13 April 1998 |
No 7 |
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Reflections On Argentina. When You Snooze You Lose!
By Roger Horton
Michael Schumacher scored a brilliant if somewhat controversial victory in the Argentinian Grand Prix. He finished some 22 seconds ahead of arch rival and championship leader Mika Hakkinen. Eddie Irvine brought his Ferrari home in a well deserved 3rd place.
Well those are the bare facts,but this was a great F1 motor race and believe me was viewed by this writer as gratefully as a water hole in the desert. Its been a while coming!
It appeared to me that this race was lost by Mclaren before they even arrived in Argentina.
After their crushing 1st and 2nd in Brazil the whole team went into holiday mode and seemed to stay there until half way through the Argentine race weekend! Ferrari,Williams and Jordan all returned to Europe to test and work on setups. Crucially they also worked with Goodyear on an improved front tire.
These are serious racing teams,they were off the pace,it was their only real choice.
The Mclaren drivers by contrast took a two week holiday. The cars stayed idle.
It is reported that Mika Hakkinen felt a little unwell in Brazil.He was reportedly feeling the strain of all the media interest in him after his hat trick of wins,and needed the break to recharge his batteries. Welcome to life in the fast lane Mika,it won't be getting any easier as the season progresses!
The Mclarens looked under serious pressure all weekend and never really established the same dominance as in the two previous races. Their decision to sit out the majority of the one hour first session on Friday backfired badly when the second session turned out to be mostly wet. Mika Hakkinen in particular never seemed to recover,and was chasing a good setup from then on.
So with Schumacher on the front row of the grid this race always looked to have the ingredients of a thriller. His tactics seemed pretty obvious. As he was two stopping against the Mclarens one,he needed to get ahead at the start and pull out a lead. Now when he failed, and also found himself in 3rd place behind both Mclarens it looked like game over,especially on this track right?
Well Schumacher then gave us another demonstration of just why he is head and shoulders above all the other drivers currently in Formula One. Within six laps he had muscled his way past both Mclarens, was in the lead, and pulling away.
His overtaking move on Coulthard was aggressive and the outcome a racing accident. This was not Jerez mark two!
Coulthard had run wide at this same corner on the previous lap,when he repeated it again Schumacher was close enough to go for the gap. The outcome was unfortunate for Coulthard but it could have gone either way. Demoted to sixth place he then found himself bottled up behind Villeneuve and Alesi for many laps. He was to eventually finish in a somewhat fortunate 6th place after several more off track excursions. I would suggest that before Coulthard gets himself too worked up about his coming together with Schumacher he take a look at the video of his own passing move on Villeneuve!
This resulted on both cars spinning off the track. Villeneuve for good!
Coulthard's later comments that Schumacher's move "was not in the spirit of Formula one" made me smile. One wonders what planet David Coulthard has been on for the last ten years! With Schumacher in the lead the interest became tactical. He would need a lead of around twenty seconds to compensate for his extra stop and to maintain his lead on Hakkinen. While the gap hovered around thirteen seconds it looked unlikely. But from somewhere he found the pace and duly rejoined ahead of Hakkinen.
It was the 1994/5 seasons revisited. He has perfected this ability to punch in lap after lap at Qualifying pace and it wins him races and Championships.
So what of the others?
Hakkinen did his Championship chances no harm by coming home in second place. All the talk was of this being his least favorite track,and this excuse seems to satisfy most people. I wonder which track doesn't suit the guy who won this race!
The race was another disaster for the Williams team. Frentzen again outqualified his team mate,but was again pushed around the race track by first Irvine,then Villeneuve,and finally by Alesi. He eventually limped home to finish 9th. Villeneuve did little better,Qualifying 7th he ran in 4th place for a while and like Australia had his mirrors full of a Sauber,this time Alesi and not Herbert.He eventually had an argument over the same piece of road with Coulthard and spun out.
The real problem emerging at Williams is the lack of a true team leader. Frentzen appears to be able to help the team make technical progress,but his last two race performances have been very average. Villeneuve is the more natural racer,but clearly is unaware that the development of an F1 car is a painstaking business consisting of many very small steps.Clearly unless there is a dramatic improvement then one or both will go for 1999.
The Benetton team had another good race. This cars race pace,especially in the hands of Wurz is very impressive. If Wurz can start to Qualifying nearer the front of the grid then a race win could soon be within reach. His attempted passing move on Irvine was a little rough,but talented newcomers deserve to be cut a little slack!
Sauber looked quite good again in Argentina. Alesi made up for some serious brain fade on friday with a strong race performance.
Poor Eddie Jordan must be wondering just what he has to do to start looking like winning a race. Ralf Schumacher's 5th place Qualifying position shows that the car has potential. But for the second time in three races he reacted very slowly to the off and his race was lost in the first 100 meters. At the time of writing it is not clear whether his two off track excursions where down the Ralf or the car. Damon Hill is clearly still not delivering anything like his full potential,and its hard to see exactly where the problem lies.
All the other runners are going to be mighty glad to see the back of South America. Back to Europe and home base,they all have lots to work to do.
So the Argentinian Grand Prix provided a race full of surprises and incidents.It would be foolish to pretend that the Mclarens have lost their performance advantage entirely. Undoubtedly the Imola track will be more to their liking,but the others are making progress.
The testing "war" will start again as soon as the teams return to Europe,I rather think Mclaren will be joining them this time!
This Championship battle has been well and truly joined.
Talk to Roger |
Roger Horton |
Singapore |
Send your comments to Roger at - rmhorton@pacific.net.sg |
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