Singapore GP - The thin line between success and failure

Formula 1’s first night race in Singapore has been a massive success. In a season of great Grands Prix, this was another classic race. Once again it turned on a safety car and showed the importance of race strategy in determining the outcome. And as far as the championship is concerned it showed that the team which makes the fewest mistakes will win the title.

Ferrari had the pace to get a 1-2 finish here and before Nelson Piquet’s accident triggered a safety car on lap 16, it looked very much as though Kimi Raikkonen would jump Lewis Hamilton in the pit stop and back his team mate Massa up to the finish. The Ferrari was half a second a lap faster than the McLaren in the opening stint and Lewis was looking down the barrel of a whooping from Ferrari. Without the pit stop foul-up for Massa, Lewis would have left here three points behind the Brazilian with three races to go.

But the safety car and the subsequent dash for the pits changed everything. It wrecked Kubica’s race because he had to pit for fuel when the pit lane was closed and then when Massa and Hamilton pitted together, in their haste to get Massa out ahead, they released him with the fuel hose still attached. [ ... ]

It was a human error, the system was not automated on this occasion. Because there were so many cars pitting and therefore a much more dangerous situation, Ferrari switched to manual. So the green light performed the same function as a lollipop would have done. It was a mistake, simple as that. Team principal Stefano Domenicali said after the race that as a team they need to be a little more calm in high pressure situations like that, but denied that the team had become more panicky than in the past when Ross Brawn and Nigel Stepney ran the discipline side of things. He recalled pit stop cock-ups in the past with Eddie Irvine and Michael Schumacher to show that it is very easy to make mistakes in pit stops – other teams do it too. It’s such a high pressure situation and for that reason I believe refuelling deserves to be a part of the sport because it adds a welcome element of unpredictability and can act as a reversal of the natural order of things. It’s a shame for Massa because he had the race under control, but it underlines that this is a team game

Emotion, Stefano admitted, is one of Ferrari’s strengths but it also one of its weaknesses. Today the whole race turned on a split second misjudgement by a nameless member of the team. He was in tears afterwards, knowing that what should have been 18 points and a comfortable lead in both championship had been turned into a struggle for Massa and a deficit to McLaren in the constructors’ table. Massa went to find him after the race to console him and he will again be in charge of put stops in Fuji. Whether Ferrari will stick with the lights system is another matter. They switched to the lollipop for the second stops to restore calm and may finally bite the bullet and stick with it for the last three races.

Massa drove the length of the pit lane with the hose hanging off, which was bizarre. But he had once again been released into the path of another car and so received a drive through penalty. It was a good opportunity for the FIA to show that they are impartial in the handing out of penalties, but of course on this occasion it made little difference to the outcome as Massa was 18^th when called in to serve the penalty.

There is so much to talk about from this race; Renault’s bold strategy which gave Alonso the chance to win, Rosberg’s stunning drive to second despite a stop and go penalty, Hamilton’s bold move on Coulthard and his subsequent decision to play it safe and settle for third place and Raikkonen’s sudden burst of pace after a slow start.

Alonso had a brilliant race. He started 15^th, but Renault’s Pat Symonds decided, not for the first time this season, to try something different than the cars around him. It’s called game theory and Symonds used it to get Piquet an unlikely podium again in Hockenheim.

If Alonso just went for one stop like everyone else in the second half of the grid, then he might end up 14^th, but they don’t travel half way around the world for 14^th, especially as practice had shown that the Renault in Alonso’s hands was a front running car. It was the most competitive it has been all year. So they went aggressive, on a light fuel load and the soft tyres to try and make up some places and it went okay until he got held up in the train behind Jarno Trulli. He pitted early, on lap 12 and dropped to last place. But he had taken on 29 laps of fuel and so when the safety car came out on lap 16 and many cars dived into the pits he rose through the order and was sitting pretty behind cars which were either one stopping or had a penalty for pitting when the pit lane was closed. They all cleared out of his way and he was able to attack in a fast car and build his winning margin. Then at the end he was on the harder tyre, the better tyre today, while everyone else was on the soft so he drove away from them after the second safety car.

Rosberg rode his luck today and there are a few grumbles about the length of time it took the stewards to decide to give him a stop-go penalty. He broke the rules by pitting when the pit lane was closed on lap 15 , but did not get hit with the penalty until lap 25. He was very lucky that at that moment he had Trulli and Fisichella holding up the cars behind him so that by the time he cam en to serve the penalty on lap 28 he had built a lead of 23 seconds over Alonso in fourth place and so slotted back in third, once Fisi pitted. But to be fair to the stewards, they were looking at Massa’s unsafe release first and awarded that penalty before moving on to consider Rosberg and Kubica. You could argue that the Massa issue was a judgement, whereas the Rosberg and Kubica infringements were a fact, so should be called instantly, but I guess the stewards have to investigate things in the order in which they happen.

Hamilton will be relieved that the weekend worked out as it did with six points more than Massa. He can now finish second to Massa at the remaining three races and stil win the title. He won’t see it that way, of course, but it’s an important psychological barrier crossed. It means that Raikkonen is going to have to be razor sharp at all three races and back Massa up in order for Massa to have any chance. But Ferrari may not have such a clear performance advantage at the remaining races as they had here and it’s far from clear whether Raikkonen will be able to step up.

He had another odd race today, with a slow start and then suddenly he lit up and was the fastest guy out there. Domenicali told me that this was because of the tyre pressures being slightly wrong at the start and when they cam right the performance kicked in. It seems to be with Kimi and this year’s car that there is a narrower window in which he can get it to work than Massa and it has to do with getting the tyres to perform.

Kubica, was very unlucky I think. If BMW had been a bit shaper on the pit wall he would have been told to dive into the pits when Piquet hit the wall on lap 14. He was 59 second ahead of Piquet on the road at the time (he was on lap 15 already) and so was two thirds of the way around the lap when the TV pictures showed the Renault in the wall. Red Bull reacted instantly and brought Webber and Coulthard in at the end of lap 15, anticipating the safety car. There was time, probably around 20 seconds, for BMW to decide to do the same with Kubica and given that he was low on fuel anyway it would have been the safer thing to do rather than take a chance. They didn’t do it and he was forced to pit when the pit lane was closed, so incurring the stop and go penalty. He has been magnificent this year and I’m sure he’s pretty annoyed that the team wasn’t on its toes in that moment.

There is a good chance of rain in Fuji next week. The forecast for that week looks pretty wet and we all know what last year was like! McLaren has a pretty big performance advantage over Ferrari in the wet at the moment, so Ferrari will face a big challenge there.

I’m loving this championship. Who knows what it will serve up next?