Formula 1 returns to action in Spain this weekend following three weeks of frantic development work by the teams - as they bid to catch Jenson Button in the points, and stop Red Bull pressing home its speed advantage on track.
As the teams head for Barcelona, itv.com/f1 runs down all 24 drivers' form heading to round five.
1. Jenson Button (GB) - McLaren
Championship position: 1st, 60 points
Who saw that coming? Four races in and Button has two wins to his name and the championship lead, while his team-mate Hamilton has yet to taste victory in 2010. While the latter is often the quicker of the McLaren duo, it's Button's cool head, great judgement and silky touch that are helping him turn speed into results - something others are struggling to do at the moment. And he's still only in the settling in stage at McLaren...
Last five race results: 1st / 8th / 1st / 7th / 3rd
(most recent first)
2. Lewis Hamilton (GB) - McLaren
Championship position: 4th, 49 points
Hamilton has done some brilliant overtaking in the first four races of 2010 - but he's had to, because things keep going horribly wrong for him, sometimes through no fault of his own, sometimes through misjudgements, mistakes or Saturday afternoon under-performance. His driving has been entertaining, but you don't get any bonus points for swashbuckling passes. He needs to pull it all together and win from the front, as he definitely has the speed to do.
Last five race results: 2nd / 6th / 6th / 3rd / R
3. Michael Schumacher (D) - Mercedes
Championship position: 10th, 10 points
This is going horribly wrong at the moment. Schumacher is giving it his all and certainly wasn't giving up without a fight in China, but he simply wasn't fast enough to hold off the queues of rivals chasing him down, and was a long, long way behind team-mate Rosberg. Mercedes has a heavily revised car for Spain, which should in theory be more suited to Schumacher's style. Will that get him on the pace and silence the whispers about how long he can continue to disappoint before returning to retirement?
Last five race results: 10th / R / 10th / 6th / -
4. Nico Rosberg (D) - Mercedes
Championship position: 2nd, 50 points
It's all looking good for Rosberg at the moment. His consistency has brought him to a close second in the championship after four rounds, he's now a podium regular, and he has blitzed legendary team-mate Schumacher by an increasingly large amount. And with few believing the Mercedes is a match for Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari, he is under less pressure to fight for wins. It must still have hurt to slip behind the McLarens after leading in China, though.
Last five race results: 3rd / 3rd / 5th / 5th / 9th
5. Sebastian Vettel (D) - Red Bull
Championship position: 5th, 45 points
Vettel's win in Malaysia was supposed to open the floodgates and mark the moment when he and Red Bull put their early fragility behind them and got on with turning their dominant pace into dominant results. But China was a similar story to the opening rounds: peerless in qualifying, but messy in the race. Last year rain was a good thing for Red Bull, but not in 2010. That said, straightforward weekend in Spain could see him untouchable.
Last five race results: 6th / 1st / R / 4th / 1st
6. Mark Webber (AUS) - Red Bull
Championship position: 8th, 27 points
While Vettel tried to put a positive face on the points salvaged in China, Webber was seething that his team had been 'blown away'. Yet again, the Aussie is getting the worst of the bad luck... and is generally a tiny fraction off Vettel's pace too. He is confident that it will just take one win to turn his season around and is probably right, but that win can't wait too long.
Last five race results: 8th / 2nd / 9th / 8th / 2nd
News from Formula One in the Formation Lap.
Showing posts with label Barcelona. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barcelona. Show all posts
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
Friday, 5 March 2010
The 2010 Season Preview - Part One
The return of Michael Schumacher; four world champions on the grid; at least three leading teams in which team mates will be fighting head-to-head for the title honours; and the prospect of drivers having to display genuine finesse in nursing their tyres now that refuelling has been banned.
Is it any wonder that 2010 is being billed as a fantastic season for the FIA Formula One World Championship?
First of all, there’s Michael Schumacher on the comeback trail, at 41 still as fit and focused as he was in his heyday when he won 92 Grand Prix victories and seven world titles. And the metamorphosis of Brawn GP into Mercedes GP signals the return of the Silver Arrows to Formula One racing for the first time since the team was withdrawn, victorious, at the end of 1955.
