Caterham ‘should be beating Marussia’ – Kovalainen

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In the round-up: Heikki Kovalainen says Caterham are capable of beating Marussia with their current car.

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‘Car quicker than Marussia’s’ (Sky)

“I could feel there was more we could use in this car and I felt that after driving the car we should be able to beat Marussia and now with the updates coming we should be in a position to beat them.”

Mark Webber must treat Sebastian Vettel as an enemy, says ex-champion (The Guardian)

Alan Jones: “Seb has proved he can’t be trusted, so from now on Mark must view him as just another enemy.”

Button realistic over McLaren situation (The Telegraph)

“Jenson Button’s verdict upon McLaren’s mounting predicament is at once honest and withering. ‘I’ve had a lot of experience dealing with midfield teams,’ he says, flatly. ‘I know what it feels like.'”

Paul Hembery answers your questions (Autosport, subscription required)

“If the tyres would ‘just work’ then what you would have would be processional racing. We’re just following instructions and what we had at the end of the season last year were a lot of races where we had no degradation – then tyres were lasting the whole race and we had lots of people complaining that we had made racing boring again.”

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Comment of the day

Are there just too many variables to juggle in getting DRS to work properly?

The effectiveness of DRS isn’t judged by zone length or detection/activation points but instead by tyres, downforce levels, gear ratios, gap between cars, wind direction, wind speed, How many cars are together and also how good an exit the cars got from the previous corner.

Due to all this I feel it will be impossible to ever reach a point where DRS works as it was intended (an assist and not purely an overtaking device) on a consistent basis.
@StefMeister

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68 comments on “Caterham ‘should be beating Marussia’ – Kovalainen”

  1. Thanks for the birthday wishes. love this site.. keep up the good work.

    1. Happy birthday to you, and to the rest of you celebrating their birthday today!

  2. Considering how much more pace “eighth-rate pay driver” Charles Pic had over “future three-time champion” Jules Bianchi at Bahrain – most of it thanks to the upgrades on the Caterham, I’d agree with Heikki.

    The question is, can Marussia develop their car to get that advantage back?

    1. Marussia have a major update scheduled for Barcelona, so we’ll know soon enough.

  3. In the round-up: Heikki Kovalainen says Caterham are capable of beating Marussia with their current car.

    “I could feel there was more we could use in this car and I felt that after driving the car we should be able to beat Marussia and now with the updates coming we should be in a position to beat them.”

    Heikki taking some shots at the current Caterham drivers, I see.

    1. @kingshark exactly what I said on the Sky sports thread. He clearly feels he’s much better than the current drivers and should be in a seat, and honestly I don’t think he’s off the mark with that one.

      1. @vettel1
        Well, if Kovalainen really did want to keep the seat, he should have watched his mouth and been more careful about what he was saying about the team.

        Also, I don’t think he’s that much better than Pic either. Personally, I always found him a bit overrated.

        1. He was actually good to them for all the 3 years he was there helped develop the car it’s only now he’s taking shots. And to be honest I think that Kovalainen has always been underrated by most teams. I agree with @vettel1 on this one.

        2. @kingshark don’t get me wrong, he’s no world champion and I think there are others I’d rather see in the Caterham seat than either of their current drivers or Kovalinen but if the choice were between van der Garde and Kovalinen, for me it’s a no brainer.

          The only issue with Kovalinen is that he doesn’t bring with him much in the way of sponsorship (if anything at all) but @sirspuddington has raised a great point in that he was central in helping the team develop the car. So maybe they could use him come this “huge upgrade” again in Spain!

        3. (@kingshark)(@vettel1)

          Well, if Kovalainen really did want to keep the seat, he should have watched his mouth and been more careful about what he was saying about the team.

          What I think is really pathetic is the fact that Caterham was forced into the position of having two pay drivers in the first place, which ended up damaging its development in the long run. I understand that a pay-driver is sometimes a necessary evil for the smaller teams (and that some are actually good drivers simply with financial backing), but when smaller teams are lacking the experience or talent to implement updates is a sorry state of affairs.

