Multi-21

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Multi-21 is a phrase which will go down in history as the moment when Vettel established himself as a fast and ruthless racing driver who doesn't stop at anything to win. Multi-21 refers to the command given to both the Red Bull drivers toward the closing stages of the 2013 Malaysian F1 Grand Prix, which orders both drivers to hold position, and cruise to the chequered flag. Webber was leading Vettel to a Red Bull 1-2, when Multi-21 was issued. Webber turned down his engine, and started preserving his tyres, and Vettel too was expected to do the same. Vettel however, had plans of his own.

Post race reaction.

He attacked Webber, and after a fierce battle over the first sector, he pulled out ahead of Webber. The drivers went wheel to wheel in what could be described as street racing fashion. It's a miracle that they didn't collide. Vettel later claimed he ignored the call and was sorry for what happened. Flimsy excuse. I expect more from a man who just pulled the rug from under his team-mate. He then continued to apologize for his actions, which I thought was very funny. He is clearly not sorry for what he did, and he doesn't need to be. He's 25, and he has won 3 world championships. He is already one of the Formula 1 greats. He doesn't need to explain his actions to his team-mate, who hasn't been anywhere near as successful. Vettel has joined the ranks of Michael Schumacher, and Ayrton Senna, and neither of them would settle for anything less than a win. Mark should've known Vettel well enough by now to know that he isn't a chubby teenager anymore.

Awkward podium ceremony

They won't see eye to eye for a while now

Red Bull were worried for obvious reasons. First being that they might just run into each other, and lose valuable championship points. Second being that while battling for the lead, they might destroy the tyres and then struggle to complete the race, and lose championship points. Now that the situation turned out favourably, Red Bull won't see the need to waste time on it any more. Vettel will not be penalized, or reprimanded even. Helmut Marko will ensure driver number one status to Vettel.

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Formula 1 Malaysia 2013

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This was a messy race. With the wet track at the start, and rapidly changing conditions, it was a slightly random result. There wasn't too much drama at this race, and it was a boring race to watch. With the faster degrading Pirelli tyres, pit stops decide the outcome of the race, and there is less of wheel to wheel battle.

The only wheel to wheel battle
we saw was that of Vettel and Webber for the lead of the race. Against team orders to hold position, Vettel attacked Webber, in a affair which will now be called "Multi 21-gate". Multi 21 refers to the order given to Vettel to hold position. Hamilton and Rosberg too fought it out for 3rd place, and it didn't end well. Hamilton ended up using too much fuel, and in the closing stages of the race he was coasting in 3rd. Rosberg meanwhile was 4th, and right behind Hamilton. Rosberg was also told to hold position, and after a lengthy debate on the radio, he complied.This meant that no one on the podium was happy. It was pretty tense. Team orders had decided the result, and this not only ruins the race for the fans, but also for the team-mates of the drivers who had benefitted. There will be a tense atmosphere at Red Bull and Mercedes for days to come.

Lotus had a terrible race, with Grosjean finishing ahead of Raikkonen in 6th and 7th respectively. Raikkonen had a nasty fight with Hulkenberg of Sauber, with the two touching. Hulkenberg barely escaping a penalty, finished 8th. Perez finished 9th for McLaren, while Jenson Button retired while en route to a podium finish. Both the Force India's retired on safety grounds after a problem with the wheel nuts. Williams had a horrid weekend, with Maldonado retiring due to a KERS issue. But Valteri Bottas hasn't showed any of the prodigious pace that was seen last year in the free practice sessions. But the car could be at fault.

Jules Bianchi is the best driver on the grid. He drove to the chequered flag in 13th, while his team-mate finished 16th. He was superb. Now Ferrari will probably snap him up next year to replace Massa. He's quicker than any of the rookies, or even the more established drivers. World Champion material. If he had been driving the Force India, he would've been a threat to any of the front running teams for sure.

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Kimi Raikkonen to Red Bull for 2014?

