US GP Race Analysis

An inspired Mika Hakkinen made the difference, and earned a deserved ovation from a crowd dominated by Ferrari and Colombian flags. As far as F1 was concerned this was the perfect result at the right time, although it's hard to believe that Indy was only the British team's fourth win of the year. But Williams could have, or should have, beaten them both...



I won't dwell on qualifying too much, suffice to say that in taking pole Michael Schumacher showed that whatever doubts were sown in his mind in Monza had been eradicated. He set the time with just three sets of tyres, and chose to stand on it and save a set for the race while everyone went out and had a final fling. It was a little like an Indy 500 polesitter waiting for first Saturday qualifying to run its course...

Significantly, Ferrari chose the harder Bridgestone tyre, while all the other teams went for the soft compound. Among the Michelin runners, Prost made the same choice. Ferrari made the decision after Friday, when conditions were cool and the track very green, and everyone - especially the Michelin runners - was slipping and sliding. At the time Ferrari's decision seemed logical, especially as it was expected to be warmer by race day, and logic suggested that the tyres would get an even harder time when the temperature went up.

"We found them much more consistent on Friday," Ross Brawn explained. "We were worried about the consistency for a race distance. Bridgestone had gone very soft, and we were worried that the soft tyre might suffer in the race."

Mika Hakkinen did a great job to take second, the margin of 0.555s over his team mate proving beyond a doubt that he's not yet ready for slippers and a pipe. Third and fourth for Williams on a track that on paper seemed to suit the cars suggested that the French tyres were not as strong as they have been at other high-speed tracks, but also underlined that a good lap time at Indy is heavily dependent on getting round the slow stuff.



Last year's wet weather meant that teams didn't know as much as they would have liked about how the race might pan out, and worries about tyre wear were obviously a key factor. One detailed calculation from the Bridgestone camp suggested that two stops would be 11s quicker over a race distance - useful, but marginal, since traffic can so easily mess things up. However, a smaller fuel load and an aggressive driver makes for a good combination when it comes to passing, so it was clearly attractive for some.

The downside was the long Indy pitlane. Last year the speed limit zone started way back towards the penultimate turn, but after bumps in the entry road were eradicated for this year, it was hoped that the line would be moved to the very entrance of the actual pitlane, as it is at most tracks.

However, there were concerns that we might see a repeat of the Alex Zanardi crash (the CART star spun out of the Lausitzring pit exit, onto the track). So after consultation with the drivers last year's limit was quietly re-introduced, again at 120kph. This was higher than the usual 80kph, to compensate for the long drag, and to make things look a little more spectacular. Work had been done on the pit surface to make it harder for cars to lock up and skid, as happened to Minardi last year.



The warm-up was full of activity, including an engine blow-up for Montoya on the final turn and a last minute thump into the guardrail for Mika Hakkinen. But few noticed the most controversial incident of the early morning session.

Oil from Montoya's car forced a red flag, and just before the restart cars began gathering at the pit exit, awaiting the green light. There were two lanes of stationary traffic, but when he arrived Hakkinen ducked to the right and passed both to be first out. The problem was that the lights were still red, and were for another five or six seconds...

As far as the rules were concerned, he had entered the track when it was still closed. As we know, in situations like this you can't be a little bit pregnant, and although it was a matter of seconds a car going out on a closed track is a pretty obvious transgression. And there is a clear advantage to be gained by being first out, because you have a clear track and can go as you please.

Mika claimed that he had not seen the light; I presume he meant it was too low and obscured by the other cars, because when I checked the thing out - actually a double red - it was shining brightly. At the end of the day it's up to him to see it, and the fact that two rows of other cars were waiting should have been a clue, although he apparently thought they were all about to make practice starts.

His penalty was the loss of his best qualifying time from the previous day, which dropped him from second to fourth. Some thought this a shocking miscarriage of justice, but perhaps they've forgotten that a decade or more ago people were thrown out of the whole meeting for missing weight checks on Friday. Rules are rules.

As things turned out, the decision seemed to have fired up Mika even more...



Mika's penalty moved both Williams drivers up a place, and it seemed likely that Ralf and Juan Pablo would be key players. However, the German's chances were effectively blown with a poor start. Montoya got ahead straight away, and then Barrichello muscled past at the first corner.

"He was just on the dirty side of the track, I think, " said Patrick Head. "We did some practice starts in the morning that were fine. From our data his start wasn't very good off the line, but it just looks like lack of grip at the contact patch."

A couple of laps later Rubens, helped by his lighter fuel load, pulled a brilliant move on Juan Pablo to take second. That left the Williams pair in third and fourth, and against pre-race expectations, they began to drop back from both the Ferraris.

