Having said that, the first pit stop issue in Malaysia came as a result of not pitting at all.  During the opening lap Fernando Alonso damaged his front win against the back of Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull and the subsequent decision by the Spanish ace and his Ferrari team not to pit was wrong.

Under pressure to try and stay on the wet track for a few laps, and not lose time in the pits, Alonso continued onto the second lap with a front wing which collapsed as soon as it reached maximum speed on the pit straight.  A pit stop to replace the damaged front wing would have been the correct decision, but Alonso and Ferrari took an uncharacteristic risk.  This not only compromised their race but was extremely dangerous.

When the pit stops did finally commence, further drama unfolded.

If the pit crew tends to be the centre of attention in pit stops, it is up to the driver to first of all stop in the right location and give them the chance to do their job efficiently.  Lewis Hamilton’s very public mistake of driving his Mercedes Benz into the McLaren pit underlined once again that the driver is the first member of a team who has to get it right in a pit stop.  Having driven for McLaren for 6 years it was perhaps natural that Hamilton should make this mistake early in his Mercedes career, especially with the McLaren crew out in the pit lane, but human error cost him valuable seconds and possibly a chance of challenging Red Bull more effectively.

Both Force Indias suffered long stops because their new ‘captive wheel nut’ designs failed to locate properly, possibly due to heat expansion in the high temperatures of Malaysia.  The captive wheel nut design integrates the nut with the wheel, making faster pit stops possible, and Force India’s Bob Fernley admitting this was necessary if the team was to achieve the kind of 3 second pit stop which is now essential.  Indeed, with McLaren targeting a 2 second pit stop this season, the pressure is on for all of the pit crews to achieve astonishing results, and Force India paid a high price in trying.  The pressure to improve means changing the technology and the processes, as well as expecting the personnel to be able to cope with the faster speeds.

McLaren then came under scrutiny, the front right hand wheel on Jenson Button’s car not been fully located during his third pit stop.  He was forced to pull over in the pit lane before being pulled back to the pit box for the wheel to be reattached, and this dropped him from 5th to 14th.  Human error was the reason quoted by McLaren; once again the pressure of sustaining sub-3 second pit stops had resulted in a mistake.

As though to complete a full line-up of pit stop problems, Toro Rosso then incurred a USD$10,000 fine by releasing Jean-Eric Vergne’s car straight into the path of Guido Van de Garde’s Caterham, causing a collision which resulted in both cars requiring new front nose sections.  Again, human error; the team under pressure to release Vergne too quickly.

As this year’s World Championship unfolds it will be interesting to see what happens as the Formula One team’s continue in their quest to deliver sustained high performance 2 to 3 second pit stops race after race.  If they achieve their goals, it will continue to be an impressive aspect of Formula One.  If they fail, it could just be that the new, high-speed pit stops become a serious problem in a sport which prides itself on putting safety first.

Jacques’ father, the much revered Gilles Villeneuve, lost his life at the Belgian Grand Prix in 1982 and it should really have been that event which triggered the safety race in Formula One. Instead we waited 12 more years and witnessed further fatalities of driver such as Riccardo Paletti, Elio de Angelis, Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna before the sports governing body under the strong leadership of Max Mosley decided to address the safety culture from the ground up.

Jacques’ himself commented that his era, starting in 1996, really marked the start of ‘safe’ Formula One racing, and he endured not only a highly successful career but one in which serious accidents became fully survivable.

He recalled driving his late father’s Ferrari 312T4 and realising that there was quite literally nothing to protect his upper body or legs in the event of a serious accident, and yet as he drove it he loved the sensation and was soon going quickly. The urge to drive fast remains a constant in the Villeneuve tradition, but fortunately for Jacques the safety-first culture of the sport mirrored the desire for ultimate performance.

Today’s memorial service for Professor Sid Watkins OBE in St Marylebone Parish Church, London, will be well attended by friends, family and Formula One’s senior figures.  Some of those present will undoubtedly owe their lives to the step change in safety culture that ‘The Prof’ championed during a 26 year career at the helm of Formula One’s medical services.  His legacy could not be more profound, for it is as a direct result of the initiatives which he championed that Formula One, a racing category which saw over 40 drivers killed in its first four and a half decades, has not witnessed a driver fatality since 1994.