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Mark Webber is due to be replaced in 2014, and so far, none of the drivers at Red Bull's sister team Torro Rosso have impressed. Red Bull would probably prefer to promote António Félix da Costa to the team, or even Jules Bianchi, or Davide Valsecchi. So till they believe the drivers have achieved some level of maturity, they might sign up Kimi Raikkonen for a single year at Red Bull for 2014. This is subject to the fact that Kimi might not continue in Formula 1 in 2014. Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel have a great relationship on, and off the track, so a move might be possible.

Kimi Raikkonen at Red Bull next year?
Image by Sutton Images

But there's one factor that makes Lotus a very good team for Raikkonen to thrive at. Lotus doesn't make Kimi do any PR work, and they don't involve in him team politics either. By shielding him away from the media, and PR work, Lotus can get the best out of Raikkonen, as the 2012 standing show quite clearly. 2012 was probably Kimi's best ever season in Formula 1. Kimi enjoys the privileges he receives at Lotus, and so there isn't much of an incentive to join Red Bull. Kimi prefers to enjoy his racing, rather than be outright successful, so there doesn't seem to be much of a case to join Red Bull. But if Kimi wants to win a championship, then he can do so with Red Bull. Red Bull has the budget, and the resource to do so, and Kimi might be tempted to sacrifice some of his PR freedom at Lotus to win a championship. There's no guarantee that either Red Bull, or Kimi want this move, but who knows what could happen next year.


UPDATE: As it turns out, I wasn't wrong after all. Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz said: "Kimi is cool and fast and always a candidate."So Raikkonen could spend his final year in Formula 1 with Red Bull, reunited with Adrian Newey from his McLaren days. Although it wasn't an entirely a successful relationship, their last year together in 2005 was a very good one. We saw Raikkonen wallop the competition with an extremely unreliable car. Now both men have gotten better over the years, and we could see ultimate dominance once again in 2014?

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Formula 1 Melbourne 2013

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Kimi Raikkonen won a race that could probably the most exciting and coincidental on in years to come. He qualified on P7, and then using a 2-stop strategy, he cruised to a win. This also tells us how the cars stack up in terms of one lap speed and race pace.

@Sutton Images

Melbourne 2013 and Abu Dhabi in 2012 were uncannily similar. In both race, Raikkonen on P1, Alonso on P2, and Vettel on P3. In both races, Webber qualified P2, and had a bad start. Another interesting fact is
that all the podium finishers were in sitting in the first row on Thursday's press conference. Coincidence? I think so.

The qualifying of the pace of the cars couldn't really be analysed in Australia because of the rainy conditions, which meant that no one was really pushing, and many made mistakes. Raikkonen, for instance wasn't happy with himself after qualifying 7th. He believed that if he had pushed slightly harder and not gone slightly out of shape at the last corner, he could've qualified on the second row. But Red Bull were quick as usual, and the Mercedes duo were fast as well. Vettel was 0.4 seconds faster than his team mate, and 0.6 seconds faster than Lewis Hamilton who qualified third.

The qualifying results,

Pos	No	Driver	Team	Q1	Q2	Q3	Laps
1	1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Racing-Renault	1:44.657	1:36.745	1:27.407	27
2	2	Mark Webber	Red Bull Racing-Renault	1:44.472	1:36.524	1:27.827	26
3	10	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1:45.456	1:36.625	1:28.087	29
4	4	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1:44.635	1:36.666	1:28.490	23
5	3	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1:43.850	1:36.691	1:28.493	26
6	9	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:43.380	1:36.194	1:28.523	28
7	7	Kimi Räikkönen	Lotus-Renault	1:45.545	1:37.517	1:28.738	27
8	8	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	1:44.284	1:37.641	1:29.013	25
9	14	Paul di Resta	Force India-Mercedes	1:45.601	1:36.901	1:29.305	23
10	5	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1:44.688	1:36.644	1:30.357	24
11	11	Nico Hulkenberg	Sauber-Ferrari	1:45.930	1:38.067		19
12	15	Adrian Sutil	Force India-Mercedes	1:47.330	1:38.134		19
13	18	Jean-Eric Vergne	STR-Ferrari	1:44.871	1:38.778		19
14	19	Daniel Ricciardo	STR-Ferrari	1:46.450	1:39.042		20
15	6	Sergio Perez	McLaren-Mercedes	1:44.300	1:39.900		18
16	17	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Renault	1:47.328	1:40.290		19
17	16	Pastor Maldonado	Williams-Renault	1:47.614			11
18	12	Esteban Gutierrez	Sauber-Ferrari	1:47.776			10
19	22	Jules Bianchi	Marussia-Cosworth	1:48.147			11
20	23	Max Chilton	Marussia-Cosworth	1:48.909			11
21	21	Giedo van der Garde	Caterham-Renault	1:49.519			11
22	20	Charles Pic	Caterham-Renault	1:50.626

