French GP Saturday Night Fever

Proceedings were enlivened by Max's description of one of the F1 team principals as being 'not the sharpest knife in the box.' Most people grasped pretty quickly to whom he was referring, and it caused much amusement around the paddock. Especially when we heard that a mischievous Bernie Ecclestone had advised the wronged person to sue...

Apart from the officiating issues that arose at Indy the other question that is being bounced around is what will happen at Williams. Will Sir Frank stick to Marc Gene and/or Antonio Pizzonia, or will he give Jacques Villeneuve a chance? All will be revealed in the coming days, but at the moment, the big question is what will happen here at Magny-Cours on race day.

It was a thrilling qualifying session, and with Fernando Alonso beating Michael Schumacher to pole, and the other top guys bunched up close behind it could be an equally intriguing afternoon.

This was to have been the last race where we could look at the qualifying performances and guestimate what strategies people might be running. However, the teams has second thoughts about changing the system for Silverstone, so the business of running race fuel loads will stay until the end of the year (unless it all changes once more - you never know!) so we've still got something to keep us occupied.



Magny-Cours is a funny circuit. While it doesn't have the high brake wear of Montreal, or the puzzling high speed/infield compromise of Indianapolis, it does present some unusual challenges.

First and foremost it is very hard on tyres, and that means we often see a significant drop-off in times in the course of a stint. As always, passing somebody who is in tyre trouble is not necessarily easy, so pit stop strategy and track position becomes critical.

The track has always had one of the quicker pit lanes, and a change to the entry last year made it even less expensive to make a stop. That, together with the tyre degradation, encourages multi-stop strategies. The logical thing to do is to divide the race into four near equal stints, and the chances are that everyone will be coming in during a busy period of three or four laps.

A look at what the top finishers did last season is the clearest indication that stopping three times if the only sensible option at Magny-Cours.



R Schumacher 18-35-51
J Montoya 17-34-50
M Schumacher 17-35-52
K Raikkonen 16-31-47

Not a lot of variety, is there? Funnily enough these four guys finished in the order they qualified. The only man to try something different was Rubens Barrichello. With a heavier fuel load than his rivals he started eighth, made his first stop on lap 20, and pitted just once more, on lap 45. He finished seventh, so it didn't seem to do him much good.

The feeling is that, as at other tracks this year, cars will be stopping earlier than they did in 2003, possibly around the lap 13 mark onwards. In that case there could be a wider spread than we saw last year and this more chance of the positions changing.

It's extremely hard to work out who's doing what, especially as it's all going to be so marginal. Although he's only fourth, Jenson Button seems pretty confident with his strategy. However, after a disappointing last sector Ferrari seemed pretty underwhelmed by Michael Schumacher's second place, and it doesn't seem likely that he's stopping significantly later than those around him. Michael is also on the dirty inside line and may find someone like DC surging past into Turn 1.

Having said that he won at Imola and Barcelona after running in second for the first stint and biding his time. And while Renault has been stopping later than most other front runners this year, if there's one race where the team might run at least car a little light to go for pole, it is France.

Of the others, it's worth noting that Montoya and Raikkonen made mistakes and thus their positions may not really be representative of their fuel loads. Although the top guys are almost certainly all on three stops, some of those further back could be going for two. The most likely candidates are the Saubers, who in terms of lap time are some way from where they ought to be.



Temperature and wind direction play havoc with car performance at Magny-Cours, and teams can easily get lost as they chase the set-up. The extremes are quite amazing. Very often we've had heatwave conditions over the full three days, but it can be cold, even in July. Wind direction plays a critical part, and it was noticeable during qualifying that the flags were really taking a hammering. It could be that drivers who were comfortable with their cars on Saturday will find them a pain to drive come the race.

There have also been some soggy weekends where torrential rain arrives at short notice and goes just as quickly. The track can be absolutely wash for a few minutes, and almost dry not long afterwards, so intermediates are usually a pretty good compromise. In between showers it can be cool and breezy, and far different from that the tyre companies expected.

Friday was mostly soggy, so everybody did far fewer laps than they normally would. Some opted not to go at all when it was raining, and Ferrari, for example, didn't take the opportunity to try Bridgestone's wets. The team's weather forecast indicated that Saturday and Sunday would be OK, and there was no point in wasting time or risking the cars by doing some damp running.

A huge shunt for Juan Pablo Montoya in the morning session suggested that it was a good policy, although it was pretty grey and overcast for qualifying, so Ross Brawn might have been a little nervous. It will be fascinating to see what happens on race day. Although it still seems unlikely, if there is rain, Ferrari might regret its decision not to run wets on Friday.

Interestingly, the damp triggered a rule that has not previously been used. As of this year the teams are forced to make their choice between the two tyres before running on Saturday. The general idea is to encourage them to run on Friday, and do all their tyre comparison work then, as it was feared that the one engine rule would see the cars sitting in the garage.

However, if both Friday sessions are declared wet at some stage, then the tyre decision is deferred until Saturday lunchtime. Thus there are two more sessions in which to compare the tyres. That's what happened at Magny-Cours, and this extra leeway came as a huge relief to just about everyone.

Nevertheless, most people have done far less running than they normally would. Bearing in mind the complexities of this venue, some may be going into the race with a lot less data to analyse than they're comfortable with, and tyres are a step into the unknown for just about everybody.

Normally it wouldn't be the most exciting list of numbers to emerge from a race weekend, but here's a list of how many laps the leading guys did prior to qualifying:



M Gene 59
T Sato 55
F Alonso 43
J Button 42
M Schumacher 37
J Trulli 36
R Barrichello 35
J Montoya 32
K Raikkonen 30
D Coulthard 27

Williams sub Gene has taken every chance he could to get out, but the mixed conditions have not helped him to get into the groove. Some teams will have made better use of the laps they've done than others, but this list does suggest that McLaren has rather less data to draw on than the others. Bear in mind that the MP4-19B is still brand new, you'd think they would do as many laps as they could. A cynic might conclude that the team is also being conservative on engine miles...



There is rarely much passing in France, but the clearest overtaking opportunity is of course the long run to the Adelaide hairpin, so the qualifying stats are worth looking at. The times for that critical first sector are extremely close among the top runners, with Schumacher fastest on 23.816s and Button ninth on 24.069s. That's an extremely narrow spread.

Interestingly, the speed trap figures before the hairpin confirm that this is not Jenson's best chunk of track. In fact he's only 14th fastest overall through the trap, and it looks like will be vulnerable to attack at the hairpin and will also find it hard to pass rivals.



M Gene 320.3kph
M Schumacher 318.8kph
J Montoya 317.4kph
T Sato 316.6kph
R Barrichello 316.0kph
D Coulthard 316.0kph
J Trulli 314.2kph
F Alonso 314.1kph
K Raikkonen 314.1kph
J Button 310.8kph

The Renaults are also missing a little bit of speed - so will Michael be able to launch an early assault on Alonso?