Formula 1 blog - Linksheaven

How about those 2006 pairings eh ????

February 16th, 2006

This season more than any in living memory, I am most excited about the pairings we have in each team in formula 1. As well as the obvious huge shake-up of the teams with the new engine formula, I think it is very exciting that within each team, apart from the odd one (Ferrari) it is very difficult to say with any amount of certainty what is going to happen between the drivers.

Let me explain what I’m waffling on about. Firstly let’s look at the teams and compare last season’s line-ups with this season and see why this one is an improvement in my not-so-humble opinion !

Firstly Ferrari.

In 2005, Ferrari started the season with Michael Schumacher partnered by Rubens Barrichello. We all know the position the #2 Ferrari driver perenially finds himself in, so this was never an exciting prospect. A successful one no doubt, but not one to get the neutral wondering what would happen. Although to Rubens’ credit it ended 12-7 in both qualifying and races to the German. Closer than some might expect.

This season Rubens has decided he’s done taking orders and has gone to Honda. Good for him, and in pre-season testing he looks to have already caught up with our Jense. Meanwhile back at Ferrari, little Felipe Massa has come in from the now defunct Sauber team. The Brazilian has long been linked with a race seat at Ferrari, ever since he entered F1 with Sauber in fact. In Massa we have someone who showed great speed and promise from early on, although unlike Sato he has recently managed to reign in his crazy ways. Last season he bashed Jacques Villeneuve 13-6 in qualifying and 13-5 in races (they didn’t race in the US) so he comes to Ferrari in good form. Even if he only beat Jacques by 2 WDC points.

It remains to be seen whether he has the temperament to play 2nd fiddle to Schumacher in quite the way Barrichello did, but in my opinion it also remains to be seen whether that will be an issue at all. It will take him time to settle in at Ferrari and start setting the kind of times that will require a “move over” command from Todt. No, I think Michael will have a pretty comfortable time of it this season within his own team, which is just as well really, because if Ferrari are to get back to where they feel they belong, Michael will need to be concentrating 100% on his opponents, not his teammate.

Next up we have Williams.

Last season’s Williams driver combo was Mark Webber and Nick Heidfeld. Webber had just moved to Williams and was seen as the 2nd coming quite Frankly. He had performed miracles in qualifying at Jaguar and was seen as the perfect Williams driver. Still is in fact. Heidfeld had only barely got a drive and was seen as lucky that the engine manufacturer (BMW) liked his nationality as Frank favoured Pizzonia. Anyway, Heidfeld got the nod. As it turns out, Heidfeld didn’t last the season, and Pizzonia got the last 5 races because by that stage Heidfeld had signed with BMW for the new BMW team that was taking over Sauber. He had done enough to outpoint Webber in the WDC. He lost 9-5 in qualifying to the Aussie and Pizzonia lost 5-0. Heidfeld beat Webber 7-6 in finishes where Webber beat Pizz 4-1.

This season sees the son of former champion Keke joining the ranks. Nico Rosberg was fast-tracked to F1 by Frank because it was painfully obvious that he would end up there eventually, and just in case he was as good as his father, Frank couldn’t risk letting him end up somewhere else before taking a close look for himself. The stories goes that Nico Rosberg scored higher than anyone else in the history of Wiliams F1 in their multiple choice entrants exam. Well done ‘ar kid. Nico has looked quick in testing although Webber seems to have the edge on him, to be expected. If Rosberg’s debut year can be as impressive as Button’s was for Williams then I think Frank will be very happy, and I doubt he’ll let this one go quite as easily as the last ! Expect Webber to comfortably beat his young upstart though.

On the face of it McLaren’s driver line-up is the same as last years, but if you look more closely you will see that it is oh so juicy and there is so much more to it than there was last year for 3 reasons.

Firstly there is the inevitable competition between the 2 drivers knowing that Fernando Alonso’s imminent arrival is going to break up the party for the 2007 season. With this in mind, it is more important than usual that each driver beat the other. Last year the performance breakdown was 1306 in qualifying and 10-8 in finishes to Kimi Raikkonen who also won the WDC battle 112 to 60. Walkover this year so ? Well I don’t think so. If you take the last 6 races of last year, JPM scored 2 wins and a 3rd and matched his teammate in qualifying 3-3. Kimi outscored him but it is clear to see that JPM, who remember was new to the team in ‘05, was getting to grips with his car and was almost a match for the Finn.

