This year will see Renault’s 35th year of competition in Formula One, producing ten Constructors’ titles and nine driving titles, and they will be hoping that the RS27 will bring more glory with Red Bull this season.

Having added another new team to their supply for two consecutive years Renault Sport will feel assured that they can continue to improve their performance. “We learnt from the experience of 2011 when we added a third team, and we put in place measures to ensure that there was no drop off in overall performance or service in doing so,” said Rob White, deputy managing director of Renault Sport F1.

One of Renault’s main challenges for this season was adapting the engine around the new exhaust regulations. The rule change regarding the necessity to run rear facing exhausts, to a certain extent, returns the exhaust specifications back to those used in 2010. “It’s not been as simple as turning back the clock as the cars have evolved since then, as have the rules concerning torque maps and engine settings.” Added White.

Changes to the shaping of the exhaust have come as good news to Renault as they feel they could have an increased engine output of 10-20bhp. This is made possible by straight and completely round final sections of the exhaust, which allows for the reopening of the outlets. Each of Renault Sport’s customers will be looking to maximise this gain, and with the use of KERS it could prove to be a vital passing tool in a straight line. Caterham in particular will be excited by this prospect as they head into 2012 looking to use their new KERS system as their stepping stone into the midfield. They believed that not having KERS in 2011 cost them potential points scoring finishes.

The introduction of a twenty-race calendar in 2012 will put a lot of pressure on engine manufacturers to insure reliability throughout the season and Renault Sport have been making any possible tweaks to put each engine through its three-race weekend expectation. “Between seasons we have worked hard to optimize parts to give consistency across their life and, therefore to give consistency across all our engines, regardless of their mileage. This should allow us to deliver engines with a theoretical unlimited kilometre range within the tacit three races weekend per engine expectation, which will give us an advantage with flexibility with 20 races on the calendar this year.” Said White.

Renault Sport F1 will be aiming at securing further World Championships this year as Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel push to make it a hat-trick for both Constructors’ and Drivers’ titles. Lotus F1 have come out of the blocks quickly, as they did last year, and with a seemingly comfortable Kimi Raikkonen they are looking to take atleast fourth spot in the teams championship by the season end. However, the most intriguing battle for Renault Sport and Formula One fans is likely to come between Caterham F1 and Williams F1. Caterham begins this season looking to catch the likes of Williams, and having both teams running the same engine is set to give us a good indicator of how this year’s regualtions have affected each squad.

With just two weeks to go until the wraps come off the new cars from the challengers for the championship, attention is building on what kind of season we will have and how close the racing will be.

Mateschitz went on to say in the same interview with Gazzetta dello Sport, that he thinks the closest challenger this year will be McLaren, then Ferrari and then Mercedes. Before any of the cars turns a wheel that is also my assessment of what lies in store. If that is the case then Vettel’s superiority over his team mate may be a crucial factor in the battle with the two McLaren drivers, who are likely to take wins and points off each other. I’d also expect Lewis Hamilton to shake off the malaise that affected him last season and be on top of his game again.

Fernando Alonso enjoys an even greater superiority over his Ferrari team mate and is very clearly the Scuderia’s favoured runner in any tight situation.

In a close title fight these could prove the decisive factors. And I expect a closer title fight with car development again a crucial factor throughout the long season.

Red Bull ended the 2011 season in very strong form with a 1-2 finish in Brazil and there is every reason to expect them to pick up in Melbourne where they left off, despite the banning of the exhaust blown diffusers on which they led the way in collaboration with Renault.

But Mateschitz choosing this moment to suggest that Vettel has taken his training and preparation to a new level in anticipation of the new season is interesting.

Vettel is young and, despite saturation levels of success in the last 36 months, he’s still hungry. That’s one key message here. Another is that he still has more development and maturity to come as a driver.

The success in 2011 was all about the team reaching the highest levels in all areas; design, development, operations, strategy, tyre management, crisis management and above all driving.

Keeping the momentum of a large organisation going at such an extremely high level is very hard, especially when winning becomes a habit and your well funded rivals are gunning for you. But the inspiration comes from the man who holds the steering wheel, the rest of the team follows.

