Spanish GP Race Analysis

But while McLaren and Mika seemed to have got it right and jumped ahead of Michael Schumacher at the second stop, their strategy succeeded largely because Michael had a problem. Schuey went so far as to say that, notwithstanding Mika's late failure, McLaren 'took our win,' so confident was he that he had everything under control. The statistics suggest that he was right.

What the race really proved is that despite the potential upset caused by the arrival of the new gizmos, Ferrari and McLaren are once again incredibly evenly matched. Pole was won by just 0.085s, and in a repeat of the kind of tense battle we've seen over the past two or three years Michael and Hakkinen were almost impossible to separate on Sunday. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened had David Coulthard stayed in the contest...



Unlike in Imola, all the Bridgestone runners opted for the same softer tyre. Michael got the upper hand in qualifying, and in more ways than one. Drivers have seven sets of tyres for Saturday and Sunday, and Michael was on an economy run. On Saturday morning he used only one set while his rivals at McLaren followed usual practice and used two.

By not doing a final run on new tyres prior to qualifying, Michael risked being less well-prepared than the opposition. But he took the gamble, and was clearly confident that driver and car would be quick enough. But he felt the same way in Imola, when he reckoned he could get pole with hard tyres...

With his first two sets he posted a time that stood up to any attempts by the McLaren drivers to beat it, and he held on to pole, albeit by a slender margin. He went out on a third set right at the end, but aware that the McLarens hadn't beaten him on their last runs, he cruised back in. The fourth set earmarked for qualifying wasn't touched, and he found himself in an even better situation than he'd anticipated. Here's how it looked:



Michael 1, Mika 2, David 2, Rubens, 2.
Michael 3, Mika 4, David 4, Rubens 4.



Michael: 3
Mika, David and Rubens: 1

So what was the significance of having new tyres? In the past in Spain there has sometimes been a huge gulf between running new and used tyres over a race distance, but this time the advantage was small, but crucial. Mika, David and Michael would each have new tyres at the start, but after each of the two stops new rubber would give Schuey an advantage of perhaps a second on his out lap and first flying lap out of the pits. Many races have been won or lost by such margins at pitstop sequences...



Michael's life was made easier when DC dropped out of the picture after stalling at the start of the formation lap. At the start proper any concerns about Ferrari's launch control were forgotten as he held on to his advantage.

When the leader pitted on lap 23 Hakkinen was just 1.7s behind, and close enough to still be a serious threat. Mika stayed out for four more laps and banged in some very quick times, but after he pitted he emerged still behind Michael - the new tyres had given the German a brief but vital boost and allowed him to cancel out Mika's weight advantage.

The gap stayed at about 3.5s for most of the middle stint, but just before he stopped Michael banged in two very quick laps to put the squeeze on Mika, so that when he came in the gap was 4.7s.

Michael pitted for the second time on lap 43, and thus resumed with 22 laps worth of fuel. His previous stint had been 20 laps, but there was no difference in the load and therefore weight, as Michael later revealed. But from the start he was unable to match his previous lap times, due to a vibration from the rear.



After the race Ferrari sources suggested that the vibration was due to a rear tyre turning on the rim, putting it out of balance. This is a common but relatively mysterious phenomenon that occurs from time to time. Apparently this year it has particularly afflicted Bridgestone runners using BBS wheels, namely Ferrari, Sauber and Arrows.

Sometimes the drivers notice nothing, but even a small movement can set up a surprisingly large vibration. I understand that after the race initial analysis showed that both of Michael's rears had moved on their rims, and the balance was well off. And there was no other obvious problem with either tyre.

It may be that Ferrari was a little hasty in blaming Bridgestone immediately after the race. It's worth noting that Rubens Barrichello suffered a rear suspension failure just a couple of laps before Michael made his second stop, and more detailed analysis at Maranello might reveal that Schuey's car had a related problem.

"I don't know what caused it, but it was a linkage in the rear suspension that broke," said Ross Brawn of Barrichello's failure. "It's a part that we've used for a number of years. We'll have to take it back and run some metallurgical checks to find out what's gone wrong. It was a suspension linkage that holds the spring in place. This is not a highly stressed circuit - at a hard kerbing circuit like Imola, maybe you'd think about it. It's a low mileage part."

Ross denied that Barrichello's failure was caused by traction control. But whatever the story, Michael was in dire straits. He knew he had to keep up his pace because Mika was going to run several more laps with a very light car. Normally the World Champion is brilliant in such circumstances, but this time it didn't work out.

"With the first two sets of tyres I was going very fast," he said. "I was pulling away a little bit, and it should have been normal enough. But then if the tyre doesn't work in the last stint, there's nothing you can do, and that's why they took our win. Because under normal circumstances I should have been increasing the gap to him after the last stop, and we were about a second slower than expected."

"He radioed in straight away to ask if we'd seen any problems or we knew what was wrong," said Brawn. "The car felt quite strange from the very beginning. We knew from Hakkinen's [first] refuelling time that he would stop on lap 50, we knew how much time we needed, and I think we had enough, but then we couldn't repeat the performance that we had on the second set of tyres. Often drivers complain of a tyre vibration, but this was exceptionally bad, so we have to find out what happened."