This year they will both start the season as McLaren veterans. Neither will have an excuse for losing to their team-mate.

All of this might be moot however. If Michael Schumacher decides to retire after 2006, this frees up the most coveted seat in Formula 1 and everyone and their dog is presuming that Raikkonen is a nailed on certainty to replace the German at Maranello. Also Montoya is also rumoured to have started pimping himself to every team on the grid so as to get a drive confirmed for next year. He can’t hang around to see if McLaren decide to keep him or to see if MS retires, and he rightly is sorting his future out much like Alonso decided to do earlier in the month. So it looks like McLaren have lost Montoya regardless, and if MS retires, it is expected that they will lose Raikkonen. If their cars stay as brittle as people think they are this pre-season then they’ll have no hope of keeping the Finn, but if they do show that they can win the championship then they might just have a hope and it might be Ferrari that need to shop around. All up in the air at the moment but certainly interesting times ahead. I would still expect Kimi to get the upper hand on Montoya, all things being even. However if the car turns out to be “fragile” then Kimi’s history of mechanical sympathy (or a lack thereof) might haunt him.

Renault have an interesting time this season too. Last season Alonso was undoubtedly the star, and although Fisichella had very bad luck for a lot of the season, there are those that subscribe to the philosophy that you make your own luck. This season Alonso is a ‘dead man walking’ at Renault. In that I mean they know he is leaving. He has no future there. They have come out with assurances that he will be treated no differently but this is impossible to believe. A driver is fundamental to the creation of the new car and the development of the existing one, and they can not let Alonso have access to anything sensitive. So while he will undoubtedly get 100% backing and access to existing equipment, if towards the 3/4 way mark he is not clearly in the running he might find the going getting tough. Especially if Fisichella’s luck turns around and he finds himself in the mix too. Make no mistake, Renault want to win the championship, but they would much rather win it and keep the number 1 car. To do this it must be Fisichella that wins it. Last season the numbers were 14-5 in qualifying and 15-3 in finishes in favour of the Spaniard. Surely this year it can not possibly be the same. I happen to think that although Fisi’s ’stock’ took a hiding last year, he has not become a bad driver overnight. The fact is that he did NOT create some of his bad luck last season, and if you couple that with Alonso’s uncomfortable position in the team this season it has to mean a closer therefore better season for Fisi. My head still expects Alonso to come out on top, but the fact it will be closer tells me it will be a better season.

Midland start the season as, err, well as Midland !! Jordan are now gone and any trace of loud drunk Irishmen in the pits is now sadly gone with them. Last season Midland used the Jordan name to settle themselves in F1. They used Karthikeyan and Monteiro. Monteiro looked like your typical last minute substandard rentadriver hired to fill a seat, and Karthikeyan looked like a marketing exercise to get the world’s 2nd most populated country interested in buying merchandise, sorry I meant interested in F1. To both of their credit, they surpassed most people’s expectations. Karthikeyan was fast, exciting, brave and looked like he had a future in the sport. Monteiro although not quite as blisteringly fast at the start, was getting to the finishline, not getting in the way (in what was a dog), and generally acquitting himself admirably. Karthikeyan edged the qualy battle 10-9 but lost the finishes 12-7 and the WDC battle 7pts to 5.

This season Monteiro (fresh from setting rookie reliability records) keeps his seat and Narain is a tester for Williams (onwards and upwards !). The 2nd Midland seat is filled by the Dutchman and ex-Minardi driver Christijan Albers. I really like Albers and followed him in DTM. I was delighted to see Paul Stoddard take a risk with him in F1 and he duly obliged by comfortable outpacing Patrick Friesacher and Robert Doornbos in his debut season. I expect to see Albers get the better of Monteiro this season but I admit I could be biased and I in no way expect Tiago to be a pushover. I hope he can continue his remarkable record if finishing GP’s and if he can add more speed to this he could pick up invaluable points finishes much like last season’s astonishing 8th place in Belgium.

