United States Grand Prix Review

Although the title battle is undoubtedly intriguing this year, apart from Canada and probably Bahrain, the races have not exactly been thrilling, and Indianapolis was no exception. Only in Malaysia has the polesitter not gone on to take victory in 2007. And consider this: at Indianapolis, apart from Nick Heidfeld dropping out and debutant Sebastian Vettel dropping a few positions, the top ten on the grid finished the race in completely the same order. One hopes not every race is like that.

Of course, the one man who came within a handful of laps of successfully breaking into the top ten was, of course, Nico Rosberg, and his race is a fine example of an issue that few have raised for discussion thus far. In the last two races, the young German qualified sensationally in the top ten, ran a two-stop strategy, and promptly found himself disadvantaged compared to one-stoppers. Here, he missed out on the top ten in qualifying, ran a one-stop strategy himself, and stood to gain big time.

The midfield in Formula One in 2007 is unprecedentedly close. As a result, given the current rules, is it not an advantage to qualify 11th or slightly lower? It gives you strategic flexibility and the ability to run a heavy fuel load, especially a one-stop fuel load, at the start of the race. Compare that to a non-McLaren, non-Ferrari, and non-BMW driver who makes it into the top ten in qualifying. Do you run heavy in Q3 and sacrifice grid position, or do you run lighter and maximise your starting spot?

If you run lighter to go for a better grid slot, consider the risks. You could lose all that advantage with a poor start. Or, suppose your rival who didn't make the top ten is going to make the same number of stops as you, but is fuelled heavier, or they are planning to make one fewer stop. So close are the relative performance of the cars, you are disadvantaged by having made it into Q3. A safety car intervention in the first half of the race would also massively benefit a non-top-ten rival who is making one fewer stop.

But enough of such musings, the rules are what they are. To the weekend at hand, and another faultless qualifying and pole position paved the way for Hamilton's victory. Lewis has not faltered in the pressure cooker of qualifying all season; if anything, he has gained in confidence. From the second row starts in Australia, Malaysia and Spain, he has now been on the front row three races on the trot. Arguably, it should have been three pole positions in a row had he not been held up by Mark Webber at Monaco.

Hamilton resisted Fernando Alonso at the start and just after their first stops when Lewis experienced some graining with his tyres, and from there it was simply a matter of holding his nerves to record his second Grand Prix win. On the other hand, for a second race in a row mistakes and poor sectors on his final flying lap cost Alonso the pole. Running only one lap longer in the first stint never gave the Spaniard the chance to leapfrog his team-mate in the pits.

Held off by Hamilton mid-race when Alonso tried to pass on the outside at turn one, Fernando promptly showed his displeasure to the McLaren pit by swerving to the pit wall the next time by. Perhaps this was because he was fuelled lighter during the second stint (and indeed second time around he came in before his team-mate), and he felt he wasn't getting a clear run. After the race, Fernando attempted to suggest that it was really because he wanted to clean his helmet and overalls in some fresh air.

He'd probably spent the second half of the race dreaming that excuse up. Why couldn't he simply admit how frustrated he's feeling? Then again, the general press would turn such a quote into some sensationalist headline, which is unfortunate. But the truth is, despite the buddy-buddy appearance on the podium and during the post-race press conference, when Peter Windsor inexplicably desisted from asking any tough questions, one would love to be a fly on the wall for Alonso's chat with Ron Dennis after the race.

But on the other hand, one can also understand where he might be coming from. Hamilton is clearly no ordinary rookie but he is a rookie nonetheless. The likes of Jacques Villeneuve and Juan-Pablo Montoya made their F1 debuts in top teams, but they were already proven big-time winners in America. Most other modern F1 stars in the past two decades, who came into F1 directly from junior formulae, served an apprenticeship of some sort in midfield or backmarker teams.