The biggest shock was, watching the McLarens struggle. It's a ride height problem, so I expect them to be in the top 5 by China. Jenson Button made some good decisions in qualifying, so it wasn't a driver problem, and tyres benefit his driving style. The new faster degrading Pirellis also complement Kimi's driving style. Both Kimi and Jenson are kind to their tyres, and can use them very efficiently. They had problems with the 2012 tyres as they couldn't get them in their working temperature range due to their gentle driving style.

One race day, the track was dry, so the race pace of the cars was quite easy to figure out.

Red Bull doesn't have the race pace to match its qualifying prowess, or is it that Vettel isn't as good a driver as the others? He couldn't get past Adrian Sutil in a Force India on older tyres even though he was on fresher ones.

Mercedes is quick, but its not kind to its tyres, especially when Lewis Hamilton is at the wheel, and he is definitely not the smoothest driver around. Quick, but not kind to his tyres.

Ferrari has a good car. Nice to its tyres, and fast as well. Alonso knows how to get the best out of the car. Alonso was simply mega in Australia. He was smiling as well. He knows he can win the championship this year.

McLaren. No one has a clue why they are so off the pace. They might switch to the older 2012 spec car if the new car doesn't deliver. Jenson Button is furious. Although he might not show it, he definitely isn't a man who seems happy.

Lotus has the best car on the grid, its very very quick, and very kind to its tyres. Although Romain didn't impress by finishing 10th, I think he just had a bad day. Both Raikkonen, and Grosjean can extract the best out of the car. Raikkonen was the only driver who was comfortable pushing with a 2-stop strategy. He said he plenty to spare, and he simply wasn't pushing the car too hard. Kimi Raikkonen never lies, and it seems like the Lotus is the quickest car on in Kimi's hands on race day. Qualifying still seems to be an issue though. Kimi set the fastest lap of the race in the last stages of the race.

Force India was another surprise. It was very quick, especially in Sutil's hands. Although he wore down his super softs in the ending stages of the race when he went wheel to wheel with Hamilton in what could've been a very personal battle. They aren't the best of friends.

Sauber didn't put on a representative show as Hulkenberg didn't start the race due to a fuel line issue. Esteban, a rookie didn't really impress. So it's still to be seen how they stack up

Williams had a disappointing weekend, with Maldonado claiming the car was undriveable. Well he would, he if he got outqualified by his rookie teammate Bottas. Still, the car looks really slow.

Torro Rosso didn't impress much, but Verge put on a good show to finish 12th.

Caterham has the slowest car, and the drivers simply couldn't get anything out of it. Charles Pic didn't even qualify due to the 107% rule. An absolute horror show.

Marussia had a brilliant weekend, with Jules Bianchi impressing everyone in the paddock.

