Mark Hughes: F1's Inside Line

On the one hand it's one of the most measured, calculated and scientific endeavours in the world - with tons of raw data produced every day from wind tunnels, vehicle dynamicists, fuel and oil chemists, engine coatings specialists, materials technologists, brake engineers, tyre behaviour modellers.

On the other, it's just so much guesswork and chaos. There's a lot of post-dating theories onto observed phenomenon - a lot of explanations after the fact of why things worked out the way they did. But the next race can render these theories as junk.

Why was Ferrari hurting for pace at Montreal, a track that should have suited them? It was expected that they'd hit back hard here after the blip that was Monaco, where it was assumed the F2007's long wheelbase was all that had hurt it - a factor that wouldn't matter here.

Was the wheelbase theory correct for Monaco, and was the car afflicted by a different shortfall here? Or was there a problem common to both circuits that had nothing to do with wheelbase? There were theories, of course - there always are.

One is that the short-duration turns of Montreal were exaggerating the underlying problem the Ferrari has in getting new front tyres up to temperature quickly enough. Another is that the car wasn't handling the critical Montreal kerbs as well as the McLaren.

Still another suggests that the much more extreme floor flexing regs introduced at Barcelona have limited the amounted of rake that can be dialled into the car to help with the front tyre temperature problem. But these are educated theories. Not numbers.

What really had been responsible for the fall-off at Monaco? What were the numbers? Was it actually a lot faster than it looked at Monaco, its pace disguised by Massa struggling to get a balance on a day when we never got to see the real pace of the faster driver that weekend, Raikkonen, because of his qualifying error? Were it not for that, could Kimi have been up with the McLarens there? Does anyone really know? Not definitively, no.

Does anyone really understand why these tyres suddenly come alive once they get a certain loading through them, but are unresponsive before that? Yes, they clearly need to reach their working temperature, but this phenomenon goes beyond that - they can be in their correct temperature window and still not really be working.

But get just slightly more downforce working through them and suddenly they respond massively, with a much more than proportionate increase in grip. So downforce is being accepted beyond previous penalties in drag.

Does anyone understand why it happens more with some cars than others? Has anyone fully modelled the relationship of wheelbase with tyre behaviour? Can anyone put numbers on the trade-off between the forward weight distribution of a short-wheelbase car versus how much more sudden the rearward weight transfer onto the rear tyres will be under acceleration?

At Montreal the Ferrari wasn't suffering unduly with tyre wear, wasn't any worse afflicted with graining than everyone else. It was simply a case of it not getting the maximum grip from the tyre - it wasn't working them hard enough.

How close have the tyre engineers modelled the relationship between a tyre's grip, the rubbering in of the track surface and the track temperature? How do these vary with different weight distributions, suspension geometry and driving styles?

Specifically to Montreal - is anyone confident to commit fully to their calculations on brake wear and how it relates to fuel weight? Is it really easier on the brakes to run the car light? Does not the greater speed of the light car - more lateral and braking grip - put more total load through the brakes than a slower, heavier car? The answers are not as clear-cut certain as you might imagine.

It's still so much about feel and experience and intuition. The depth of the data simply creates more and deeper questions. It answers a lot, but it creates a whole lot more.

In this environment, any team that can identify the correct questions and then give itself some definitive numbers in answering them is at a big advantage. There is a worry in Ferrari at the moment that historically McLaren has had a better development curve than them - even in seasons where Ferrari has won titles, McLaren has often made more spectacular gains.

Are the awesome facilities at McLaren's MTC factory giving them a raw data advantage? Is McLaren getting its understanding of the Bridgestone tyres to a level Ferrari has taken years to achieve? Ferrari is still a great intuitive racing team, but is it about to be overhauled this year by the sheer power of data being generated at McLaren?

And as such, is this championship going to come down to a straight Hamilton versus Alonso contest?