Red Bull surprised everyone last year. While everyone else was trying to get to the finishline and sneering at Dietrich Mateschitz’s GP entry, they were busily going about their business of sticking it to the man. DC got points in each of his first 3 GP’s and Klien got points in his first 2. An incredible haul that had Red Bull above Ferrari after race 3. Red Bull continued to impress throughout the season and Christian Klien who had taken a bit of a pasting from Webber at Jag showed why he was brought into F1 in the first place. He was supposed to rotate with Liuzzi all season but such was his form that he only ended up missing 4 GP’s. Amazingly he out-qualified DC 8-7 where Liuzzi was outqualified 4-0. DC took the finishes 9-5 over Klien where Liuzzi was 2-2 with DC. Coulthard’s race guile showed through in the WDC where he took 24pts to Klien’s 9, but I’m expecting big things from Red Bull this year. Klien is on the up and the new engine should hopefully put them nicely in the mix. I’ll go for Klien considerably narrowing the gap to DC.

Now we go to Sauber who are now called BMW. Where last year we had a ‘has-been’ called Jacques Villeneuve that everyone thought shouldn’t have been in F1 and a messer like Massa who spent as much time in the wall as on the track, this season I look forward to with more relish. Firstly, Villeneuve proved towards the end of the season that he DOES belong in F1. Massa may have tonked him over the season, but at season’s end JV was his equal. This season we see Nick Heidfeld following his compatriots to Hinwil. Heidfeld showed last year that he was the equal of Webber and that he certainly belongs in F1. Villeneuve will have the advantage of knowing the Sauber setup but Heidfeld is showing good signs in pre-season and is at a better stage in his career. Where the BMW will be on the grid is anyone’s guess but these 2 drivers in my opinion can not be seperated on paper. If I had to guess I would say Heidfeld will take it narrowly, but Villeneuve is not a WDC for nothing and he showed very good consistency last year. He usually gets to the finish line, and if the car is anyway decent and Vileneuve sniffs a good result, then the impetus may come back. Put it this way, Heidfeld might outpoint him over a season but if you wanna count big results - podiums and the like, then I doubt Villeneuve will be beat.

Toyota. I don’t know why but I find them to be the dullest team on the grid. Maybe it’s a good thing for them that there’s consistency. They have the same 2 drivers. 2 incredibly reliable drivers. A mountain of money. A car that is on the up, but not quite there yet. Apart from all that and the fact I just can’t get worked up about their chances, the fact remains that the inter-battle between Trulli and Ralf is intriguing. Last season everyone said that Trulli monstered Ralf. They said that Ralf was on 6 times the money that Jarno was on. And that’s probably true, but if you look at the numbers you’ll see that Ralf Schumacher actually BEAT Trulli in th championship by 2pts, and in race finishes they were level at 9 each. Where Trulli really did kill Ralf was in qualifying, where he beat him 16-3, but what’s the point in that if you don’t translate it into results ? ‘There’s no point’ is the answer. And anyway, Trulli’s average qualy position was 5.5 to Ralf’s 8. Not a huge margin, but consistent nonetheless. The thing that makes it more interesting in my opinion is that Ralf’s form started to come good at the tail end of the season. Much of what people were saying about them was already decided by midseason. People decided Trulli was far better, and never bothered to check at the end. By season’s end Ralf had outfinished Trulli in the last 4 races, and came in 6th to Jarno’s 5th in the 5th last race. and 2 of his 3 qualy victories over Trulli came in the last 2 races of the season when he got pole position in Japan and a 9th in China to Jarno’s 12th. So going into this season I think it’s way too simple to suggest that based on everyone’s preconceptions, Jarno will continue where he left off. He might have gone some way to disproving the theory that he’s a qualifier and not a racer, but in my mind, if anything, he still has a lot to prove, and last season didn’t do much for me !!

