9.9.11

Hungry? Yes please bacon sandwich, oh Hungary! Time was I couldn't wait for the next GP. Back then GPs came more or less once a fortnight and in an established order. Now there are too many races and I have no idea what's coming up where.

Off track there have been a few interesting stories, one of them about a new F1 engine supplier run by Craig Pollock. Older readers will remember him as Jacques Villeneuve's former sports teacher and later manager. JV won in CART and arrived in F1 in 1996 in the best seat, at that time Williams. He pushed Damon Hill hard for the title and won it the following year when Hill had pushed off to Arrows in disgust at his treatment by Williams. Villeneuve scored three more points than Schuey who was later disqualified from the championship for being adjudged to have deliberately turned into Villeneuve in the last race of the season.

The following season Hakkinen won for McLaren from Schuey and JV was down in sixth. Meanwhile his Manager had talked British American T*b*cc* into giving him a humongous amount of wedge to establish their own team. Pollock bought Tyrrell to get its FOCA benefits, then in 1999 it became British American Racing (BAR). They promptly dumped all the Tyrrell experience and established themselves in a shiny brand new factory in Brackley, employing the technical expertise of the highly successful Reynard company. In the closed season we were subject to all sorts of ads featuring Pollock which (as I remember) said they going to win races in their first year. They scored precisely nil points.

Pollock had the original idea of having one car painted in one of BAR's brand liveries and one in another. The Powers that Be did not like that idea and the cars ended up with having one brand painted down one side of the car and another on the other side. That first season the cars were powered by Supertec engines which were actually old Renault designed engines built and maintained by Mecacrome. This is a French precision engineering company which has built Renault engines for many years and still does so today including those for Red Bull and GP2. I hope you're following all this, it will be relevant later....

Despite this dismal start BAR secured Honda engines for 2000 and scored 20 points. In 2001 this fell to 17 and Pollock was forced to resign by the owners. For 2002 they brought in Dave Richards and Prodrive. Despite only scoring 7 points in 2002, things were on the up. In 2003 he brought in Jenson Button at the start of the season and got rid of Villeneuve near the end. In 2004 they finished second to Ferrari in the constructors' championship, albeit with less than half the points. At the end of the year Honda bought 45% of the team. Richards left to be replaced by Nick Fry. At the end of 2005 they were back down to sixth in the constructors and the team became 100% Honda owned and the BAR name disappeared. It took until 2006 for their first win, by Button in Hungary. BAR had taken design in house some years before and Reynard had disappeared into bankrupcy.

Pollock managed Villeneuve through to the end of his F1 career, 3 races with Renault in 2004, then Sauber/BMW Sauber for 2005 & 06 before being dumped in favour of Robert Kubica. Pollock and Villeneuve parted company at the end of 2008. Pollock clearly feels he has unfinished business in F1 because in 2008 he put in a bid to enter a new F1 team. This was rejected, ironically in favour of Prodrive. Their team never appeared because the plan to use customers cars (in this case McLarens) was vetoed by the existing teams.

Anyway in May this year it was announced that Pollock was to return to F1 in 2013 with Propulsion Universelle et Recuperation d'Energie (PURE) an independent manufacturer of F1 power units, employing some ex-Renault personnel. The engines would be built by Mecachrome. In July PURE announced that they had signed Gilles Simon, FIA Director of Power Train and ex-Ferrari F1 engine man recruited by Jean Todt. He was to start his new job immediately and the teams were outraged because they had been discussing many of the details of their new engines with him, however one suspects that despite the teams' protests some of the sting may have been taken out from this because since the formation of PURE the new engine formula has changed from 4 cylinder 1.6 litre turbos to V6s in 2014.

Quite where PURE will fit in is not clear. The switch to a Mercedes McLaren power train was obviously a significant performance enhancer for Force India. Recently Heikki Kovalainen said that Team Lotus' switch to Renault engines from Cosworth was significant. It wasn't power, but the whole Renault package brought about by their experience, plus the fact they could use a Red Bull gearbox. Recently Williams announced they would be changing to Renault engines for 2012. This will leave just two Cossie teams on the grid next year, Virgin and Hispania. Virgin have now got a technical tie-up with McLaren. It looks like the smaller teams have to have access to expertise and technology (like KERS) developed by the bigger teams. So who will PURE sell to?

