fling93 loves fishies

Formula One, Melbourne

Thought I’d point out that the 2004 season of Formula One racing kicked off on Saturday in Melbourne, Australia. Thank god I have my TiVo set to autorecord my wishlist of “Formula One” under the “Sports/Auto” category, or else I’d have missed it, since there is practically zero media coverage of Formula One in the U.S.

Which is partially why I’m bothering to write this. I know most of you probably don’t care, but there is also a lack of bloggers (especially American bloggers) writing about Formula One, so I figured I’d help fill the void.

Anyway, it all first started when my wife bought me a Logitech Wingman Formula racing wheel for the PC several years ago (well okay, the sport itself started long before that, but my interest in racing started then, which is what’s important). The wheel came with a free copy of Ubisoft’s excellent F1 Racing Simulation game. After playing around with the game a bit, I wanted to see how the real racers ran the courses, but couldn’t find any of them televised because, well, nobody in the U.S. seems to care about Formula One (probably partially because there aren’t aren’t any American drivers, and probably because the more complex nature of road courses and race strategy doesn’t appeal to NASCAR fans). The closest thing I could find was the CART (aka Champ Car) races, so I followed a few of their races and got to know drivers like Gil de Ferran and Juan Pablo Montoya.

I can’t really don’t see the appeal of oval racing in Indy or NASCAR. They’re obviously not nearly as difficult to drive as the more varied road-courses of Formula One and CART, where every turn presents its own unique set of challenges. Plus, passing becomes much more of an art involving lots of technique and control instead of just powering by. It does happen a lot less often, but it’s really exciting when it does happen, especially when the lead driver doesn’t give in and you have the two cars dangerously going side-by-side (resulting in one or both cars being off the ideal line) through a turn or two.

Plus, I think the quality of the drivers clinches it. I heartily enjoyed it when Montoya came over from CART to race at Indy a few years ago and absolutely kicked everyone’s arse, to Indy’s great embarassment (Indy and CART had a big rivalry at the time). And I think de Ferran won Indy last year, but I guess CART’s well on the way down now, so that wasn’t as big a deal. But Montoya “graduated” to Formula One because it seems to me that all the best drivers in the world are in Formula One (which also have the fastest cars). And it seems that none of them ever come from NASCAR or Indy, although you have a few from CART. So road course drivers obviously can easily handle the ovals just fine, but not vice versa.

But I’ve also “graduated” from CART to Formula one because finally we got DirecTV last year, and the Speed Channel aired every single Formula One race (not sure if they ever did before or not). I was an instant convert. The speed, the speed changes through the turns, the strategy (two stops or three? how much downforce to use?), rooting for your guy to reel in the next car and pass him. I actually watched it more regularly than I watched any other sport (which I suppose isn’t saying all that much).

The way it’s organized, you have teams, like Ferrari and Williams BMW, and each team fields two drivers. In each race, the top eight finishers earn points (the better the finish, the more points you win), and at the end of the year, there are two championships: one for the driver with the most points, and one for the team with the most points. It’s a way of somewhat knowing whether the success is due to the car or the driver (although with both Ferrari and Schumacher being perennial winners, you can’t really tell). There’s also a bit of a tire manufacturer competition between Michelin and Bridgestone, but it’s not quite the same because there’s no tire championship, and Bridgestone pretty much just caters to Ferrari.

I quickly became a fan of Montoya, who moved up to Formula One in 2001 and races for Williams BMW (although, in a bizarre twist, has a contract with McLaren to race for them in 2005). I like him mostly since I watched him already at CART, and blue being my favorite color anyway (plus I’ve idly considered getting a BMW — except I hate investing that much money in something that depreciates). Sadly, he is not in my F1 Racing Simulation game because the game features the 1996 season (one of these days I’ll get a newer one). I was also pretty put off by reigning champion Michael Schumacher’s smug arrogance (plus that side-by-side finish with Rubens stunt in 2002 was a turn-off) — but I like to root for underdogs anyway. I know Montoya has his own share of ego issues, but he just doesn’t seem like a phony to me. He says it like it is, and is sometimes a smartass, so I always enjoy watching his interviews. Plus, he is considered a likely candidate to succeed Schumacher as the next driver to dominate the sport (along with Kimi Raikkonen of McLaren and Fernando Alonso of Renault — and perhaps also Mark Webber of Jaguar, but he’d probably need to change teams).

I found the TiVo invaluable, as the international race schedule results in rather inconvenient race times. Plus, I can skip through the qualifying sessions to just the drivers I care about, and fast-forward when it becomes clear that a race is all but settled and the drivers are racing conservatively just to preserve their current positions (this doesn’t happen all the time, but often enough to make it a big issue for viewers — I sometimes wonder if they need some sort of rule change, like when the NHL made regulation ties worth a point to help promote aggressive play in overtime).

