Mark Hughes: F1's Inside Line

Jerez. The final hairpin. Last Wednesday afternoon. A drying but still- damp track, no rubber build-up, tight braking into a hairpin leading onto the pit straight. Ideal conditions for evaluating if there's anything visibly different about the behaviour of the cars now that they're bereft of their electronic driver aids. Software-controlled engine-braking modulation has gone the same way as traction control and corner-by-corner tuning of the diff. The good news is, yes, the naked eye and ear can tell the difference.

As far as braking into the corner is concerned, the visible differences between a great driver and a good one have been amplified. Felipe Massa was struggling to make the braking and turn-in one smooth operation, in stark contrast to Kimi Raikkonen. Massa, looking like he was trying to drive the car as if it still had all its tricks, would lock up and run wide more often than not, regularly missing the apex. It was the unloaded rear wheel that was giving him the problems, the tyre locking and jinking him off line. By contrast, Raikkonen would roll the car into the corner, keeping the momentum up and making hardly any inputs.