          If you look at the larger teams, the classic pairing through the years has been;
          -one quick, young, perhaps hot-headed and inexperienced driver who is more likely to deliver victories, but also crash out.
          -one slower, smoother and more experienced driver who will be more use with car setup, and although perhaps less likely to challenge for wins, will bring in a steady flow of points for a constructors title.

          Obviously mid-field and backmarker teams have slightly different priorities (financial survival being a chief concern) so if you replace the fast, hot-head driver with a pay driver, you still bring finances to the team, but retain the ability to actually implement and develop the updates. We’ll all agree Kovalinen is not championship material, but he clearly has many years of experience, some of them with a top team, and his experience has ended up proving far more valuable than mere cash-flow. What really needs changing isn’t just Caterham’s drivers, but the entire atmosphere that has developed with a gross over-abundance of pay drivers. I’m not entirely sure how it could be fixed, but clearly something is broken.

          1. @sgt-pepper agreed; I was very disappointed when I heard Caterham’s driver announcement, not so much for the fact they had rid of Kovalinen, but for who they had replaced him for.

            At least Marussia have Bianchi, who has some talent!

    2. Yeah, it sure feels like a “you’ve put the wrong guys in there Tony” interview. Nice to see the competative spirits in Heikki then!

      Off course VdGArde being unfamiliar with F1 setup won’t help him get the maximum out of it, but I would think Pic’s year of experience with Marussia should help him get close enough, after all he had Glock in the garage next to him, who was likely as good at it as Heikki is.

  4. “Seb has proved he can’t be trusted, so from now on Mark must view him as just another enemy.

    “If Seb didn’t like what was going on he shouldn’t have signed his agreement with Red Bull in the first place.”

    What? I’m sorry, but Webber has been the first to ignore team orders in the past, so why the hell should he have expected him to comply with them in Malaysia, particularly considering he showed his intentions quite conclusively on lap 44, two laps before Vettel overtook him.

    Vettel signed the contract with Red Bull under the expectation he would be allowed to race for victories when they presented themselves I presume, which is something Red Bull initially prided themselves on (not using team orders).

    Overall though, I think that’s just pretty hypocritical from Jones though.

    1. Ignore the second though!

    2. “He’s a racing driver” is no excuse for what Vettel did – he gave his word, and then broke it at the first opportunity. It’s indefensible.

    3. Webber has been the first to ignore team orders in the past

      There you go again, trying to interject those annoying facts into the discussion!

      1. @jonsan I plead guilty! :P

    4. I think I’ve got it – they weren’t protesting human rights violations in Bahrain, they were protesting all of the media talk about Red Bull team orders.

    5. Well Jones is a Webber fan, so a degree of hypocrisy is to be expected. But there’s nothing wrong with what he’s said, it’s just biased towards one perspective. You could easily argue that Webber has shown that he can’t be trusted as well, that’s fine. But the substance of what Jones’ has said is still valid. Neither driver has shown they can’t be trusted to yield to the other driver on numerous occassions now.

      1. @kibblesworth That is true, but the implication of his comments is that Webber should have had a trust in Vettel in the first place, which would be foolish of him as he isn’t the most trustworthy of people himself and you reap what you sow!

        @prisoner-monkeys that’s based on the assumption that there is a degree of morality in following the interests of the team over your own interests, which I think is void. The driver’s championship holds far more importance to the general spectators than the comstrcutor’s championship, so to me driver takes priority over team. F1 is no longer a gentlemen’s pastime, it is a fierce contest so I say let them be selfish!

        Just out of curiosity, are you as aghast towards Webber or indeed Senna by any chance?

