Ben Evans Racing

Sunday saw the start of both the F1 and Indycar seasons, with both races throwing up their share of interest if not out and out excitement.

Within only a few laps I was getting quite bored with the new overtaking ‘aids’ available to the F1 drivers. KERS in its first inception was a bit of a damp squib and served to prevent passes rather than aid them, and its reintroduction has thus far done nothing to convince me otherwise.

However it was DRS which completely baffled me. What is the point of the system if it is only allowed on a tiny portion of the circuit and only when the drivers were within a second of each other? Surely it should either be available totally at the drivers’ discretion (the loss of traction as drivers deployed it in qualifying was entertaining) or outlawed. The halfway house approach just gives the spectator one more thing to consider in amidst pit stop strategy, KERS, tyres etc. I just want to see drivers racing, and don’t care if they are in a DRS window, or have sufficient KERS left on any given lap.

In the event the much vaunted overtaking bonanza didn’t happen, and I would be astonished if the race positions would have differed at all if KERS and DRS had not been available to the drivers.

Over in the US they have certainly hit on an innovation that spices up the race – double file (i.e. side by side) restarts. This was introduced at St Petersberg on Sunday and led to a manic first 20 laps of the race. Indycar races have long had side by side rolling race starts and on Sunday this led to chaos as several drivers lunged up the inside to find there wasn’t much grip off line and on the paint. The end result was Marco Andretti upside down and several drivers out of the race.

This led to a safety car and the first double file restart, which led to another pile up and another restart. Only on about the 4^th restart did the field get through without driving into each other, but by this point with a much shuffled pack.  The remainder of the race was exactly what you’d expect from a spec series on a street circuit with no overtaking opportunities – cars running closely together but unable to get through.  On balance however I enjoyed it more than the action from Albert Park.

The double file restart proved highly unpopular with the drivers who disliked the incidents and jostling for position. However I felt the drivers complaints were a little over the top. Firstly – crashing is discretionary, all the incidents were as far as I could tell, caused more by drivers launching up the inside where there was no grip rather than any particular factors of them running closely together. Surely the team managers could have told their charges not to do anything that will compromise finishing the race. Secondly St Petersberg is probably an exceptional case in that it is a circuit where it tough to overtake, for most drivers the restart was the sole opportunity to move up the order.

Watching the race at home I loved the new restart format, it spiced up the racing, gave the fans multiple ‘first corners’ throughout the event, and created some great action. If F1 is serious about cost cutting and improving the show, then side by side restarts after a safety car could be an answer to both elements (minus the wrecked cars). It would give the fans more action, it would shake up the race order, and it would create the side by side racing we all want to see.

For years F1 teams have used the role of the test driver as a way to introduce new drivers to the team and assess their pace. The likes of Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill used test driving contracts as their route into regular F1 race seats, whilst others such as Alex Wurz and Pedro de la Rosa have been able to sustain their careers through solid seasons in the test seat.

However, in recent years the role of the ‘test’ driver has shifted to that of ‘reserve’ driver. This is partly because there is little actual testing to be done, and also because reserve driver sells better to potential sponsors.

With the massively reduced number of F1 testing days throughout the season, opportunities are limited for reserve drivers to get behind the wheel, which restricts the value they can add to the team, and also their opportunity to get F1 mileage. Whilst I fully understand and support the restrictions in testing days for the teams in terms of the racing, there is surely an argument to set aside several days a season for teams to run reserve and rookie drivers.

The situation at Renault has clearly illustrated why this should be the case. From an external perspective it seems utter ludicrous that a team with four, yes four, reserve drivers should then go and recruit a fifth (Nick Heidfeld) to fill the hole left by Robert Kubica.

In particular I think that Bruno Senna and Romain Grosjean could feel hard done by as both have in previous seasons been thrown into race seats without the opportunity to get some test days under their belt and therefore were perceived to underperform.

Whilst Heidfeld seems a sensible short term option, if he is in the seat for the whole season you wonder what that will give Renault. Heidfeld is a solid performer, but he has never had a standout performance, or indeed a run of races that have shown a touch of magic. The absence of Kubica seems like a golden opportunity to give a relative newcomer a good run in the car, with some pre-season testing, to show their full potential.  Given that Renault have four young guns on their books as official reserve drivers it would have been super to see at least one of them given the chance.

The counter argument is that by running two inexperienced drivers in the car that they could end the season with fewer points than Britain in the Eurovision song contest, and a damage bill to match Vitaly Petrov’s from 2010. True, but then Heidfeld is hardly likely to be bringing the car home on the podium every weekend.

To put either Bruno Senna or Romain Grosjean in the car would be a huge risk, but if either showed their pace from F3 and GP2 on a regular basis, then Renault may just be sitting on a new star driver.

For an up and coming driver an F1 contract, or any description, is a dream come true. However if a driver signs up as a reserve driver to me there is an implicit understanding that if one of the principle race drivers should have to step down from their seat, that the reserve driver should have first refusal for the drive. Furthermore in order to bring through new talent teams cannot be afraid to be risk averse and offer drives to known quantities who are unlikely to deliver spectacular results.