Floyd on F1
TERRIBLE WEEKEND FOR FERRARI
Will 2018 see a new chapter of the McLaren-Mercedes partnership?
This year’s championship is certainly creating entertainment.Lewis Hamilton’s victory and team-mate Valtteri Bottas’ second place last Sunday has swung the lead in the Constructors championship back to the Mercedes camp.
Ferrari suffered a tough weekend after a promising qualifying.
It was decided for Sebastien Vettel in turn one when Red Bull’s Max Verstappen drew alongside the German. Unfortunately they touched and Vettel’s front wing was damaged, forcing an early pit stop for a new nose cone.
Verstappen was soon to drop out with an energy store problem, while team-mate Daniel Ricciardo drove his heart out to stay ahead of a resurgent Vettel, plus the Force Indias of Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon for a deserved third podium place.
Unfortunately it wasn’t all roses for some of the teams.
The cracks in the McLaren/ Honda alliance are threatening the very foundations of the beleaguered team.
It is the third season with Honda and so far this year the team has failed to score a single point.
The last two were not earth shaking on that score – just 27 in 2015 and 76 points for the 2016 season.
2016 saw some top ten finishes, but not one podium.
McLaren’s last podium was the Australian race in 2014 when Kevin Magnussen and Jenson Button took second and third respectively – with the Mercedes power unit.
McLaren’s last victory was a win for Button in the Brazilian Grand Prix in 2012.
With their number of power unit failures, those ludicrous FIA grid penalties will be the order of the day for McLaren.
A hard one to swallow when your chassis is working but the product supplied by your partner is not.
Fernando Alonso drives the wheels off the MLC 32 but there is either a lack of power or none at all as yet another Honda unit lunches itself.
Despite McLaren’s loyalty to Honda things are not improving.
Even Alonso’s Indycar effort was thwarted by a broken engine from the same source, so where does the British manufacturer go from here?
Zak Brown of McLaren recently said that Honda appeared to be “a bit lost”.
Honda’s F1 Chief, Yusuke Hasegawa, believes otherwise and responded. “It is unfortunate I can’t convince them we are going in the right direction. I am confident we are not lost, we still need some more time but we are doing the right thing.”
He sympathized with Brown by adding. “It is no wonder he is frustrated. I am frustrated, I am disappointed, the team is disappointed. This is a difficult situation.”
Things looked up last weekend when Alonso qualified 12th and seemed likely to collect at least one point from the Sunday race. Was there a ray of sunshine? We all know the answer to that as a loss of oil pressure brought him to a stop on lap 66 of 70.
Team principal Eric Boullier said. “For the first time this season, running in tenth place within spitting distance of the flag, we dared to hope for a solitary world championship point.
“After so much heartache, even that single point would have felt like a victory and then came yet another failure. It’s difficult to find the right words to express our disappointment, frustration and sadness.”
One wonders what the late, great Bruce McLaren would have said.
There were weekend rumours of meetings between McLaren and Mercedes – probably about an engine deal for 2018. It would not surprise anyone if this resulted in a new generation McLaren-Mercedes car.
What would McLaren’s feelings be if the Swiss team and Honda get it right and became a winning combination?
I would love to witness that but I am afraid the Japanese supplier’s board will withdraw from F1 unless progress is very rapid. Sauber could well be looking for a new engine supplier at the end of 2018.
What on earth was going on with Daniil Kvyat?
What baffles me was the stewards’ decision to penalize him for not taking up his correct grid position after his stall at the start of the warm-up lap. A drive through penalty was given and dutifully complied with by the young Russian Toro Rosso driver, but then those same stewards decided they had issued the wrong punishment and handed him the correct ten second stop/ go penalty.
Two penalties for the same offence due to an official error makes no sense.
Luckily Kvyat’s subsequent retirement obviated the need for further explanation.