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The FIA recently announced plans to introduce a cost cap of £40m in 2010.  While the cost cap would be voluntary, those teams that signed up for it would be allowed a greater degree of technical freedom than the uncapped teams.

Any team that wishes to compete in the 2010 Championship must complete their application by the end of May and state whether they wish to compete under the cost cap or not.

While some of the smaller teams would be in favour of limiting budgets, the main area of concern for FOTA is that it would create a two-tier championship.  It is estimated that with the freedoms allowed under the cost cap, the cars of those teams that sign up could be two seconds per lap quicker than those of the uncapped teams.

Last week Toyota became the first team to declare they wouldn’t sign up for the 2010 Championship if there was a two-tier system in place but it was a comment by Toyota boss, and FOTA vice-chairman, John Howett that got me thinking.

The FIA own the “FIA Formula One World Championship” so presumably they can do what they want with it, right?  But are there procedures for changing the rules?  Regulations for the regulations, in effect?

This is what Howett said:

The regulations were announced but if you read the regulations, there is a proper process that should be followed and our understanding is that that hasn’t been done.

Article 1.1 of the 2009 F1 Sporting Regulations says:

All changes to the Formula One Technical and/or Sporting Regulations will be made in accordance with the procedures set out in Appendix 5.

and Apendix 5 states:

1. Changes to the Technical Regulations will be proposed by the Technical Working Group (TWG) consisting of one senior technical representative from each team and chaired by a representative of the FIA.

2. Changes to the Sporting Regulations will be proposed by the Sporting Working Group (SWG) consisting of one senior representative from each team and chaired by a representative of the FIA.

3. Decisions in the TWG and SWG will be taken by a simple majority vote. The FIA representative will not vote unless the teams’ representatives are equally divided, in which case he will exercise a casting vote.

I’m not really sure what this means.  Are the regulations valid for one year (and one year only) or do they carry on until a new set of rules replaces them?

If it is the case that there are “The Rules” which apply from their date of effect then it looks like the FIA cannot just arbitrarily decide to change them without consulting the teams.  In fact it looks like all changes to the rules must come from either the TWG or the SWG.

Maybe I’m missing something.  You can read the full regulations here, and if anyone can give me a definitive answer I’d love to hear it.

I’m starting to like the idea of a budget cap with increased technical freedom but the teams are always saying that one of the best ways to reduce costs is to stop messing with the rules.

The Spanish Grand Prix has a reputation for being a bit processional.  Although the Circuit de Catalunya is one of the most technical circuits on the calendar, all the teams test there so the drivers know it inside out and the race engineers know just how to set their car up.

This year, however, was anything but processional.  Thanks to a big incident on the first lap, the safety-car was deployed for only the fifth time in the race’s eighteen year history and the combination of KERS and new aerodynamics allowed for a bit more overtaking.

In the f1buzz prediction game, most people correctly picked Button to win or at least a Brawn GP podium but Correa’s last-minute change of heart netted him a huge 23 points to jump up to third place in the standings.

To make things a bit more interesting, I’ve decided to award prizes to the first three places in the prediction game (my scores won’t be included.)  First prize is a 1:43 scale Minichamps replica of the winning car/driver.  Second and third will each receive a copy of the 2009 Formula One Season Review DVD.

The next Grand Prix is Monaco in two weeks time, and I’ll be there!

Image: Brawn GP

In an unusually eventful Spanish Grand Prix, Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello continued the domination of Brawn GP with another 1-2 finish.

Despite starting from the second row of the grid, Barrichello had a great start and passed both Sebastian Vettel and Jenson Button to take the lead into the first corner.  Meanwhile, Nico Rosberg squeezed Jarno Trulli off the track causing the Italian to lose control and plough into the Force India of Adrian Sutil.  As carbon fibre scattered across the track, the two Toro Rossos had a coming together and by the end of the first lap the safety-car was out and all four drivers had retired.