At this early stage I’d suggest that Vettel starts favourite and will step up another gear in 2012, both in terms of driving and team leadership in search of the third world title that would put him among the greats like Senna, Prost, Schumacher and Stewart in the record books, even if many fans still deny that he merits that status.

He’s the man to beat.

It was a scintillating lap by Vettel, only a tenth faster than team mate Mark Webber, but a perfect summing up of the season in many ways, as the German put everything together in one lap. The Red Bull’s prowess in the middle sector was the decisive factor in keeping them ahead of the McLaren of Jenson Button, who edged out team mate Hamilton with a very strong performance.

“These number are made for ever. I said to myself going into qualifying that I must get everything out of the car. It’s all about putting everything into one lap. Fortunately we had some great Saturdays and this feeling now is very special,” Vettel said.

Vettel acknowledged that he beat Mansell’s record with three more races in the season,
but it still clearly means a lot to him.

Rain showers had been forecast, but as the qualifying hour got underway the track was dry and the ambient temperature was high, but the wind was increasing in force.

Nevertheless everyone went out early to get a lap in as the weather was hard to predict.

Rubens Barrichello did a fantastic lap to get into Q2 half a second ahead of team mate Maldonado who was eliminated along with the new teams. Heikki Kovalainen was only 4/10ths of a second slower than the Williams, the best of the season, thanks to the new rear wing.

Meanwhile the HRT cars both outqualified the Virgin cars, Liuzzi ahead of Ricciardo for the first time since Korea.

In Q2 Paul Di Resta failed to make the most of a quick Force India car, ending up 11th three tenths behind team mate Sutil as he has been all weekend. “I really struggled. We have a top speed issue which gave away some lap time to the opposition,” he said.

Barrichello did an excellent job to get the Williams up to 12th when their expectation had been that they’d be in lower reaches of Q2. “The people pushed, I used the power of the people,” said a delighted Brazilian.

Bruno Senna did a great job to get his Renault into the top ten.

In Q3 Vettel set the pace in the first runs, three tenths ahead of Webber and four tenths up on Button. In his second run he broke through into the 1m 11s, with a perfect lap.

Button edged out Hamilton for the seventh time this season and the younger man was forced to admit he was beaten for pace,

“Jenson was massively quick today,” said Hamilton candidly. “I ended up a couple of tenths away from him, so clearly I could have gone a bit faster, but the fact is that although I didn’t make any mistakes on my best lap I just wasn’t quite quick enough on the day.”

Brazilian Grand Prix, Interlagos, Qualifying
1. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull 1m11.918s
2. Mark Webber Red Bull 1m12.099s + 0.181
3. Jenson Button McLaren 1m12.283s + 0.365
4. Lewis Hamilton McLaren 1m12.480s + 0.562
5. Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1m12.591s + 0.673
6. Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1m13.050s + 1.132
7. Felipe Massa Ferrari 1m13.068s + 1.150
8. Adrian Sutil Force India 1m13.298s + 1.380
9. Bruno Senna Renault 1m13.761s + 1.843
10. Michael Schumacher Mercedes

11. Paul di Resta Force India 1m13.584s + 1.138
12. Rubens Barrichello Williams 1m13.801s + 1.355
13. Jaime Alguersuari Toro Rosso 1m13.804s + 1.358
14. Sebastien Buemi Toro Rosso 1m13.919s + 1.473
15. Vitaly Petrov Renault 1m14.053s + 1.607
16. Kamui Kobayashi Sauber 1m14.129s + 1.683
17. Sergio Perez Sauber 1m14.182s + 1.736

18. Pastor Maldonado Williams 1m14.625s + 1.344
19. Heikki Kovalainen Lotus 1m15.068s + 1.787
20. Jarno Trulli Lotus 1m15.358s + 2.077
21. Tonio Liuzzi HRT 1m16.631s + 3.350
22. Daniel Ricciardo HRT 1m16.890s + 3.609
23. Jerome D’Ambrosio Virgin 1m17.019s + 3.738
24. Timo Glock Virgin 1m17.060s + 3.779

McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time of the day, just over a tenth clear of Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel, but the long runs were interesting. The Red Bull was 8/10ths faster than the McLaren, but allowing for the difference in fuel loads, they were close.