Honda look to be back, and this is one of the most exciting partnerships in the business at the moment. Going on a tangent for a minute we can check the pre-season testing times, which I grant are as useful as the proverbial chocolate teapot, and see that they are on the pace. Other teams are even suggesting that, alongside Renault, Honda are the benchmark this season. That might be a stretch but one thing’s for sure - this season they have 2 drivers capable of finishing in the points, not just 1. For the purposes of completion I will look at Button versus Sato last season. 16-1 & 18-0 - you know the format. Absolute obliteration. And that’s not because Button was untouchable, it was because Sato was shockingly poor. So much so that Honda did the unthinkable and dropped golden balls altogether, well almost. Barrichello has come from Ferrari after years of playing pansy. He is undoubtedly a very fine driver well capable of winning GP’s. On his day he has outperformed the legendary Michael Schumacher and showed in the Stewart that is able to wring a performance from any kind of car. Make no mistake, this season Button has competition. It is refreshing to hear Gil de Ferran saying there will be no team orders at Honda, and I believe him. Much like at Williams, there is no need for them to have orders. It is slightly facetious to suggest that they don’t have a driver quite good enough to build a team around, but the benefit to us is that both can go hammer and tongs. And I expect they will. Button showed last season that he can score points in nearly every race. This pre-season RB has been up with him on pace which suggests so can he. Button on his own out-scored Toyota in the latter half of last season, so if you add Rubens to the mix and the fact that Honda look on their game you’ll appreciate that I don’t expect to see Honda trailing on Toyota’s WCC campaign in quite the way they did last year (88pts to 38). I honestly can’t see Barrichello beating Button this season simply because Button knows the team and in my opinion is the better driver, but both have a lot to prove. Barrichello needs to show that he CAN win without a Ferrari, and Button needs to prove he can win full stop. I suspect they will be given the car this season to show off their abilities, and I think Honda are in for a good year.

Scuderia Toro Rosso, or Team Red Bull if you want all of this in English, are Dietrich Mateshitz’s junior F1 team. Apart from being excited about where they will sit on the grid, and for being the only team to run with a de-tuned V10 engine from Cosworth, I think their 2 drivers will be very good this year. Especially Vitantonio Liuzzi. In Liuzzi we have one of the best karters ever. This doesn’t always equate to great F1 driver, but he sure has buckets of ability, and I’ve read in more than one place that last year he wasn’t given the chance to show us exactly what he can do. He came into F1, much like Massa, touted as a future Ferrari man, so no pressure there then !! We’ve already touched on the fact that he didn’t do too good in qualifying for Red Bull last year but you may have noticed that he did equal DC in finishes 2-2. He has good race craft and this year at STR should hold him in good stead and give us a better idea of exactly how much of that kart ability he can bring to the table. One of my favourite drivers and I hope he shines. Now only the Americans could come up with a name like ‘Speed’ for a racing driver, but we are assured it is his real name. He has shown plenty of his surname in GP2 and won the Red Bull driver search in America. Indeed so impressed were Red Bull with him and his fellow winners that they saw fit to close the programme altogether as a “job done” “mission accomplished”. There wasn’t enough teams in F1 to give him a go, and Christian Klien was undumpable after his season last year so what did the billionaire Mateshitz do ? He bought Minardi, renamed it and made it his own. We have no real gauge of how well these drivers will do, and with the uniqueness of their engine situation we have no real idea where the car will be, so in many ways STR are the greatest enigma on the grid. If the car fails is it the cars fault or the drivers ? Only time will tell, but I think this will be one of the more controversial and contentious teams this year. I just hope the drivers can do themselves justice amongst all the messing.

Finally we get to Super Aguri, and I don’t have much to write about here (thank god you say). They are a new team using a modified 4 year old Arrows chassis - a chassis that wouldn’t have been a world beater back then. They have a driver in Sato who has to be shockingly low on confidence after a woeful 2005 at Honda, although by all accounts one of the nicest guys in the paddock. You have a guy in Yuji Ide who is 31, has never won a major series and has been racing since 1990. They do have Honda backing and they will have a modern chassis for the start of the ‘European’ season so they will no doubt make progress, but I think we can safely write them off this season as back of the grid men. The only thing that could stop them propping up the grid is if the FIA clamp down on the STR V10 and make it uncompetitive, or if by some stroke of genius they get it right with their SA06 chassis.

Anyway, if you’ve got this far then fair play to you, I’m off to massage my aching wrists.

Bealzbob

(edited - comment below or join in the discussion on the forums)

Entry Filed under: Formula 1