Sutil, Heidfeld and fickle F1 reputations

Thought this was interesting..from ITV

Adrian Sutil was the hero of the hour in Monaco with his sensational performance in the race day rain for minnows Force India.


Nick Heidfeld, by contrast, was in the doldrums all weekend, failing to qualify in the top 10 for the first time since mid-2006 and once again getting trounced by his BMW team-mate Robert Kubica.


The connection between these apparently unrelated facts is that both Sutil and Heidfeld are case studies in just how fickle reputations are in F1 – and how much they hinge on a driver's style being suited to changing technical imperatives outside his control. Mark Hughes explains...


Star drive of Monaco was arguably that of Adrian Sutil, running the lowly Force India in a great fourth place when, with just a handful of laps to go, he was collected by an out-of-control Kimi Raikkonen.

Although he was distraught at the outcome, the performance came at a timely moment for Sutil given that his stock has taken a major hammering this year at the hands of team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella.

Going into the season the general perception was that Sutil was a potential star in the making, Fisichella a washed-up ‘has-been’ forced to accept that his days in a top team were at an end.

But coming to Monaco the veteran had outqualified the future star 5-0 (discounting Fisi’s three-place penalty for ignoring a red light in Turkey).

Sutil was frequently commenting that he couldn’t get his tyres up to temperature in time for the qualifying lap, a problem that Fisi was somehow driving around more effectively.

It would be easy to dismiss this as ‘driver’s excuse number 432’ from a guy being seen off by his team-mate.

Those subscribing to this view would point out that since entering F1 last year Sutil had enjoyed the luxury of mediocre team-mates, that his star credentials were therefore unfounded and that he was now being found out.

That may be the case, but I don’t believe so. Sutil has a great deal of natural talent and Monaco was an apt reminder of this – 12 months on from the masterly display of wet-weather driving that put him fastest in the Saturday morning practice session at the same venue.



Dovetailing tyre characteristics with driving style is a hugely important factor in determining performance in the current control tyre F1.

It is more than conceivable that Sutil’s potential this year has been disguised by struggles with the tyres that have left his team-mate unaffected.

We saw this last year too, with the initially below-par performances of Raikkonen, Fernando Alonso and Robert Kubica, previously on Michelins.

The Bridgestone fronts are extremely sensitive to how the car and driver work them; too hard and they overheat before the end of the lap, not enough and they are below temperature and pressure for the start. The window in between is very narrow.

Last year Kubica only rarely looked like the awesome force he’d appeared to be in ’06 when on Michelins. This year, he’s back on top and it’s his BMW team-mate Nick Heidfeld whose form has dropped off alarmingly.

But if Sutil and Heidfeld managed their tyres well last year, why not this? They are the same tyres, after all. Probably because their cars are working those tyres in a very different way.

The big endeavour for teams in designing their 2008 cars, informed by their initial experience of the single-spec Bridgestones in ’07, was in moving the weight distribution further forwards. This would help load up the reluctant front tyres more quickly, getting them up to temperature sooner.

However, for this to work there needed to be a matching move forwards in the aerodynamic balance. More downforce had to be found from the front to give the cars a more forward centre of pressure that would match the new weight distribution.

This has resulted in cars that have significantly more front-end grip than last year’s, when drivers whose style asked a lot of the front end – like Alonso and Kubica – initially struggled.

This year, those drivers have got back some (but not all) of the front-end bite they had with the Michelins, and their more aggressive style is finding them time over team-mates who are driving more smoothly and tending therefore not to heat the tyres up in time for the start of their qualifying laps.

This is the exact problem that Heidfeld and Sutil have been complaining about this year.

For Heidfeld there was no respite at Monaco, and he now seems to be suffering a confidence crisis.

Sutil reported a breakthrough in qualifying, but the verdict’s still out on that one, for although he did outqualify Fisichella for the first time, Fisi’s lap was shaping up to be a faster one before he was baulked by traffic.

In the rain of Sunday everyone began on wet-weather tyres, which place a different set of demands on car and driver to the dries. Furthermore, there was no direct comparison between Sutil and Fisi as the latter was struggling from very early on with no first and second gears – crucial for Monaco.

But it all illustrates just how transient and dependent on technical issues driver reputations are and how much information you need to have before you can even begin to have an informed opinion.

 

Interesting article. Sutil was being pretty highly touted at one point, getting wiped by Fisi hasn't helped him but this goes a long way to explain why. The whole "my style doesn't suit the tires" excuse is an old one. The bottom line is a driver must be able to adjust to the car as well as adjust the car to his own style. The ones that can do it quickly and with a minimun of fuss are usually the ones that become champions. The ones that can't are usually also rans. I think Sutil fits into the latter category. He'll be in good shape when the whole season is run in the rain. Hopefully his performance at Monaco has given him some confidence and he can get on with the program. I wonder how some of these driving styles will have to adjusted to slicks next year.

 

Monaco is an anomaly in the F1 schedule, its very hard to judge one's skills simply on this race alone simply because there are almost no other tracks like it.

It's been hard for Nick too, he has had to switch tires quite often in the last few years.

 

Good point Luis, As for this year it could be LH's downfall tyre wear.

Like you say, the driver's must learn quick to change, or else there next case in WDC term's.

 

It might be. It's been said that the grooved tires favor a harsh turn in (Alonso, Hamilton, Etc). That was reportedly the reason why Zanardi had such a rough go of it with Williams. Most of the drivers today have no experience with slicks on an F1 car. It will be interesting for sure.