Red Bull tends to do its long runs using the fuel load it would typically start the second stint of the race with, while McLaren tend to run with full tanks. Allowing for the difference in weight their lap times are closely matched.

Ferrari is again a little bit back from the front two teams, with Mercedes a little closer than they have been. In the midfield battle Force India look in good shape to make it into the top ten in qualifying. They lie 15 points behind Renault so they need both cars solidly in the points on Sunday to have a chance of moving up to fifth in the constructors’ championship.

Further back, Lotus look they have made a step forward with their new rear wing, which has better downforce and a bigger DRS effect than before. The update looks to be worth several tenths of a second; not enough to catch the midfield cars in qualifying, but they may be able to race with Williams.

This is a track where the exhaust blown diffusers, making their final outing before being banned next year, are very important. It is very apparent, for example, from watching and listening at the entry to the Senna S how much the systems are working on the car, giving a lot of extra rear-end grip. Some drivers are using this grip to take more aggressive lines over kerbs around the track.

What was also apparent today with the Pirelli tyres is that the rear tyres are the limiting factor, as has been the case in the past with the Bridgestones. But the soft tyre looks like it will last at least 20 laps, so a two stop strategy is a good bet for many runners.

That said, the rain showers which were forecast at 60% likelihood earlier in the week now look almost certain to come and teams prepared today with that in mind. Last year’s qualifying was rain affected and we could see showers both tomorrow and on Sunday.

This would make qualifying more of a lottery than Vettel would like; he needs one more podium to set a new record for a season at 15.

It would also mean that if the race started wet, but dried out, teams would not need to use the slower medium tyre during the race. The tyre looks to be between 0.8s to 1 sec per lap slower than the soft.

If tomorrow’s race ended like that it would mean that the title race goes on to the Japanese Grand Prix, with Webber still in the hunt. In all likelihood we will see Alonso come up from fifth on the grid as the Ferrari has better performance and stronger tyre life in race conditions.

It was Red Bull’s fifth 1-2 grid lockout of the season and Vettel’s 26th career pole position, equalling Mika Hakkinen. Only Fangio, Mansell, Prost, Clark, Senna and Schumacher lie ahead of him.

Hamilton was unable to go out for a second run in Q3, due to a problem with refuelling the car, after losing time getting back to the pits due to a puncture and a random FIA weight check. The upside is he saved a set of tyres, but he also lost one with the punctured set. He also lost a front row start slot and two places in the process, as he was second after the first runs. It is the first time he’s been off the front row since Silverstone.

It’s been a messy couple of days for McLaren, with problems on both cars in Practice 2 and a broken floor stay, a puncture and a refuelling issue for Hamilton this evening. They have good pace in the car, but so far haven’t been able to maximise it. Vettel meanwhile, has exceptional long run pace and good tyre wear and only something exceptional will stop him from collecting his ninth win of the season.

Webber was quite pleased with his efforts, ending up 3/10ths off his team mate, who excels on tracks with stop and start corners like this. He believes that the ends of the stints will be crucial tomorrow, but acknowledged that a good start will be vital, something he’s often failed to do this season.

Ferrari’s lack of qualifying pace was highlighted with Alonso in fifth and Felipe Massa sixth, fighting off the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg. Alonso said that his lap was probably his best of the season as it put him a tenth off Webber and the McLarens and a whole second faster than Felipe Massa. Ferrari boss Stefano Domenicali observed that the qualifying result mirrored the story of the 2011 season; one car and driver in a league of their own with four drivers battling over who follows him home. Massa is very much adrift of that battle.

In the race we are likely to see the leading cars do three stints on supersofts and one on softs, with Ferrari possibly trying to make one stop less to gain track position. We could also see a one stopper in midfield, perhaps a Sauber.

The two Force India cars qualified in the top ten, but chose not to set a time in Q3, saving a set of soft tyres and two new sets of super soft tyres in the process. A one stop strategy could be on the cards for some of the midfield teams with good tyre durability tomorrow. Hamilton, meanwhile, will have to be aggressive in the race to make up the two places lost, even if he will have slightly better tyre life.