Anyone who has seen the documentary SENNA will understand the impact on the sport caused by the death of the triple World Champion on May 1st 1994, and of the close relationship Watkins enjoyed with the Brazilian superstar.  It was Senna’s fatality, and that of fellow driver Roland Ratzenberger the day before, which galvanised Formula One into accepting a raft of changes in which Watkins played a pivotal role.

In 30 years of travelling I have only left my passport at home on one occasion; Thursday 27th September, 1990, to be precise.  I remember the date because the next day, while driving back to London’s Gatwick Airport, the news broke on BBC Radio that Lotus F1 driver Martin Donnelly has been seriously injured in a practice accident and airlifted to hospital in Seville.

Martin had been a friend since our teenage years, our mothers having been members of the same operatic society in Belfast, and we’d both achieved our objective of reaching Formula One; he as driver and me as journalist.

On landing in Gibraltar I hired a car and drove straight to Seville’s Virgen del Rioco University Hospital where I was allowed to join Martin’s fiancee in the intensive care unit where I would later meet Prof Watkins.  Thrown from his disintegrating Lotus T102 when it speered off the track, Martin had suffered multiple injuries and been placed in a medically induced coma.  Watkins, however, instilled confidence in us, even at that early stage; Martin would recover, he said, so long as there weren’t further complications.

His bedside manner drew on a combination of deep expertise, wisdom gathered from decades of experience and a calm, avuncular personality.  Even in the darkest of moments he could help put everything in context, focusing only on the critical matters, avoiding the dramatic. His sense of humour also helped.

Martin was subsequently transferred to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, where Watkins worked as an eminent neurosurgeon, and during the weeks which followed I had many an opportunity to talk with him.  Ultimately we spent most of our time discussing a prognosis which developed in precisely the direction Sid had forecast.

Having induced Martin’s coma, and personally helped save his leg in spite of the Seville hospital’s intent on removing it, Sid asked us not to worry too much about the dramatic loss of weight, the profoundly deep, rapid breathing and severely dehydrated skin which felt cool and death-like.  I have only fainted a couple of times in my life, but one of those was in the ICU at the Royal London Hospital while holding Martin Donnelly’s hand.  Not something to be proud of, but I was in good company; his team mate Derek Warwick, a man of courage, had suffered the same fate during a visit.

Martin Donnelly is one of those who, along with former World Champion Mika Hakkinen, wakes up every morning knowing that the life he leads today would not have been possible without the intervention of Sid Watkins.  But there are many others, those of the new generation of F1 drivers, who probably won’t be in attendance at today’s memorial service and unwittingly take for granted his legacy.

I’ll leave it to Sid’s own words to bring my little tribute to a close.  Joining him in an airport lounge, with a glass of whiskey in his hand, I happened to mention that I needed to shed a few pounds thanks to the effects of a little too much Formula One corporate hospitality and too little exercise over the years.

“Don’t worry too much about that,” he smiled.  “It’s important to enjoy life.  I haven’t met a healthy person yet who could avoid death; I think you’ll find it’s not optional.”

The result was an inaugural event which exceeded everyone’s expectations, attracting capacity crowds and enjoyed the buzz created by the heady combination of a great race on an impressive circuit attended by some of America’s A list Hollywood stars.

For a nation whose appetite for motor sport is normally sated by Nascar’s blanket coverage augmented by top flight single seater racing provided by IndyCar, Formula One managed to resurrect itself successfully, and in a manner which bodes well for the future.

Putting aside the years when America’s Indy 500 could count towards the Formula One World Championship, F1’s road racing history started at Riverside, California, and Sebring, Florida, in 1959 and 1960 before enjoying a long period at Watkins Glen in upstate New York until 1980.  Forays to Long Beach, Detroit, Dallas and even the car park of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas proved unsustainable, while Phoenix’s Grand Prix between 1989 and 1991 brought F1’s presence in the country to an end for almost a decade.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway, that most hallowed of racing venues for American fans, bravely stepped up to the plate in 2000, and although it initially looked set to achieve the breakthrough Bernie Eccelstone and the teams had hoped for, attendances soon declined.  The sheer farce of the 2005 event, when only 6 cars competed following the withdrawal of seven teams due to a problems with their Michelin tyres, did nothing to help.  The inability of F1’s power-brokers to put on the show that day remains a blot on the collective memory of race fans.  By the end of 2007 Indianapolis was unable to agree fresh terms, and the US Grand Prix once again bit the dust.