        1. To add, I don’t recall at any point Vettel saying he agreed to his team’s instruction to hold station, so he could only have broken a pre-race agreement. In that case, who actually cares if it gave a good show? I was not excited at all by Rosberg’s holding station but I was on the edge of my seat during Vettel and Webber dicing, as was Crofty by his very vocal commentary! Isn’t that the point?

          1. Again with this? Ok, the hypocrisy is that Vettel was the one who has called for team orders when he demanded the team; “be wise” as in Silverstone 2011 and in Suzuka when he wanted Multi12 to be invoked.

          2. @katederby sadly so! All I’m saying in response to that is that a driver only cares about what is best for himself, so naturally they’ll want team orders for themselves but not for their teammate. I don’t like the selfishness but that’s just how it is, so it’d be far better if the teams just didn’t employ team orders at all in my view.

            That is why I encourage drivers to disobey them, because I think they put a damp squib on races if they’re heeded. I don’t blame Webber for ignoring them, I don’t blame Vettel for ignoring them, I don’t blame Senna for ignoring them.

          3. It would be easier for fans if there were no team orders but then when Vettel demands them it becomes a joke when he then ignores them… often in the same race!

          4. @katederby I do feel inclined to agree with you there, except his demands had a hint of disdain in them in the Malaysia instance: he was under team orders to remain behind Webber, hence why he said rather bluntly “get him out of the way, he’s too slow” – he was actually putting him in the clutches of Hamilton.

            Again though, he’s by no means unique and despite the fact I don’t like it, I have to accept that F1 drivers are selfish!

  5. We’re just following instructions and what we had at the end of the season last year were a lot of races where we had no degradation – then tyres were lasting the whole race and we had lots of people complaining that we had made racing boring again.”

    Obviously you didn’t hear all the people not complaining then? Look at the races towards the end of last season and you will see they were anything but boring. In fact, let’s have a look at the top 4 races of 2012 in terms of race rating:

    2012 Brazilian Grand Prix 9.449
    2012 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix 8.854
    2012 European Grand Prix 8.784
    2012 United States Grand Prix 8.772

    Hmmm, 3 of these appear to be at the end of the season.

    So who are these “lots of people” that blamed Pirelli for “making racing boring again” towards the end of 2012? Obviously not the people that vote on F1fanatic. I’m sick and tired of these lazy defensive comments now.

    1. Nick.UK (@)
      5th May 2013, 0:41

      To play devils advocate: Brazil was largely rain affected and Abu Dahbi featured two safety cars (I think 2 at least, certainly 1). Texas was a very low grip circuit with it being new. These factors all added to those races being great.

      That said. I would like to see a return of the 2012 tyres. There was nothing wrong with them whatsoever.

      1. @nick-uk they are all criticisms I agree with, and also I think a major influence in the excitement was actually Sebastian Vettel in Abu Dhabi and Brazil having to come through the field!

        Agreed though again on the second part, the 2012 tyres towards the end of the season had enough of an effect to provide good enough racing but weren’t so dominant that they forced drivers to crawl around the track at very slow speeds. I liked that balance.

        1. Nick.UK (@)
          5th May 2013, 2:12

          @vettel1

          I think a major influence in the excitement was actually Sebastian Vettel

          Now why does this not surprise me haha… I understand what you mean though.

          1. @nick-uk oh I hated Brazil and Abu Dhabi for the fact he ended up at the back! Looking back on it though, he did make them pretty exciting – better than a cruise from pole anyway! ;)

      2. Fair point about the rain in Brazil, I guess I am being a little selective with my stats here admittedly. My bad.

        While it’s true that Austin being low grip made things interesting at times, but the main reason it was a great race (for me) was that I could watch Vettel and Hamilton pushing lap after lap on the limit. It wasn’t the overtaking that was exciting (DRS put pay to that) or the final race outcome, but the fact they were able to be on the ragged edge, racing like their lives depended on it.

        I just can’t stand it when we’re made to believe that everyone wanted Pirelli to ‘do another early 2012’, when a vast number of us wanted the exact opposite. I think the tide is turning as seen by yesterday’s poll.

        Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating rock solid Bridgestones again, just tyres that require 1 or 2 stops like towards the end of 2012, and don’t overly punish drivers for attacking or defending their race position on the track.

        1. I think you’ll find that the early races of 2012 were exciting because the teams did not know the tyres and so had to make things up as they went on. The later races were exciting because the teams mostly understood the tyres, and so played to their strengths. The excitement was there, it just came about in different ways.

          1. The later races were exciting because the teams mostly understood the tyres, and so played to their strengths

            @prisoner-monkeys The tyre choices were much more conservative by Pirelli, often selecting the medium and hard compound so as “not to interfere with the championship”. This was the main factor in the teams only making 1 or 2 stops, not their understanding of the tyres. I’m surprised you don’t remember that.

          2. The problem with your argument is that you’re assuming that just because it happened that way in 2012, the same thing will happen in 2013 – but Pirelli have changed ALL of their compounds for 2013, so conservative choices will not necessarily produce the same result this year.

        2. I’m not advocating rock solid Bridgestones again, just tyres that require 1 or 2 stops like towards the end of 2012

          But that’s the very point. You assume that the teams’ understanding of the tyres is static, but it isn’t. Their ability to make the tyres last will evolve over the course of 20 races.

          If you have one or two stops at this stage of the season, you’ll end up with processional one stoppers, Bridgestone-era style, by the end of the season.

          That’s why I largely tune out from all the whining about the tyres. We’re just witnessing a repeat of 2012. By the second half of the season people will be talking about something else, because the teams will have figured the tyres out.

          1. Good. Let’s talk about something else other than tyres then, I’m all for that.

          2. @tdog I doubt the 2012 tyres would end up like Bridgestones, we’d still need at least one stop per race. That does mean therefore that you can gamble on doing a no stop, which I would like as it keep the strategic element and tyre conservation skills but on the flipside also allows for hard racing. Best of both world in my eyes.

        3. I’m not advocating rock solid Bridgestones again, just tyres that require 1 or 2 stops like towards the end of 2012,

          You will get those races at the end of the 2013 season too. If you observe 201 and 2013, the number of pit stops went down as the season progressed. The simple reason being that teams learnt to master the tyres as the season went on. Their upgrades (in general) were designed such that they would reduce tyre wear and allow the driver to push more. Remember, the tyres are static and remain same throughout the season but the cars evolve. Hence, Pirelli have to over-do all their development before the season starts and then let the teams catch up as the season progresses.

          If Pirelli hadn’t made the tyres softer for 2013, then the start of 2013 would have seen the 1-2 stoppers like end of 2012 but by the end of 2013, we would have had the boring 2010 Bridgestone races.

          1. The tyres used towards the end of the season chosen were the hards and mediums due to Pirelli “not wanting to effect the championship”, so although the tyres remain the same, the choices for the races became more and more ‘conservative’.

          2. It’s a mystery to me why so many people keep insisting that the goodness of motor-racing is directly proportional to the number of pit stops per race. But if that is the case, why not simply mandate three (or four, or five) pit stops per race and leave the tyres alone?

    2. How did the European GP get there? It’s boring.

      1. That was the race where Vettel unpredictably broke down, Maldonado punted off Hamilton costing either driver a podium, Schumacher got his podium, and Alonso won from 11th place in front of his home crowd. It was pretty much a classic.

      2. While all races up to last years had been only for the enthusiasts of watching the cars speed to enjoy, last year’s race certainly was a highlight, and probably will stand as a great goodbye from Valencia @sirspuddington

  6. I agree with the comment of the day. The DRS rules are too complex for such a simple goal: having a car being able to closely follow another. But I think they can be revised to a point where they can be effective. And I’m not talking about just tweaking activation points and DRS zone length, I mean actually thinking it over from scratch. It makes no sense to have the FIA deciding where and when a racing driver goes for an overtake.

