The perfect storm: Fisichella shocks Spa

When Giancarlo Fisichella took pole and finished second at Spa last weekend, many people reacted as if the Force India VJM02 had suddenly arrived from another planet. Some were convinced that the team (and one or two others who qualified well) got hold of special Bridgestones - Michael Schumacher's comeback tyres was the big joke. A representative of a leading team was even moved to remark that Force India's sudden appearance at the sharp end of the field was bad for F1, which seemed a little disingenuous.

In fact, the performance was a confluence of factors all falling into place. A car that has steadily and quietly been improving hit top form at a track that seemed tailor made for it, while at the same time many of the usual frontrunners totally failed to come to terms with the challenges the place threw up. And a driver who on his day can be quite brilliant - and who had proved it at Spa a few times in the past - was motivated further by the knowledge that the chance of a lifetime within his reach. It was indeed the perfect storm.

It's all too easy to pigeonhole Force India as the tail end Charlie of F1, but that is to forget that there are still many people involved who won races with the team in its Jordan incarnation in 1998-99. There are even more around who helped Fisichella to his amazing Brazilian GP win just six years ago. This is a team that is staffed with good people who can think on their feet and make the most of chances offered, as we've seen with various wet weather runs from Adrian Sutil, or that brilliant call that got Markus Winkelhock to the front at the 'Ring a couple of years ago.

In normal conditions their abilities have been disguised somewhat over recent seasons, thanks to generally restricted resources and customer engines that didn't give privateers much chance to compete.

But things have changed, and in an era of frozen V8s, Force India can have access to the best engine on the grid. Not only that, this year it also has a McLaren gearbox. While the team is perfectly capable of producing its own unit, having such a key element of the package delivered from Woking allows scarce resources to be better used elsewhere.

Perhaps most significantly, the ban on testing has left everyone relying just that little bit more on good planning and intuition as they introduce new parts and prepare for each track. Wind tunnels and simulators can only do so much.

While even Vijay Mallya could not have predicted the Spa performance, anyone watching closely would have seen a steady improvement in the team's form over the last few races.

Adrian Sutil's Force India after qualifying at Silverstone © XPB

At Silverstone, where a new package was introduced, the team scored an own goal when Adrian Sutil crashed in qualifying, and caused Fisichella to abort his lap. Both men should have qualified far higher than they did. Come the race, the Italian made a great start, slicing past several cars on the first lap.

But instead of having to cede those places, he stayed there, admittedly helped by a cushion created by Nick Heidfeld holding everyone else up. On a day when none of the cars in front of him had a problem, and the race was not affected by rain or safety cars, he crossed the line in 10th place - just 1.9s behind Kimi Raikkonen, who took the final point in eighth.

Sutil had a sensational weekend in Germany, qualifying seventh with a heavy fuel load and climbing to second before his late first pitstop. Alas as he left the pits his race was ruined in a collision with - guess who? - Kimi Raikkonen. That led to a stop for a new nose, and a guaranteed top eight finish was lost.

Hungary was a disappointment, the car simply unsuited to the slow track. Then came Valencia, where a new aero package was introduced - a pretty good effort, given the summer break. After all even McLaren only managed to update one of its cars in Spain!

On another track with slow corners the car more than made up for it with its pace on the straights. Sutil was a promising sixth fastest in both Friday sessions. He was quickest on Saturday morning before Vettel's engine failure caused a delay, and then he was fastest again with another set of tyres after the break. Even allowing for the top guys running heavier fuel loads, that surely meant something.

This time things didn't quite happen for him in qualifying, and he missed out by fractions in 11th. He was never going to make much progress in what was a processional race for everybody, and with only one car ahead retiring, it was another blink and you miss it 10th place. He finished right on the heels of Mark Webber, who had won in Germany, and only 13s behind Jenson Button, winner of six races this year.

What was needed was a circuit where the car really hit the spot and one or other of the drivers really got the most out of it - while some of those who are usually ahead suffered off weekends. And that's what happened in Belgium.

Qualifying

The team certainly went to Spa with high hopes, for even with fairly ordinary machinery in the past couple of years, it had been one of the best races of the year. And the place always provided Jordan with some of its great moments, including Michael Schumacher's debut in 1991, and Damon Hill's win seven years later.

It's also a venue where Fisichella has often found something extra. Second only to Michael Schumacher in the wet in 1997 (in a Jordan), he even managed to get a podium with the awful 2001 Renault. Give him a good car there, and he'll respond. And this time there was the extraordinary extra carrot - the chance to drive a Ferrari in Monza and beyond. While the deal was by no means done before the race, he knew he was at the top of the list, and that a good performance could silence anyone in Maranello who was talking up alternative candidates.