Such history does not augur well for COTA, but fortunately some fundamental aspects of this event are different.  First of all it is a purpose built facility funded by core investors Red McCombs and Bobby Epstein.  A 3.4 mile, 20-corner race track which features the latest in 21st century design philosophy, it produced a thrilling race on Sunday with Lewis Hamilton managing to overhaul runaway leader Sebastian Vettel.  The headline writers had their Texas duel.

Introduced to Bernie Ecclestone by long standing associate Tavo Hellmund, the COTA investors acquired an 890 acre site, brought in F1 circuit guru Hermann Tilke to assist with the design, and according to the New York Times have spent USD$350 Million on its construction.

Although the project was launched in 2010, subsequent disputes between Hellmund and his investors appeared to threaten the development, but ultimately these were resolved and COTA was completed on time and given the all clear by the FIA.  State-of-the-art is an overused term, but COTA ticks all the boxes and there were only positive reports from teams and media.

F1’s initial agreement with COTA is for a full decade of racing, and the owners of the track have been quick to capitalise on the success of attracting motor sport’s premier category. MotoGP has since been signed up to hold its first Texas motor cycle Grand Prix next year, while catagories as diverse as Australia’s V8 Supercars, the FIA’s World Endurance Championship and the American Le Mans Series have also added the venue to their 2013 calendars.

All this means that COTA’s owners are serious about ensuring their facility becomes a hub for world motor sport, with F1 as the jewel in its crown.  Austin’s city officials have been fully supportive, along with Texas state, and feedback from the weekend was that the welcome received by the visiting circus has marked the event out as a season highlight.  Attention to detail is important in securing favourable reports, and something as simple as a well-stocked media centre cafe resulted in smiling journalists happy with their lot.

If the international media was won over, the national media at least bothered to turn up and left impressed with what they had seen, but ultimately struggled to the give the race quite the headline coverage it deserved.  Having the event on the same day as the final Nascar race of the season wasn’t the best timing, but F1 did get reported on even if the column inches were less than for a domestic ball game.

This was, therefore, an encouraging start.  However, more than anything F1 needs the USA to produce a driver capable of racing at the sharp end of a sport that saw its last American World Champion way back in 1978 when Mario Andretti won for Team Lotus.  In the 34 years since, American driver involvement in F1 has been both sparse and unspectacular.

I recall flying out of Phoenix the day after its final F1 event in March 1991 and reading in the local paper that the Grand Prix had attracted less than a third of the number of spectators who attended a llama race in northern Arizona on the same day. Yes, you read that correctly. Llamas were more popular than Ferrari’s Prancing Horse.

I also remember speaking to Tony George, then boss of Indianapolis Motor Speedy, back in 2000 and him saying how surprised they were that the trailer parks set aside for spectators were pretty well empty while the hotels were full within 100 miles of the race track. They were learning fast that the F1 spectators were not blue-collar Nascar fans sleeping in their RV’s, but international visitors flying in from Canada, Latin America, the East and West Coast.

COTA successful inaugural Grand Prix bodes well for the future, but the errors of the past will have to be kept in mind.  The momentum of Sunday’s race needs to be maintained.

It will be over the 9 years that follow when the real test will come. A visiting World Championship is one thing, but for a nation renowned for its sporting patriotism and fervour, it is likely that the real step-change will only occur when F1 can find a home-grown American talent capable of duelling with the Vettels and Hamiltons.

(First published; www.isportconnect.com)

My impression of the race was that Lewis Hamilton drove absolutely on the limit of the McLaren MP4-27 from beginning to end, a performance that ranked among the very best we have seen.  He really should not have won the race, but he did thanks to the car’s excellent high speed performance combined with Lewis’s ability to push as hard as possible lap after lap.

Having got past Mark Webber during the first stage of the race, Hamilton closed on Vettel only to find that getting past was going to be very difficult.  Over the first sector, Turns 1 & 2 plus the flowing corners from Turns 3-6, the McLaren was typically 0.3-0.4s faster than the Red Bull.  In the middle sector they were quite evenly matched, with Vettel’s car perhaps 0.1 quicker because of it’s performance through 7, 8 and 9, while in the final, twisty sector the reigning World Champion was much faster than Hamilton, sometimes up to 0.5s.

As a result it became very clear that the only way Hamilton was going to win this race was to use his advantage over Sector 1 to get very close to Vettel, enough to trigger the DRS at its activation point 150m after Turn 10, and make the pass before Turn 12.  It wasn’t going to be easy.

