Real Racing...

It’s great news that F1 has approved (subject to final confirmation) new aero modifications for 2019 in an attempt to allow cars to follow each other more closely without losing such a high proportion of downforce. I’m fed up with that element of each race we have at the moment when a rival catches another by half a second to a second a lap over a concerted period of effort, only to get within 2 seconds of the car in front and get stuck. Only when the car behind has a 2-3s per lap advantage do we tend to see a successful pass, especially on the tracks with fast corners where downforce disruption is even more noticeable. 


In Baku we did see some exciting overtaking, but the flat out section from Turn 16 to Turn 1 has a great deal to do with that; tuck into your competitor’s slipstream for an extended period when you don’t need the downforce for a corner, and suddenly overtaking is a reality. We were able to watch a fabulous battle between the two Red Bull drivers until it all went wrong. Up til then, Riccciardo and Verstappen were treating us to some of the best wheel-to-wheel racing we have seen in F1 for a while; just imagine if they had been battling for the win…


Mind you, Max should look back over that race and work out if his tactics were really in the interests of either himself or the team. He was so aggressively committed, which normally I would praise above everything, but when racing your team mate there is a subtle change in etiquette. You have to give a couple more inches of space, and make allowance for what can go wrong. When they touched wheels at Turn 1 in the first stint, it could so easily have ended with Ricciardo in the wall. Max was also super aggressive into Turn 2 on a couple of occasions, and it was because Ricciardo gave him room that they got away with it, but it still allowed the Renault of Sainz to pass Daniel and then a few laps later, Verstappen. Perhaps if the Red Bull drivers had worked together, towing past each other without fighting in order to achieve fast lap times, then they wouldn’t have dropped back so far compared to Vettel and Hamilton in those early stages.


In wheel to wheel racing, there is a time to fight, and a time to give way to allow another opportunity to arise in a moment’s time. That’s part of the joy of great racing; the very best drivers somehow always manage to be in the right place when it counts. Two weeks ago, I raced my Formula Ford at Donington - getting out on track always helps me reconnect with the driver’s eye view and hopefully helps my commentary. In preparation, I was drawn to YouTube and a race that took place just a couple of weeks earlier in the Historic FF1600 series between 2017 Champion (and former Formula Palmer Audi Champion) Richard Tarling and the rest of a very competitive field. It was a fantastic race (if you have time, here’s the link to Tarling’s on board coverage of the whole race https://bit.ly/2FBOmUG ) and an absolute reminder that to be overtaken is not a sign of weakness. Having started 3rd, Tarling was up and down the lead group like a yo-yo thanks to the effect of slip-streaming, but pulled off some terrific moves to to be in front at the chequered flag. OK, FF1600 cars are narrow, have no wings and therefore no loss of downforce to worry about, but the principals are the same. Let’s hope that the revised technical rules in F1 open the door to more racing of the sort we saw in Baku before the crash, and that drivers who can mix the right blend of attack, defence, patience and cunning will rise to the top and show their true worth.