Certainly, Formula One makes more than its fair share of rule changes each year. After Ferrari romped to an embarassingly huge victory early in the season in 2002, Formula One instituted tons of changes designed to even the playing field a bit and added a few more this year. I planned to go through all the changes, but instead I found a good intro to this new season from Steve MacLaughlin. He also goes through all the new faces and driver changes (mostly in the lower-tier teams — it isn’t as bad as football and baseball as far as turnover goes).

But despite it all, it looks like Ferrari is going to dominate yet again. For those unfamiliar, Ferrari is basically the Evil Empire of Formula One right now. And the new car designs seem to indicate we’re in for more of the same, cuz the manufacturers generally only resort to drastic experiments when they’re desperate, and the two main challengers to Ferrari both have radical new designs this year. Williams BMW has the dual-nose “walrus” or “platypus” design and McLaren went with a needle-nose “anteater” look. Meanwhile, Ferrari’s new car looks very much like last year’s model, but is still kicking butt.

Cuz at Melbourne, Ferrari finished one and two (best possible finish when most teams merely hope to have both drivers in the points), which doesn’t bode well for the other teams. McLaren’s new car struggled badly (with Raikkonen retiring due to an engine failure and Coulthard barely earning a point), and Williams, while more competitive, was still a full second off Ferrari’s pace. Of course, Williams was in the same boat last year, running into all sorts of problems with their new car until midway through the season when they started dominating races before Ferrari caught back up. So we’ll see.

The graphics for the telecast have been overhauled this year. The cockpit view (my personal favorite, for obvious reasons) has added an RPM meter, which was nice but really didn’t add much information that the engine sound didn’t already supply. I also liked the new computerized tour of the track, although there were times when it was clearly showing off the Williams BMW car instead of the track, which was kinda annoying, but I presume BMW paid for it (it seems like all the American ads featuring Formula One are BMW ads).

Another nice addition was the sidebar with the leaderboard — or rather, with three-letter abbreviations of the driver’s name, which I suppose is enough for a specific driver’s fans to locate him, but the list itself can be rather cryptic, especially given all the new racers, like Pantano and Bruni. So here’s a full list, for handy reference (in order of finish at Australia, separated into those who finished with points, those that finished outside the points, and those forced to retire):

MSC - Michael Schumacher (Ferrari)
BAR - Rubens Barrichello (Ferrari)
ALO - Fernando Alonso (Renault)
RSC - Ralf Schumacher (Williams BMW)
MOY - Juan Pablo Montoya (Williams BMW)
BUT - Jenson Button (BAR Honda)
TRU - Jarno Trulli (Renault)
COU - David Coulthard (McLaren Mercedes)

SAT - Takuma Sato (BAR Honda)
FIS - Giancarlo Fisichella (Sauber Petronas)
KLI - Christian Klien (Jaguar)
DAM - Christiano Da Matta (Toyota)
PAN - Olivier Panis (Toyota)
PTO - Giorgio Pantano (Jordan)

MAS - Felipe Massa (Sauber Petronas) (engine problem)
HEI - Nick Heidfeld (Jordan) (pit accident due to clutch problem)
BRU - Gianmaria Bruni (Minardi)
WEB - Mark Webber (Jaguar) (gearbox problem)
BAU - Zsolt Baumgartner (Minardi) (some electronics problem)
RAI - Kimi Raikkonen (McLaren Mercedes) (engine blew)

Yes, I paused the TiVo as these came up and typed them into my iBook. Gotta love technology. Most of those make sense, but MOY for Juan Pablo Montoya? It would’ve made much more sense to use MYA or, as the commentators often call him, JPM. And fellow ex-CART driver Christiano Da Matta would’ve been better off with a MAT or CDM.

Not too much to say about the race itself (again, MacLaughlin has a more informed review). It seemed like it was settled pretty early when Montoya (starting 3rd) had an awful start and Alonso (starting 5th, right behind him) got around him, despite going on the grass. Alonso then forced him over to the inside and then darted back outside in time for the turn while Montoya stayed on the inside and braked too late to make the chicane, losing three or four positions. Montoya spent the rest of the race making up for it, and never challenged for the lead. It seemed to me like he had a much harder time than he should have in passing lesser drivers in lesser cars in Trulli and Button, and Montoya complained about his car’s balance after the race. That put Alonso solidly in 3rd, and with Ferrari starting 1 & 2, they pulled away from his lesser-powered Renault, with Barrichello surviving even some brake problems at the end.

Ah well, that’s what fast-forward is for. As I said, it’s early. Anything can happen, and it took a while for Williams to get its act together last year. Hopefully we’ll have another exciting season (2003 was a doozy!), and I hope some of you will join me in following it. Next race is March 21st in Malaysia.