Left field

The F1 title race, in old money

McLaren’s Formula One champions Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton have both sought solace in the scoring system after recent setbacks.

But in fact, if they did the maths they might feel a little bit sore. Applying the 2009 points to the 2010 results so far, the title battle would actually be even tighter.

“I think the new points system has definitely amplified what people think of the standings, but I’ve always imagined the points as they would have been under last year’s system,” Button said after last weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix left him fifth overall and 25 points adrift of Red Bull’s championship leader Mark Webber.

“So, in old money, I’m 10 points off Mark, and Lewis is about eight or nine behind him. And, with four races to go, that’s not much at all.”

“When you say you’re 25 points off the lead, that sounds a lot – but it’s just easier for me to reference it by the old system. It makes it seem easier to understand and compute, too.”

Hamilton, who has retired from three of the last four races, is 20 points behind Webber with four races remaining while Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso is 11 off the Australian.

“That’s still less than a race win,” said Hamilton. “It’s easy to get disheartened by being 20 points away, because it sounds such a lot, but under last year’s rules, that’s only about eight points – and to be eight points off with four races left is nothing really.”

Remembering Bruce McLaren

Ferrari made much of their 800th Formula One grand prix in Turkey last Sunday, throwing a party in Istanbul and racing with the number 800 on their cars’ engine covers.

It was just a shame their performance on the track was nothing to shout about.

Over at McLaren, a more poignant milestone was being marked more discretely — one fittingly capped by Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button finishing one-two in the race while the sport’s only Antipodean driver, Mark Webber, joined them on the podium.

Wednesday, June 2, will be the 40th anniversary of team founder Bruce McLaren’s death in a testing accident at the Goodwood circuit in southern England.

The New Zealander, whose team would ultimately go on to become one of the sport’s most successful, was only 32 years old.

Throughout the weekend, inside the team hospitality, a rolling series of images from yesteryear were projected on television screens as a backdrop to the team’s regular activities.

Who do you think you are? Lewis Hamilton?

An irresistible story from Melbourne, where Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton was stopped by the police for “over-exuberant” driving on the road.

Hamilton was fastest in practice for the Australian Grand Prix on Friday and apparently struggled to make the adjustment to his road car. Here’s the story from Ian Ransom in Melbourne and Alan Baldwin in London:

Lewis Hamilton was stopped by police for behaving like a boy racer on Friday only hours after he had wowed a Melbourne crowd with the fastest lap in Australian Grand Prix practice.

The McLaren driver, who in 2008 became Formula One’s youngest ever world champion, found himself having to make a public apology about his behaviour in Australia for the second year in a row.

“This evening, I was driving in an over-exuberant manner and, as a result, was stopped by the police,” the 25-year-old Briton said in a McLaren statement.

“What I did was silly, and I want to apologise for it.”

Senior police constable Scott Woodford told Reuters that a 25-year-old male, resident in Switzerland, was stopped at 9.15pm in the St. Kilda neighbourhood at the wheel of a brand new Mercedes.

Who do you think you are? Jenson Button?

Muscles acheing, and body sagging under the lingering effects of jet-lag, I wiped away beads of sweat and warily contemplated our newly-arrived karting opponents.

They looked like proper Formula One drivers.

A British media v Lewis Hamilton/Jenson Button “challenge” could only be a mismatch, even if one of our more souped-up members did bring his own race suit and helmet to the party.

The past two world champions were certainly considerably better turned out than this reporter, squeezed as he was into ill-fitting overalls with a dodgy fastener that kept bursting open.

McLaren had organised a 50 minute ‘endurance’ test in two-man teams as a warm-up while we waited for two of the fastest men in the world to join us at the indoor track on an industrial estate near London’s Heathrow airport.

Just a couple of stints at no more than 40mph was enough to remind an ageing and unfit hack just how strong real racers must be to manage a full grand prix distance for up to two hours at speeds in excess of 200mph.

Schumacher – The Comeback Part II (or not?)

A lot of people are getting quite excited about the possibility of Michael Schumacher coming out of retirement to race for the new Mercedes F1 team (formerly known as champions Brawn) at the age of 41.

The German’s spokeswoman Sabine Kehm feels it is highly unlikely while Mercedes said at the weekend that “some speculations are nothing but dreams which will not come true” (although note the carmaker did not specifically say this particular piece of speculation was one of them).

Team principal Ross Brawn, who is currently on holiday, has been quoted by Germany’s Bild newspaper as saying that “the media are trying to put together a dream. Michael would have returned to the cockpit for Ferrari, but only temporarily. He has no ambitions to start a new career.”

Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone told the BBC on Sunday that he was “very doubtful” about any such comeback, however appealing it might be.

On the other hand, Kehm told Britain’s Times newspaper on Monday that “I can see a lot of tempting things in it for Michael, but I can also see a lot of non-tempting things. I don’t know.

“It is as it was in August when you couldn’t tell what was going to happen. Then I was convinced Michael would never come back and suddenly all the circumstances were right for him,” she added, referring to the champion’s abortive attempt to return as a stand-in for injured Brazilian Felipe Massa at Ferrari.

A Schumacher comeback has a lot of media appeal — witness all the stories — and not least because McLaren will have two British world champions next season in Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton.

Button to McLaren – the real deal or just pretend?

Jenson Button’s eye-catching visit to McLaren on Friday is of obvious benefit to both parties, whatever the reality behind the headlines.