Alain Prost endured a middling debut year in a mediocre McLaren in 1980. Ayrton Senna had to serve his time with Toleman in 1984. Nigel Mansell ground through several unsuccessful years with Lotus. Mika Hakkinen also learned his trade with Lotus in 1991 and 1992. Damon Hill started his F1 career in the dying Brabham before he got his Williams opportunity. Even Alonso himself started out with Minardi in 2001, and in the same year Kimi Raikkonen spent his debut season at Sauber.

Michael Schumacher of course had his one race with Jordan, before spending over two years in a top-ish Benetton seat at a time when Williams and, to a lesser extent, McLaren ruled the roost and Michael only scored two wins before his championship year in 1994. In recent times, only David Coulthard jumped directly from lower formulae into a top ride at Williams in 1994, but he never remotely looked like winning a race until midway through 1995.

The concern is not just the young age of the Hamiltons and Vettels, it's the ease with which rookies like them have been able to jump into F1 in 2007 and do amazingly well. Vettel scored a point on his debut, and in so doing became the youngest man to score a championship point. This after he became the youngest person ever to take part in an official Grand Prix session last year - a session in which he also happened to top the timesheets. And he's not even taking the Renault World Series by storm at the moment!

Over at Ferrari, Felipe Massa also didn't really put a foot wrong all weekend, it's just that developmentally something's gone awry with the F2007, which clearly was a much more difficult car to handle than the McLaren, and accordingly the Brazilian never had the speed to challenge the silver cars. But what he did do was hold off Raikkonen, who once more failed to out-qualify Massa despite supposedly being the fastest man in F1, and a poor start left the Finn stranded behind Heikki Kovalainen in the first stint.

Although Kimi passed Heidfeld on the track and Kovalainen in the pits, and his tyre strategy of running the less-preferred mediums first rather than last made things interesting by leaving him on softs at the end of the race, he never really posed any serious threat to Massa's podium place. The situation at Ferrari isn't brewing like it is at McLaren, partly because Kimi is more phlegmatic and less emotional, but all round Ferrari have reason to leave the Americas feeling dissatisfied with their current position.

Not for the first time, BMW's pace in practice and qualifying hasn't quite translated to race pace. Heidfeld should have finished a fairly safe 5th were it not for more mechanical gremlins, as the team continue to struggle with reliability somewhat. Vettel's pace was not a surprise, but neither was his first corner error in braking too late and running off the track. Despite his spirited efforts to pass Webber late in the race, it's probably safe to say that Robert Kubica would have done better than Sebastian, but not by much.

BMW are now a distant third in the constructors championship, behind Ferrari who are almost give-up distance behind McLaren. If anything, BMW may start coming under attack from an improving Renault. Kovalainen's Canadian fortune obviously did him a world of good. He showed tremendous speed in qualifying, he comfortably held off Raikkonen in the first stint, his mid-race pace kept him safe from the one-stopping Rosberg, and he thoroughly deserved the 5th place he eventually inherited.

Much credit must go to Jarno Trulli for a fantastic weekend on a track where he has traditionally done well. Toyota were really struggling with a lack of grip on Friday, but the Italian turned it around in qualifying, muscling the car into Q3. He effectively kept the faster Webber behind all race, including an audacious move just after the second stops when Webber temporarily got ahead, and he kept getting great runs out of turn 11 to ensure that the Red Bull never got enough of a slipstream late in the race.

In other words, Trulli once again capitalised where Ralf Schumacher floundered. It's true that we haven't been Ralf fans, but we don't deliberately have a campaign against him either. Sadly, Schumacher is his own worst enemy at the moment, and after missing out on Q3, he knocked out Coulthard and Rubens Barrichello at the first corner after locking his brakes and lurching left. He called it a racing incident; it looked rather more pathetic than that. The rumours grow - is that kaput for Ralf's Formula One career?

Red Bull and Webber were by far the fastest car in a straight line, but the Australian was denied anything higher than a 7th place finish for his first (and overdue) points of the season. Ironically, it came in a race where he and the team haven't been quite as competitive as they were in Monaco and Canada, helpless to do anything about the likes of Trulli, Rosberg and Kovalainen even though he was almost certainly quicker than the Toyota. Perhaps the fact that Adrian Newey was off racing at Le Mans didn't help.