Hamilton’s deficit to Vettel at the start of the pit straight was often 1.5-2s, so he had to push really hard into Turn 1, which often caused problems.  This meant he kept having to correct the steering due to sudden understeer or oversteer depending on his entry speed.  This lost him valuable tenths and meant he couldn’t get close enough to Vettel by the DRS activation point.

Hamilton’s salvation came in the form of Narain Karthikeyan.  The HRT driver’s fastest first sector time all day was 28.452s, with Vettel’s 27.440s.  The Red Bull was a full 1 second faster than the Spanish car, and most of this came between turns 3 and 6, the fast, sweeping corners through which Karthikeyan could not carry speed.

When Vettel caught Karthikeyan on lap 42, therefore, Hamilton was able to sit back and watch as the Red Bull lost over second trying to get past the HRT.  It meant Hamilton was right behind Vettel and able to execute a perfect DRS pass.  Vettel’s lap time on lap 41 was a 1:40.850, but on the lap he was overtaken he lost two seconds, achieving a 1:42.746 while Hamilton managed a clean 1:41.001 because he wasn’t delayed by Karthikeyan.

A number of things came out of this;  firstly, the RB8 and the McLaren MP4-27 were very evenly matched around the Circuit of the Americas.  Different sectors played to the different strengths of each car.  Secondly, Vettel and Hamilton were pushing to the very limit from beginning to end; the McLaren won by 0.675s.

Thirdly is my conclusion that the only way for Lewis Hamilton to have won that Grand Prix and beat Vettel was to be driving a McLaren-Mercedes MP4-27, and equally that the only way McLaren could expect to win the race was with Lewis Hamilton.  If the USGP proved anything, therefore, it was that the split between driver and team makes no sense at all.  It’s going to be very hard for Button and Perez to achieve the kind of performance Hamilton brings to McLaren, and even more difficult for Mercedes to give Hamilton the speed he is used to.  Having watched from the cockpit, it’s a tragedy for both sides that this partnership has only one weekend left.  That’s another good reason to watch the Brazilian Grand Prix on Sunday.

(First published; www.gocar.gr)

Hamilton has driven for McLaren for five years, winning the 2008 World Championship for Drivers, achieving 48 podiums from 103 race starts, and winning 20 Grands Prix.  He famously approach the team’s boss, Ron Dennis, as a precocious 10 year old kart racer and was signed to the McLaren driver development programme only three years later. Over the course of the next decade he was trained in every facet of Formula One such that he was the best prepared driver in the history of the sport when he came to make his debut in 2007.

That relationship is now over, and there are likely to be three main reasons why Hamilton and his management opted not to renew the McLaren deal.

In my view the first reason will be personal.  Hamilton has not been entirely happy for some time, evidenced by the moody behaviour which marked his 2011 season and has been seen again at times this year.  Blamed on an on-off relationship with celebrity girlfrend Nicole Scherzinger, there were times when their driver’s terse responses to media questions and general demeanour proved embarrassing to McLaren.  There have been spats with the team, most recently over a series of poorly conceived tweets by Hamilton, including sending photographs of sensitive team data to his one million followers.

Secondly will be the promise of technical superiority by Mercedes in the coming seasons.  In 2014 Formula One will usher in a new era of fully hybrid power train technologies and, as one of the three manufacturers, Mercedes Benz is ideally positioned to design and package the new engine, electric motor and energy recovery system to meet their team’s design requirements.  McLaren is merely a Mercedes engine customer, even to the extent of having to pay for its engines next season.

Finally there is the commercial offering which, if the rumours are true, represents a marginal increase in base remuneration but some lucrative bonuses and greater flexibility in relation to personal endorsements.

Considering that the Mercedes team has only won one Grand Prix in three years, it looks like a considerable roll of the dice for Hamilton.  However, Mercedes grew out of the World Championship winning Brawn GP team of 2009 and possesses world class facilities thanks to a decade long investment by previous owners British American Tobacco and Honda.

Hamilton’s move has led to McLaren opting for the talents of Mexico’s Sergio Perez who, at only 22 years of age, has achieved three strong podium finishes for the Sauber team this season including 2nd places in Malaysia and Italy. Backed by Telmex, it will be interesting to see if Perez ultimately carries this sponsorship with him if Vodafone opts to downscale or discontinue its support for McLaren after 2013.

