You may have heard that the greatest motor racing championship is underway once more and what a trio of races we’ve had. First was Australia in which we saw some storming results from the three teams on the podium. Then it was Malaysia, a surprisingly dry race but just as eventful as any Malaysia GP.
Then yesterday’s fantastic Chinese Grand Prix, which in my opinion is one of the best that I’ve ever seen. There was literally never a dull moment – from Qualifying on Saturday in which KERS caused Webber to drop out early on, then Hamilton’s near-miss because of air-intake flooding and the race itself.
So many overtakes, so many pitstops and it was great to see a race with so many changes of positions for drivers with just one driver not finishing. Previously we’ve had to see cars crashing out for there to be dramatic changes to the field but this weekend, Webber gained a staggering number of places to get a podium finish.
If I have one quorum with Formula One at the moment, it’s that it seems to be taking the focus off drivers and putting it on the teams. The top drivers at the moment – Vettel, Webber, Hamilton, Button and all right, Alonso, are fairly evenly matched in terms of actual driving ability and I wouldn’t hasten to add the likes of Kobayashi, Petrov, Kovalainen and Barricello close behind them, were they in better cars.
An interesting experiment would be to change all the drivers around, put them in different teams completely and see how they compete. My money would be that the teams would finish in the same places and drivers would go up and down. Current situations in F1 such as KERS, tyre degradation and pit stop strategies means that the difference between 1st and 2nd is mainly down to the teams, as we have seen with the past three races – won by team strategies and technology rather then pure driver skill.
P.S. In response to suggested moves of Lewis Hamilton to Red Bull, forget it. There’s no space in Red Bull for Hamilton if Vettel is still there and I simply can’t see Hamilton leaving McLaren any time soon, especially not before he’s won two more titles and got himself an orange McLaren F1, as promised to him by Ron Dennis.
