Race Analysis: Brazilian GP

Those who feared a dull Ferrari walkover this season were reminded in Brazil that one of Grand Prix racing's great strengths is its unpredictability. Here are just a few of the oddball themes to emerge from the race:

1) A driver and a tyre brand in their third race kept Michael Schumacher comfortably at bay, despite a heavier fuel load;
2) A McLaren - on exactly the same tyres - humbled the rainmaster when conditions were at their worst;
3) Michael was beaten despite the two major threats (ie the guys immediately behind him on the grid) disappearing from contention right at the start;
4) Michael has amassed 26 points despite two lengthy trips through gravel traps in the past two races;
5) McLaren made what could have been a costly late decision to pit for wets, but nevertheless came out smiling.



I was on the grid before the start, and Michael didn't seem quite as relaxed as usual. A little flustered by the photographers, he personally adjusted the crowd control barriers around the car, and tried to wave people back. It could be that he was a little annoyed that his T-car had been claimed by Rubens Barrichello, who stopped with fuel pump failure on a reconnaissance lap. Had there been a red flag and Michael had need of the spare, it would have been very interesting to see the reaction when the team claimed it back, leaving Rubens without a race. I suspect a riot would have ensued...

That didn't happen of course, but Rubens did not exactly have it easy. He ran back to the pits and was clearly in a bit of a state when he got there, well aware that switching the car over to his pedal settings was not the work of the moment. He made it out of the pits just before the 15 minute to go mark, and the team finished the job on the grid. His adrenalin was surging at this stage, and he wisely kept his helmet on while he waited for the work to be completed, and that at least that kept the casual well wishers and TV crews out of his face.

If this drama wasn't enough, the start was to provide plenty more. The grid at Interlagos is on a distinct upward slope, and it's by no means easy to get away well. On the second row Hakkinen pointed his car slightly to the left, aiming straight at the gap between the guys ahead (behind him Montoya pointed at the same gap from the other side of the grid!).

I was watching the front couple of rows from a perfect vantage point when Mika jerked forward a metre with a couple of seconds of the countdown still to run. This would almost certainly have earned him a jump start penalty, had that not been rendered academic by the fact that he stalled. Ron Dennis told me later that he was disappointed that the start was not aborted at this stage, but in fact we were too far along with the procedure for FIA race director Charlie Whiting to implement such a decision.

Mika began waving, and immediately behind him DC did a brilliant job to avoid his team mate, as did others. But well before the rest of the field had got past, he tucked his arms back into the cockpit. You can't really blame him for instinctively wanting to protect himself from any potential assault from behind, but as I recall that is exactly what Didier Pironi did before he was struck from behind by the unsighted Ricardo Paletti at Montreal in 1982. We were extremely fortunate that there was not a repeat of that tragedy.

At some tracks it is possible to quickly slip a stalled car through a gap in the barrier into the pitlane, thus giving the mechanics a chance to restart it. The Interlagos layout prevents this, so the only option was to park the car in a little alcove just to the right of the front of the grid. In his hurry to get away Mika left the steering wheel hanging on the side of the cockpit, something that is expressly forbidden in the rules.

Often it doesn't matter, but in this case the marshals pushed the car forward and then suddenly realised they had no way to turn it and back it into the available parking spot. Brazil's short lap meant that panic ensued, and that's why the safety car had to come out, and why Mika landed himself a $5000 fine. It could have been worse, for in pre-safety car days the race was red-flagged after a car stalled on the grid.

Back to the action. While Mika caught the attention by stalling, Ralf and Rubens also made bad starts, and that allowed Michael to get away well in front and open up a handy lead in the first few corners. The safety car put a stop to that and allowed Montoya to get on his tail.

Usually Michael is the master of safety car restarts, but then at most tracks the pit straight is preceded by a slow corner that allows him to slow to a crawl, back the field up, and then get the jump. The long, gentle turn onto the Interlagos pit straight meant that Montoya, well versed in Champcar restarts, was able to get a good run. Michael couldn't cross the startline until the safety car had passed a line at the end of the long the pit entry.

All Montoya had to do was make sure that he was still behind when Michael crossed the line. He built up more momentum, and while he started from quite a long way back, that's why he was able to duck to the inside and give Michael one of the biggest surprises he's had since Jacques Villeneuve jumped inside him at Jerez in 1997.

