Enjoy.... Conclusions From The Bahrain GP Sunday 26th April 2009 - PlanetF1.com McLaren, if they are permitted to race, and Red Bull will be the teams to watch in Spain... Button's Backers Are Sitting Pretty Is it Jenson's title to lose? No, not yet. There are too many races to run, and too many upgrades in the pipeline, for such simplicity to be stated. But beating him to the title will be hard work in the chase to come. Although their package is far from perfect in qualifying trim when the Brawn struggles to heat up its tyres, their car remains out in front in race condition. As can be expected from a driver whose smooth style means that he is extremely competitive in a good car and generally hopeless in bad car, Button is excelling at maximising its potential. Those, such as Flavio Briatore, who imply that his lead of the World Championship lacks credibility ought to have been silenced by Sunday's result. Although the mutually-destructive Seb Vettel and Jarno Trulli were accessories to their defeats, the sight of Rubens Barrichello trailing Button by 45 seconds in a 57-lap race spoke volumes about their respective performances in identical machinery. Rather than shrink in the spotlight, Button appears to be thriving on the pressure of being a frontrunner. A telling insight into his focus for the season was how his post-race summary was framed in terms of the championship fight. "I've 31 points heading back to Europe with a twelve-point lead. I couldn't ask for any more." Well, he could, given that his victory in Malaysia only earned a half-measure, but Button's goal is clearly set. There may be plenty of reasons to suppose that Brawn will be caught and that Button days out in front are numbered, but there is not one convincing argument against his current status as the frontrunning favourite for the title. Beware: Brawn Won't Be Standing Still Either Heading back to Europe and the 'relaunches' scheduled for Spain, it's very easy to buy into the expectation that the big boys, with a double diffuser bolted on to the back of their cars, will suddenly spring forward to gobble up the Brawns and Toyotas. There are, however, two potential flaws with this forecast: 1) There is absolutely no guarantee - or indeed expert expectation - that installing a double diffuser will instantly reap a substantial improvement; 2) Brawn will also be introducing a series of upgrades in Barcelona. Watch out for them. "I am optimistic of a good step forward in Spain," confirmed/warned Ross Brawn in the wake of his team's third victory of the season. "The rate of progress will be very rapid and we need to keep up." There speaks a man accustomed to winning championships. As 2009 enters a period of the season that could be bylined as 'The Development War', Brawn are bound to struggle to match the arsenal of McLaren, Toyota, Renault and Ferrari. But their decision in February to re-hire Rubens Barrichello as a fee-driver rather than bring in a pay driver suggested that their finances are by no means as parlous as suggested, and the expected injection of investment from Virgin is, from their rivals' perspective, itself an unhelpful development. Red Bull To Be The Barca Litmus Guide With the team only forecast to introduce minor upgrades in Spain, Red Bull will be the team to watch in Barcelona because, by standing still, they will provide a measuring guide to the size of the step forward taken elsewhere. Their own double diffuser, scheduled to be unveiled in Monaco, is a month away so Barcelona may be a difficult weekend for the team if McLaren and Ferrari, who have already succeeded in halving the gap since the season's start, finally make good their financial muscle. Vettel was the fastest driver in Bahrain on Saturday, but both Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton were only four tenths of a second adrift in the Qualy Two shoot-out. It will be fascinating to see where they are in Barcelona - and also instructive, no doubt, to the Red Bull team itself which still seems be wrestling with the pros and cons of repackaging their rear wing to incorporate a two-tier diffuser. "There is no doubt that a double-diffuser does give performance," remarked Adrian Newey last week. "How much performance depends on how you interpret the regulations and how you adapt it to suit your own car, so that some teams will get more out of it than others." Will Red Bull be one of those teams? Newey could offer no guarantees. "As has been speculated, given the design of RB5, it's not the easiest task getting it to fit the car and while we work on this one item, we also need to keep working on the general development of the car, to ensure we don't fall behind in other areas. The unique feature of the Red Bull cars is the pullrod rear suspension, which is a good solution when you don't have a double-diffuser. But getting it to work with the diffuser will be more difficult." It remains a difficult dilemma for the team. A Different Type Of Guessing Game Awaits Its Verdict But before Spain, though, there's the small matter of McLaren's contrite appearance in front of the FIA. What will happen? Judging by the contradictory predictions being bandied about - PF1 has heard, from various sources, that McLaren will escape with a suspended sentence, suffer a two-race ban, be deducted 30 points, and avoid a heavy punishment because of the repercussions that it would carry during the current recession - the truth is that nobody has a clue. McLaren Are Nearly There. And Will Be There Soon, If... The magnitude of Wednesday's hearing has just been ratcheted up a critical notch or two. One conclusion from the Bahrain GP has to be that, on the list of 'Things McLaren Are Fighting For' in the Liargate hearing, which already features their prestige, budget, sponsors and future, can be added the 2009 World Championship. The team's rate of development since February has been staggering. A car that was two seconds adrift in the final test of the winter is now less than half a second away. It has been an incredible turnaround from a team enveloped by a debilitating crisis since Australia. Yet no matter their capacity to bounce back, the two-race ban mooted as the most probable outcome from Wednesday's hearing would surely leave the team with an insurmountable task. On the other hand, given their rate of progress since Australia, it would take a brave man to bet against the team failing to complete the final quarter of its recovery in either Barcelona or Monaco - if they are allowed to run. Toyota Should Be Kicking Themselves So, too, will Red Bull, but they have the considerable consolation of achieving their first-ever win in F1 a week ago. Toyota's disappointment at failing to turn their grid one-two into a victory that was within their grasp will be compounded by the knowledge that they were the architects of their own downfall with a tyre strategy lifted straight from the Ferrari Handbook of 2009 Cock-Ups. With the medium option tyres approximately a second slower per lap than the softs on Sunday, it was the tyre to be short-stinted in Bahrain. Toyota's brainwave? To bring in Trulli early and stick on the options for an extra-long middle stint. Result: race ruined. An almighty row in Cologne awaits. Don't Ignore Button's First Overtake As declared in the PF1 race report, Button's pass around Lewis Hamilton on the second lap was the critical moment of the weekend. But for that move, Button would have endured the sort of costly frustration that Seb Vettel had to endure instead. What shouldn't be overlooked either is that Button was only in a position to overtake Hamilton because he had first pulled off an opportunist move to pass Vettel into the second corner of the race. He's at the top of his game. It's Like Piccadilly Circus Out There...And Rush Hour Is Around The Corner In the other Red Bull, Mark Webber's difficulty passing Adrian Sutil in the first round of qualifying was a weekend-wrecking setback. It was a small matter with a big consequence, and, unfortunately, almost certainly the start of a common plague. With the field separated by a mere second, nobody - as Felipe Massa discovered in Sepang - can be absolutely sure of progress to the second run of qualifying. The result is an ultra-busy track on Saturday afternoon with most cars going out for two runs rather than one. Webber will not be the last driver this season to suffer from traffic. The situation will be particularly acute in the next two races with both Barcelona (4.7 km) and Monte Carlo (3.3 km) significantly shorter than Bahrain (5.4 km), Shanghai (5.5 km) Malaysia (5.5km) and Melbourne (5.2 km). And the mind boggles at the congestion that awaits in 2010 with three additional teams invited to join the current twenty-car field. Piccadilly Circus will be a picture of serenity and calm in comparison. Pete Gill
