kimi Raikkonen on the front row. The McLaren was just 0.15sec slower than the Ferrari, with a lap that included a wobble coming out of the final turn. The MP4-19B's time was derived in a different way from most of the other cars, down on straightline speed, up on corner times.

"It felt good straight away on Friday," said Raikkonen, "but as the track changed, it lost balance and we had to make quite big set-up changes to get it back for qualifying."

David Coulthard in the sister car couldn't get to grips with the slow-corner balance, unable to live with the loose rear end that was no problem to his McLaren team-mate. Coulthard finished qualifying 10th on the grid, 0.9sec behind.
In third to sixth were Jenson Button, Felipe Massa, Ralf Schumacher and Fernando Alonso - six makes of car in the top six, split by under a second.
Button's BAR-Honda looked good in the slow corners, its FCP torque transfer system across the front wheels giving it a stable slow-corner front end, and he was fastest in sector three. Like Raikkonen's McLaren, the BAR was good on Friday, less so on the different track surface of Saturday, but tuned in for qualifying. Takuma Sato was taking a 10-place hit for a Friday afternoon engine failure, and as such his ninth-fastest time was a disappointment.

The Saubers were working well and able to fully extract the speed of the Bridgestones. Massa, on the softer compound, did a typically ragged but effective lap, and was fastest in sector one. Giancarlo Fisichella, on the harder tyre, suffered graining, but his lap was still good for seventh.

Ralf Schumacher returned in feisty form, beating team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya on Friday and Saturday.

"The car is working well here," he said, "which is a nice surprise because normally it's not at its best on slow-corner entry and exit, both of which are emphasised here."

Montoya failed to make sense of the car on a similar fuel load and was 11th, having had to lift through Turn 6.

The Renault R24s were proving a handful, and Fernando Alonso and new recruit Jacques Villeneuve spun at various times during practice. Alonso did well to squeeze a semi-competitive lap from it, but Villeneuve admitted to being overcautious in Turn 6 and trailed Alonso by 0.4sec, 13th fastest.

Olivier Panis worked away to find some balance on the initially oversteery Toyota and gridded it eighth, 0.5sec and six places ahead of team-mate Ricardo Zonta, who messed up his lap with a brake-locking moment into Turn 10.

The Jaguar team had more to worry about than the R5's lack of grunt down the two very long straights. This and a wild Turn 11 moment as he took too much inner kerb restricted Mark Webber to 12th. Christian Klien gave the lighter R5B its debut, but admitted to not getting the best from it. He was 1.3sec behind Webber and 16th.

Sandwiching Klien were the two Jordans, Nick Heidfeld 0.5sec faster than Timo Glock. Zsolt Baumgartner was the only Minardi driver to complete qualifying after Gianmaria Bruni spun out at Turn 2.



Complex races don't have to be dull. The Chinese crowd witnessing Formula 1 for the first time may not have even known this was indeed a complex race, but the sport gave a good account of itself regardless.

You saw what happened: a second consecutive Rubens Barrichello victory, Michael Schumacher finishing 12th after starting from the back and suffering three separate incidents, a tense race as both Jenson Button and Kimi Raikkonen pitched for the win - and lots of overtaking. Even aside from the extraordinary surroundings, this was not your average 2004 grand prix.

Here's why: you get good races when the variables are juggled. Sometimes - like at Spa and Monza - they're varied by the weather. At Shanghai the lack of prior data did it. Specifically, it threw up a situation where the pattern of tyre performance repeatedly swung from one tyre manufacturer to the other, with neither of them ever ideal. In the process, Ferrari's usual advantage was eroded.
"I think we still had the quickest car," said Barrichello, "but not by as much as at Monza. There it was much faster. Here it was not."

Actually, at its best it was still clearly the quickest, as the fastest laps of Schumacher and Barrichello - respectively 0.6 seconds and 0.4sec quicker than the best of the rest - testify. But its usual consistency was missing. Ferrari and Barrichello depended on track positioning to overcome that. In contrast to the pattern of most of 2004, the reason they had track position was their one-lap qualifying speed - and that was partly derived from the same characteristics that brought the inconsistency. It was, then, a complex and partly circular formula that was driving what we saw on track.

These were a new family of Bridgestone compounds - the first appearance of what will be the 2005 range. They were combined with the new construction that made its debut in Hungary but which hadn't been seen since. At Shanghai they behaved very differently from the classic Bridgestone. Quick to warm up, but prone to graining, they behaved for all the world like a Michelin! Even more weirdly, the Michelin - slow to warm up but very consistent - behaved more like a classic Bridgestone! It was a characteristic that was amplified by the Michelin teams opting exclusively for the harder of the compounds and by Ferrari going for the softer of the Bridgestones. That, in turn, was partly because the Michelin teams between them brought only two compounds from which to choose, one of which proved too hard, the other too soft.