It was a brilliant, instinctive move, and it made for great TV, but as with the less public moment with Eddie Irvine in Australia, Juan didn't give his opponent any room. They touched at least twice as he gently edged the Ferrari off the road. Publicly Michael said he had no problem with Montoya's forcefulness, but he will have made a mental note, and he (and indeed others) may not be so charitable in the future...



Seconds later we had Ferrari/Williams contact of a far more destructive kind when Rubens ran into the back of Ralf. This was a very odd incident, and as has become usual, each blamed the other for braking too early or too late. In the build-up to the clash Ralf had almost been run off the road on the left by Jarno Trulli, and it was after he pulled over to the right to regain the line for the next corner that contact happened.

Rubens was certainly well wound up at this stage after all the pre-race drama, which was followed by a bad start that cost him several places, and thus it's easy to speculate that his frustration contributed to a misjudgement. The stewards decided to take no action on the report from the race director, and there was a widespread feeling in the paddock that Barrichello was lucky to escape punishment, bearing in mind his incidents in the previous races, one of which also involved Ralf. This sort of situation only strengthens the argument for permanent stewards or some form of driving standards referee.

Perhaps the only positive aspect of the whole thing was that Ralf got back to the pits, and after a five minute stop, he resumed. Only the rear wing was replaced, and despite a good check around the back end, under Patrick Head's supervision, it was deemed that there was no further damage - despite the severity of the impact. After the race a tweaked toe-link was discovered, but that was it.

That says a lot for the quality of engineering at Williams, and I guess gives the team a little confidence for Monaco, where both drivers will no doubt test the rear suspension to the limits. Both the team and Ralf also deserve full marks for making the effort to continue when there was clearly little to be achieved. Fastest lap was some kind of reward.



Meanwhile it soon became obvious that Michael was not going to find a way past Montoya. There was a strong suggestion that the Williams would require two stops, and thus it was a major surprise when Michael peeled into the pits first, after just 25 laps. When no other leading contenders stopped it became apparent that Ferrari had got its strategy wrong for once. In Brazil two stops only really makes sense if you can guarantee that you will be at the front and can open up a gap, or if you are well down the field and are confident that you can do a lot of passing (see Olivier Panis).

Now with a heavy fuel load, and a handling problem that the team has yet to explain, Michael gradually slipped further back from Montoya and, to a slightly lesser extent, from Coulthard.

In the early stages DC looked unspectacular, but there was good reason for it, as he explained: "We took a decision to make some adjustments to the car on the basis of it being wet, because that's what we believed to be the case coming in to the second half of the race. And that made it pretty difficult for me to hang in there initially, but I thought I was keeping quite close given that I was on the one-stop strategy."

30.124s
30.654s
31.044s
31.561s
32.199s
32.833s
33.461s
35.287s
36.441s

Clearly the Michelins were lasting a lot better than even the Williams team expected. Juan Pablo was under instructions to keep an eye on the fronts and report back if the grooves began to disappear, but word never came.

If conditions remained dry, there was no way that Michael could do anything about either Juan Pablo or Coulthard, who was around five seconds behind the Colombian. The only thing that could save him was the predicted rain, and specifically if he could time his second stop to coincide with a switch to wets or intermediates.

His problem was reduced by 50 percent when Montoya was eliminated by the collision with Verstappen on lap 39. Yet again a Williams was hit from behind, but on this occasion the perpetrator was penalised, to the tune of $15,000. It was hard to call it a racing incident when the car at fault was being lapped, and most observers agreed that it was about time that somebody was used as an example. Williams' telemetry showed that Montoya was braking within 2m of his normal mark.

As soon as this happened, Coulthard dived into the pits to make his single stop on lap 40, although he had the fuel to go a little further. The timing was good, as crucially he emerged right in front of Michael, demonstrating a great piece of strategic thinking from McLaren.

Most of those on one stop were still hoping to time their tyre changes with the arrival of the rain, but as they reached the end of their fuel windows, drivers had little choice but to come in for dry tyres on laps 41-44, despite the skies looking threatening. Indeed, we could hear thunder and see spots of rain as early as lap 35. But by the time the last of the scheduled stops was made by Jarno Trulli on lap 44, the promised deluge hadn't quite arrived.



It finally hit as the two leaders were completing lap 45. Immediately behind them, just about everyone else came in - including an extremely unlucky Trulli, who had put dries on just the lap before. As so often in such circumstances, Jean Alesi was the first man to react.

