San Marino GP race analysis

The most significant themes to emerge from the race were the apparent ease with which Williams ended its long drought, and the complete disaster endured by Scuderia Ferrari. Michael's race performance in Brazil was bad enough, but in Imola the Italian team suffered a series of uncharacteristic glitches, starting with a dodgy tyre choice for qualifying. The team was a bit coy about what caused his eventual retirement, but my sources suggest that it stemmed from a problem with the controversial trick brake system that is such a key part of the 2001 package. Whatever, the team that blitzed the first two races seems to have hit a rocky patch...



There's not much new to say about Ralf's brilliant win, and you can read comments from team members elsewhere on Autosport.com. Pit stops and the like were of little real interest, so this week I'll focus on Ferrari's dismal weekend. I guess I've been a bit unkind about McLaren's strategic lapses in the past, so here's a chance to redress the balance. And if I've got it completely wrong, I'm sorry Ross: You should have come out of the truck to answer my questions...

In effect Schumacher was the engineer of his own downfall at Imola, for it was he who pushed for Bridgestone's harder tyre compound.

In the past, one of Eddie Irvine's roles at Ferrari was to conduct the tyre comparison on the Friday of each GP. Schumacher would take note of Eddie's input and decide which way to go. By leaving the donkey work to his team mate, Michael would not waste one of his precious sets by trying the 'wrong' tyres. However, Eddie would effectively sacrifice a set of his own allocation; this would often catch up on him later in the weekend, when he had one fewer set of new tyres for qualifying and the race. I presume that the same system carried on with Rubens Barrichello last season.

This season all drivers can use up 'spare' sets on Friday without compromising the rest of the weekend. That's why Michael now has the freedom to play around with tyres more than he did in the past, and why all drivers are doing so many more laps on Friday compared to last year.



The thing at Imola was that the first session on Friday morning was completely washed out, so serious dry running did not begin until the one hour in the afternoon. In that session, Schumacher did three runs of six, 10 and nine laps. I believe he tried the hards and then the softs, but whatever the permutation, by the end of the session he had come to a clear conclusion - he wanted to go with the hard tyres for the rest of the weekend. Rubens went along with the choice, but perhaps he had to? He's in a difficult situation right now, and had he chosen the softs, and been proved wrong, he would not have earned many brownie points...

Teams do not have to officially confirm their choice between the two options until Saturday lunchtime, immediately before qualifying, but Ferrari had made its decision and did not try the softs again on Saturday morning, a session that was again spoiled at the start by a wet surface.

Ferrari was the only team to go for the hard Bridgestones. This in itself was nothing unusual. Several times last year Michael went for the harder tyres, because he felt they provided a better balance, and that was a benefit over a race distance. And nor were they necessarily a performance handicap; he earned pole positions while his main rivals were on the softer and in theory faster tyre.

Of course 'hard' and 'soft' are relative terms, and the situation this year, with the tyre war forcing development, is very different. It could be that Michael simply convinced himself that last year's trick would work again, despite the fact the climate has changed drastically. This time McLaren was more than surprised by Ferrari's choice; the softs were worth a not insignificant 0.4s over a lap.

In retrospect he didn't bank on the temperature going up by race day, which certainly helped Michelin, and was perhaps also misled by the 'green' nature of the track on Friday, which inevitably changed as the weekend went on. In effect, he simply made his choice far too early. He also perhaps underestimated the progress that his immediate rivals have made in terms of qualifying speed, and thought that the package of himself and the F2001 still had enough in hand to make up for any loss of pace in the tyres. On Friday he was 1.2s clear of Mika Hakkinen, and it seemed that McLaren was struggling.



In opting for the harder tyres, Ferrari's overall game plan involved a one-stop strategy, which has not usually been the winning ticket at Imola, where the many gradients and stop-start nature ensure that a heavy fuel load is a particular handicap. It also required him to earn a good grid position. From pole he could control the race, stay in front when those behind made their first stop, and retain his lead when he made his own pit visit. Easy. Michael surely didn't bank on starting only fourth...

The qualifying schedule required Michael to do three runs of two flying laps each, rather than the usual four runs of one lap. Clearly the team had found that the hard tyres were as good or better on their second flying lap, and again this in itself is not without precedent.

However, the situation was complicated by threatening skies which caused most people to dash out and put in a banker time right at the start. Michael did one run that failed to produce a representative time, had an eight minute break, and then had another go, which earned him the necessary quick lap.

So with around 40 minutes of the session to go he had one run of two flying laps left. Meanwhile, his rivals each had two runs of one flying lap. You don't have to be a genius to realise that Michael had painted himself into a corner. He had no choice but to wait until the very end of the session before going out, for as we all know, that's when the best times are always done. But during that 40 minute wait track conditions could change drastically, and he would have to adjust on the fly - in contrast everyone else had that extra run in which to test the water and make any necessary changes before their last efforts.

He made a mistake on that last crucial lap, and had to settle for fourth, missing pole by 0.539s. By his recent standards, this was a disaster...



The pattern of the race was decided at the start. Clutches are getting ever more sensitive, and in Brazil Mika just plain messed up, which is why he stalled on the uphill Interlagos grid. This time it was Coulthard's turn to have a problem, as he touched the brake to steady the car, and his rear tyres were wreathed in smoke when he got on the throttle. He bogged down, and that's why Ralf was able to shoot down the inside - DC politely left the door wide open.