The green debate continues to rumble on in F1. Bernie says no "electric only" in the pit lane in 2014, yet Ross Brawn believes electric motors will play an important part in F1's future. Meanwhile Toyota has produced a car which has broken the all-electric lap record at the Nordschleife. The time was 7 minutes, 47.794 about a minute slower than the record set by a petrol Radical SR8. Click here for a video. I can see what Bernie means, it is very impressive, but there is more than a hint of manic Milk Float about it.

The rapid degradation of the Pirelli tyres has done wonders to spice up the sport and the firm has said that they are considering introducing qualifying tyres next year. We F1 fans love qualis, yet it's hard to reconcile this with a green agenda. Just this week has come the news that Pirelli are seeking to adjust the number of tyres allocated to each driver from five sets of softer "option" tyres and six harder "primes" to six sets of options and five sets of primes because they are taking unused hard tyres away from each race and scrapping them! Surely it would gain more eco-points to make each car use the same set of tyres for two or three races? I know: how about bringing back qualis - say two sets per driver per race and then allowing them, say, ten sets of slicks for the season. Wets and inters would be unlimited, but their use would only be permitted if authorised by the Race Director. That would certainly stir things up!

Moving on I was pleased that Red Bull have paid for their latest young hot-shoe, 2009 British F3 Champion Daniel Ricciardo to get a seat at Hispania. The current ban on testing puts experience at a premium and makes it even harder for the young guys to break through. The first measure of whether Ricciardo has got what it takes will surely be if he can out-qualify and out race his team mate, ex Red Bull protégé Vitantonio Liuzzi. So far he's got close to the former and did the latter in Hungary. A major function of the little teams should be to give young guns some F1 experience and if the big teams have to pay for it then so what?

I would like to see at least one Friday practice session compulsorily given over to new drivers. Hang on, it'd only be on Sky, so I wouldn't be able to see it anyway. The row over that is still rumbling on with the latest that the BBC will only show highlights of the "Sky" races and BBC executives to be summoned to the House of Commons to be questioned by MPs over the deal.

So to Hungary: In the past this was generally a dull no-overtaking race and the new regs plus changing conditions did spice it up a lot this year. Button won for McLaren after Hamilton led, spun, changed to intermediates at the wrong time and was penalized for spin-turning in front of di Resta, forcing him to take avoiding action. Vettel started from pole but could not match the Maccas. He finished second due to Hamilton's "issues". The Ferraris weren't fast enough - qualifying fourth and fifth with Massa in front of Alonso. Alonso finished on the podium again after twice going off. An early stop for option tyres when most were on prime gave him the pace to jump from fifth to third. After the tyres fell off the cliff it rained and he stayed out, securing the podium despite a spin. So an aggressive strategy and 110% driving, to take advantage of the conditions meant that he and Ferrari punched above the car's weight - a bit like the early Schuey years. Felipe was sixth behind the Red Bull of Webber.

Di Resta was a good seventh for Force India. Toro Rosso keep notching up the points with Buemi eighth and Alguersuari tenth. Rosberg was ninth for Mercedes. Poor Heidfeld had his car catch fire after an unfortunate combination of circumstances. Basically the sidepod caught fire in a tardy pit-stop and Nick had to bail out in the pit lane exit; shortly afterwards an air bottle exploded. However the hairiest sight was after the marshals had extinguished the fire, towing it into the pit lane with a Dacia Sandero (or similar) whilst cars went past it at full speed on the track and on the exit from the pits. Even in 2011 F1 sometimes seems the most professional and amateur of sports at the same time. Worse was to come for Heidfeld, after this race he was sacked in favour of Bruno Senna. Some thought this as much cash related as anything else, but if it was it turned out Renault got a good deal in more ways than one....

Click here for FIA lap chart.

Stefano Domenicali: “All things considered, we can be reasonably pleased with the way things went. Certainly, going into the race, maybe we had hoped to get a little bit more out of it.... (but) having managed to get to the podium in these circumstances is still positive and we can consider that our glass is half full.

Fernando Alonso: “Another podium finish, the fourth in a row: we have been competitive on four tracks with different characteristics and certainly this July, in weather that definitely does not suit our car. So that gives me confidence for the rest of the championship, even if now I can’t wait to pause for breath. It has been a very busy and stressful July and I think that everyone, especially the team members, deserve a couple of weeks holiday.

Felipe Massa: “It was a difficult race with the rain coming and going. My afternoon was ruined when I went off the track on lap 8. The back end of the car hit the barriers and I was scared the car might be too damaged to continue, but my engineer told me I could keep going. I lost so much time because of that and even if I made some nice passing moves and moved up the order.