Formula One World Championship

I know, what the hell. Good news for Magnussen but bummed for Fernando.

There may be no winners and losers at pre-season Formula 1 testing, but it is a time when the true pace of a new batch of shiny cars is finally revealed. It is when the world gets its first clues as to who will be genuine contenders.



Six years ago, F1 testing revealed something that would turn the sport on its head, as a privateer took on the world's most expensive sport in the middle of the credit crunch - and won.
This is the story of how the Brawn team won F1's drivers' and constructors' world championships in 2009.

Hopeless Honda and an Interlagos inferno

The seeds for this modern F1 fairytale were sewn amidst another milestone in British motorsport history.
As Lewis Hamilton became the first British F1 world champion since 1996 in the most dramatic fashion - on the penultimate corner of the final lap of the final race of the 2008 season - Jenson Button was watching his F1 career and Honda's megabucks attempts at glory go up in flames.
In that 2008 season, British driver Button finished in the points just once as the Honda proved woefully off the pace, despite one of the highest investment budgets in F1, finishing second-last in the constructors' title race.


Button (top left) takes a moment to congratulate Hamilton while his Honda spouts flames in foreground.

Perhaps no one image summed up how far off the rails Button's career had strayed than that which followed the season-ending Brazilian Grand Prix.

Button had just finished 13th when the rear end of his Honda caught alight as he sat in a queue of cars parked in the Interlagos pit-lane entry.

By chance, the car behind was that of the elated Hamilton, who barely looked up as Button's flaming Honda rolled backwards and hit the nose of his McLaren.

Button, meanwhile, gave the RA108's barbecued posterior a withering look, paused to congratulate Hamilton, and then went off to beckon over a fire marshal.

At that moment, Button's dreams of ever becoming world champion himself seemed to mix and drift away with the smoke.

Honda pull down the shutters

But even Button would not have realised how grim the situation was. Within weeks of the season ending, Honda announced it was pulling out of F1 due to the global financial crisis.

Button's time in F1 - along with that of veteran team-mate Rubens Barrichello - looked as good as over. Two drivers whose careers had promised so much would exit the sport without a world title between them.

Yet this was not just about two men. Seven hundred jobs were threatened by Honda's decision and new buyers were urgently sought. But in the midst of a financial downturn, that would not be easy.

Three months passed before salvation arrived in the form of Ross Brawn, the former Ferrari technical director and mastermind of all seven of Michael Schumacher's world titles, who had taken the helm of the Honda F1 team in late 2007, albeit too late to avert their dismal 2008 campaign.

Just weeks before the opening race of the 2009 season in Australia, it was announced Brawn was heading up a management buy-out from Honda, taking a controlling 54% stake, renaming the team Brawn GP, retaining drivers Button and Barrichello, and crucially keeping hundreds of employees at Brackley in work.

Despite the many jobs saved by Brawn's buy-out, there was blood-letting to be done and around 270 roles were lost as a result of Honda withdrawing their £200m-a-year investment.

And while Brawn's success trackside was proven, buying out a whole team was another task entirely - a little like a Premier League benefactor walking out on a club to leave the manager to run it himself.

That said, Honda had invested heavily in what would become the 2009 car, and also provided some money to Brawn to ease the transition from factory to privateer team.


Button's 2009 Australian GP win was just his second in 154 races to that point

Phoenix from the flames

It was a bold move, but Brawn had reason to be quietly confident as he embarked on a new life as a privateer.
For what would have been Honda's 2009 challenger promised to be devastatingly fast, according to computer simulations over the winter - the design team successfully interpreting sweeping new aerodynamic rules set to be introduced for that season.

Speaking to BBC Sport's chief F1 writer Andrew Benson in 2009, a Brawn source said: "Weeks before the car got on the track we were told by one of the aero guys that we would be two seconds quicker [a lap] than anyone else."

Although the extent of the car's advantage was exaggerated, they were, quite clearly, ahead of the rest.

Even with a few inches crudely lopped off the back of the Brawn chassis to accommodate a Mercedes engine rather than one from Honda, the BGP001 was comfortably the class of the field at the end of its first four days of testing in Barcelona, and another strong showing followed at the final pre-season test in Jerez.

The promise was there, and at the season-opener in Australia at the end of March the Brawn car duly delivered, Button heading Barrichello in both qualifying and the race. It was the first of six wins in seven races for Button at the start of the season.

For all their early-season success, Brawn lacked resources to develop their car at the same rate as their rivals.