In the first part of qualifying the Renault’s weakness in traction out of slow corners was shown up with Vitaly Petrov eliminated with the new teams and Bruno Senna required to produce a high pressure lap to make it through. The Lotus cars were just over a second slower, while Daniel Ricciardo again outqualified his team mate Tonio Liuzzi, but lost out to the Virgin cars, with whom he’d been battling in Practice 3.

Kobayashi catches some air (Sauber)

In Q2 Sauber’s chances of getting into the top ten took a knock as Kamui Kobayashi crashed heavily after taking off over a kerb. This brought out a red flag stoppage. Team mate Sergio Perez had been on an out lap at the time. He wasn’t able to find the speed to take on the Force India cars and wound up 11th.

In Q3 Mercedes opted to do only one run at the end with Rosberg pressuring Massa, who responded and stayed ahead. Michael Schumacher, like the Force India cars, didn’t set a lap time, so all three have the option of what tyre to start the race on. Both Mercedes have two new sets of softs and one set of super softs available.

So the top ten grid slots are in team order, with Red Bull, from McLaren, from Ferrari, Mercedes and Force India. The midfield is jumbled up apart from the two Williams together in 12th and 13th and then the last three rows are in team order again.

SINGAPORE GRAND PRIX, Qualifying
1. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull 1m44.381s
2. Mark Webber Red Bull 1m44.732s + 0.351
3. Jenson Button McLaren 1m44.804s + 0.423
4. Lewis Hamilton McLaren 1m44.809s + 0.428
5. Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1m44.874s + 0.493
6. Felipe Massa Ferrari 1m45.800s + 1.419
7. Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1m46.013s + 1.632
8. Michael Schumacher Mercedes no time
9. Adrian Sutil Force India no time
10. Paul di Resta Force India no time

11. Sergio Perez Sauber 1m47.616s + 2.685
12. Rubens Barrichello Williams 1m48.082s + 3.151
13. Pastor Maldonado Williams 1m48.270s + 3.339
14. Sebastien Buemi Toro Rosso 1m48.634s + 3.703
15. Bruno Senna Renault 1m48.662s + 3.731
16. Jaime Alguersuari Toro Rosso 1m49.862s + 4.931
17. Kamui Kobayashi Sauber No time
Q1 cut-off time: 1m49.588s Gap *
18. Vitaly Petrov Renault 1m49.835s + 3.438
19. Heikki Kovalainen Lotus 1m50.948s + 4.551
20. Jarno Trulli Lotus 1m51.012s + 4.615
21. Timo Glock Virgin 1m52.154s + 5.757
22. Jerome D’Ambrosio Virgin 1m52.363s + 5.966
23. Daniel Ricciardo HRT 1m52.404s + 6.007
24. Tonio Liuzzi HRT 1m52.810s + 6.413

The plastic kerbs, in only their fourth year of use, were lifting up with retaining bolts raising out of the ground, due to the forces the cars are putting on them.

Tonight most of the kerbs are either being removed or bonded to the ground. The kerbs at turns 3, 5, 10 and 17, for example, are being removed and markings are being painted on the ground. The kerbs are of a similar kind to those used at Indianapolis on the road course, which lasted for seven years. It is not clear what has happened to the Singapore units to cause the problems we saw today.

Meanwhile last year’s main protagonists Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso set the pace at the front.

It was an interesting day’s running, with first practice cut short by half an hour as two kerbs highlighted as a problem by Pirelli were removed and then later in the session another kerb lifted after Felipe Massa ran over it. Mark Webber hit Timo Glock, thinking that the Virgin driver was letting him through, but the German wasn’t aware he was there. Webber’s front wing was damaged.

In the second session we saw the usual hot laps on the faster supersoft tyre and then long runs on the same tyre to assess its race performance. It looks pretty good.

It appears that for the front runners, the race will be mainly run on the supersoft tyres, with a final stint on softs and Pirelli predict that the leaders will do a sprint strategy of three stops, possibly two, depending on safety cars. The supersoft looked like it was about a second a lap faster than the soft and Vettel managed 16 laps on it with little in the way of degradation. On the first hot lap he was two tenths faster than Alonso and his long run pace was similar to the Ferrari’s.

The pair look closely matched, both having a good record around this circuit. Hamilton too should be there or thereabouts in qualifying and the race. Alonso said that he felt the weekend held more promise than Spa or Monza, based on today’s evidence, but added, “We have to be realistic and not expect any great surprises. The Red Bulls are favourites here and McLaren are very strong.”