Also affected is Michael Schumacher, the 7 times World Championship who unexpectedly returned to the sport in 2010 with Mercedes.  Three seasons later, his much hyped return has failed to match expectations, the car’s performance and reliability doing little to help a driver who has also made some uncharacteristic mistakes. It is not clear if Schumacher will now retire permanently, but it is difficult to see a credible future for the German ace.

All told, Hamilton’s move from McLaren to Mercedes is big news for Formula One and set to give World Championship a new look in 2013.  More immediately, with six races of this year’s World Championship still to run, and McLaren the team of the moment, it is conceivable that Hamilton might yet steal the Drivers title from runaway series leader Fernando Alonso.

McLaren has pledged its full commitment to both Hamilton and team mate Jenson Button, as one would expect, but it is their departing driver who stands the better chance of title success.  That might yet become the big story of the year, therefore, if Hamilton can bring McLaren a World Championship title in the teeth of what some will regard as his betrayal of their support for his career. {First published on www.isportconnect.com}

Maldonado has a strong talent; he proved that before reached Formula One by winning series including the GP2 title, and no one can forget his astonishing drive in Spain this year when he converted pole position into a dominant victory.  Against Fernando Alonso.

Like many people, however, I have tended to concentrate most of the time on the mistakes Maldonado has made, particularly the enormous aggression which has seen him behave in an unacceptable manner.  Just ask Sergio Perez or Lewis Hamilton.

His crash in Australia, when he was pushing too hard behind Alonso in the closing stages of the race, and his unnecessary collision with Hamilton in Valencia robbed him, and Williams, of much-need, strong results.

Controversy is nothing new for Maldonado, however. In 2005 he received a 4-race ban in the World Series by Renault for failing to slow down at the scene of an accident in Monaco, hitting and injuring a track marshal.  And in F1 he has usually been in the headlines for the wrong reasons.

Coming to Singapore Maldonado confirmed that he was taking a new approach.  Before Monza he even had his new philosophy added to his helmet.  ‘Less Trouble, More Speed’.

He was a man of his word.  The Singapore track is demanding, requiring all the precision we have come to expect from an unforgiving street circuit and offering no rest for the driver as they snake their cars around its 23 corners.  When Hamilton qualified on pole position with a 1m46.362s Alonso said he was ‘on another planet’. Well, Maldonado was only 0.44s slower around the 5km track, and a tenth of a second quicker than double World Champion Sebastian Vettel.  To my mind, that puts Maldonado on the same planet as two of the world’s greatest ever drivers.

Preparing for the race, like many TV commentators I wondered if Maldonado could avoid trouble at the start.  But he made a clean, tidy getaway, if anything being too cautious in allowing Vettel and Button to get past.  After that he maintained strong race pace until his Williams suffered hydraulic failure.  A desperately disappointing outcome.

Two other points to make about Pastor Maldonado’s season.  The first is that the Williams-Renault FW34 is a very impressive car and the team should be much higher up the Formula One World Championship for Constructors.  This is a car which should have won two or three Grands Prix by now.

The second is that Maldonado’s performances, and the sheer capability of the FW34, call into question the ability of Bruno Senna to sustain his career at the top level.  He has not had a good season and Singapore showed why.  Teams do not employ drivers to crash, and although accidents will invariably happen from time to time, Bruno’s weekend involved too much contact with the barrier; it destroyed their practice on Friday and ruined his qualifying. With Maldonado 2nd, Senna was in 17th after not even completing a flying lap in Q2.

Singapore may well have been a turning point for both men.  For the Venezuelan it was a very positive step towards developing a career which will be remembered for the right reasons, while for his Brazilian team mate the very public mistakes over the weekend will have done little to keep his F1 dreams alive into 2013. {First published on www.gocar.gr}

Ma Qing Ha – China’s first F1 driver – will practice at the 2012 Italian Grand Prix

Watching the London Games I found it easy to become both carried away on the wave of euphoria sweeping the country and slightly depressed at the shortcomings of my own sport.  For someone who has spent his career working in and around Formula One, two things really struck me.

The first was the enormous appeal that the Oympic Games generates as a result of its inclusiveness. Whether it was a Jamaican sprinter, a home-grown cyclist, a slow rower from Niger or a first-time female competitor from Saudi Arabia, this was one big sporting party.  A total of 204 countries competed, 85 won medals, and the top 20 included countries such as Iran and Kazakhstan.