The Valencia package was even more of a benefit at Spa, with its focus on high speed cornering, and Fisichella repeated Sutil's Valencia form by taking sixth in both sessions on Friday. The team wasn't yet entirely happy with the car, and the guys worked on Friday evening to find the perfect compromise between the flat-out run through sectors one and three, and the higher downforce requirements of the middle sector of the lap.

Giancarlo Fisichella flies through Eau Rouge © XPB

"I was quite hopeful on Friday personally," said technical director James Key after the flag. "Some weren't so sure, because we had a bit of work to do. But I think on Saturday morning it was fairly clear that we could get a car into Q3, that's what we thought we should be able to achieve. The drivers like it here and the track conditions for us are OK, we don't have tyre heat-up issues particularly."

The tyre situation was crucial. Others seemed to be a little lost, struggling with a knife-edge performance envelope. The tyres worked or they didn't. Force India seemed to have things under control with either tyre. Sutil was perfectly happy with the car on the medium, while Fisichella preferred the soft.

"It wasn't really an issue for us, like you say everything came together. The tyres weren't really that much of a problem, to the extent that we ran different tyres on each car in qualifying, because Adrian had a liking for the harder tyre and Fisi for the softer one," added Key.

"We did have a slight issue for Adrian on the Saturday morning with the soft tyres, slightly oversteer balance compared to Giancarlo. But not major issues particularly, the car seemed to perform pretty well on both."

Ultimately Fisichella's choice was the one that got the laptime that propelled him into Q3. Ordinarily you might think the team would rest on its laurels, accept that ninth or 10th would be the most likely outcome, and fill up with fuel for a good early race run. That's what happened in Germany, where Sutil's eventual seventh with heavy fuel was a bonus.

But looking at the numbers - Fisichella was fastest of all in Q1 - the engineers could see that the car was genuinely quick, and that an aggressive fuel load could land a spot in the front few rows.

Fisichella responded with a brilliant performance, but nevertheless, pole was a surprise. And when the fuel figures came, they showed it was genuine form. Fuel corrected, Jarno Trulli was marginally quicker, but nobody else was. Kubica in fifth and Glock in seventh had near identical fuel loads, and Barrichello in fourth was actually a couple of laps lighter.

"Yes, I was a bit surprised," said Key. "But not completely. I expected to see lots of lap 15 and that sort of thing in there. So it was good to see that it wasn't that different. We hadn't been stupid by going to lap 11-12, which was the original plan. So it wasn't a ridiculously low fuel level. We thought it might be the lightest there. But to see Barrichello on two laps less, and the other guys around us on a pretty similar level, was quite amazing really."

Certainly, going into the race the car's inherent straightline speed advantage was going to be useful

"I think it was just because our package for here was working well," explained engineering head Dominic Harlow on Sunday. "Everybody's aiming to do those kinds of speeds. Some people were hampered because they couldn't quite get the efficiency they wanted out of their package here. We set out to have a car with that sort of characteristic at the start of the year, because last year we felt we were a little bit at the opposite end in terms of the efficiency. It seems to be bearing fruit now."

The race

Looking at the slightly unfamiliar grid it was important to remember that it wasn't generated by wet conditions or any freaky circumstances. Those guys at the front were not going to be swallowed up or tumble down the field, and Fisichella for one had some real pace.

The biggest threat seemed to come from Trulli, alongside him on the front row, while Raikkonen in sixth certainly couldn't be ruled out. Ferrari had expected to go well at Spa and with that KERS button to hand, he alone among the top group would find overtaking a relatively easy matter.

Giancarlo Fisichella leads Nick Heidfeld, Jarno Trulli, and a fast starting Kimi Raikkonen into the first turn © LAT

I chatted with Fisichella on Sunday morning about what might unfold at the start, and he agreed that the fact that he had Heidfeld and Trulli right behind - two drivers usually noted for being fairly sensible - meant that an assault from behind was unlikely. It was somewhat ironic therefore that they managed to bump each other exiting Turn One, a moment caused when Nick found he had no grip at all on the medium tyre and got it a bit wrong.

There were no such problems for Fisichella as he skated away, chased initially by Robert Kubica until Raikkonen blasted past the BMW on the run up the hill. The Ferrari man had benefited from Barrichello's failure to get away and the Heidfeld/Trulli bump. While going wide at La Source had allowed Kubica to get ahead, it also gave him a fabulous run down to Eau Rouge, which helped him slingshot past. At Les Combes he overdid it a bit, and even got a nudge from Kubica. That meant he lost some momentum, and Fisichella opened up a few more vital lengths. And then came the safety car...

Would the outcome of the race been different had it not appeared? Very possibly. That little edge Fisichella had already gained was wasted, and having been able to sit on his tail, Raikkonen played the restart perfectly, and dragged past. Certainly there was a strong feeling in the Force India camp that in normal circumstances the Italian would have been sufficiently far ahead to stay of out Raikkonen's reach on lap two and thereafter.