Jenson Button battled through the field to take fifth place and the title at the 2009 Brazilian GP

The team's controversial 'double diffuser' aerodynamic exhaust system - which played a big part in the team's initial performance advantage - was eventually declared legal by governing body the FIA after an objection by the other teams.

But Red Bull - who were warming up for a period of dominance that would see them win every drivers' and constructors' title between 2010 and 2014 - were reeling in the Brawns with their significant spending on development.

Brazil 2009 - what a difference a year makes

The car that by now enjoyed nothing like the advantage it had in Melbourne seven months earlier was being soundly beaten by Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber in the Red Bulls.

It may have been a fairytale year, but the end could not come soon enough.

Just as with Hamilton 12 months earlier, Button clinched the title with a fifth-placed finish in the Brazilian Grand Prix, under a dramatic hail of flashbulbs and a disbelieving paddock - the Briton hoisted on to the shoulders of his jubilant mechanics.

One of the victims of the rain-hit qualifying session, Button lined up in 14th place, but drove tenaciously to secure the result he needed to land the title, picking his way through the field in uncharacteristically gung-ho style.

Come the final reckoning, Button was champion by 11 points and Brawn were the constructors' champions - a unique feat for a team in its debut and, as it would turn out, only season.

The Brawn legacy

For all the success during 2009, Ross Brawn's best move was to sell up to Mercedes. Without significant investment, the team would never have been able to continue at the top of the sport.


This sign celebrating Brawn's title triumphs was in place for only a few weeks before Mercedes' takeover

Brawn stayed at the team under the guise of Mercedes until 2013, when a management reshuffle saw him depart Brackley, and the sport - for now.

Having dominated 2014, Mercedes are emerging from testing this year with the same sort of advantage that Brawn did six years ago - looking like they will be very hard to beat at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix on 15 March.

Despite the winning habit, and the significant financial clout that comes with a company such as Mercedes, many in that team will look back with huge fondness - and not a little incredulity - to the time when a title-winning car emerged from the smouldering remains of Honda's failed F1 dream.

Haha glad you guys enjoyed it! Took a lot of effort copying and pasting from the BBC to make it look all pretty

Phil, which role did you apply for? It's pretty cool to see that the big teams are recruiting regularly, I was having a nose at a few jobs last year. Last one I saw was a personal carer for Frank Williams 24/7. Needless to say I didn't apply!

Do you think it's just blown out of proportion? I mean people will say some pretty odd things after a concussion, but did he actually suffer from amnesia? Either way, it would explain a lot as to why he was kept in hospital for so long.

Man, I really hope he is alright...

Fernando Alonso: Unanswered questions over F1 crash
By: Andrew Benson

The crash that has forced Fernando Alonso to miss the season-opening Australian Grand Prix has still not been fully explained, and that void of knowledge has been filled ever since by a number of theories of various degrees of credibility.

McLaren initially described it as a "normal testing accident", but it very quickly became apparent that it was anything but.

Although head injuries are always a possibility in any F1 crash, it is certainly not normal for a driver of Alonso's calibre to crash on a pre-season test day, spend three nights in hospital and then miss the first race.

But just because Alonso had a nasty accident and is missing a race does not necessarily mean there is anything further amiss. So what do we know - and not know - about Alonso's crash?

What do we know about the accident?

There have been conflicting reports about the speed of Alonso's accident, which happened on the exit of Turn Three at the Circuit De Barcelona-Catalunya. But some facts are known.

This writer has seen the GPS and lap-time data of both the lap on which the Spaniard crashed and the lap before. The computer telemetry from the car, which contains all the data, including braking and steering inputs, has not been released by McLaren.

The GPS and lap time data shows both the line Alonso was on, and the speed he was doing at the time. It reveals the following:

Alonso's previous lap was the fastest he had done that day. On the subsequent lap, the lap of the crash, he brakes deeper into Turn One, and is wider out of it.

That dictates a different line through the kink of Turn Two, from where he takes a wider entry - a potentially faster line - into Turn Three, the racing line of which sees the drivers run right out at the edge of the track throughout the second part of the corner.

Alonso enters Turn Three noticeably faster than on the previous lap. It is hard to be absolutely sure of the difference, but it is in the region of 5-7km/h. In other words, a significant amount.

He maintains his wider line throughout - so will have had more of the car on the kerb than on the previous lap. He loses control at a speed of about 215km/h (134mph), give or take a km/h or so.

This is about the speed a driver would be expected to be travelling at this point. Some sources say it is a bit slow, but we know it was faster than the previous lap, which was his fastest so far, and we also know he was slightly off line.