Some of the midfield runners will be looking to make only one stop on Sunday, which will work out well if there is a safety car to extend tyre life by a few laps. Toro Rosso lost valuable track time in the second session when Buemi hit the wall after just 14 laps and Alguersuari was called in after a similar number of laps having hit the kerbs very aggressively.

Renault tried a new bodywork package on Petrov’s car but it caused overheating and was dropped. The car’s weakness in low speed corners looks like holding the team back this weekend, giving a chance to Force India, Sauber and Toro Rosso to get among the points with some imaginative strategy work.

There were no problems with the kerbs in the afternoon, but Pirelli’s Paul Hembery said, “The bolt coming out of the kerb was a worry because if a tyre hit that it would cause an instant deflation.”

“There are some areas out on the track where the bolts are coming out of the kerbs,” said Lewis Hamilton. “They must be taking some serious force from the cars. On a couple of the corners – Turns Three, 13 and 14 – the exit and apex kerbing has been removed, so some drivers were using the extra track.

“We don’t yet know whether or not the kerbs will be reinstated tonight, so I continued driving as though the kerbs were there. If they’re not replaced, then we should gain an extra couple of tenths by being able to run as wide as some of the others did.”

Hamilton’s team mate Jenson Button had a difficult day, not managing to get a lap on the faster tyre after locking up and being unable to reverse out of where the car came to rest.

The gaps in the field between front and back and even front and midfield are very big, with a nine second spread separating the fastest and slowest cars, one of the largest gaps of the season.

SINGAPORE GRAND PRIX, Practice 2
1. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull 1m46.374s 33
2. Fernando Alonso Ferrari 1m46.575s + 0.201 28
3. Lewis Hamilton McLaren 1m47.115s + 0.741 22
4. Felipe Massa Ferrari 1m47.120s + 0.746 23
5. Mark Webber Red Bull 1m47.265s + 0.891 28
6. Michael Schumacher Mercedes 1m48.418s + 2.044 27
7. Adrian Sutil Force India 1m48.866s + 2.492 32
8. Sergio Perez Sauber 1m49.578s + 3.204 27
9. Kamui Kobayashi Sauber 1m49.730s + 3.356 29
10. Jenson Button McLaren 1m49.751s + 3.377 10
11. Jaime Alguersuari Toro Rosso 1m49.792s + 3.418 14
12. Bruno Senna Renault 1m50.241s + 3.867 31
13. Paul di Resta Force India 1m50.345s + 3.971 8
14. Vitaly Petrov Renault 1m50.399s + 4.025 29
15. Nico Rosberg Mercedes 1m50.790s + 4.416 28
16. Rubens Barrichello Williams 1m50.897s + 4.523 24
17. Pastor Maldonado Williams 1m50.937s + 4.563 30
18. Heikki Kovalainen Lotus 1m51.950s + 5.576 26
19. Sebastien Buemi Toro Rosso 1m52.257s + 5.883 15
20. Jarno Trulli Lotus 1m52.489s + 6.115 25
21. Timo Glock Virgin 1m53.579s + 7.205 25
22. Jerome D’Ambrosio Virgin 1m54.649s + 8.275 25
23. Daniel Ricciardo HRT 1m54.754s + 8.380 29
24. Tonio Liuzzi HRT 1m55.198s + 8.824 26

Speaking to L’Equipe he revealed that this weekend he will be “in the Red Bull simulator at Milton Keynes supporting Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber for the Singapore GP.”

Teams send all the data from the track in real time back to their factory bases and after the debriefs the engineers at the factory can run simulations trying different set ups. Having a driver able to test variations in the simulator can be useful in some situations and Vergne is using the experience to get up to speed in preparation for two important F1 appointments he has coming up.

Red Bull has one of the most advanced simulators of all the F1 teams. The key to being able to make use of a driver back at base to evolve set ups is having a good tyre model, which only the leading teams have.

In the same L’Equipe article he confirms that he will be driving the Toro Rosso on Friday mornings from Korea onwards. His World Series by Renault season will end the weekend before in Barcelona, the same weekend as the Japanese Grand Prix.