"Strange to be saying this really but I think we had the fastest car here of the front pack," said Key. "Vettel was very quick at the end, but Fisi had a brilliant start and was already a little bit up the road by the time we reached Eau Rouge. I think he had the legs on the Ferrari. Had he been in front, he would have moved ahead. A win wasn't out of the question.

"You could see when Kimi hit the KERS button because he shot right up to the back of Fisi. There wasn't enough straight left to have a go at him again.

"I think what really helped us what our top speed, we've been pretty strong in that area all year. It's a factor we knew would be useful here. I like to think that we could have held station, or maybe pulled away. The fact that we had very similar strategies meant that we didn't have too much worry about him having an extra lap on us or something like that."

How the fuel strategies unfolded was certainly very intriguing. On paper, Raikkonen was due to come in a couple of laps after Fisichella, but in fact they came in together. The obvious conclusion was that the Force India man did a better job of saving fuel, both under the safety car, and while sitting in the Ferrari's slipstream. There may also be a question of the KERS-equipped Ferrari being a few kilos heavier when 'dry' than the Force India, so that not all of that apparent two lap weight differential was accounted for by fuel.

"I was very surprised," says Key of the timing of the stops. "I thought we'd be on the same lap as Kubica, and Glock, who both came in earlier than us. We did a lot of fuel saving behind the safety car. It was lap 12 at a push, and we managed to extend it by a lap... I was surprised and relieved in a way when Raikkonen came in."

Giancarlo Fisichella makes a pitstop © LAT

Conversely, had Fisichella been leading, there was a chance that he would have ended up pitting a lap before Raikkonen. And that might have given the Finn the chance to get the lead anyway at the first stops.

"One thing that does help you here is having a car in front of you, although it helps you in the second section a bit," Key said.

"It does give you a tow up the straight, and it does make quite a difference, so you sort of reclaim your lap time a little bit in the first and third sector. We would have lost that perhaps, but you never know what could have happened."

The big frustration for Force India was that the two cars were fuelled identically at the first stop, and thus came in together at the second stops. Indeed Ferrari was clearly worried that Fisichella could go longer by a lap, and Raikkonen was alerted to that possibility. There must have been relief in the Maranello camp when the two cars appeared in convoy at the pit entrance.

After the race, the Force India guys were left pondering how close it had all been. One extra lap in the tank for qualifying might just have helped at that first stop.

"It was P2 on the grid for an extra lap of fuel, so we would still have been on the front row with that extra lap," said Key. "You kind of think if you've got that extra lap and he could have really blasted it on that lap..."

It's worth recalling that after setting his pole time Fisichella ran an extra lap in qualifying, and had he not done so, he could have used that fuel in the first stint! But what really would have been useful was an extra lap going into the car at that first stop. Force India's calculations for the ideal middle stint just meshed with those of Ferrari.

"You can't mind read, can you?," says Harlow. "You just go with the best you can do. Their nozzle was on, we were looking at what was going on, but at that point you can't change what you're doing."

Harlow added that the position in the pitlane was unfortunate. Spa is a track where the top teams are closer to the entrance, and thus Force India was at the exit.

Look at what happened with Grosjean/Badoer at Valencia for a case study it what can happen if it's the other way around: "If we'd been further down the pit lane it would have helped. Kimi stopped first and started his pit stop and work, and although we gained some time - our stop was 0.8s quicker the first time - we'd still got to accelerate up and join the fast lane. It's more difficult to release a car with an oncoming car."

Fisichella might have had a little extra performance up his sleeve, but stuck behind Raikkonen, he couldn't use it.

"We were very quick in a straight line," said Harlow. "And we were very quick generally in the middle sector compared to Kimi, and we kept pulling up to him there. I imagine another couple of tenths were in it. We stayed on options in the second stint, and Kimi went to primes. If anything we seemed to harry him the most in the middle there, and even at the end Fisi said he felt pretty comfortable on the primes. We were strong on both of them relative to Kimi. But the tyres converged, as often happens when the track improves."

Giancarlo Fisichella chases Kimi Raikkonen © LAT

"There was nothing he could do!," shrugged Key. "From that point it was a case of needing a little bit of luck probably to get past on the track. But all credit to him and the team for putting us in such a strong position, but to stay in second, and stay so close. It was a brilliant drive, really smooth. It was really calm on the pit wall, everyone did a great job."

Fisichella won't be at the car in Monza, of course. Has anyone else ever finished second in a grand prix and been in the car that beat him just a fortnight later? But Sutil and presumably reserve driver Tonio Liuzzi can carry on the good work. Monza should suit the car, although it is another step removed from Spa in terms of downforce, and it's a reset button for everybody.

The track that could be very interesting is Suzuka, which Sutil knows well from his F3 days. He could be well worth a punt...