In extracts from article today on The Daily Telegraph website by Tom Cary, he argues that there may be discontent in both McLaren & Red Bull camps about the use of fuel during the race in Turkey. He also questions the veracity of Button's statements over target lap times.
Will this lead to more rucuus amongst the top runners in Canada as that too has a very quick lap pace?
1. Was Button given a specific target lap time by the pitwall or not?
It seems to me that this crucial question remains unanswered and yet it is holds the key to understanding the frostiness between Button and Hamilton at the finish.
To explain, with the race pace in Turkey much faster than anticipated, the four frontrunners were all eating up their fuel at a much higher rate of consumption than was comfortable for the engineers on the pitwall. For that reason they were all at varying times given instructions to “save fuel”.
In the case of the Red Bull pair, this involved de-tuning Webber’s engine a few laps earlier than Vettel’s, which the team claim was behind the German’s extra speed when he made his move on lap 40. In the case of Lewis and Jenson, it involved the setting of target lap times for both men. Or at least that is what McLaren’s chief engineer Tim Goss told me in the immediate aftermath.
“They were both given identical instructions to conserve fuel,” Goss said quite categorically. “We were running quite an aggressive fuel strategy to get good pace early in the race. We gave both drivers identical target lap times. And as you can see from the evidence Jenson managed to close on Lewis.”
If their target lap times were identical, I asked, why did one catch the other? Was someone was ignoring their instructions? “You could look at the target times yourself,” Goss replied. “We instructed them over the radio to target 1:31 lap times.”
As it happens, they both ran under 1:31 pretty consistently around those crucial laps in the buld-up to their skirmish on lap 48, but Button was dipping further under, twice taking big chunks out of Hamilton. Hamilton clearly felt a bit stunned at Button’s attempt to pass him given the fact they had both been told to conserve fuel and set identical target times – which is akin to an order not to race. So it was fascinating was hearing their differing interpretation of the team’s instructions afterwards.
Hamilton: “They asked me to save fuel but it’s difficult to know how much you have to save. They set a lap time target for me and I tried to stick to that. The target was definitely a bit too slow and all of a sudden Jenson was right up on my tail.”
Button: “They were telling me to save fuel too but they didn’t put a lap time on it – just said you have got to save a bit of fuel.”
So is Button telling the truth or is he trying to dig himself out of a conflict with Hamilton by claiming the directions from the team were a bit vague? Intriguing.
2. If Button had made his move on Hamilton stick, would they have continued racing?
The fact that Lewis was able to slipstream Button down the home straight and re-pass the world champion through Turn One prevented a serious fallout in the aftermath that might have rivalled Red Bull’s. But if Hamilton had not been able to reclaim first position immediately, would that have been it? McLaren’s pitwall were by now becoming very concerned at the rate of fuel consumption – which they described as “critical” – and they were imploring both drivers to turn down their engines. But try telling Hamilton, a born racer and a seriously competitive animal, that he is not allowed to fight for a win that he thought he had already wrapped up. One or both of them might have run out of fuel. Which leads me to my next question…
3. If Vettel and Webber had not crashed into one another, would both McLarens and both Red Bulls have reached the finish line?
With just two seconds separating all four frontrunners for much of the race, the pace was frightening. There has been some interesting analysis done in the aftermath of Turkey looking at how aggressive race strategists are becoming with the amount of fuel they put in the cars at the start. Autosport’s Mark Hughes wrote: “Whereas teams were typically filling their cars with about 165kg in Australia, it was more like 155kg at Turkey. That is 145kg for the actual race and a spare 10kg for warming the engine, driving to the grid, the formation lap and slowing down lap. That 10kg difference since Australia represents about 0.33 seconds per lap at Istanbul – and so it is easy to understand why McLaren in particular would be motivated into minimising the amount of fuel it put in.”
With the race pace absolutely flat-out for longer than anyone could have predicted, that precious fuel was being consumed quicker than anticipated. Had the Red Bulls not collided, it would have continued. The question therefore remains: who would would have backed off first? Who had the most fuel left? It may be that Webber would have come fourth by the end had Vettel got past him, with both McLarens also seemingly on Vettel’s pace. Or maybe he would have kept pushing and run out of gas a lap from the end? Maybe they all would? Now we will never know but this issue looks like being a critical determining factor for the rest of the season.
telegraph.co.uk, today
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