Mark is also suffering from Red Bull's 'middling' strategies. He will tend to pit later than some others, but not quite late enough to avoid being leapfrogged by someone, especially someone who's one-stopping. What he might gain on strategy he almost always seems to lose back to someone else. Meanwhile, Coulthard never got a fair crack at the race on Sunday afternoon, although for the second race running Webber has seemingly quite easily had his measure.

In fact, also taking into account how strategy worked against him in Monaco and Canada, Rosberg could quite easily be 6th in the championship at present. In the other FW29, despite his Montreal podium Wurz still fails to convince with his pace. He missed out on the Q1 cut yet again, and for the first half of the race couldn't think of anything more creative than to try to pass Liuzzi around the outside of turn 1. When you've been held up for that long and you're that far behind, even a one-stop strategy can't help you.

Another back who fell back to earth with a thud was Takuma Sato. After his Canadian heroics, this was a weekend to forget, with a failure to make the Q1 cut, followed by a lazy spin out of the race, finished off by a preposterous penalty for passing under yellows that will see him drop ten places on the grid in France. Not only is it ridiculous that Taku should be penalised at the next race for something that happened at Indy, but he simply did not pass Jenson Button under yellow flags.

At the end of the first lap, Button came out of turn 13 in Sato's slipstream and pulled alongside down the front straight. It is not clear whether he actually got his nose in front, but he certainly was never in front enough to say he had made a clean pass. Given that the position was disputed going into turn one, surely the one who was attempting the pass was Button, not Sato. All Taku did was hold firm around the outside of turn one, which gave him the inside line into turn two.

For a ridiculous decision that lacked any trace of common sense, and which is simply grossly unfair on Sato for the French GP, the USA GP stewards take out the 'Reject of the Race' award on this occasion. Sato's early disappearance however allowed Anthony Davidson a chance to shine a little, after he ran off on the first corner and had to mount another recovery effort all the way to an eventual 11th. He gained some revenge on Button with a tidy move towards the end of the race whilst running the preferable softs.

REJECT OF THE RACE
US GP Stewards
Dubious penalty for a doubtful illegal pass

Remembering that the Super Aguri is last year's Honda, and for all intents and purposes it seems like Honda have actually taken a step backwards this year (having finished no race higher than 10th), surely the first target for the RA107B is to be an improvement over last year's car, i.e. this year's Super Aguri. What's more, if Honda is to get to the front they will need to find 1 to 1.5 seconds, and that's just not going to happen. Better off taking things a step at a time and, firstly, making sure they can beat Super Aguri!

Toro Rosso were a major disappointment this weekend. They do seem to hang on the coat-tails of Red Bull's performance. Just as Red Bull's relative pace dropped slightly at Indy, so Toro Rosso fell back and both cars missed out on progressing into Q2. In the race, Liuzzi hung on grimly in the first half of the race but was always going to drop back once the stops came around. Given it was his home race and last year he had shown good pace, Scott Speed was the one who particularly fell below expectations.

Albers split with his manager on the eve of the USA GP, hoping that without that distraction he could focus more on his driving. Clearly though his struggles with this year's Spyker is the real problem. The Dutchman also blames a difficulty coming to grips with this year's Bridgestones, except that throughout his F1 career he has never raced on anything other than Bridgestones! No driver since the early 1990s has had three years as a backmarker as Albers has had; perhaps his time is also up.

With Indianapolis' contract up for renewal, that may have been the last time F1 will visit the Brickyard, as the circus now heads for another track on F1's death row; Magny-Cours is condemned to history after 2007. Whereas no-one will be particularly saddened that the Nevers track is off the calendar, it will be a shame if Formula One doesn't return to Indy. The tradition of the Brickyard and the tradition of F1 just hasn't combined to produce any great spectacle of note, and the 2007 edition was, sadly, no different.