Bernie Ecclestone has done a remarkable of building Formula One into a sport which can, annually, deliver audiences that stand up pretty well to scrutiny against the quadrennial Olympic Games or World Cup.

Inclusiveness has never been a key mantra, however, for Formula One is built around a central pillar of elitism; in technology, in its self-regard and the opportunity for anyone who hopes to compete in it.  Of this season’s 24 drivers, 15 come from five European countries, 4 from Latin America and two from Australia.  All 12 teams are located in Europe, 8 in the UK.  Furthermore, any aspiring driver who seeks to progress seamlessly from karting to Formula One had better have access to the £4m it takes to fund the lower formulae.

The elite spectacle of Formula One has led it to find a rich seam of revenues through global expansion in the past 15 years.  With the creation of events in Malaysia, China, Bahrain, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, South Korea, and India the sport has made some progress in attracting drivers such as India’s Narain Karthikeyan and Karun Chandhok, but the principal benefit has been to open the coffers for investment into teams and events from sovereign and private funds.

What it hasn’t lead to is a diversification of competitors, important for Formula One’s  development in countries and regions where a local hero will be needed to energise sponsors and media.  And this leads me to my second point.

China was once again a formidable competitor in the London Games, second in the medals table with 88 to the USA’s 104.  Winning is everything to the Chinese, and much attention was paid by the media to a sporting culture where finishing second is regarded as being first of the losers.

Given the importance of sporting success to the world’s most populous country, it is puzzling to many that the nation which, since 2009, has been the world’s largest automobile producer has singularly ignored the business potential of Formula One.

In 2011 Ferrari sold 7195 cars world wide, a 9.5% increase in annual sales.  In China, however, the Prancing Horse witnessed a 75% increase in sales year on year and is set to increase the number of dealerships from 10 to 15 by next year.  Consider too that Bentley, a brand with strong motor sport heritage, sells 35% of its products in China.

The 5,200 cars that China produced in the whole of 1985 turned into 11.26 million passenger vehicles in 2010, 44% of which were from home-grown brands that few outside China have heard of.  Hard to believe that anyone walks into the office and proudly throws down the keys to their new BYD, Lifan or Great Wall, but they do.

Formula One has tried hard to tap into this automotive mega-market mega.  Ecclestone successfully secured a Chinese Grand Prix in 2004 in Shanghai, and this deal has recently been renewed until 2018.  Team’s were initially ecstatic about China being added to the schedule, the belief being that Chinese companies, aka sponsors, would flock to Formula One. How wrong we were.

Lesson one was that Chinese companies had quite a big enough domestic market, thank you, without going to the expense of sponsoring a sport that few understood. Lesson two was that the commercial benefit went in the other direction; western brands using the presence of Formula One in China to push their wares in this important market.

There is some light at the end of the tunnel, and perhaps London 2012 pointed us towards it.

China’s car buying public are becoming more discerning, requiring style and performance, aspiring to own recognisable brands.  As a proportion of total sales, domestic brands are struggling.  With 114 million cars on the road and growing fast, there can be no better means of getting consumers onside than by combining the national passion for sporting success with the creation of home-grown talent that can win at the pinnacle of motoring competition.

The lesson for Formula One from this summer’s Games is perhaps that now is the time to explain to Chinese automotive brands the age old adage that if if you win on Sunday, you sell on on Monday.  Even for the most hard bitten Chinese businessman, the opportunity to drive sales is one he understands.

[First published, Expert Column; www.isportconnect.com]

Double World Champions; Sebastian Vettel congratulates Fernando Alonso, 2012 German Grand Prix.

As this most fickle of Formula One World Championship seasons reaches its mid-summer break, giving teams a much needed opportunity to refresh and reflect, the importance of consistency remains fundamental.

The two men at the head of the championship have finished every race this season, Fernando Alonso scoring points every time and Mark Webber only missing out once when he finished 11th in Spain.  Alonso’s performance for Ferrari is remarkable, and his 40 point lead in the Drivers World Championship the result.  The last time he finished a race outside the points at the 2011 Canadian Grand Prix, and when he arrives in Belgium at the end of August he will have scored points in 35 of the last 36 Grands Prix.

At 31 years of age the Spanish double-World Champion remains at the peak of his powers, and his ability to work closely with the Ferrari team to turn the initially difficult F2012 into a 3-time race winner this season says as much about his work-rate as it does about his talent.