He also confirmed that he will drive the Red Bull car in the Young Guns test at Abu Dhabi in November, the opportunity Daniel Ricciardo took last year.

The burning question is what Red Bull and its young driver programme director Helmut Marko plans to do with his drivers. Ricciardo, who started the season doing Fridays for Toro Rosso, is now gaining some race experience at HRT and managed to outqualify team mate Tonio Liuzzi in Monza. He might reasonably expect to take one of the Toro Rosso seats next year, but maintains that he doesn’t know what he will be doing in 2012.

Vergne meanwhile is coming into the Toro Rosso set up and also pushing for an opportunity.

Meanwhile the ownership of Toro Rosso remains a talking point. Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz says emphatically today in an interview with the Financial Times Germany that the team is not for sale, but doesn’t rule out “partnerships”. He has entered into an agreement with IPIC, the Abu Dhabi based investment company. Among other brands, IPIC owns CEPSA, the Spanish oil company which is now a Toro Rosso sponsor.

Mateschitz makes clear that he wants to continue to own the Toro Rosso team as there are many benefits not least from a political point of view, but there are suggestions in the Singapore paddock that IPIC could take a minority shareholding in the team.

Mateschitz also makes clear that Red Bull Racing will remain exactly as it is now, a wholly owned part of Red Bull company.

This deal is significant in that it means that not only will the team use the current V8 units with the Renault KERS system for 2012 and 2013, but is committed to the marque for the new generation of fuel efficient V6 1.6 litre turbo engines from 2014 onwards. Part of the deal is a technology collaboration between Red Bull Technology and Renault to work on innovations for the 2014 engine. These will benefit all Renault customers, which will also include Williams.

Despite occasional grumbles from Red Bull senior management about a lack of power over the last five seasons, the partnership with Renault has been very successful with both world titles last season seven victories and no engine failures in a 100% faultless record this season which is likely to lead to another clean sweep of titles.

With the Renault deal has come a technical and sponsor partnership with oil company Total. In addition to getting money from the deal, Renault also has branding on the drivers’ helmets and on the engine cover of the car. This reflects the company’s strategy for F1 to be a profit centre, rather than a cost. The Renault team, currently known as Lotus Renault GP, is owned by investment firm Genii and sponsored by Group Lotus. Renault’s only involvement is to supply engines, as it does to Red Bull. But there seems to be some activity around this team in terms of its ownership and branding moving forwards. The way is clear for it to rebrand as Lotus, if the two sides feel that this is appropriate.

Meanwhile Renault number two Carlos Tavares was asked recently by French colleagues about the possibility of Renault coming back as a team owner and he said, “Having an F1 team as a manufacturer is a double edged sword. You have to win. And if you do not win, it’s serious. The solution of being an engine supplier makes sense and is clearly more long term for a manufacturer.”

It’s clear that Renault Sport, the division of the company which runs the F1 engine programme, regards Red Bull as their number one team now, almost a works team and Christian Horner alluded to this when the announcement was made.

This is emphasised by statements from Renault about how they see the importance of the integration of the engine and the chassis aerodynamics, especially post 2014. They also couch their communications in terms of “They are world champions and we are world champions.” The evolution of the blown diffuser and Renault’s work on ignition timing to improve it are a good example of the close integration of the two sides.

There is also the Nissan/Infiniti connection, with Infiniti branding on the car and the likelihood that Red Bull will be able to benefit from Nissan/Renault battery technology in the post 2014 era, when electric becomes a more important part of the package than currently.

On a side note, young French driver Jean Eric Vergne is going to be doing some Friday driving for Toro Rosso shortly. But when it comes to the Young Guns test at Abu Dhabi, there seems to be a view that he might be given a run in the Red Bull car, as Daniel Ricciardo did last year.

This would make sense in terms of a benchmark. And as Ricciardo is now racing for HRT, he is ineligible for the Young Guns test, so they may as well turn to Vergne next.

In Budapest we saw a reaction with Red Bull mechanics using up one of their four curfew free nights of the season on Friday to work into the small hours on the car to get it right for qualifying and the race. This involved changing the specification of the car from what they had intended to run, with modifications to the rear suspension and bodywork – quite a significant amount of work.

