Speculation over who will become Ferrari’s number one driver continues, with the Raikkonen ranks swelling after his win in Australia but the Massa devotees still expecting there to be a fight when their boy gets a car that doesn’t break in qualifying.

But I think Massa will be the least of Kimi’s worries at the moment – more to the point is that his engine temperatures shot up in the last few laps of the Australian GP. No damage was caused but it does put a question mark over the engine’s ability to survive another GP.

He could play safe by taking an engine change and the ten-position penalty that goes with it, of course. Which might be the wiser option, given the inevitability of Kimi qualifying on pole in Malaysia. No driver likes to have to fight his way to the front from tenth position but that shouldn’t be too big a problem for the Finn – he’s used to doing the same in an uncompetitive McLaren, after all.

The downside of the tactic is that it increases the risk of someone defending his position too vigorously and pushing Raikkonen off the track. But that is part of racing and can happen even if you’re leading and lapping an inattentive back marker. And how much more risky is it to start a race with an engine that was beginning to give trouble at the end of the last one? So I would say that Kimi should take the engine change and give us an entertaining drive through the field.

What, you think that Massa might be the fly in the ointment of that strategy? Get real – Felipe has improved out of all recognition in the last year, it’s true, but he is still not in the same class as Raikkonen. The Finn will come past him like a train and he won’t need team orders to do it.

There is some talk of stability control being introduced into F1 in the future. This, of course, is a direct result of the manufacturers being involved in the sport – already they have used such systems on production cars and it makes sense for them to get their own private testing ground, F1, to help them develop the idea further.

This should be anathema to anyone interested in seeing F1 continue as a sport; the fans look forward with hope to the standardized ECU as a means of getting rid of traction control and now it emerges that the FIA is talking to the car industry about allowing stability control in F1. Nothing could more clearly illustrate the way in which the FIA has sold its soul to big money in the form of the manufacturers. Stability control will do much more than traction control in reducing the influence of driving skill as a factor in races – it will make the driver a mere passenger without opportunity to demonstrate his skill. Where is the sport in that?

It is quite apparent that the aims of motor sport and car manufacture are mutually incompatible. The primary intent of F1 must always be competition between drivers and nothing the FIA can do or say will alter that fact in the minds of those who care about the sport. The manufacturers, however, are in F1 only to demonstrate to potential customers that their designs are the best – a marketing exercise, in other words. They do not care about the sporting aspects and would be betraying their company’s interests if they did.

The irony lies in the fact that, as the cars become laden with driver aids in the cause of “relevance to the production of road vehicles”, the fans will drift away because the human element, the drivers, are no longer competing in any meaningful way. Once the viewing public has dwindled to the point of insignificance, the manufacturers will leave and put their money elsewhere.

At which point we might, just might, get our sport back, if there is anything left to salvage. My fear is that a governing body as blind to the obvious as the FIA is showing itself to be will find a way to make things even worse.

In a way, it is good that these matters are becoming apparent now, rather than later. As sanity at last begins to make an appearance in the global warming debate, the FIA’s commitment to “green-ness” will be shown up for the subservience to the manufacturers that it is. Once their credibility as a governing body is destroyed (and it is fairly rocky already), it might become apparent that the only change that is needed is in the way F1 is governed and by whom.

Hopefully, that will happen before all the idiotic rule changes they have lined up can come into effect.

In my recent post about Number 38, I promised more of Roy Jacobson’s accounts of motor racing at grass roots level. Well it’s time to deliver – here’s how to take an old M.G. and challenge the big boys.

Just An Old M.G…

The Australian Grand Prix was held over the weekend but it was also the 12 hours race at Sebring. I had an experience there that may be entertaining.

In the early 1970s I began racing an M.G. TD, a Mark 2, which the company had offered in 1953 as the competition option. Larger carburetors, 4 extra dampers and a lower rear axle ratio – hardly competitive options. Over time I learned to drive and developed the car to a high degree and became bold enough to enter it in a “curtain raiser” race just prior to the Sebring
12 hours race of 1977.

Long sentences are not necessary; just imagine a 1,400 mile drive in an old bread van, towing the M.G. on a trailer, no reservations, a room I found in Lake Worth – I had to chase the chameleons out first. At entrant registration came word that an IMSA competition license was necessary and that cost about all the cash I had – I had not even entered the circuit yet!

Practice went well but the competition looked rather intimidating; have a look at the photo – that’s a 1959 Lister-Chevrolet, 5.3 liter V-8. Final practice confirmed we were ready but Sebring is a long way around, 5.3 miles in those days. It can get lonely out there and the IMSA folks must have realized this during my practice for they sent out a few modern cars to do “exhibition laps”.

Half way down the long straight, topping 100mph, a glance in the mirror – NOTHING – but as I reached the 90 degree right hander I felt the ground shaking. John Greenwood’s Corvette was passing me! On another lap a Porsche 908 passed me doing 170+. That car didn’t make noise but you could hear the air displacement as it ‘whistled’ past.

The race went better than expected; that monster Lister-Chevrolet lost a wheel in turn one, others expired from the flat out running, but the M.G. never failed me and I remember some cheering as I managed to pass a single car, a 6 cylinder Mustang which I had harried for 10 laps or so.

With a 15th place finish in my logbook and a time sheet, the M.G. loaded on the trailer, some sandwiches and a Thermos of orange juice presented by a friend’s wife, I headed north in the bread van. Many, many hours later, freezing cold, late at night, north of New York City, the van’s fuel tank ran dry. I had to drain the M.G. tank to feed the van for the final 100 miles!

Not really F1 is it? But come back next week for another adventure.

Number 38

I see that BMW are also under suspicion of having a flexible floor on the F1.07. Which makes it harder to believe the dismissive “Oh, Ferrari always gets accused of cheating when they’re fast” statement from the red brigade. Let’s wait and see what the FIA have to say on the matter, shall we?

It is interesting that it is BMW who are accused along with Ferrari; they were also suspects in the flexi-wing saga of last year and I begin to wonder if they have a mole in the Ferrari camp who passes along all the latest tweaks. Industrial espionage in F1 – who would have guessed it?

But mention of moles reminds me that I have been meaning for some time to point at a rather entertaining occasional column on GrandPrix dot com. It is called simply The Mole and is well worth a read, especially if you’re British (some of the humor is very English).

To return to The Amazing Moving Floor Scandal, however, it strikes me that the idea might be related to Ferrari’s much-questioned longer wheelbase this year. All the other teams have gone for shorter wheelbases (although I seem to remember reading somewhere that Honda are another exception – hmmm, could that be an explanation of their poor performance so far?). It is just possible that Ferrari discovered that the flexi-floor worked really well with a long wheelbase and so went against standard theory on the Bridgestone tires. Which would argue against BMW adopting the system since they have a short wheelbase – except that they could have found that it still gives them a measurable performance advantage.

All conjecture, of course, and I am no engineer – I just like to look at possible motives behind all these upsets in F1. And, as long as I’m doing that, we could consider what would happen if the FIA decide that the floors are illegal and must be changed. That could really mess with Ferrari’s performance, as we saw with the Renault handicapped by the banning of mass dampers in 1976 – design your car around a certain tweak and you’re in big trouble if it is suddenly made illegal.

But I suppose the fuss will die down and be forgotten in due course. And, whatever Ferrari and BMW are doing, you can bet that everyone else will be by the end of the season.