Knowledge Management

The British Grand Prix of 2006 will be remembered as the race which promised so much excitement, the prototypical 'battle of the giants', but which ultimately failed to deliver anything truly memorable for the fans.

In recent years, Silverstone has been the scene of some thrilling and hard-fought wins, not least for Ferrari's Rubens Barrichello in 2003. Saturday qualifying promised another close-fought Silverstone classic, with the three top drivers in the field - Renault's Fernando Alonso, Ferrari's Michael Schumacher and McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen - dutifully outpacing their teammates to snag the choice starting spots on the grid.

With none of the three major protagonists handicapped behind slower cars down the grid, and with the viable opportunities for overtaking at the pancake-flat former airfield, surely the season would come alive via a titanic wheel to wheel struggle among the big three?

After just a few laps of the race on Sunday, those hopes had evaporated. Once Alonso had established himself in the lead, it was clear that he could turn up the wick at will. The race's only highlight was Michael Schumacher's trademark and superbly timed spurt on new tyres to leapfrog Raikkonen into second place for a well-deserved eight points.

For race winner Fernando Alonso, the rest of the field might as well not have existed. The Spaniard was again in a class of his own, turning in the sort of controlled and flawless drive that has become expected of him.

Going into the 2006 season, it was widely believed that Alonso was merely riding the crest of a lucky streak, making the best use of the Renault's impressive reliability to win races and championships by attrition rather than outright speed or talent. The logical extension to that theory was that breaking Alonso's streak would rattle his confidence and pressure the Spaniard into possibly more mistakes, opening up the floodgates of opportunity for his pursuers.

In light of the Silverstone performance, that theory no longer seems valid. If Alonso does, for some inexplicable reason, repeat his Canadian driving error of last season, and if he is again forced to sit out the US Grand Prix at Indianapolis through no fault of his own, the reigning champion will not succumb to pressure.

Instead, it is more likely that he would regain the momentum in France, record another convincing win and set his implacable defence of his title back on course. With a 23-point lead in the WDC chase, and his rivals unable to reclaim anything more than two points over a GP weekend, Alonso is effectively out of sight.

There is no precedent in F1 history to explain the level of success that Alonso is enjoying this year. Even the most dominant drivers and teams in the sport could be counted on to get something wrong occasionally - a poor tyre choice, the wrong strategy, a less than ideal setup, driver errors, mechanical unreliability, anything to give the opposition a glimmer of hope.

Alonso and Renault aren't making any mistakes at all. In the past, when a driver was leading a race comfortably, commentators would often avoid predicting victory for fear of 'jinxing' the driver. In Alonso's case, there is no such fear. Ten laps into Silverstone, any commentator could have confidently declared Alonso the winner, without fear of circumstances contradicting him later.

Even team chief Flavio Briatore has sensed it. Formula One bosses rarely display hubris in boasting of their team's achievements. This has been a hallmark of Jean Todt's reign at Ferrari.

Even when Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello were destroying the field in 2004, Todt routinely warned that the dominance was temporary, that the Scuderia's rivals would surely bounce back strongly, that more focus and yet more hard work was required if Ferrari wanted to continue their run of success. It was as if Todt (and indeed, the whole Ferrari organisation) feared that the slightest concession to back-slapping would bring down retribution from the gods.

Flavio Briatore © LAT

Briatore shows no such concern. Earlier in the season, he opined that Renault's superiority was 'embarrassing'. A few days after Silverstone, he was at it again, stating with utmost confidence that his team are now 'virtually untouchable'.

Despite their different reactions to success, it seems increasingly likely that Ferrari and Renault have built their foundations not on bulletproof reliability nor on star drivers, but on the Eighth Wonder of the world and the revelation of the Information Age - the power of knowledge.

It is not a trend unique to F1, but can be seen in other professional sports as well. British football is one example. Time was, the famed 'double' (being League champions and FA Cup winners in one season) was viewed as an almost impossibly difficult achievement. So difficult, in fact, that in the century from 1889 to 1989, only five teams achieved it, at a rate of once every twenty years.

In the twelve years since 1994, five doubles have been recorded - three by Manchester United and two by Arsenal, at a rate of once every two or three seasons.