One of the more noticeable things on the Red Bull was a new front wing configuration, a refinement of the layout seen at Nurburgring. The idea here was to reduce pitch sensitivity, as the engineers believe that this could be causing them higher tyre wear with certain set ups. Certainly the Red Bull has been a little harder on its tyres than its rivals and this gives them less margin on race strategy to run longer stints if necessary and Hungary is famously hard on front tyres. Some observers think that this work was more about problem solving than a development step forward.

The reason for all this furious work is that Ferrari and McLaren have been pushing hard. Ferrari has found a second on its car in the last month, with a variety of updates; a change of rear suspension and rear bodywork phased in over several races but first raced at Silverstone, modifications to the exhausts to improve the blown diffuser, a succession of new front and rear wings. In Hungary they tried new front and rear wings including a rear wing modification that looks destined for Spa. It has a curved main plane, where the previous one used in Germany was straight, with only three gills in the endplate, and different positioning of the planes relative to the endplate. It was run in a high downforce configuration for Hungary, but Italian sources suggest it was designed for Spa, where it would work well in terms of reducing the drag on the long straights, even when using medium to steep angles for the flap. Alonso also said that the team has targetted Monza for an all out assault “to please the tifosi”. Last year they got it spot on with a Monza special F Duct rear wing and no doubt they’ll be the team to beat this year.

Meanwhile McLaren, which has now won the last two races, has done work on visible things like wings and brakeducts, but one of the keys to their success lately has been working with the rake of the car and the exhaust blown diffuser, both in terms of engine mapping and the diffuser design itself. As maps have to be the same for qualifying and race, there has been a lot of work on getting the best compromise. The result is more rear end downforce and stability. They got it wrong on Button’s car in Germany and that’s one of the reasons he was strangely off the pace.

Red Bull’s car runs at quite a steep rake (height of rear of car relative to the front. As over 45% of the downforce of a car comes from underneath and around 35% from the rear, this is a crucial area to get right. Force India have made great progress in this area too, hence their step forward.

But it’s not just a case of raising the ride height; work has to be done on bodywork, floor and exhausts to get the maximum.

Sebastian Vettel is 88 points clear of Lewis Hamilton in the championship and 89 ahead of Alonso, while Red Bull is 103 points clear of McLaren with Ferrari 168 adrift.

There are only eight races to go and with both Red Bull drivers scoring well it’s hard to imagine they will be caught in the Constructors’ Championship.

The drivers’ championship is also a stretch. No one contender has emerged to challenge Vettel, with three other drivers winning races and four different drivers finishing second to him when he wins.

In the end it came down to some inspired driving and finely balanced strategy calls. But further down the field we saw some varying strategies making a difference to the race result, particularly in the case of Adrian Sutil, who finished sixth ahead of the Mercedes and Renaults.

The key consideration in deciding the strategy in Germany was the performance on the slower medium tyre. If you were getting a difference between the soft and medium tyre of around 1.5 seconds then two stops was the way to go. If the gap was larger then three stops would be the answer with a short final stint on the medium tyre.

Tyre life turned out to be better than expected in Friday practice, so for many teams two stops looked a good option. But then heavy rain on Saturday night cleaned the track and that might have pushed some people towards three stops in the race believing that the track was very green. In the Bridgestone days this would have led to tyre graining, but that didn’t happen with the Pirellis in Germany. Instead what happened was that the track had less grip so the lap times were slower and this took less life out of the tyres, but the green surface didn’t damage them.

The battle at the front

Bearing all of this in mind, even the three-stoppers at the front ran almost a two-stop race in terms of stint lengths. Webber for example, did 26 laps on his third set of soft tyres. They didn’t want to put on the prime tyre, so they stopped as late as possible. Two cars pushed it to the extreme – Vettel and Massa – they pitted for medium tyres on the penultimate lap!

Among the leading trio Webber, who lost the lead to Hamilton at the start, was able to undercut Hamilton at the first stop by pitting first on lap 14. Webber was 0.5s behind the leader Hamilton when he made the stop. A very fast turnaround by the Red Bull crew, plus two very aggressive out-laps by Webber got him into the lead. He pushed hard to open a gap but Hamilton was faster in sectors one and three and Webber knew then that it wasn’t going to be his day.