The drivers who seemed most likely to benefit were two-stoppers, such as Michael, Alesi and Panis. But while Alesi got it right, Panis arrived to find the lapped Jacques Villeneuve already there and the team searching hard for his tyres. By the time BAR had sorted itself out, poor Olivier had lost an extra 70s in addition to what a normal pit stop would cost. The team hadn't learned much from its disaster in Montreal last year, when again a podium shot when missing. What a mess...

To most people's surprise, Coulthard did not stop next time around on lap 46, although Michael and the last of the stragglers did decide to come in. After pitting so quickly (but for what turned out to be the wrong tyres) in Malaysia, David and McLaren seemed to be a little on the cautious side, determined to wait and see if the safety car came out, and how long the shower lasted for.

(by leader's completed laps, in chronological order)

Alesi, Ralf (for dries!), Fisichella, Villeneuve, Panis, Button, Frentzen, Trulli, Heidfeld, Marques.

Schumacher, Mazzacane, Ralf (for wets), Irvine, Raikkonen

Coulthard

David's late decision could have proved extremely costly. Indeed, he effectively lost 13 seconds and therefore the lead to Michael as he tip-toed around that slippery lap 47, before coming in for intermediates - McLaren already knew that Michael had opted for them, so this time there was no mistake.

"We just wanted to be absolutely sure what was going to happen with the weather conditions," said DC. "The team were waiting to tell me with the weather reports and they came on when I came past the pits saying 'we think it will rain for 10 minutes'. So I said 'let's wait one lap,' and we did - and clearly Michael gained time on that one lap. But when I came out the car was working well and I was able to take advantage of the car."

Schumacher's perfectly timed second stop seemed to have saved his day, and in any normal circumstances you would have expected the German to disappear into the distance, or at the very least maintain the 13s or so lead he now had over David.

But on his first flying lap he had a half spin, and by the time he resumed the McLaren was almost on his tail, and any advantage gained through stopping one lap earlier was wasted. On the very next lap DC got a good tow down the pit straight and dragged by Michael into the first turn as they passed either side of a surprised Tarso Marques.

And that was it. A good choice of compromise settings meant that David now had a well-balanced car, while whatever problem Michael had suffered from in the dry was now exacerbated, and he could not match DC's times. What's more on lap 53 he had a trip through a gravel trap, losing even more time. Even when a dry line appeared, he couldn't do much about the gap: "The car wasn't really working in the way I would like it and, as you saw, I had a couple of 'offs', which is unusual for me in these conditions, but there are certain limits and the car wasn't really prepared for those circumstances."



David pits, Michael has half spin
+ 1.049s
+ 0.018s (DC draws alongside on pit straight prior to Turn 1 pass)
- 1.597s
- 2.571s
- 6.071s
- 15.072s (Michael goes through gravel trap)
- 17.071s
- 18.975s
- 18.086s
Etc

After all the earlier excitement, the last few laps passed without major incident. Heidfield did a near faultless job to take third for Sauber, and with eight points from three races the Swiss team can hardly believe its good fortune. I suspect that Alex Wurz and Ricardo Zonta, both of whom turned their noses up at Sauber to opt for testing deals elsewhere, might come to regret their decisions. Despite his earlier pit disaster Panis managed to recover to take fourth. He's certainly winning his personal battle with his team mate...

What we'll never know of course is how Montoya would have fared had he lasted into the rain. However, team insiders admit that Michelin's wet options are not yet up to scratch, and it is very unlikely that he would have beaten Coulthard. That was underlined by the poor performance of the Michelin runners in the rain, and the spins for the likes of Irvine and Ralf. Montoya might also have suffered at the hands of poor Williams strategy, since Ralf was given dries at the very moment that the pits filled up with drivers asking for wets! To be fair to the team it was his scheduled stop, delayed by the early repair job, but methinks they could have reacted quicker...

The other mystery is what happened to Michael. A mistake with set-up or tyre preparation, damage from the brush with Montoya, or perhaps some kind of diff problem or other electronic failure in the rear end? It would be interesting to know...

Whatever the truth, Michael's handicap obviously detracted a little from what was a fine effort by Coulthard: "The reality is that whenever Michael doesn't do a particularly good job, he's got reasons why," rued Ron Dennis after the race. "Unfortunately I don't think anybody will give David the credit that he deserves. It was an outstanding race, and as I said, we compromised the performance of the car in the dry to make sure it was quick in the wet, and at the end of the day he delivered. And that's what being a racing driver is all about."