That was just the beginning of the complexities. The differing characteristics of the two tyre brands brought about differing ideal strategies. As a generalisation, Michelin users were better off two-stopping, Bridgestones were better suited to three stops.

But there was an exception to this. The McLaren seemed able to work the tyres harder and therefore get more benefit from new rubber. This could have been to do with how much wing it was carrying. The theoretically ideal rear wing for the car fell frustratingly between two actual wings - another result of having no prior data.

But by accident or design, running higher downforce than most allowed the team to push hard on tyres that were slightly too conservative and as a result McLaren partly overcame that disadvantage. This meant that unlike BAR or Williams, McLaren simulations showed three-stopping - theoretically faster round here than two if you can get sufficient benefit from new rubber - to be faster. But the wing levels also meant the car was slow down the straights - 4.3mph slower down the long back straight than Ferrari.

McLaren, frustrated at not being able to take advantage of the Ferrari's tricky phases because the MP4/19B lacked the straightline speed to pass, gambled on a tactical change. It backfired. Not only did Raikkonen's early second stop fail to leapfrog him past Barrichello, but ultimately it cost him second place to Button.The McLaren - compelled to follow the Ferrari through its graining phase - was held back to a speed that made it vulnerable to a BAR that was slightly slower on account of having a two-stop strategy imposed upon it by its tyre usage.

Now you've worked your way through that minefield of complexities, it played out like this: Barrichello surged into the lead from Raikkonen at the start as Fernando Alonso jumped to third from sixth. Felipe Massa and Button passed and repassed four times during the opening lap for fourth, with the Sauber ahead as they came by for the first time, and Giancarlo Fisichella sixth from Ralf Schumacher and David Coulthard. Ferrari had opted to start Schumacher from the pits rather than the back of the grid, his engine having been changed after a water leak was discovered earlier that morning. They also fuelled him up heavy. He came by a solid last. Olivier Panis lost the benefit of his eighth place start after the anti-stall kicked in as he left the line, and trickling away at low speed, he was passed by everyone except the Minardis and Schumacher's Ferrari.

By lap three the Bridgestones were into their graining phase, allowing Raikkonen to close right up on Barrichello and causing a bit of a log jam behind Massa, with Button forcing his way through in ballsy fashion as they came out of Turn 13/14 and onto the long back straight. As he chased down Alonso's third place, Button set the fastest lap of the race so far.

A couple of laps later Massa's chronic graining allowed even Fisichella's similar car past, with Ralf Schumacher taking advantage to bundle him out of the way too. Coulthard took only a further lap to find a way by. It took until lap seven for Barrichello's front tyres to come back in, but in the meantime he had defended the lead faultlessly from Raikkonen who cursed his lack of straightline speed. Button meantime zapped Alonso for third into the tight Turn 6 and thanks to the slow pace Barrichello had held Raikkonen to, was still only 4.5sec off the lead. Further back, Schuey was still only four from the back and struggling to find a way by Panis.

Takuma Sato was four places further ahead, unable to find a way by Juan Pablo Montoya who in turn was fighting with Jacques Villeneuve, with JPM occasionally getting ahead under braking only for Villeneuve to immediately retaliate with better traction on the exit. This was set to be a long afternoon for Jacques. The Renaults in general were not their usual swift selves - Alonso quickly dropped away from the lead three - but Villeneuve was a long way off his team-mate's pace. Similarly Montoya - who had got on the dust on the opening lap and dropped a load of places - was running a long way behind his team-mate, with Ralf in sixth looking for a hole in Fisichella's defences while defending from Coulthard.

The racing through the field was excellent, the track's layout facilitating plenty of passing.

To Schuey's relief, at the end of the 10th lap Panis finally pitted. Michael immediately made a move on Christian Klien's Jaguar going into Turn 15, the hairpin at the end of the back straight. It was from a long way back and Klien would have had to have driven onto the marbles to avoid contact. He didn't and the two touched hard, the Jaguar's rear suspension sustaining damage that put it out of the race, Michael getting away unscathed. As the Jag was limping back, Fisi and DC pitted from fifth and sixth and left in the same order.

A lap later and the two leaders pitted together - putting Button into the lead - and left in the same order, with Alonso following on lap 13, Button on 14 and Ralf on 15. When all had settled, Barrichello led once more, Raikkonen on his gearbox again, frustrated in the surety that he could pull away if only he could pass, as the Ferrari's front tyres went through another graining phase. Button was still third, well clear now of Alonso, Ralf and the yet-to-pit Michael. On lap 15 Schuey had spun exiting Turn 14 through nothing more than driver error and had to fight to repass Coulthard. This was surely Schuey's worst performance in living memory, even if he did occasionally lap extremely quickly between incidents. On lap 20 he gave a playful little wave to his brother as he passed the Williams down to Turn 15, before immediately making his first stop. He took a lot of fuel on board and rejoined five from the back, stuck behind Villeneuve for the rest of the stint.