Having pushed his tyres too hard early on, Webber’s pace wasn’t good at the end of the second stint. He tried the undercut again, but it didn’t work out. Hamilton and Alonso, on option tyres that were two laps younger, were able to increase their pace when Webber pitted. Webber’s second stop was 0.8s slower than his first stop and the end result was that he was down to third.

As for Hamilton and Alonso, they came in together for the first stop but Hamilton pitted a lap earlier second time around. Alonso’s in lap was 0.7s faster than Hamilton’s and the pit stop was 0.4s faster. What was interesting was that Hamilton’s out lap on fresher tyres hadn’t been significantly faster than Alonso’s on worn tyres, which defies the principal of the early stopper having the advantage.

Alonso came out of the pits in front but the Ferrari’s weakness in not warming the tyres up straight away meant Hamilton was able to pass him in Turn 2. So the strategy had worked for Ferrari on paper, but not in reality.

Webber had managed the undercut at the first stop but stopping first didn’t work for either Webber or Hamilton at the second stop. This can partly be explained by the damage the extra duel weight does to the tyre in the first stint, which diminishes by the time of the second stop and by the durability of the Pirelli soft tyre.

As for the timing of the final stop to the slower medium tyre, that was all about looking for evidence and it came in the form of Vitaly Petrov and Kamui Kobayashi. Maldonado had gone to the medium early on lap 35 but his lap times were inconsistent. When Petrov went to mediums on lap 46 and started setting personal best sector times on his second lap on the tyres, and Kobayashi went faster than his team mate who was still on old soft tyres, it was clear to McLaren that the time had come to take the medium tyre.

Webber was out of the picture by now, 8 seconds behind second place Alonso. McLaren pitted Hamilton on lap 51, but Ferrari did not react, leaving Alonso out there for two more laps, Ferrari was more concerned about its pace on the harder tyre. Hamilton’s pace was good straight away on the medium and the race was in the bag. Webber tried to stay out longer and jump them but he was coming from too far back and he couldn’t get close.

Sutil vs Rosberg

One of the highlights of the race was the performance of Force India with Adrian Sutil. He put together a perfect weekend and the strategy team got it just right. The result was he finished in sixth place, ahead of both Mercedes. He qualified 8th, two places and 0.8sec behind Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes. To beat him from there is quite an achievement.

Sutil vs Rosberg was a good example of two stops working out better than three. Force India were one of the teams for whom the simulator said that two stops was as fast as three and with one less stop to make there was less risk of losing time in traffic or with a poor stop.

Sutil stopped on laps 22 and 48, Rosberg on laps 14, 36 and 53. Their lap times were pretty similar in the first stint, but thereafter Sutil had the measure of him. The Mercedes is heavier on its tyres and Sutil closed the gap to Rosberg from four seconds down to nothing by the time Rosberg made his first of three stops. The Mercedes is a faster car, as was proven in qualifying, but their hands were tied by the heavy tyre use and Force India were able to beat them with 10 seconds to spare at the end.

Sutil was very impressive all weekend and he managed to find good consistency from the medium tyre. He was straight onto the pace after he went to mediums and set his fastest lap of the race when they were nine laps old. Many teams found it hard to get temperature into the medium tyre in the cool temperatures.

Getting the fuel load right
The possibility of rain on race day had quite an influence on fuel strategy in this race. A lot of people under-fuelled their cars in the belief that it would rain and that forced a lot of people to save fuel late in the race. That’s why Alonso eventually finished four seconds behind Hamilton, before then running out of fuel on the slow-down lap.

After making that mistake and under-fuelling Hamilton at Silverstone, McLaren didn’t make the same mistake twice!

(The UBS Strategy Report is produced with input and data from the strategists of several F1 teams.)

Race History Graph
Below is a graph showing the race history. It shows each car and the time delta between them and the race leader. So the laptime is encapsulated in it, but it also shows progress at different stages during the race because a cars slope will change if it goes faster or slower. You can also see when someone is clearly being held up in traffic.

The zero line is simply the race winners’ average lap time (total race time divided by the number of race laps). This is why his curve can go above the line if he’s lapping faster than his average, and below the line if he’s slower than his average or doing a pitstop.

LAP TIMES GRAPH