  7. at the end of the season last year were a lot of races where we had no degradation – then tyres were lasting the whole race and we had lots of people complaining that we had made racing boring again.”

    I thought we had some of the best races at the end of last season.

    Austin, Abu-Dhabi, Singapore, Suzuka, Brazil & India were all good races which I felt were far better races with far better racing than earlier in the year.

    In all honesty, If things stay as they are with DRS & the current tyres im not sure how much longer i’ll be able to keep watching because the current product & what currently is passed off as ‘racing’ is about as far away from what I would consider good, entertaining racing as things could get :(

    At least there’s Indycar as a replacement, Racing is so much better over there & its all genuinely exciting. None of these silly tyres which are designed to fall apart & none of the silly highway passing you get in F1 with DRS/KERS now.

    1. F1 = KERS
      Indycar = Push to pass

    2. Honestly, I think the racing in Indycar is terrible. There is a ridiculously high attrition rate from silly errors resulting in crashes and the rules regarding defensive driving make it pretty much as impossible to hold onto a position for any length of time as DRS does in F1.

      I find Indycar incredibly frustrating to watch personally, but that’s just my opinion!

      1. Maybe you should watch some of the races before saying that.

        Firstly the rules regarding defensive driving are the same as in F1, Your allowed 1 move to defend on road/street circuits & on oval’s are not allowed to move in reaction to a car behind.

        Also the racing has been brilliant since the introduction of the new car, Go watch Barber this year for instance, Lots of great racing/overtaking & only 1 retirement.
        There was a lot of retirements on occasion last year due to the new equipment, But they were on-top of all that by the 2nd half of the year.

        F1 = KERS
        Indycar = Push to pass

        True, However P2P gives a much smaller boost & only ever works as a bit of an assist, Most the time it doesn’t even help get a car alongside.

        In F1 both DRS & KERS give such a big boost that both when used to overtake just drive cars clean past & I don’t find that sort of racing to be any fun to watch at all.

        I’d also argue that Indycar doesn’t even need P2P anymore, They didn’t have it for most of last season & the racing was still great.

        1. I have watched some races (such as Long Beach this year) and I saw a ridiculous amount of crashes which just looked like rookie mistakes (this was from ‘champions’ though).

          I just genuinely think that despite it’s gimmicks, the quality of racing in F1 is still greater. That would only improve if we banished DRS.

          1. long beach was bad, however that sort of race is the exception & its not the sort of racing you see all the time in that series.

            as dizzy said the race at the barber motorsport park was brilliant & 95% of the races in 2012 were just as great.

            i used to snub indycar & never watched it, however i saw some early races in 2012 & became hooked & have actually brought a subscription to espn for this year in order to keep following the series.

            as to push to pass.
            i think the difference between that & what we now have in f1 (drs/kers/pirelli tyres) is that p2p actually add’s to & improves the racing while drs/kers/pirelli add nothing & make the racing worse in many cases.

            all the passing in indycar is actually exciting to watch while much of it in f1 now tends to be quite boring to watch.

            honestly, give the indycar series a chance, watch a few races before coming to a final judgement. cant base anything on just a single event.

      2. @vettel1 There are more crashes in IndyCar and I do believe the level of talent from the drivers in the series is lower than F1’s on average. But they also have much tougher circuits which on the whole are bumpier, narrower and have far less run-off than F1 tracks do.

        And the racing can be excellent: the closing laps of today’s IndyCar race were pure drama.

        1. @keithcollantine true, I may pay more attention to it although that said I don’t have ESPN so it’s a bit of a bummer! I’ve just never bought in to the oval aspect at least…

  8. the battle between Caterham and Marussia isnt fought on upgrades, it is been fought on who had better drivers.

  9. I was a lot happier with F1 in the days when the tyre company spokesman was not a bigger star than 80% of the drivers. I’m sure Paul Hembery is a perfectly nice person in his private life, but I’m sick and tired of hearing from him. The very fact that his every utterance is deemed newsworthy is itself indicative of something very wrong with the tyre situation today.