That Mark Webber is second in the championship is in itself a major story of 2012, for although Sebastian Vettel has closed the gap to within two points, the Australian has raised his game this season and banished the memories of a very difficult 2011. Both Red Bull drivers have one win, but Webber’s consistency has been better.

Then we come to Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button and McLaren.  It is a common view that McLaren ought to be the team leading this championship or at least giving Alonso and Ferrari a much harder time.  Mistakes in pit stops, difficulties getting the MP4-27 to optimise its use of Pirelli tyres and a very poor run of results for Button has seen the team struggle unexpectedly.

Perhaps most disturbingly of all, Lewis Hamilton continues to look like a man who sometimes looks both uncomfortable and unhappy.  In Hungary he was the Hamilton we remember from 2007 and 2008; in a different league to the others, and totally dominant.

I do not know Lewis Hamilton, but I have worked with and watched top drivers very closely for 30 years and things do not look right.  When the results are poor or below expectation, he seems unable to cope. Only when he wins does he seem happy; the problem with that approach is that 90% of the time he is going to be a disappointed man.  He has won 19 Grands Prix, but 9 of those came in the first two years and since winning the World Championship in 2008 he has never been higher than 4th. More than ever he must learn from Alonso’s consistency and work-rate within the team.  You cannot win every battle.

I have believed for some time that this years World Championship for Drivers would always come down to three people – Alonso, Vettel and Hamilton.  Webber has caused an upset by jumping to the front of Alonso’s challengers, but the real surprise is Kimi Raikkonen.  The Finn lies 5th in the Championship only 8 points – or one 6th place – behind Webber in 2nd.

As with Webber, Raikkonen has finished every race in the points this season apart from one, and with three 2nd placed finishes a win cannot be far away.  He came very close in Hungary.  Lotus, a team which has been through some very difficult times in recent years, has flourish this year under the leadership of Eric Boullier.  Consistency has lead them to 3rd place in the World Championship for Constructors, ahead of Ferrari and one point behind McLaren, in spite of not winning a race.

If Lotus can continue that form, and Raikkonen find the extra little bit of performance from the Lotus-Renault E20, it could well turn out that Alonso’s biggest rival in the second half of of the season is the man he replaced at Scuderia Ferrari in 2010. Consistency will be key.

(First published on www.gocar.gr – Mark Gallagher column)

Teams in Formula One use a variety of techniques to engage staff because, against the impression that many people have, building and sustaining staff motivation in the demanding world of Grand Prix motor racing is every bit as difficult as in any other business.  Working to the immoveable deadlines of 20 races per year, with a relentless quest for improved performance, means there is seldom any let up for F1 team personnel.  Consider too that around 80-90% of staff within an F1 team do not travel to races and enjoy any of the privileges of a supposedly ‘jet-set’ job. Instead, they work in factories much like any other, designing, manufacturing and developing a product that just happens to be a Formula One race car.

Regular briefings and communications to the team personnel are a familiar part of Formula One team culture, usually with the Team Principal, Technical Director, COO or similar giving a detailed account of the latest event, reviewing performance and taking questions from staff.  It is easy for the factory-based staff to somehow feel disassociated with the race team – and this can even lead to the threat of disengagement; talking down the business, when results aren’t good.

Top drivers often show terrific leadership qualities by recognising the importance of engagement and visiting the factories between races to talk with the people who actually design and manufacture the product they race.  Ayrton Senna was well known for his ability to inspire and motivate team personnel during his factory visits, and the same applies to Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso.  Mark Webber’s regular 5-a-side football matches with staff from Red Bull Racing’s factory in Milton Keynes was another tangible example of staying connected with the people who do vital work for the business.

McLaren’s state of the art Technical Centre in Woking, UK, has a number of excellent features from a staff engagement point of view.  The extensive use of glass reflects a degree of open-ness and pride in the work place.  You can literally see the workers doing their jobs, and they can see who is visiting.  The superb staff canteen – more like a London restaurant – shows that someone, somewhere really cares about the staff experience.  Regular visits from the drivers must also help – nice to see Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button tweeting about their visits to the factory.  And finally I love the fact that when the team wins a Grand Prix, not only do the race team at the track wear their striking orange ‘victory shirts’, but the sign outside the factory turns orange as well.  Getting everyone in the business to celebrate the company’s success, and understand that they all played a part in it, is a job well done.