In fact both teams had split their cars between the strategic options, with Michael and Juan on one stop, and Rubens and Ralf on two. The Ferrari drivers quickly swapped so that the lighter man had a clear track, but the Williams guys did not, and Montoya stayed just out of reach. Despite having a lighter load than his team mate - there was a 12 lap difference - Ralf could seemingly do nothing about the Colombian. So what was going on here?

"Neither driver was enamoured with the behaviour of their car," Patrick explained. "The difficult thing was that the rear tyres were giving up quite a lot, and to try and get a tyre balanced on younger tyres, and medium and older tyres so that it would be driveable all the way through. Obviously Juan did a better job than Ralf.

"We were debating about whether to one stop or two stop, and came to the conclusion that one stop would be better. But Ralf was saying he could drive a better race on two, so being right at the front we thought that if Ralf could make a good start and get clear then he could be able to make a stop. And in truth from what one saw with Rubens showed that if he did it right and got the front, two stops was perfectly OK. But Ralf on a two stop was no quicker than Juan on a one-stop..."

When he pitted on lap 24 Ralf was 15s behind leader Barrichello, and still 1.5s behind Montoya. Then Williams had yet another pit stop foul-up ("A right rear nut didn't feel quite right to the mechanics, so they took it off and put another one on."). Thus he lost more ground. On his second set of tyres he didn't seem at all comfortable, and he could make no impression on Jean Alesi. Just 12 laps into his middle stint, he spun off.

"Obviously the car wasn't that special," Head admitted, "but his fastest lap was a 1m14.5s, one lap before he pitted, and Juan's fastest lap was a 1m14.4s, the fastest lap of the race, one lap before he pitted. So consistency is the problem, I think."

As Head notes, Montoya got quicker as the first stint went on, and he gradually reeled in Michael. The gap between them was a consistent 3.5s-3.8s for many laps, but by lap 27 he was on the Ferrari's tail and looking for a way by. A mistake at the first corner cost him momentum, but on lap 34 he made it past in another great move. He had just a couple of laps in which to build a lead before coming in on lap 36. Michael stayed out, and now interest focussed on whether he would be able to remain ahead when he stopped.

That's a question we won't be able to answer, because just two laps after his stop Juan was halted by loss of drive to the hydraulic pump, which cost him all hydraulic pressure.

When Michael did come in, on lap 39, Hakkinen moved into the lead, 4.2s ahead of his team mate. Hitherto this had seemed like a Ferrari/Williams battle, but as the silver cars pounded round, it became apparent that they might be a factor after all..



I'm not smart enough to explain in one hit just how Mika got ahead of both of the Ferraris (it would be a bit like commentating on three dimensional chess!), so I'll consider the two cars separately.

Firstly Michael. This is how it unfolded in the crucial middle period of the race:



Lap 36: - 10.2s (Michael takes lead after Montoya stops)
Lap 37: - 8.3s (Michael loses time lapping de la Rosa)
Lap 38: - 8.2s
Lap 39: Michael Pits
Lap 40: + 26.1s
Lap 41: + 26.1s
Lap 42: + 25.9s
Lap 43: + 27.1s
Lap 44: + 28.7s
Lap 45: + 30.5s
Lap 46: Mika pits, comes out just in front of Michael
Lap 47: + 3.1s (Mika second, just before Barrichello's final stop)

As you can see, Mika gained a little immediately prior to Michael's stop, but what really counted was that seven lap difference between the German pitting and Mika coming in. Michael had some bad luck with traffic, although Mika did not have a perfect run either. But during that time the Finn clearly had a significant weight advantage, and by preserving his tyres in the early going, he was able to push harder at the end, putting in a series of blistering laps prior to his stop.

The pit told him that the race was his to be won, and he responded. Michael's decision to stop when he did was clearly not forced by fuel capacity, so the only answer is that McLaren did the better job on strategy, although to be fair it was mighty close.

"I think the thing was that the soft tyre stayed together, which was not what we expected, " said Brawn. "It looked like it would have a high degradation, but in fact in the race it didn't. It's hard to recall a soft tyre coming together by race day, so we didn't quite get that right. Having said all that Michael was still in a strong position, but he had some pretty difficult laps when he first went out. He got caught in traffic.

"There was a bit of a mess in the middle of the race, so there were five or six critical laps when Mika was able to put the hammer down, and he did a great job. Michael had a couple of bad laps where he lost 1.5-2s, on each lap, and I think he came into the pits 2s down on Mika. But motor racing is full of ifs and buts, so we've got no excuses!"

Schumacher himself placed the blame on the tyre decision.

"I think in the end you have to say that the tyre choice didn't look to be the right one because the consistency advantage we thought to have, and yet we didn't have. But that's something when you work out something for Friday, not always it relates to Sunday; and temperatures were quite different on Friday. We thought we made the right decision, but then sometimes it's not the case. I say that with not knowing all the factors..."