McLaren say Alonso lost control because his outside rear wheel was on the Astroturf on the outside of the corner, and also that strong gusting winds - about which the driver had been complaining all morning - may well have played a part.
The car then decelerates heavily throughout the period before Alonso hits the wall.

Engineers who have seen the GPS data say the deceleration trace is almost identical to that for braking into Turn Four, a hairpin.

Alonso did not run at a specific lower speed for any significant amount of time. There is a small blip in the data where the deceleration levels out, but this is for only between 0.2-0.3 secs.

It is impossible to be sure from the GPS data at what speed the car was travelling when it hit the wall.

McLaren chairman Ron Dennis says: "There were two G readings, when his head hit one side of the cockpit and then the other side of the cockpit."

What don't we know about the crash?

Some aspects of the accident are unexplained, most importantly why Alonso lost control of the car, and what happened between that moment and him hitting the wall.

McLaren have put this down to him being off line and the windy conditions.

There has been speculation Alonso had some kind of medical condition in the car that caused him to lose control.
But he was certainly conscious, because he was braking at maximum force - equivalent to 75kg or more - and changing gear.

The braking appears to rule out an electric shock or another kind of seizure that would have restricted his movement. And the doctors are said by McLaren to have found no evidence of any such thing.

However, Dennis has said Alonso's team-mate Jenson Button has seen the telemetry from the car and found it unusual.
"Every single input into the car was normal," Dennis said. "Changing down gear, steering, braking… there is nothing we can see that is abnormal.

"Jenson looked at the figures and said: 'Well, that's a bit strange.' But what's a bit strange when you are wrestling with the car being destabilised by the wind?

"Yes, we can guess. Yes, we can surmise and speculate. But the only thing we can comment on is the actual facts as we know them."

One highly-experienced engineer said: "Nothing I can see in the GPS data makes me think it was anything other than him going too fast and losing control."

However, the engineer added it was "a bit odd" that Alonso would suddenly slam the brakes on in this manner if he had lost control.

It remains unexplained why a driver who was conscious and braking could not also avoid the car hitting the wall.

However, Lotus driver Pastor Maldonado had an accident during qualifying at last year's Spanish Grand Prix that was very similar to what McLaren say happened to Alonso.


Pastor Maldonado had a similar accident to Alonso's during qualifying at the 2014 Spanish Grand Prix

What do we know about the aftermath?

Alonso was briefly unconscious when rescue crews reached him. The length of this period has not been verified, but Dennis says it was "seconds".

Alonso was in a confused state when he regained consciousness, to the extent that he did not know he was a Formula 1 driver or why he was in the car.

He was sedated at the circuit medical centre and flown quickly to hospital in Barcelona. He was diagnosed with concussion but all brain and body scans showed no indication of any abnormalities.

There was no evidence of electric shock, of epilepsy or any kind of seizure, or any other medical condition that might have explained why he had lost control of a car that McLaren say suffered no problems.

He did not remember the accident and it took some time for his awareness of who he was and important aspects of his life to return.

This is called retrograde amnesia and is not abnormal in patients who have had a severe concussion.

Dennis held a news conference on the Thursday after the accident at which he said Alonso was "not even concussed". This was inaccurate and a mistake.

Alonso was kept in hospital for three nights - at the upper limits of what would be expected for a concussion, doctors say - and then returned with his parents to the family home in Oviedo in northern Spain.

On Thursday, 27 February - five days after the accident - Alonso released a video on YouTube in which he said he was "completely fine" and was looking forward to being in the car again "very soon".

Five days later, on Tuesday this week, McLaren announced that Alonso would not race in Australia on medical advice to avoid the risk of 'second impact syndrome'.

This is where a second concussion before the first is healed can have serious consequences, potentially including raised pressure inside the skull, prolonged coma and even death.

Alonso said shortly afterwards on Twitter that he was sad to miss the first race but "understood the recommendations".
"A second impact in less than 21 days 'NO'," he wrote.

Gary Hartstein, F1's chief medical officer from 2005-12, says this decision reflects the maturity of both Alonso and F1 when it comes to head injuries.

"He knows about concussion," Hartstein told BBC Sport. "He takes it seriously. We've been at this subject for so long."

Hartstein added: "So far, I don't find it odd. The timescale in terms of missing Australia is at the upper limit of everything, but it is consistent with a three-day stay in hospital. Therefore it makes sense for it to be a bit longer to get back in the car."


Alonso suffered with retrograde amnesia in the days after his crash

What do we not know about Alonso's recovery?