When the safety-car came in, Fernando Alonso performed a spectular KERS-powered overtaking move on Mark Webber, only for the Australian to take the place back with an equally spectacular lunge up the inside.  Webber went on to finish third, ahead of team mate Sebastien Vettel who for most of the race couldn’t get past the KERS-powered Ferrari of Felipe Massa.

Vettel:

I was stuck behind him [Massa] for almost all of the race.  He was impossible to pass, he did a very good job with no mistakes.  It’s obviously disappointing as my car was quick today, but I couldn’t finish on the podium.

Massa eventually slipped back to 6th after a refuelling problem left him with one lap less fuel than he needed to finish the race, forcing him to slow down to conserve fuel:

We had a problem with the [refuelling] machine.  But I don’t know if the problem was human or the machine.  We need to analyse what was the problem.

It was very frustrating. You fight the whole race and then you have to back off.  I was already saving fuel in the last run, but it was not enough, so I had to really back off and let Vettel go.  I lost a position to Fernando and almost to Nick, so it was quite frustrating.

Jenson Button has now won four out of five Grands Prix and both Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa seem to have written off challenging for the Championship this year.  Massa said:

We need to be realistic. After five races they won four. Even if we improve massively and we are three or four tenths in front of them they will still score points. So forget it.

Hamilton was clearly not happy with his car, telling the BBC after the race:

It’s just a shame they haven’t given me a car to defend the championship with.  The car is that bad.  I’m driving the socks off it.  There’s just no hope.

2009 Spanish Grand Prix Race Results

Image: Getty

The proposed 2010 F1 Sporting Regulations will ban refuelling during the race.  This means that next year we will see a return to ‘proper’ qualifying where all cars run as light as possible to go as fast as possible.

As it stands now, those cars that make it through to the final qualifying session must use the fuel they qualified with while the rest of the field may refuel before the race.

In previous years this meant you could never be sure if a fast qualifying time was genuine or whether they were showboating with a light fuel load.  However, since the FIA started publishing the car weights after qualifying we can determine the relative performance of the top ten grid slots.

Below is a graph showing the actual top ten qualifying times as well as those times adjusted for the weight of fuel each car is carrying.  The graph assumes a standard lap time cost of 0.3 seconds per 10kg of fuel.

The graph shows that while Jenson Button is quick, Vettel was even quicker and Massa’s adjusted time is almost identical to Barrichello’s.

It’s going to be a battle between the Brazillians on the second row into the first corner!

2009 Spanish Grand Prix car weights

Image: Getty

Jenson Button claimed his third pole position of the year in Saturday’s qualifying for the Spanish Grand Prix.

Starting his final flying lap just seconds before the end of the session, Button set a lap time of 1:20.527, a tenth of a second faster than second place man Sebastian Vettel.

Button’s team mate, Rubens Barrichello, will start from third on the grid alongside Felipe Massa which should warm some cockles back at Maranello.

Kimi Raikkonen was driving the new ‘Superleggera’ version of the F60, which gave him 10kg more ballast weight to play with but while both the Red Cars were quick in practice an error in strategy saw Raikkonen being dropped in the first qualifying session.

In a repeat of Malaysia, Ferrari thought Kimi’s time would be enough to get him through to the second qualifying session and so decided not to send him out again.  As it turned out he was 2 tenths slower than Sebastien Buemi and will start way back on the eighth row of the grid.

Still, it does look like Ferrari have made significant improvement since Bahrain and Raikkonnen is confident the team can improve further:

We are still a bit behind, I would say, but it’s much stronger than it was before.  It’s only the first step, so we can get some more for the next races. After that, for sure we can catch them up even if it takes a little while.

I don’t know if we can tomorrow or not, but in the later races we can definitely fight for wins, podiums and good positions.

As expected, the McLarens of Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen performed poorly and only managed 14th and 18th, respectively.

2009 Spanish Grand Prix Qualifying Results

Image: Brawn GP