James Allen: Assessing the title run-in
Thursday, 12 August 2010
When the season reconvenes after the summer break at Spa at the end of the month five drivers from the grid’s leading trio of teams are poised to go toe-to-toe for the world championship spoils over the final seven rounds.
But after Red Bull blitzed the field last time out in Hungary, what are the chances of Ferrari and McLaren’s respective challengers getting a realistic look-in? ITV.com/F1 columnist James Allen analyses how the balance of power is likely to swing from Belgium to Abu Dhabi.
So where do we go from here?
We have just seven races to go in this fascinating championship and we are now getting into what is commonly referred to as the ‘business end’ of the season. Who will come out on top?
Now every win and every retirement starts to take on even greater significance. With the new points system introduced this season, the title race has swung one way and another.
At one stage or another, both Ferrari drivers, both Red Bull drivers (Vettel jointly) and both McLaren drivers have led the points race, which is pretty remarkable.
It’s Mark Webber at the moment who has a slender advantage over the McLaren drivers and his own team-mate.
Fernando Alonso is in the hunt too after a very strong pair of results in Germany and Hungary. What is abundantly clear is that only one Ferrari driver is going for the title, as the team have decided to throw all its efforts into the former two-time champion.
Ferrari have improved their car a lot in the last month and it has been very competitive. Felipe Massa said recently that he felt the relative performances in Germany and Hungary were more about Red Bull underperforming in Germany, rather than finding some kind of miracle set up for the Hungaroring.
Certainly the impressive thing about the Red Bull this year has been its downforce at low to medium speed and Budapest really showed that. The car has worked well at every circuit we’ve been to so far so there is no reason to suspect that they will have any problems at the tracks coming up.
In Spa they will run a similar aerodynamic set-up to Canada, where the car was pretty competitive even though it was giving something away on the straights to the Ferrari and McLaren.
We will see Ferrari and McLaren taking quite a bit out of them in sector one at Spa with the long straight from Eau Rouge to Les Combes, and then the super-fast Monza will give both their rivals a chance too.
I’d expect to see most teams leaving the F-duct at home for Monza, because they will run skinny rear wings anyway. But McLaren showed in Hungary that as their car was designed around the F-duct it’s not so easy for them to take it off.
Abu Dhabi with its epically long straight will also give the challengers a chance, while Singapore and Interlagos will be good for Red Bull. McLaren might struggle a bit in Brazil as their car doesn’t seem to go well over bumps.
Then there is Korea, which is a bit of an unknown, but doesn’t have any outstanding characteristic as far as I can see that will make it more or less of a Red Bull circuit.
It is designed by Herman Tilke and looks like it will call for performance rather like Sepang, although it’s counter clockwise, like Interlagos and Istanbul, so ironically Massa will probably be very quick there!
The championship race should take a few more twists and turns before it’s decided.
The trends at the moment are Red Bull and Ferrari up, and McLaren down, but that could change again.
However I don’t see Red Bull losing the constructors’ championship now, as both drivers are potential winners at every track and the other teams cannot say that.
As for the drivers’ title it could be wrapped up with a race to go as 25 points is a massive margin. One of the Red Bull drivers should win it, because frankly the car deserves it. I’m not going to stick my neck out and guess which one, but I think one of them will put a run together now and take it.
But Alonso is looking the most likely to nick it from them, if Webber and Vettel continue their current trend of taking wins off each other. Ferrari have a big step for Spa, with a revised back-end of the car scheduled.
Hamilton and Button will still have something to say, but their challenge has started to wane and they are due an update to get them in the game.
courtesy ITV-F1