Archive for September 29th, 2003

Non Driver’s Fault

Published by
James
at 9:47 HKT Sep 29, 2003 in Sports. 0 Comments

Back in May, I reported this about the fuel rig problem in Formula 1. It just happened one too many times in yesterday’s race at Indianapolis. Three times in total amongst three teams actually.

This time around, it cost Montoya’s chance of this year’s Driver’s Championship title, and possibly Williams Team Championship title as well. The same problem happened to Jordan as well as McLaren later on in the race. This immediately alarmed Ferrari, who apparently had worries that the same problem could just as well happen to their drivers, and saw them having both fuel rigs ready the entire time for Michael through out the remainder of the race.

I’d say enough of this. There are mighty number of car manufacturer and oil company giants there to fire the fuel rig manufacturer, scrap the crap, and come up with a much more reliable new rig.

Another non driver’s fault is that, I think, Honda of Team BAR has been overly criticizing their own former F1 Champion driver, Jacques Villeneuve, unfairly during this and last season. More than half of the races for Jacques, the engine blew and cost him any chance to do anything. In fact, I think the Honda engines are some of the most unreliable ones in the F1 history. Yet, BAR Honda is thinking of replacing Jacques for the lack of performance, and it could be as soon as between now and before the start of the next race at Suzuka, Japan - the last race of the season.

To further highlight this being unfair to Jacques - both BAR cars’ engines blew up in yesterday’s race which, for one, could have ended the former Champion’s F1 career in a sad way, as well as ended BAR’s own chance to a 1st place win where their second driver Jenson Button was leading the entire middle third of the race by as far as some 6 seconds with normal rounds of pit stops!

Whether BAR will continue their contract with Jacques, IMO, Honda should first figure out how to get its own act together to provide their drivers with reliable engines.

Team Order

Published by
James
at 2:06 HKT Sep 29, 2003 in Sports. 0 Comments

The FIA have just made it clear again that they fully stand by this year’s new rule where team order is strictly prohibited.

It was last year where Rubens Barrichallo was ordered by Ferrari to let Michael Schumacher through at the very last stretch of the race, so Michael could win that race and therefore banking more points for the Championship. I didn’t like it back then, I don’t like it now, and I don’t think anyone liked that stunt including Michael himself; however, I like it even less for the FIA’s banning of team order.

As in most team sports, if there were a ball in the game, it would get passed to whoever to score for whatever reason, as long as it gets scored. Like it or not, that’s the spirit of team sports. Formula 1 is most definitely a team sport even though it looks like it is for the individual drivers. The FIA ban of team order has taken that team spirit out of the teams.

I think it is best left to the teams to decide.

Update (HKT 11:10am) :

As the championship points stood before the start of the race, there was more at stake for Michael with Montoya than with Kimi.

At the start of the race, Ferrari’s Rubens was second at the grid positions behind McLaren Kimi and directly in front of William’s Montoya who is 3 positions in front of Ferrari’s Michael. In theory, Rubens could have either been flying with a much lighter tank of gas, catch up on Kimi and then slow down to give Michael a chance to catch up; or he could slow down right at the very beginning and let Montoya and the rest behind him bunched up together, allowing Michael, who was effectively on the other line from Rubens, to go pass them.

The latter scenario happened. However, as there is no “black box” recorder as such on board any of the F1 cars monitoring the drivers’ moves as well as the cars’ problems, who could proved either way if that particular move was in fact a team order move or otherwise?