If a deal is done, the new Formula One champion gets the bigger salary that Brawn are reluctant or unable to pay as well as a potentially winning car for next season.

McLaren would get a line-up of champions that will appeal to global sponsors like Vodafone and show that they remain, along with Ferrari, a big hitting team that can always pull in the top talent.

At the very least, Button is able to send a clear message to Brawn that he has other, viable and possibly more lucrative, options and that they cannot assume he will just stay out of loyalty.

McLaren are similarly able to remind Kimi Raikkonen, until now widely considered the main choice to partner Lewis Hamilton, that they too have alternatives and that he should consider reducing his wage demands.

Raikkonen, their former driver who won the 2007 title with Ferrari and has now left the Italian team, was seen at the factory on Wednesday with his management.

But what if Brawn don’t blink, Raikkonen refuses to accept McLaren’s terms and Button signs up to join Hamilton?

How will Button rate as a champion?

Jenson Button needs at most six points to clinch the Formula One title in Brazil this weekend and become Britain’s 10th world champion.

If he does wrap it up at Interlagos, a debate that has been going on for some weeks now will only pick up speed — just how does the 29-year-old rate as a champion compared to all the others?

There are some who hold the view that Button will somehow not be a truly worthy champion, their opinions influenced by the Brawn driver’s inability to assert himself in the latter part of the season.

Some might argue that champions like Michael Schumacher, Ayrton Senna or Lewis Hamilton made their greatness evident from the moment they arrived in the sport.

They could add that someone like Button, who had to wait seven years for his first win and scored a total of just nine points in the 2007 and 2008 seasons combined in a dire spell with now-departed Honda, is surely not on a par with them.

Did he simply luck into a dominant car, thanks to rule changes wrong-footing the usual suspects until halfway through the season, or is he being rewarded for his loyalty to a Brawn team that some were writing off as dead and buried back in January?

There is no arguing that, after winning six of the first seven races, Button has struggled. He finished this month’s Japanese Grand Prix in eighth place and is limping agonisingly to the finish, his early advantage seeing him through.

Anyone still want medals to decide F1 title?

If Bernie Ecclestone had got his way before the start of the season, Jenson Button might have been crowned Formula One champion in Singapore on Sunday.

The commercial supremo’s plan for the championship to be decided by an Olympic-style medals system, with the title going to the driver taking most golds, would have left Brawn’s Button out of reach.

With six wins in the first seven races, the Briton’s tally cannot now be matched by anyone else.

Singapore winner Lewis Hamilton, Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel and Button’s Brazilian team mate Rubens Barrichello all have two wins with three races left.

The only interest in Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix would have been the constructors’ championship and it is pretty much a given now anyway that Brawn will win it in their first full season.

Brazil and Abu Dhabi, making its debut with what promises to be the most lavish race yet, would have been irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

As it is, Button has edged 15 points clear of Barrichello and could win the title at Suzuka. But the battle could equally very well go down to the wire as well. There is still plenty at stake.

Schumacher can finally show Hamilton and Vettel who’s boss

Just seeing Michael Schumacher back in an F1 car, especially a Ferrari, will be enough for most motor sport fans.

But the chance to watch him race against young guns Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel is something very special. 

The German retired before they appeared on the scene and there have been comparisons ever since the pair got on the grid –  with compatriot Vettel even having the nickname ‘Baby Schumi’.  

Will it be the case of the old master showing the young pretenders how it is done, or will 40-year-old Schumacher be taught a lesson of his own?

After a terrible start, this year’s Ferrari has been gradually improving and no one would put it past Schumacher winning one of the season’s remaining races.

Hamilton has also burst into form and if the world champion meets the sport’s greatest on the first corner, expect a bump or two.

Talking Turkey with Lewis Hamilton

Of all the corners in Formula One this season, turn eight at the Istanbul Park Circuit subjects drivers to the highest G-forces (around 5G, or five times their body weight).

It is a long, sweeping multi-apex corner that yearns to be taken flat out (270kph+) but that will see only a handful — probably only the Brawns, Red Bulls and Ferraris — manage to do it this weekend.

We strolled around it with McLaren’s world champion Lewis Hamilton to get the inside track. Here’s what he had to say:

“The entrance is very straightforward but if you turn in too early and cook the first apex (the peak of the perfect racing line), you will miss the second and third so there is a certain point where you have to turn in.

You have to miss the first curve by something like two or three metres. Then you clip the next two apexes. The speed which you are going into this corner, it looks quite tight already and we are in sixth gear and doing about 270 kph. it’s flat and you keep going.” - – - - Istanbul is one of only three anti-clockwise circuits on the Formula One calendar, which puts an additional strain on drivers’ necks as they wrestle the G-forces. Hamilton had already walked the length of the 5.338km trac klong before Friday’s first practice, just as he has done at every track the 24-year-old Briton has competed at since 2005.

The walk is more a part of his pre-race routine, a time to talk calmly with his race engineer away from the cramped confines of trucks and motorhomes and to breathe in the atmosphere. He may not learn much that he does not know already, but the effect of walking is more sub-conscious. - – - - “It’s easy to arrive at the weekend and just get in and drive and get a good or bad result,” he says. “If you get a bad result, you just wish you had prepared better so we prepare the best way we possibly can and make sure we cover every area and feel comfortable that even if we have a bad weekend, we did everything we needed to.” - – - That means paying special to turn eight. Last year he had to make three stops, costing him a potential victory, triggered by concern about tyre wear brought on by his aggressive approach. - – - -