In the United States, the New England Patriots football team, under coach Bill Belichick, has recorded unprecedented success for the club, taking three Super Bowl titles in four years. And this in a sport where winning just two Super Bowls is enough to grant the team legendary status.

In cricket, the Australian national team likewise set up a juggernaut operation that has steamrolled its way to new records, opening up acres of daylight between itself and its closest pursuers.

In each case, it's not just a question of superior natural talent or a larger budget. It's a case of the organisation knowing more about itself (and its rivals) than was previously deemed possible. In the field sports, it's about examining every aspect of the game, of assessing the skills, training, dietary, psychological and physiological needs of every team member - then putting a regimen in place to address any weak spots. It's about knowing the opposition's tactics and strengths and weaknesses better than they do.

In F1, the focus is more on engineering than on human skills, but the principle remains the same. The team that knows its optimum set-up for each track, how the air flows over its chassis elements, how its tyres interact with the track surface, how well the car performs on heavy fuel or cold tyres, how far the revs can be pushed before stressing the engine too much, is at an advantage.

This has always been a factor in F1, but the sheer amount of data available to the engineers in this era has made it more important than ever.

This principle was highlighted during Sunday's race, when McLaren chief Ron Dennis was asked to hazard a guess as to the fuel loads carried by the top three runners. Dennis predicted that Schumacher's Ferrari was running lightest, that Raikkonen's McLaren was slightly heavier with Alonso's Renault due to run longest of the three.

This is supposed to be privileged and secret information, but Dennis' prediction was spot on. Any team that doesn't have these projections and data available just cannot compete in this era.

It's notable that both of Schumacher's best tactical moves this season - fending off Alonso at Imola and overtaking Raikkonen during the pitstop on Sunday - relied on bluffing the opposition into believing they had the bases covered. In both cases, he was able to put in unexpectedly fast hot-laps to make the strategy work. Confounding the opposition's data and knowledge management has become a key tactical weapon in modern F1.

Fernando Alonso wins another one for Renault © LAT

There is a tendency to blame Renault's dominance on the current F1 rules, with their emphasis on consistency and reliability. However, the FIA's rules cannot explain the similar dominance displayed by Manchester United, the New England Patriots or the Australian cricket team. Instead, it's a function of how knowledge management is affecting sport globally.

The organisation that gathers the most knowledge about itself and its rivals, its strengths and weaknesses, the theory and practice of excellence in its field, will be the dominant team. Passion and natural talent are no longer enough. Exhaustive preparation, analysis and ongoing data gathering is the cement that now brings the different elements of a successful organisation together.

When Michael Schumacher recorded his staggeringly consistent record of 17 consecutive podium finishes during the 2002 season, it was thought to be the crowning achievement of a legendary career, and a feat that would not be repeated for many years, if ever. Just a few years later, Alonso looks set to not only emulate it, but possibly beat it. Perhaps that it is not the hallmark of two exceptional drivers and teams, but a taste of what will become the norm in F1.

Prior to the 1990s, any suggestion that an English football team could win the double three times in six seasons would have been dismissed as a flight of fantasy. Then Manchester United redefined the limits of what was feasible, just as first Michael Schumacher/Ferrari and then Fernando Alonso/Renault have redefined the limits of what is possible in terms of F1 dominance.

It's not much fun for the fans. Manchester United's peak years during the 90s were among the dullest and most predictable in FA history. Therein lies the eternal conundrum of professional sport. The fans want excitement and uncertainty and an even spread of the honours. The practitioners of the sport spend exorbitant time, energy and money to make the results as certain and predictable and one-sided as humanly possible.

The good news is that dominance is never permanent. Even in the knowledge management age, the top theorists haven't found a way to sustain such a high level of success. So Manchester United have been eclipsed by Chelsea as Premier League champions, the Patriots have been succeeded by the Pittsburgh Steelers as Super Bowl winners, and the Australian cricket team finally lost the Ashes to old rivals England.

In Alonso's case, there is a self-evident cut-off date: his separation from the winning Renault team at the end of the season. Until then, any prediction that Michael Schumacher or Kimi Raikkonen could challenge the reigning champion seems rooted more in vain hope than reality.