Then there’s Fernando Alonso, adding fresh charge to Ferrari, while Felipe Massa returns as healthy and determined as ever after his horrible accident at Hungaroring last July. Jenson Button is already settling in alongside Lewis Hamilton at McLaren, where he will be determined to prove that the 2008 champion is not going to wipe the floor with him.
Sebastien Vettel and Mark Webber are ready to go head-to-head at Red Bull, and owner Dietrich Mateschitz has made it clear he will accept nothing less than the world championship from one of them. The return of Lotus, meanwhile, spearheads the appearance of new teams from Virgin and HRT.
There are fewer rule changes this year, and the most significant is the ban on refuelling. It has obliged teams to develop longer cars with up to 160 kg of fuel-tank capacity instead of the previous maximum of 80, and to juggle weight distribution. The ban will place a premium on preserving their Bridgestone tyres between the mandatory stop(s) in which drivers must switch compounds. It will also change strategy, and promote greater efforts to overtake, as drivers will be less able to wait for pit stops to make up places. Calculation of testing form has been a nightmare, since fuel loads can vary so much (from 10 to 160 kg). Just so you know, every 10 kg of fuel equates to 0.3 seconds on lap time.
The other major change places much more emphasis on victory, as the new points system goes down to 10th place, thus: 25-18-15-12-10-8-6-4-2-1.
Each driver now gets only 11 sets of tyres per weekend, six sets of primes and five options. Three sets apply solely to Fridays, and must be handed back even if they aren’t used. And drivers from the Q3 session must start the race on the tyres on which they set their grid time.
The penalty for engine changes has effectively been doubled; it’s now 10 grid positions at the race at which the failure occurs, and for the next. The other significant change once again allows teams to run their third drivers on a Friday, provided they use the engine and tyres allocated to the nominated race driver of the relevant car.
Is it any wonder that 2010 is being billed as a fantastic season for the FIA Formula One World Championship?
First of all, there’s Michael Schumacher on the comeback trail, at 41 still as fit and focused as he was in his heyday when he won 92 Grand Prix victories and seven world titles. And the metamorphosis of Brawn GP into Mercedes GP signals the return of the Silver Arrows to Formula One racing for the first time since the team was withdrawn, victorious, at the end of 1955.
Then there’s Fernando Alonso, adding fresh charge to Ferrari, while Felipe Massa returns as healthy and determined as ever after his horrible accident at Hungaroring last July. Jenson Button is already settling in alongside Lewis Hamilton at McLaren, where he will be determined to prove that the 2008 champion is not going to wipe the floor with him.
Sebastien Vettel and Mark Webber are ready to go head-to-head at Red Bull, and owner Dietrich Mateschitz has made it clear he will accept nothing less than the world championship from one of them. The return of Lotus, meanwhile, spearheads the appearance of new teams from Virgin and HRT.
There are fewer rule changes this year, and the most significant is the ban on refuelling. It has obliged teams to develop longer cars with up to 160 kg of fuel-tank capacity instead of the previous maximum of 80, and to juggle weight distribution. The ban will place a premium on preserving their Bridgestone tyres between the mandatory stop(s) in which drivers must switch compounds. It will also change strategy, and promote greater efforts to overtake, as drivers will be less able to wait for pit stops to make up places. Calculation of testing form has been a nightmare, since fuel loads can vary so much (from 10 to 160 kg). Just so you know, every 10 kg of fuel equates to 0.3 seconds on lap time.
The other major change places much more emphasis on victory, as the new points system goes down to 10th place, thus: 25-18-15-12-10-8-6-4-2-1.
Each driver now gets only 11 sets of tyres per weekend, six sets of primes and five options. Three sets apply solely to Fridays, and must be handed back even if they aren’t used. And drivers from the Q3 session must start the race on the tyres on which they set their grid time.
The penalty for engine changes has effectively been doubled; it’s now 10 grid positions at the race at which the failure occurs, and for the next. The other significant change once again allows teams to run their third drivers on a Friday, provided they use the engine and tyres allocated to the nominated race driver of the relevant car.
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