From fourth Michael should have been well-placed to take advantage of Coulthard's problem, but he got away just as badly, albeit with no obvious sign of excessive wheelspin. The curve just after the start at Imola always gives a little advantage to those starting on the inside, and Jarno Trulli blasted past Michael, who got a little sideways, and then pulled over to the left, blocking Juan Pablo Montoya. He was now in fifth place.

He stayed there until at the end of lap three, when he appeared to stumble as he exited the final corner. Montoya jinked straight past him, and was followed by Panis, although the Frenchman didn't complete the move until after the finish line - so that on the official chart it appeared that Michael had lost places on two different laps!

The team later said that he'd suffered a brief gearbox problem. In fact what apparently happened was that he went for third gear as he bounced over the inside kerb. The right rear wheel was clear of the ground at the crucial moment; the gearbox was confused by the signals it was getting, and decided not to allow the upshift. Schumacher thus drifted out of the corner still in second, and by the time he was able to select the correct gear, all his momentum had been lost. This was apparently an unprecedented occurrence, and it may be that the new gizmo package which comes in time for Spain will ensure that Ferrari doesn't have to worry about a repeat.

Michael now had his team mate right up his chuff. Presumably distracted a little by the loss of two places, he went wide later round the lap. Rubens snuck past, and Schumacher was demoted to eighth place. As far as any thoughts of winning were concerned, he was now in serious trouble. After just four laps the leader was already 10 seconds up the road, what's more there were six cars between the World Champion and his brother - including some that were clearly slower, soft tyres or not. And, apparently, Michael was also having brake problems.



One can only guess at what emotions went through Michael's head in the next few laps as he computed his options. There was only one answer: he was well and truly stuffed. Panis was holding up Rubens; Barrichello got past the Frenchman on lap eight, and Michael followed suit a lap later, moving into seventh. He then joined a train that consisted of Trulli, Hakkinen, Montoya and Rubens.

It was clear that neither Ferrari driver was going to make much progress, and all they could do was run as close as they could to the guys in front without compromising aero performance. At least they knew that the one-stop strategy would eventually allow them to leapfrog these cars. But Ralf and Coulthard were pulling so far ahead that there was no way that the Ferraris could catch them.

It became academic when Michael suddenly slowed on lap 23, with what appeared to be a left front puncture. Debris from Kimi Raikkonen's earlier crash seemed to be a possible cause, but the truth was far more interesting. Ferrari announced later that a suspension problem had damaged a wheel, but my information is that the brakes were the root cause.



Much has been made of Ferrari's unconventional new brake system, which consists of a drum that fits neatly within the shape of the wheel. Aerodynamically efficient, it's got the other teams talking. There have been suggestions that there's a tiny fan inside that might be perceived as a 'moveable aerodynamic device', but whatever the truth, it has been approved by the FIA.

The team had a couple of problems in Australia when stones or other debris got caught in the wrong place, gouging the wheel, but that seems to have been solved, as Michael certainly didn't have any worries after his gravel trips in Malaysia and Brazil. But Imola was the toughest brake test so far, and sources tell me that the left front corner got so hot that the BBS wheel simply failed or distorted in such a way that it lost all its air. Michael was sent out with a new set of tyres, but was called in as soon as the damaged wheel was analysed.

Wheel distortion has been a concern in the past, and has been experienced in testing. Ferrari uses stickers that record the maximum temperature around the inside of the rims specifically to see what effect the new brake system has.

An indication of what can happen at Imola was given when Montoya made his long stop; by the time he left, smoke was pouring off the overheated front corners, which had been without cooling air flow for over a minute. In addition Michael spent nearly every lap behind another car, and both the disruption to the airflow, and the ducking and diving that inevitably results when you don't have an empty track in front of you, may have put further stress on the system. On a one-stopper, he also had a very heavy fuel load, which would not have helped.

So why didn't Rubens have the same problem? Well, as the team will confirm, he isn't as hard on the brakes as Michael. This is because he brakes in the traditional manner with his right foot, so he's off the throttle when he does so. Like just about every other driver in the field, Michael uses his left, and his style means that there are times when his dancing feet are on both pedals at once. So the stresses on the brakes are correspondingly higher...

Rubens was on a one-stopper, and went as far as lap 32, which was one beyond half distance. He was in third place at the time, and the team decided to switch him onto a two-stopper, which was a pretty clear admission that the whole hard tyre strategy had failed.

He did the last 30 laps in two stints of 15 laps apiece, and that at least reduced the possibility of him having a repeat of the problem that stopped Michael. A lower fuel load reduced the stress on the brakes, and each set of wheels only had to do 15 laps. Interestingly, he lapped at a respectable pace until the flag, matching Ralf's times. The gap between them stayed at 36-37s, coming down by a couple of seconds only when Ralf backed off slightly on the last lap.



Ross Brawn described Brazil as a wake-up call, and after Imola one imagines that alarms will be superfluous, as there will be a few sleepless nights for Ross and the rest of Ferrari's technical staff. The brake issue certainly won't help, although I understand there is a back-up plan - presumably the option to go back to something a little more conventional for brake-clobbering races like Montreal. But they already have enough on their plate in finalising the package of changes due for Barcelona. It's going to be interesting to see how it all pans out.

The ultimate cynic might point out that however glum faces might be at Maranello this week, the timing of the downturn was fortunate in some ways. Had Ferrari won the last two GPs, and then struggled when the electronic gizmos were officially reintroduced, inevitable conclusions might have been drawn...