Button at this stage fell away from the lead too, laden down with around 12kg more fuel on account of his different strategy. Actually the BAR was losing more than can be accounted for by fuel weight alone in these post-stop phases. "We had a lot of oversteer early in the stint and it was quite tough to drive," he explained. But the damage of that was being limited by the lead Ferrari's graining phase.

Realising that their man was not going to be able to pass Barrichello on the track, McLaren began to think in terms of short-stopping him to buy the vital clean air that might give him positional advantage and allow him to exploit his car's better performance in the early post-stop laps. He came in on lap 27 - delayed into the pitlane by Gianmaria Bruni's Minardi - for a short 6.1sec stop and proceeded to let rip with some fantastically on-the-limit laps. Ferrari monitored closely and responded by bringing in Barrichello on lap 29, three earlier than planned, for a similarly short stop in order to retain positional advantage. He rejoined 1.5sec ahead, with Button on his different strategy now in the lead.

Jenson pushed hard at this stage and as Raikkonen was again held to Barrichello's early stint pace, it allowed Button to be comfortably ahead of the McLaren after he made his second and final stop on lap 35 and Raikkonen made his third a lap later (after a stint of just nine laps). At around the same time, Michael suffered a left-rear puncture, entailing a crawl back to the pits, his afternoon's work completely destroyed now. Barrichello had fuel for five more laps than Raikkonen and made maximum use of them to finally put himself completely out of the McLaren's reach - and out of Button's too. All he had to do now was bring it home.

Alonso's two-stopping Renault had fallen back into Ralf Schumacher's similar-strategy Williams by this stage, with Coulthard feeling held up. "Ralf was just following the Renault around," said DC in explanation of the Turn 15 assault he then made on Ralf. "I felt I had to try something and it turned out to be optimistic." The McLaren punctured a front left, the Williams a right rear as they made contact. Ralf headed immediately for the pits, spinning on the way in, only to be told by the team to drive through as they were waiting at that very moment for Montoya.

Ralf, who had blown JPM away all weekend, didn't think much of the idea of doing another lap on a punctured tyre. "I didn't feel it was safe to continue," he said, explaining why he had erupted out of the car and stalked into the back of the garage. After servicing Montoya - who leapfrogged Sato at this point - the team replaced Ralf's tyre and did a damage inspection. Finding none, they invited Ralf to get back in. But almost two further laps had elapsed by this time and he was less than keen. Finally, he told them in no uncertain terms that he was done for the day. Watching with interest in the background, just behind Ralf's right shoulder, was Antonio Pizzonia...

Raikkonen had rejoined after his final stop nine seconds behind Button. For a time he made only gradual inroads. But once he'd got the gap down to five seconds and had the BAR in his sights, he lifted his game. Visibly pushing the silver car harder than it wanted to go, he began to slash into Button's advantage. Jenson responded as best he could, but the McLaren definitely had the edge in speed, just as it had all weekend. The last few laps were going to be hard work for Button.

Further back - much further back - Villeneuve was mounting an attack on Mark Webber's 10th place but meeting with little success. In fact it was Villeneuve, not Webber, who briefly left the track. JV's fastest lap was 1.3sec slower than fourth-placed Alonso's, slower even than Timo Glock's best in the Jordan.

The Saubers made their final stops late but ran into trouble trying to double stint their front Bridgestones to avoid the graining, with Fisichella and Massa dropping back to seventh and eighth after difficult races. Montoya, who was unable to get the Williams handling to his liking all weekend, ran an unspectacular fifth, while sixth-placed Sato wasn't putting a foot wrong from his penalised 18th place start. Bruni had retired when a wheel fell off the Minardi - almost as spectacular as his Monza retirement - while Ricardo Zonta dropped out of a fight with Fisichella and the delayed Coulthard after he lost fifth gear.

A couple of laps from the end Schumacher set the race's fastest lap from his much-delayed 12th place, ahead only of Nick Heidfeld, Panis, Glock and Zsolt Baumgartner.

As they began the last lap, with Barrichello comfortably in charge, Raikkonen was just 0.9sec behind Button. It wasn't enough and Kimi had to reflect on the fact that he'd lost second with a brave gamble on first. Barrichello was, if anything, even more delighted than at Monza two weeks earlier. He was happier still after he saturated Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo in champagne.

A capacity Chinese crowd had just witnessed a great inaugural race. But for one of them at least, it wasn't quite what she'd been expecting. Why not? "I thought there'd be more crashes," she replied. The complexities ran rather deeper than that.