The best way to illustrate this is to compare Michael's times with what he achieved after his first stop:



Lap 23: Into Pits
Lap 24: 1m43.937s
Lap 25: 1m21.151s (the fastest lap of the race)
Lap 26: 1m21.799s
Lap 27: 1m22.226s
Lap 28: 1m22.818s
Lap 29: 1m22.369s
Lap 30: 1m23.057s (loses time lapping Verstappen - next lap was 1m22.095s)



Lap 43: Into Pits
Lap 44: 1m45.016s
Lap 45: 1m22.497s
Lap 46: 1m23.034s
Lap 47: 1m22.743s
Lap 48: 1m22.632s
Lap 49: 1m23.326s
Lap 50: 1m22.894s (Hakkinen pits)

Total time of seven laps after first stop: 9m57.357s

Total time of seven laps after second stop: 10m02.142

Time difference: 4.835s

So Michael was 4.835s slower over those crucial seven laps compared with what he had achieved after the first stop. When Schuey came round to complete lap 50, Mika accelerated out of the pit lane clearly ahead. It's impossible to know what the exact time gap was as Mika pulled out onto the track, but a third of the way round the lap at the first sector checkpoint it was just 2.165s.

McLaren's strategy of stopping later worked well, but it succeeded in getting Mika ahead only because Schumacher had his problem. I'm sure Ron Dennis would disagree, and it's true that Mika was very quick at this point (he set his fastest lap on lap 49), but had he not been compromised, Michael would almost certainly have safely stayed ahead, albeit only by a second or two. But that of course is all he needed. By co-incidence that tiny advantage equates to what he gained or (would have gained) from having those two extra sets of new tyres...

"It was going to be very close," said Ross Brawn. "By my calculations we should have just done it, but that was assuming we had a good set of tyres in the last stint. The new tyres meant that we could do some quick laps at the beginning of the stint. If you look at the fastest lap, it was the first lap of the second stint. So the whole strategy was based round the fact that we could come out and be quick. And the third set we couldn't use, so the strategy fell a bit flat at that point."

"When you look at the times, I was doing a high 21s, 22.0s after the first stint," said Michael. "Then when I put new tyres I was doing 21.0s, 21.1s, and very consistent. Then again at the end of the second stint I was 21 high. Then I put the new tyres, and I managed just a 21 high [he didn't - see table above!] and then I fell off into the 22s, over 23s. So I was about one second slower with this set of tyres, and the fuel level was exactly the same as I had in the stint before, so it was just down to the tyres. There's no other reason there can be, especially with the vibration."

With 15 laps still to run, Michael effectively gave up. He's not the sort of guy to readily switch to cruise mode - in normal circumstances he would relish keeping the pressure on Mika to the flag, even if passing was impossible. That indicates just how bad it must have felt from where he was sitting. Indeed he was so spooked by the vibration that he thought the tyre was about to de-laminate and fail on the straight. That quote had led some sections of the media to erroneously suggest that a tyre had indeed failed, but as we've seen both appeared to be in good shape.

But he decided against pitting for a new set. A cynic might say this suggests that the team knew very well that tyres were not the issue here, but on the other hand the risk of stalling or some other kind of mishap occurring in the pits was too great.

Fortunately for him the attrition rate behind had been so dramatic that he had an advantage of some 63s over third placed Juan Pablo Montoya. He could cut his pace by 4s a lap and still finish second, although he didn't start to back off dramatically until the 10 laps to go mark. By the start of the last lap, he was 42s behind Mika, but still 43s ahead of Montoya.



It was at that stage that Hakkinen began to slow. Smoke and sparks suggested an engine problem, but it was of course a clutch failure, and he did well to get the car as far round the lap as he did before finally pulling off. Coulthard had suffered a hydraulic failure in the morning, and Dennis suggested that hydraulics were again at the root of Mika's problem, although Adrian Newey said that the two issues were unrelated.

But was Mika's failure connected to the new electronic systems? That's certainly a possibility. I was right above the McLaren pits for the stops, and the energy involved when the drivers selected a gear and the cars took off was so great that the ground seemed to shake; Ferrari's operation was a lot smoother. All the new gizmos take a lot out of the cars, and create forces that weren't there before.

A racing start with launch control and two violent starts from the pits may well have pushed the hardworking clutch to the limits. What McLaren may now come to regret is the way Mika pressed on even after Michael dropped back. One presumes that he was just enjoying himself, and was relieved that his barren patch had come to an end.

"He had backed off," said Newey. "He was taking it a bit easier, but after that you leave it to the driver. He's got the usual problems - tell them to back off too much, and they lose concentration."

It's impossible to say whether he would have still had the failure, but slowing down would surely not have hurt. Of course, he had to leave himself a little leeway in case he picked up a puncture or had any kind of last minute emergency, but did he really need a 42s advantage with one lap to go? Whatever the story, clutches or their operation have been costly so far this year, with Mika stalling at the start in Brazil and DC almost repeating it and letting Ralf Schumacher past in Imola.

Both teams have a lot to think about in the coming days. And don't write off Williams just yet. Assuming the team can get its traction control up to speed...