The final race standings,

Pos	No	Driver	Team	Laps	Time/Retired	Grid	Pts
1	7	Kimi Räikkönen	Lotus-Renault	58	1:30:03.225	7	25
2	3	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	58	+12.4 secs	5	18
3	1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Racing-Renault	58	+22.3 secs	1	15
4	4	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	58	+33.5 secs	4	12
5	10	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	58	+45.5 secs	3	10
6	2	Mark Webber	Red Bull Racing-Renault	58	+46.8 secs	2	8
7	15	Adrian Sutil	Force India-Mercedes	58	+65.0 secs	12	6
8	14	Paul di Resta	Force India-Mercedes	58	+68.4 secs	9	4
9	5	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	58	+81.6 secs	10	2
10	8	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	58	+82.7 secs	8	1
11	6	Sergio Perez	McLaren-Mercedes	58	+83.3 secs	15
12	18	Jean-Eric Vergne	STR-Ferrari	58	+83.8 secs	13
13	12	Esteban Gutierrez	Sauber-Ferrari	57	+1 Lap	18
14	17	Valtteri Bottas	Williams-Renault	57	+1 Lap	16
15	22	Jules Bianchi	Marussia-Cosworth	57	+1 Lap	19
16	20	Charles Pic	Caterham-Renault	56	+2 Laps	22
17	23	Max Chilton	Marussia-Cosworth	56	+2 Laps	20
18	21	Giedo van der Garde	Caterham-Renault	56	+2 Laps	21
Ret	19	Daniel Ricciardo	STR-Ferrari	39	Exhaust	14
Ret	9	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	26	Electrical	6
Ret	16	Pastor Maldonado	Williams-Renault	24	Spin	17
Ret	11	Nico Hulkenberg	Sauber-Ferrari	0	Fuel System	11

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Formula 1 2013 Barcelona Test Summary

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This was a very interesting test session. There is absolutely nothing conclusive that can be derived from the test apart from the fact that the top teams are still fast, and the slow teams are still slow.

@Sutton Images

Here are the pointers, as usual.

• Marussia replaced Luiz Razia with Jules Bianchi as Luiz Razia's sponsors didn't pay up. Jules Bianchi is about a second faster than Max Chilton, so this will not be a fun year for the englishman.
• Caterham did nothing interesting, apart from proving James Allison right by removing their illegal exhaust system.
• Torro Rosso, again nothing eventful. It's got average pace. Reliable.
• Force India confirmed Adrain Sutil as their second driver, hence Jules Bianchi went to Marussia. Smart move, as they get to keep Mercedes engine, and McLaren technical support. Bulletproof car, no issues, fast as well.
• Sauber has a fast car, but their reliability wasn't impressive as they suffered small technical glitches during race simulations. Esteban racked up the highest mileage of any driver.
• Williams has a very good car as well, and Bottas thinks they will challenge the front-runners. It's a bit optimistic, but with a Finn in the cockpit, anything can happen.
• Ferrari also has a fast car, the only glitch being that the front wheel fell off once. Ferrari claim it's no biggie. Oh well.
• Lotus has a good car, but concentrated on getting their rear wing stalling device working properly. Kimi had the least running of any driver, with gearbox issues, and food poisoning. He wasn't complaining though. They did a lot of sandbagging. It's a quick car, but their real strength lies in race distance pace, which was impressive. Romain looks a different man. He's much more mature. He will have a good year by the looks of it. 
• McLaren was hard to judge, as they took a lot of time to make setup changes. They're the only team to have a completely new car. Others have simply evolved their 2012 designs. It's definitely very quick, one of the fastest. Reliable as well. They claim to have some trouble understanding the tyres. They said that many times, repeatedly. Something fishy.
• Mercedes set the fastest time of the test, but they did it on a low fuel run, so it's hard to compare with the other teams. Their race simulation timings weren't that impressive though. Very quick in wet conditions though.
• Red Bull rewrote the rules of sandbagging at this test. It's by far the quickest car, and with the most downforce. Good race distance pace as well. But they deliberately hid the cars true pace, and would constantly try to hide their car from photographers. Vettel was frustrated by the lack of low fuel runs, but the team was adamant about hiding their true potential.

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Formula 1 Jerez Test Roundup

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Formula 1 started 2013 with the first test in Jerez. With limited testing, every testing session is vitally important, and teams have to make use of every test opportunity they can get. Although it is impossible to judge how the teams have improved over the winter in a test, everyone still tries to make some sense of the lap times. Ferrari set the fastest lap time on soft tyres in Jerez, and Red Bull set the fastest time on the hards. This is the only important fact of the whole test session. Ferrari has recovered, and their car is  not a catastrophic disaster as it was last year, and Red Bull is still very fast.

