TED'S BRAZIL NOTEBOOK
Ferrari
There’s a certain justice to Kimi Raikkonen’s world title: He lost two championships in 2003 and 2005 because of an unreliable McLaren, now he’s won the 2007 title because of an unreliable McLaren.
But still there were discussions after the race about whether Raikkonen actually deserved the championship.
You’d have to say he does: Kimi led the driver’s title after the first race and he lead it after the last race.
He also won six races to Alonso and Hamilton’s four, so I’d say he thoroughly deserved it.
There were a few within Ferrari who brought up ‘Stepney-gate’ as one reason why they felt both titles went to the right team.
Felipe Massa told us after the race how he thought it was good that the team who appeared to benefit from the leaked secrets did not win the championship.
Massa drove well at Interlagos, as he always does, but many observers were astonished that he had been re-signed to the team on a new three year contract.
That’s the same length as Kimi’s deal, and it makes Fernando Alonso’s attempt to land a Ferrari drive much more difficult.
Massa is managed by Jean Todt’s son, Nicolas.
The elephant in the room at Ferrari remains how Jean Todt will fit in with the predicted return of Ross Brawn.
It is helpful that Ferrari won both championships, as this gives Todt a graceful exit strategy should he need to use it.
You can just imagine the press release: ‘Todt goes out at the top’.
A very Formula 1 way to enact regime change.
McLaren
McLaren must know they won’t get anywhere with their appeal, but I guess they reason that they have everything to gain, while Ferrari and the FIA have everything to lose.
They can be thought of as being a bit emotionless, but it was impossible not to feel for the whole McLaren team after the race. Everyone was gutted - some were in tears - after having a championship they’d led since the second race snatched away from them at the last moment.
This was their best season in years, and they left with nothing to show for it.
But the crucial and really frustrating thing is that it seems McLaren experienced gearbox problems in qualifying.
McLaren investigated the problem, but everything seemed normal, so they didn’t change anything in parc ferme.
In fact, they didn’t change anything on either car, which is unusual.
Perhaps they were fearful of making something worse.
As for what happened to Hamilton, the gearbox electronics received an incorrect demand, so the system put the gearbox into its default setting - neutral.
Lewis was busy changing up the gears with the clutch in (as you would if you saw you were in neutral) whereas to reset the system, he actually needed to downshift, and then upshift.
Not the most intuitive thing to do while your championship is gently slipping away.
It will probably be traced back to something as insignificant as a sensor in the gearbox electronics or hydraulics, but together with the team’s over-confidence in Shanghai, that software glitch cost Lewis a championship.
That meant McLaren’s last drivers’ champion remained Mika Hakkinen, and he watched the whole race in the garage with the mechanics.
Hakkinen’s and many McLaren employees’ despair was soothed a little by the fact it was Kimi Raikkonen who won the championship.
Kimi is still much-loved within McLaren.
They feel bad that they lost him two championships, and feel he was treated shabbily when Ron Dennis signed up Fernando Alonso at the start of 2006.
So while some transferred happiness for an old friend helps ease the pain, McLaren must now motivate themselves to do it all again, with a new driver, and from the smallest garage in the pit lane, next year.
Cool Fuel: BMW Sauber & Williams
A very wound-up Williams technical director Sam Michael explained to me at the airport on Sunday night how certain he was that his cars were not illegal.
Firstly, the temperature of the fuel was taken by the FIA when the fuel was “going into the car during the race refuelling”.
This is significant.
Article 6.5.5 of the technical regulations says that the fuel in the car cannot be less than 10 degrees cooler than ambient. It makes no mention of the fuel in the refuelling rig.
The readings came from the fuel rig while it was pumping the fuel in, so it was not taking the temperature of the fuel in the car as the rules state.
The fuel would have warmed up as soon as it went into the tank, and BMW and Williams have data that supports this.
Secondly, the ambient temperature was never 37 degrees.
The temperatures were taken from Formula One Management data that is shown on page three of the circuit’s timing screens.
But in Brazil, these temperature readings were, to put it mildly, unscientific.
Either the air temperature probe was in the sun (air temp should always be taken from the shade) or it was not calibrated correctly.
This is supported by the readings of the track temperature.
When the race started, the FOM screens showed the track temperature as 62 degrees.
That would’ve melted even my trusty Dr Martens boots.
Bridgestone measured the track temp at a more usual 48 degrees.
The weather experts from Meteo France, who sit in a small container within the circuit measuring the weather to internationally accepted standards and accuracy, said the ambient temperature (in the shade) never exceeded 34 degrees.
So in that light, it does seem that BMW and Williams were legal, and McLaren will have a hard time proving otherwise.