Alonso and McLaren both say he intends to drive in the second race of the season in Malaysia. But Alonso will still need clearance from his own doctors, and he will also be subject to tests by the FIA's medical team in Malaysia.

He will have a full neurological assessment, including what is known as an Impact test to evaluate recovery from concussion. Only if he passes these will the doctors say he is fit to race.

Beyond that, there are relatively few hard and fast rules when it comes to the handling of concussion injuries in F1 - partly because recovery varies so much from patient to patient.

Hartstein says: "A second episode of concussion within a month of the first is a month out - that's the only definitive test we use. And if they have a concussion on a race weekend, they will not be driving again that weekend."

As for the unfounded theories about what may or may not have happened to Alonso to cause the accident, standard practice in F1 is to base decisions on the results of medical tests.

In other words, it is not normal practice for the doctors to concern themselves with the causes of the accident.

However, if the FIA's investigation into the accident throws up any issues of concern, they have the right to ask further questions, including to demand the driver's full medical records.


Alonso posted a picture of himself in hospital on social media

Could a medical issue have caused the crash?

Apart from one exception, Hartstein says the chances are "extremely slim" of the crash being caused by Alonso suffering some form of cerebral or physiological abnormality.

Of the possibilities that could cause a driver to act in such a way in the car, he says: "Hypoglycemia? He's never had it in his life before, so why would it happen on his second flying lap?

"Epilepsy? The fact he was braking is inconsistent with that.

"Some kind of loss of vision that meant he could not see but could still use his limbs? A bit of a stretch; really hard to imagine."

That, Hartstein says, leaves arrhythmia - an irregular heart rate - which can be tested for. And something called carotid sinus hypersensitivity.

This is where pressure on a certain point of the carotid artery - the main one in the neck supplying the brain - causes an extreme drop in heart rate and therefore blood pressure, and can cause someone to pass out.

This, Hartstein says, is "surprisingly common", and certainly could not be ruled out for someone going through a high-G corner wearing an F1 driver's head and neck support.

If Alonso is found to be suffering from this, he would need a pace-maker to be fitted.

But, again, you cannot brake at maximum force in an F1 car if you are unconscious.

What if Alonso misses more races?

While missing Australia is understandable in the circumstances as they have been made public so far, any further absences would not be, Hartstein says.

"That would be head-scratching time, for sure," he says. "It would be highly unusual - so much so that they'd have to say something (about what was wrong). But for now concussion is the most likely and it explains everything we know at the moment."

According to Seb:

Vettel was not far behind Alonso went he went off the road and immediately after the crash some media outlets reported him as calling the incident "strange", adding the Spaniard had slowly turned right into the wall.

In the aftermath there were rumours Alonso had lost consciousness before the crash - which McLaren has categorically denied - and Vettel's comments were used in some quarters to support that theory. However, during the third and final test in Barcelona Vettel said he only saw what happened after Alonso hit the wall.

When asked if it was windy through Turn 3, Vettel said: "Yes, I think it was. I think Carlos [Sainz] had an accident [at Turn 3] where he lost the car, it was very windy on that day. I'm not sure what exactly happened.

"I was right behind but I didn't really see. I was a bit too late so I couldn't see how the accident started, I only saw the last bit where he hit the wall. But what happened before I don't know, I cannot judge."

Vettel said the FIA as not approached him to ask him about what he saw, though he did visit McLaren immediately after the crash to give the team his version of events.

"I went to McLaren straight away after it happened and basically told them what I saw and asked Fernando if he was at OK - at that stage we didn't know. It's still shocking to know he still needs to recover but the most important thing right now is that in general he is fine."

I thought Tony was just clearing his throat

"HOCKENHEIM!"

Some early morning goss:

Monday, 9 March

Lewis Hamilton has twice been approached by Ferrari with a view to moving for the 2016 season, but the world champion has kept his word to Mercedes boss Toto Wolff and refused to open talks with the Italian team. (Daily Mirror)

Hamilton is negotiating his own contract with Mercedes and believes the two parties are in the "final stages" of agreeing a new deal. (Daily Express)

Former world champion Damon Hill has predicted "lots of pain" for McLaren at the start of the season. (Daily Mail)

Ferrari duo Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen are the "perfect combination" of drivers, according to team boss Maurizio Arrivabene. (Autosport)

Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg tweeted a picture of a meeting with F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone and the message: "Just went to see Bernie to collect my pole trophy and the big boss already told me the result of the 2015 championship. I'm very happy with it ."

If Ken Block raced F1 cars...

Hahah.

Come on then fellas, who are you picking for Pole Position and the Win for next weekend?