Flooded Friday at Silverstone

In typical British style the rain started this weekend off at Silverstone for the British Grand Prix. It didn't seem to dampen the spirits of the drivers on the run up to the event though. Most of them seem to regard Silverstone as a second home and obviously for the British drivers a home event is always a big deal. But the track itself has seen significant changes this year as well.

Photo courtesy of Force India

The pit complex has been moved into a new part of the track which has created a lot more space. The garages are now housed in the all new Silverstone wing building with its distinctive roof and the whole effect is very modern. The track has also been reshaped with a major new section being inserted between Abbey and the start of the complex at Brooklands. This section is designed to be difficult and possibly get the drivers to make some errors and increase the chances of overtaking.

The wet track and changing conditions meant that it was difficult to see any difference in performance from the hot blown diffusers. The new regulations regarding the amount of fuel that can be burnt when off throttle come into force from this race onward. This should see some effect on most of the cars, but Red Bull are believed to have the best system and should see the biggest change. That's debatable though thanks to some last minute changes to the ruling. Due to reliability reasons some concessions have been made to the rules and its now even more unclear if any difference at all will be noticeable.

There was a lot of sliding about from many of the drivers, but it was left up to Kamui Kobayashi to have a big accident. He ran wide coming out of Woodcote and in typical fashion refused to lift off until the car span. It turned side on as it hit the grass and nearly rolled before sliding into the barriers and causing some pretty major damage. Nico Rosberg had a good try at outdoing the Japanese driver as he locked the rear under braking for Copse. The car tried to swap ends on him three times but he saved it and ran off the track before continuing round the track for another go.

Most of the running was carried out in the morning session thanks to a rain shower making the track far wetter just before free practice 2. Fastest time of the morning was taken by Mark Webber. Felipe Massa was fastest in the afternoon session but was 3.3 seconds behind the Australian's morning run. Not much was learned by anybody after that but the weather does look set to improve throughout the weekend.

I've given myself an almost impossible task of making predictions from a Friday that had no proper running at all, so this is purely based on gut instinct and hope! Ferrari have been the closest challengers to Red Bull in recent races. With a little pace taken by the engine changes the blue cars may be vulnerable here. Home advantage is with McLaren as well which will hopefully make for a very close fight for pole. I'm going for Alonso to finally beat Vettel in qualifying. Hopefully a double DRS zone, and not much dry tyre running until the race, will mean that the main event will be totally unpredictable. I'm hoping that Jenson will keep his head and be able to make his way to the top step again. Vettel is never far away though so I'll put him second and Alonso third. I get the feeling that Hamilton's aggression may get the better of him again and lead to another race for him to forget. I'm also thinking that Paul di Resta can pull out all the stops and get himself back into the points if he gets a little luck, so keep an eye out for him too.

Let me know if you think I'm talking rubbish, I'd love to hear your version of the top three!

Rule Changes, Rule Changes and Changes to the Rules

The FIA have finally decided to implement the long discussed ban on blown diffusers from the British Grand Prix onwards. But of course, that on its own would be too easy, so an there is an extra change to the rules (effective immediately) which bans any change in engine mapping between qualifying and the race. Just to add a little more entertainment it has also been decided to postpone the major engine regulation changes to make Formula 1 greener, from 2013 to 2014.

The ban on hot blown diffusers has been talked about for a little while now and the FIA have finally got round to making a ruling on it. From Silverstone the teams must change their engine mapping so that when the throttle is closed no more than 10% of the maximum fuel flow is allowed into the engine. Some of the teams have been using a system where the fuel flow is kept high but the ignition is retarded so much that the fuel burns in the exhaust. This allows hot gas to exit the exhaust and create more downforce under the car. Now that this is to be restricted, we are left to wonder which cars will be most affected by the change. Its widely believed that Red Bull will see the biggest hit but nothing is certain until the British Grand Prix.

The teams have also been issued another ruling which will take effect this coming weekend in Valencia. Once qualifying is finished there are to be no changes to the engine mapping until the race is underway. Previously it was not regarded as a breach of Parc Fermé rules to plug in a laptop and make alterations to the ECU settings. This allowed the cars to use a far more aggressive mapping during qualifying, and then change the setting down for the race in order to stop the floor and exhaust from overheating. Again Red Bull are thought to be the biggest loser in this change. Their cars never quite seem to have the domination in the race that they show on Saturday.

It should be interesting to see if this has any noticeable effect during the European Grand Prix. Theoretically it is possible to change the engine mapping during a pit stop. But due to the time required, no-one seems to believe that it will happen, which means that the other cars may be a little closer to Vettel than normal. Some are unhappy that these changes weren't left until the end of the season but it does seem to slow down another (presumably) expensive line of research and may even help to close up the championship race. Which is never going to be a bad thing!

Finally the major engine changes that were to be introduced in 2013. It was believed that the FIA had secured agreement for a change to 4 cylinder turbo-charged engines to be introduced in 2013 but now, after a meeting with all the teams a new agreement has been reached. And this time that means that everyone agrees. This will see Formula 1 moving to 1.6 litre V6 turbo-charged engines instead of the current 3.5 litre V8. There will also be a reduction in fuel flow along with a rev limit reduction from 18,000 to 12,000 rpm which should see fuel usage drop by up to 35%. These changes should see the current power output of around 750bhp stay roughly the same. KERS will also be beefed up to twice its current output.

These changes are intended to make the sport greener, but how green can a sport like motor racing really be? These are cars that have no purpose other than moving one man around and around in a circle as fast as possible. Not going anywhere as quick as you can is, by its very nature, a waste of fuel and energy. It is hoped however that the turbo chargers and energy recovery systems may boost the use of the same  technologies on road cars, which can only be a good thing.

In my opinion, the only real way to make F1 greener would be to limit the total amount of fuel used per race and drop that amount season by season. The teams would be allowed to use whatever other sources of energy they can (KERS, solar power, Mr. Fusion etc.) to make up the shortfall and increase the efficiency. Then we might see a technical battle worth watching and it might have a greater impact on the rest of the road-going world.