    1. +1 for that, one of the things that annoys me about Pirelli in general.

    2. It’s not Hembery’s fault people keep interviewing him about the tyre situation. It’s not even his fault, Pirelli’s just doing what the FIA and the teams told him to do.

    3. I was a lot happier with F1 in the days when the tyre company spokesman was not a bigger star than 80% of the drivers

      One of the pithiest comments on the curent malaise.

    4. (@jonsan)

      I was a lot happier with F1 in the days when the tyre company spokesman was not a bigger star than 80% of the drivers. I’m sure Paul Hembery is a perfectly nice person in his private life, but I’m sick and tired of hearing from him. The very fact that his every utterance is deemed newsworthy is itself indicative of something very wrong with the tyre situation today.

      Surely the COTD.

  10. If the tyres would ‘just work’ then what you would have would be processional racing

    The great majority of racing in F1 throughout its history has been “processional racing”. The same tends to be true in most other forms of motor-racing. It’s very difficult to get rid of “processional racing” without getting rid of racing, period.

    Starting position on the grid is strongly predictive of finishing position. (This is the technical definition of ‘processional racing’) The winning driver starts on pole 50% of the time, on the front row 75% of the time, on the first or second row more than 90% of the time. But that was always the case in F1, and it’s also the case even in spec series like GP2.

    It seems to me that all the various cures for “processional racing” are worse than the disease. I’d rather see handicaps placed on each driver in reverse order from their finishing position in the previous race – that would be more honest than this constant mucking about with the tyres.

    1. I remember chuckling to myself in 2011 I think it was when David Coulthard on a BBC broadcast said something about having a pole sitter go in to win the race was “as expected, if you think about it, they got there by being faster than the rest and went on to prove it” or something to that effect.

      Personally? I’d rather you just turn them loose. James Allen wrote a great piece this week comparing current F1 racing to NBA Basketball, compared to the old-style F1 racing which was like a 1-0 Football (Soccer/Futball) match. In the article, he argued that this was all by design and the era of the sport that we’re in. I think, as I’ve written about before, most of us who are lamenting that fact do understand that the decision is a conscious one. We just don’t like it and no amount of Paul Henbery’s shilling is going to change any of our minds.

      1. *the Basketball comparison was “where games end 94-82” or something to that effect. Realized I’d left that big out.

      2. David not Coulthard (@)
        5th May 2013, 9:33

        Federation Football, to be exact.

        Anyway, even then, the championships in “old F1” and something like the Premier League are still exciting. Just look at the Premier League’s 2011/2012 finale. Just look at how thrilling the championship in 2010 was, with Vettel somehow taking the title in the end, with a 2-time WDC stuck behind a Russian driving for the team that gave him the 2 championships he’s won.

        It’s also processional racing, I believe, that makes great wins so great – that makes Grand Chelems so great, that makes this year’s Champions League semi-final results so….stunning.

        It’s also the thing that made it possible for Spain 1981 to happen. But while that win was great, it was perhaps very boring, if amazing at the same time.

      3. Great comparison, but it also explains the problem with the current situation.

        I think most of us would want to see a 3-2 football result (from a 1-2 at halftime) instead of either a basketball or a catenaccio score.

  11. According to the Daily Star, Webber has told “close friends” that he will stop at the end of the season. They say it doesn’t have anything to do with the Vettel situation, but he thinks it’s just time to call it a day.

    Sounds like a lot of speculation (read: ‘rubbish’) to me.

    1. @andae23 Hmm..I personally don’t think he has a choice…he should walk out with his head held high rather than having the same end that befell Barrichello(sacked)..

      1. @wsrgo Definitely

  12. I’m technically tardy about saying thanks for the birthday wishes, but I live in the U.S. so it’s my birthday right now. Again thanks for that and keep up the good work!

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