Dodgy Business

So, you've got a bit of home life back, caught up with how the kids are doing, put up the Christmas tree, got used to living without the piercing scream of 20,000rpm engines. And then comes the Honda Christmas lunch.

As Nick Fry said, it has become a bit of an institution. And what a delight it is. If anyone ever tires of being entertained at the renowned Le Manoir Aux Quatre Saisons, near Oxford, and chewing the F1 fat then, really, they're in the wrong job.

F1 never truly stops, and while the teams have been busy in Spain, albeit without the definitive packages they will put down in Melbourne next March, there is no shortage of interesting gossip.

The general feeling seems to be that we could have a really close year in 2007 although, predictably, there is the sense that Ferrari and Kimi Raikkonen will start favourites.

Honda's engineering chief Jacky Eeckelaert says: "It could be very open. Last year, tyres were most important, aero was number two, and engines number three. Now, everyone is on the same tyre and the engines have been reduced to 19,000rpm. Revs is what tests racing engines and, so, eliminate one and three and you are left with aero, as always, and drivers. The driver should be a bigger factor in the overall equation."

Jenson Button at Barcelona last month © LAT

And that, you feel, should be good news for Jenson Button and Honda. Eeckelaert, a man who once tested a Copersucar as a Marlboro Challenge winner, is a man steeped in the sport with both a true enthusiasm and a feel for it. He believes that Raikkonen, Fernando Alonso and Button are the best three drivers in F1 and that, hopefully, Jenson will be a big player next year.

Eeckelaert's feeling that Raikkonen will be tough to beat for the 2007 championship is logical and hard to dispute. And, having engineered Kimi at Sauber, he got an early insight into the Finn's personality.

Mentally, Eeckelaert reckons, Raikkonen is super tough. Relentlessness, a quality more often attributed to Schumacher or Alonso than to Kimi is, in fact, one of his specific strengths, Jacky says. Plenty of drivers are quick over one lap but Kimi keeps it going through an entire race.

"The test arrives when the car becomes hard to drive, when the tyres start to go away. You see a lot of drivers losing half a second a lap then, but with Kimi you'd be surprised if it was more than two tenths."

It's a quality Eeckelaert helped instill in Kimi when he first came to Sauber fresh out of Formula Renault.

"He was very quick, that much was obvious," Eeckelaert says, "but I told him I wanted to make sure that the limit in the final stages of a race was the one imposed by the car and not by his own body. Which wasn't easy when you'd come out of Formula Renault and were used to 15 or 20 minute races."

Eeckelaert told Raikkonen that until he could run at 15km/h for 90 minutes, he wasn't fit enough to drive a Grand Prix without worrying about physical limitations.

Eeckelaert with Raikkonen in 2001 © Reuters

Think about that. Occasionally, F1 drivers take on other challenges, including marathons. Jarno Trulli, for example, completed the New York Marathon, and Mark Webber regularly undertakes tasks of endurance ludicrous to the common man.

Talking marathons, a common target is to complete the distance in four hours. But what Eeckelaert wanted Raikkonen to do was run at near as damn it six-minute mile pace for an hour and a half. That's a decent task for a club athlete. Keep it up over a marathon distance, for example, and you'll break the tape in 2 hours and 48 minutes!

Within a couple of months, Raikkonen had hit Eeckelaert's target.

"I wanted him to push to the absolute maximum from start to finish," Eeckelaert said. "I told him it was the only way he'd get an accurate feel for how the grip levels change, how the tyres truly work, and it was the only way we could properly assess the car. OK, he wasn't going to win races at Sauber but, if and when he was at the top level, he'd need to know it all and how to handle it.

"He appreciated the benefit in his very first race when there were only points for the first six. He finished seventh but Olivier Panis got a time penalty and Kimi, who'd pushed like hell, was close enough to leapfrog him and score a point on his debut. 'There you go,' I said to him, and his response was, 'OK, but now I've got to beat the other five bastards...'"

Kimi, of course, thought that he would go to McLaren and do just that. He didn't. The world title nearly happened for him in 2003 but not quite. In 2005 the McLaren was fast but fragile. Kimi would still occasionally speak to Eeckelaert and air his frustrations. Keep pushing, Jacky told him, you're always being judged. The feeling is that now, with Ferrari's legendary reliability, Kimi should still be on the podium on a bad day.

Eeckelaert, of course, also oversaw Felipe Massa at Sauber. Personally, I find speaking of Massa and Raikkonen in the same breath almost as daft as doing likewise with Massa and Schumacher, no disrespect to Felipe intended. Eeckelaert, however, thinks that Massa can be super-quick over a lap, even if others doubt whether his consistency or mental strength can match Kimi's.

Eeckelaert with Massa in 2002 © Reuters

Those who've been to Spain recently report that Raikkonen is not taking Massa lightly. I don't think it's any great secret to reveal that Kimi likes a party and the odd drink or three. But, allegedly, he's realised he can't whoop it up over the winter then just turn up and blow Felipe away. He's off the bottle and keeping a close watch on how Massa is doing.

Then there's the other Brazilian; Rubens Barrichello. Rubens, hard though it is to believe, is about to embark on his fifteenth season in Formula One. Some suggest it may be his last, but Rubinho himself would probably be deeply affronted by that.

The word is that Barrichello is very happy to be back on Bridgestone rubber and getting on with the Japanese-shod Honda far better than he ever did when the car was on Michelins.

The French tyres seemed better suited to drivers who like to get their braking done in a straight line, turn the car in, wait and then get on the power. The Bridgestones, however, generate more of their heat from a softer carcass and are happier with the higher stresses, especially lateral forces, generated by drivers with a more pronounced tendency to brake and turn in simultaneously. Rubens, in his Ferrari days, was used to precisely that and was never truly happy last year.

Whether it makes a significant difference to his performance relative to Button remains to be seen. Rubens finished 9-9 with Jenson on fuel-adjusted qualifying times this year but, in race trim, found the car harder to drive when the Michelins started to go away. That may improve in '07 or, possibly, it could be that 15 years in, he'll find it hard to race strongly enough to worry a teammate many consider is merely waiting for the appropriate steed to mount a championship campaign.

Interestingly, Robert Kubica, who impressed so often with the Michelin-shod BMW-Sauber last year, is experiencing Barrichello's findings in reverse and finding it difficult to get used to the Bridgestones. Kubica, like Alonso, is very aggressive with the front-end, and seasoned observers have noted more than one lock-up/missed apex.

Robert Kubica testing at Jerez © LAT

The FIA has apparently asked Bridgestone to manufacture rubber that will slow down the cars and, hence, the new tyres are harder and have a much wider performance window. No longer will teams face serious suitability problems if the ambient is plus or minus five degrees from their forecasts, but the flip side is that the 'peak' of performance from the tyre is no longer there to be had. That, ultimately, may harm the super talented, such as Kubica, who are capable of fully exploiting it. Not to mention Alonso.

But then again, the top ones always seem to adapt come what may. Just as the end of open fires didn't stop Santa Claus. Hope he's good to you, and all the best for 2007!