Drivers raring to go as F1 gears up for new season
MELBOURNE, one of the world’s princely cities of sport, acts as Formula One’s crossroads this weekend. What a busy paddock is crying out for is a statement as lifeenhancing as Lewis Hamilton produced at the first corner here on his debut 10 years ago, when he swept past the then champion Fernando Alonso like a boy who had arrived from another planet.
The nearest equivalent here would be a Ferrari victory. The Italians came to Australia with high hopes but yesterday, when they were a scorching half a second slower than the all-singing and all-dancing Hamilton, blunted their enthusiasm.
By the time you are likely to be reading this we will know from the results of qualifying at the dawn of your Saturday morning whether Ferrari had been hiding their true pace.
Hamilton, in the Mercedes, against Sebastian Vettel, in the Ferrari, is precisely what the sport needs after operating as a one-party state for the last three years. There is little chance of Hamilton’s new team-mate Valtteri Bottas overhauling the main man. So it requires Ferrari to make a match of it with Mercedes. If they don’t, the excitement provided by the faster, bigger, brasher cars of 2017 will be a footnote to a season of tedium.
The sun-baked paddock was briefly electrified as a jet flew almost tree-trimmingly low, emitting a sonic boom so loud that a colleague nearly threw himself on the floor next to the buffet table in McLaren.
Those hospitality areas will be more densely populated over the next couple of days than usual, the rules controlling the passes to the inner sanctum having been relaxed in the first race of the post-Bernie Ecclestone era. Inclusivity, a dreary buzzword of our times, has replaced exclusivity.
‘Access’ via ‘social media’ is another mantra. In fact, it is the big idea of new American owners, Liberty Media. The more ‘the fans’ see, the better – so the argument goes. Liberty want more races on the calendar – they have talked of 25. But this promise of saturation carry risks to the sport’s mystique and uniqueness. There was only one Rumble in the Jungle.
There were not 25 a year. Liberty should, surely, try a 16-race programme, 18 maximum. They defeat themselves with their own illogicality on this one: chief executive Chase Carey says he wants to turn every grand prix into a Super Bowl, forgetting that there is only one of those over-hyped extravaganzas a year.
Some of the Liberty comments are even more difficult to fathom.
The new commercial boss, Sean Bratches, another American, a newcomer to this world, came up with this zinger of an epigram at a press conference yesterday: ‘We are looking at reimagining our entire portfolio of digital offerings holistically.’ He really does speak like that. Like David Brent’s scriptwriter. At least Liberty have brought in Ross Brawn, a leading member of three championshipwinning teams, to offer both sapient advice and credibility to the revamp. Let’s just hope they realise that Nascar is Nascar and Formula One is Formula One. But back to Ferrari. This team has done more to spread the gospel of motor racing than any other.
Yet they have recently shut down their media activity to all but the stingiest extent. We await to see if F1’s new owners will tell team principal Maurizio Arrivabene to talk to journalists and broadcasters rather than just post the odd thing on social media.
Even their supposed lurch towards modernity and a young audience is awry: neither Vettel nor Kimi Raikkonen is on Twitter. Trying to be constructive, let’s hope Liberty go ahead with their idea of making the drivers the real stars. It is not easy when they are helmeted and sunken in cockpits that largely hide their driving style from public view.
Liberty should take away their radios and let these millionaires determine their own fate. No more syrupy voiced coaching from the pit lane. Just pit boards and their own brains. Anyway, back to this 20-race campaign and the hope it brings.
Hamilton, who has added two more tattoos to the largest private art collection outside Buckingham Palace, as well as additional ear piercings, is full of beans. ‘You want to drive the fastest cars in the world,’ said the Briton, who starts the season as firm favourite to win back the title he lost to Nico Rosberg.
‘They are faster cars now. The challenge of exploiting that speed on track is great.
‘It’s the direction Formula One should be going, in terms of the physicality. We are athletes and Formula One should be the most physically demanding series in motor racing. In previous years that has not been the case. We are going to have to push the boundaries.’
THE new cars caught out a few drivers in yesterday’s practice, including Britain’s Jolyon Palmer, who was on a good lap when something went wrong with his Renault.
Raikkonen, Bottas, Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen also had offs. None of the drivers was complaining, though. They relish the challenge of these more brutal machines.
The fastest lap record set by Michael Schumacher in 2004 – 1min 24.125sec – awaits updating this weekend. Despite this being the opening weekend of locally popular Aussie Rules, a giant crowd is expected at Albert Park.
Whatever Formula One’s future holds, it is always a joy to be in sports-mad Melbourne as the first grid forms.