While he was busy beating Michael Mika was having a simultaneous race with Barrichello. And having outflanked fellow one-stopper Schumacher by running longer, his speed at that stage of the race also allowed him to overcome Barrichello's two-stop strategy.

When he made his first stop the Brazilian had a handy advantage over Mika. While he emerged behind the McLaren, his earlier form suggested that he would be able to catch up, and at the very least be on the Finn's tail when the McLaren driver made his single stop. But not only did Rubens fail to close that gap, he actually began to fall back, and thus leave the door open for Mika to stay ahead after the stops.



Lap 26: - 23.1s
Lap 27: Rubens first pit stop
Lap 28: + 7.1s
Lap 29: + 7.1s
Lap 30: + 7.3s
Lap 31: + 7.3s
Lap 32: + 7.7s
Lap 33: + 8.0s
Lap 34: + 8.2s
Lap 35: + 8.3s
Lap 36: + 8.2s
Lap 37: + 8.3s
Lap 38: + 9.0s
Lap 39: + 9.5s (Mika takes lead as Schumacher pits)
Lap 40: + 9.8s
Lap 41: + 9.6s
Lap 42: + 8.8s
Lap 43: + 9.9s
Lap 44: + 10.6s
Lap 45: + 11.0s
Lap 46: Mika pits, Rubens takes lead.
Lap 47: - 20.4s
Lap 48: - 21.3s
Lap 49: - 22.0s
Lap 50: Rubens pits and comes out behind Mika

So what went wrong for Rubens? When he emerged from his first stop Rubens had 23 laps worth of fuel on board, whereas Mika still had enough for what turned out to be 19 - a useful but hardly significant difference. However, two things happened. Firstly Mika was able to pick up his pace with his lightening load, because he had kept his soft tyres in good shape. And secondly Rubens found his second set to be under par.

"With Rubens in fifth place we thought on two stops he might have a chance to attack," said Brawn, "and he did a very good job again. But I think the second set didn't seem to work as well as the first set, so he wasn't able to build the time in the second stint that he should have done. So we had a half hour where it started to come a little bit more difficult."

Rubens got ahead when Mika made his single stop, and after his own second stop Barrichello was 6.1s behind. Now, with a decent third set of tyres, he began to catch Mika. He'd already proved with Montoya that he knew how to pass at Turn 1, so regaining the lead was certainly possible, although this time the two cars had identical fuel loads. But Hakkinen responded and held the gap at just under 3s when engine problems for the Brazilian made it all academic. In fact Mika was more concerned that it looked from the outside:

"I was pushing really hard, and at that moment the car didn't feel really good. Every time I was losing quite a lot of time in a couple of corners, and I knew it wasn't a good thing, and Rubens was definitely catching. I thought, well, this is it, you know. I'll just have to hope, hope something happens. And luckily it was some not so many more laps left; and finally, finally it looks like the engine blew up..."

DC seemingly came from nowhere to finish third, and his comments showed just how unlikely this overall performance must have seemed even to the most optimistic members of the McLaren camp.

"I still had a lot of oversteer," the Scot noted, "and there's no question I don't really deserve to be third in terms of place, but that's the way the races work out sometimes. I was concentrating on my own race, trying to keep the car on the circuit and be consistent. You know, we only made one mistake at the end of the main straight the whole race, which I'm quite happy with, given how difficult I found the car to drive. And, you know, it was just a personal battle, me and the car..."

But it worked, even more so for Mika, and perhaps the biggest compliment came from Ross Brawn: "McLaren had a good strategy. They just sat behind us quietly, looked after their tyres at the beginning of the race, and particularly for Mika it all came together in those five or six laps in the middle of the race. It's always frustrating to lose a race which we could have won, but they did a good job."

Here's how it all played out:

Race Stint Schedule

Hakkinen: 46-27
Schumacher: 39-34
Coulthard: 43-30
(Trulli: 39-34)
Irvine: 52-21
Heidfeld: 27-21-23

Barrichello: 27-23-23 (projected)
Montoya: 36-37 (projected)

Of the rest, it was interesting to see Jaguar again get its sums right, as the team did in several mid-season events. Eddie Irvine ran a remarkable 52 laps, and even then he had the fuel to do a couple more, but decided that his tyres were well past their sell-by date. He eventually finished an excellent fifth on the road (fourth after Trulli's penalty). He also set the seventh fastest lap, less than 0.3s off Michael Schumacher's best!

Obviously several quicker cars retired, but five others that eventually finished behind him had qualified ahead of the Jaguar, underlining what a good strategy Eddie and the team had played out. It's not too simplistic to say that the green cars qualify badly and race well because of the way they work, or don't work, their tyres. And solving that conundrum isn't easy...