There Is More to Racing Than Winning and Losing

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/20/sports/autoracing/20iht-srf1drivers20.html

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Does a Formula One driver charge like a bull or calculate like a spider?

The battle for victory at the Bahrain Grand Prix this weekend may be an instinctive, blind attack by drivers to finish as high as possible. Or, given the nature of modern Formula One racing, there may be far more calculating than the thoroughbred drivers would like.

During a packed press conference in China last week, Sebastian Vettel, the reigning three-time world champion, said in no uncertain terms that he, for one, opts for the former approach.

The German driver was being grilled by reporters over his refusal to obey team orders and let his teammate hang on to victory at the previous race, the Malaysian Grand Prix. When a journalist suggested he had clearly calculated that his main rival, Fernando Alonso of Ferrari, had dropped out of the race in Malaysia and that the seven more points he would get if he moved from second to first place could secure him the title at the end of the year, Vettel corrected him.

“I didn’t care where Fernando was,” Vettel said. “I didn’t think, ‘Maximum points, maximum points.’ I thought, ‘Winning the race, winning the race.”’

“Ultimately you can say ‘stupid,’ but from my point of view, if I think about the championship and points situation too much, then I’m not ‘in the moment,”’ he added. “Ultimately, you don’t have time inside the car if you are really going for that gap that all of a sudden is there, to reflect whether it is right; is it the right amount of risk or not? If you see the gap and you are free in your mind, you go for it. If you have any doubt, you go for it and you crash, in my opinion.”

Yet, in the race that followed in Shanghai on Sunday, there were several moments in which not only Vettel but other drivers depended on their teams for deciding how aggressively they should drive. They blamed this on new Pirelli tires that are so delicate they wear out within a few laps, which means drivers have to drive at a speed that is slow enough to preserve the tires yet fast enough to maintain position.

After Lap 25, for example, Vettel led the race, while Nico Hülkenberg, in a Sauber, was 3.8 seconds behind him, and Alonso was in third, 1.4 seconds behind Hülkenberg. Alonso had just set the fastest lap, and then he passed Hülkenberg to take second place on Lap 26. A Red Bull engineer said to Vettel: “Sebastian, do not lose any time to Alonso. Do not lose any time to Alonso.”

On Lap 27, Jenson Button of McLaren had Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes less than a second behind him, but he had to make a pit stop soon.

“Do we want to fight? Do we want to fight?” Button asked his team.

“Yes. Fight,” came the reply.

A few laps from the end of the race, after Lap 51, Vettel, too, had to make a final pit stop and he dropped from second to fourth place.

“O.K., Sebastian, you’ve got to race to the finish, race to the finish,” his engineer said, hoping Vettel would catch Hamilton and finish on the podium. Despite Hamilton being 11.1 seconds ahead at that point, with only five laps remaining, Vettel raced as hard as he could, and finished just .2 seconds behind.

This would seem at odds with Vettel’s version of what guides his racing actions. Drivers and teams have been uncertain as to how hard the driver can push the new tires — and for how long. So drivers and engineers have been working extra hard to exchange information.

Some drivers have said they enjoy the new challenge, but others, whose instinct is to attack, are frustrated.

Toward the end of the race in China, Alonso could have cruised to victory, and his team told him not to push too hard, but he mostly ignored the plea.

“You always push,” he said. “In a Formula One race it’s impossible not to push, but it’s true that we had some pace, maybe, in the pocket. Not easy to know when to use it, depending on the state of the tires.”

Early in the season — the Bahrain Grand Prix is the fourth of the season’s 19 races — most drivers race less conservatively than later in the year, when they may be trying to hold onto or improve a position in the standings.

“At this point of the season, you just go for the win,” Button said. “It’s all about winning the race. You know you get 25 points, but you don’t think about 25 points at that moment in time. You think about crossing the finish line and that moment when you see the checkered flag first. It’s such a special feeling.

“Winning a Grand Prix is such a high, such a peak in adrenaline and emotions,” he added, “that’s what you aim for, not the 25 points.”

At the race in China, he and his McLaren team were among those critical of the new tires.

“I hate it when my drivers are out there and you know they are driving at nine-tenths,” said Martin Whitmarsh, McLaren’s director. “But my job and the team’s job is to maximize the opportunity of scoring points and that’s why we did it.”

Such calculations are not new. In the 1980s and early 1990s, tire and fuel strategies were as important as they are today. Alain Prost, a quadruple world champion from that era was nicknamed The Professor for his cerebral approach.

“You expect a driver to be pushing for the most he can get,” said Monisha Kaltenborn, director of the Sauber team. “And it’s a very fine line, because as a team you have a bit of a different perspective, and in many ways you have to have a wider perspective. And it’s difficult to find then the right balance between the expectation you have from the driver — and you know what he’s going for — and the wider picture that you have from your team position. Because we are a team, and the points from both drivers count.”

The biggest difficulty comes when both drivers are bringing the same number of points, racing side-by-side, and the team would prefer that they hold position. That’s what happened with Vettel and his teammate, Mark Webber, who was leading in Malaysia when the team told them both to slow down to preserve the tires and finish the race in first and second place. Webber did so, but Vettel refused, charging past a slowed-down Webber to win the race.

“Then it is this balancing,” Kaltenborn said. “To what extent do you let a driver follow this instinct, what you are pushing him for, to go for the maximum, and to what extent do you give that team order? These are very difficult situations, and I don’t think there is any recipe for it, because every situation is different.”

Drivers sometimes don’t know their position for much of a race or even until it ends.

“I didn’t know until the last 10 laps that I could be in the points,” the Toro Rosso driver Jean-Éric Vergne said of the Malaysian Grand Prix, when he finished 10th and scored a point. “In the head, you have to be strong enough. I always try to have a positive approach during the race even if you have a bad start, and generally it has always paid off for me.”

Vettel is nonetheless only too aware of how pushing for any available points can help in the end.

“I started dead last from the pit lane in Abu Dhabi, then I damaged my front wing and I was dead last again,” he said, referring to the third-to-last race of last season. “I was fourth at the end of the race, with Jenson to pass.”

“You could say: ‘O.K., he came from last, there are only two places ahead, what’s the point? There’s only a few points, he’s leading the championship, relax, take the points,’ and don’t risk the very risky maneuver I had with Jenson,” he added. “But I saw the gap, I went for it, I didn’t think twice. And I got third place, and won the championship by those three points. That’s my theory.”