Romain Grosjean in the Lotus

Jerez has an extremely abrasive track surface, so the long runs on a heavy fuel load also do not have relevance whatsoever. The soft tyres barely last for 5-6 laps. So tyre data collection was corrupted somewhat. The other headline facts of the test are,

• Marussia, under technical director Pat Symonds now has KERS and the Coanda exhaust system.
• Caterham is trying to wing this year, and is going to divert all its resources to 2014. They probably want to simply finish in the points this year and keep ahead of Marussia.
• Torro Rosso looks quick, and this improvement is due to their new technical director James Key. Also, the Torro Rosso is called STR8, funnily enough. Torro Rosso might switch to Renault engines in 2014 so that they can use Red Bull mechanicals in the future.
• Sauber has made their smaller sidepods work, and hasn't had any cooling issues. Smaller sidepods mean less drag, so Sauber has had to package their internals very well. Yet. The real test is Barcelona, where the cars will really be driven in anger. But Sauber looks fast as well, and with Nico Hulkenberg at the wheel, they will challenge for podiums and wins.
• Williams ran their 2012 car, so no one knows how fast their 2013 car is. But Valtteri Bottas, another Kimi Raikkonen, had his first taste of how the team works in race simulations.
• Force India looks strong as well, and they have yet to confirm their second driver. It's definitely Jules Bianchi.
• Mercedes had bad time at Jerez. Rosberg had an electrical problem on the first day, and within 15 laps, the Merc was on fire. They had to fix a fundamental electrical design problem, and missed the entire first day of running. The second day, Hamilton binned the car at the fastest part of the track as his rear brakes failed on his 16th lap. Hamilton managed to slow down the car slightly by locking up his fronts, but still smashed the front wing and nose after crossing the gravel trap. And so another day wasted. Meanwhile in the pits, everyone at McLaren were rolling on the floor and laughing. But no one noticed them, as everyone else in the pit lane was also laughing quite a lot. Mercedes recovered on the third and fourth day of the test, clocking on an average of 145 laps each day. Thats a lot compared to other teams who barely did a 100 or so laps. Mercedes also realized that when Hamilton drove hard, the car took quite a beating. When he drove into the pits after along stint, the brakes were smoking, the engine was complaining, and so on. 
• Ferrari has a good car, and Massa and Pedro de la Rosa drove it in Jerez. Interestingly Alonso did not opt for the Jerez test. As Massa completed lap after lap of aero test, engine test, and other such tests, he could not work on setup. When Alonso drives the car in Barcelona, the cars will be ready to use and Alonso can start work on setup right away, and won't have to do the boring work of checking all the systems and collecting data. Jerez is not a track that has similar characteristics to any of those on the calendar, so it's not ideal to setup a car, or even train on. So Alonso has cleverly opted to only run at Barcelona
• Lotus, under technical director James Allison also has a very fast car. Romain and Kimi, both seemed happy with it. Although they didn't run their passive DRS in Jerez, the car was relatively reliable as well. All teams will bring their final updates and new parts in Barcelona, so Barcelona will be a real test to gauge the speed of the cars.
• McLaren has a very fast car, and Jenson set the most important lap time of the test. He set a very fast lap time on a relatively green track, on the first day on hard tyres. So the McLaren is quick as it was last year.
• Red Bull was running different array of tests throughout the session, and so neither Vettel nor Webber pushed the car hard. But they are definitely quick, and more importantly, very consistent. Their longer runs were the most consistent of any team. So they remain favourites.

Only at Barcelona will we know how fast the cars actually are, and how they have coped with the new faster wearing Pirelli tyres.

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Formula 1 2013 Season Predictions

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Lotus E21

2013 will be one the most competitive years in the history of Formula 1, no question about it. The best part is that 6 or 7 teams will be fighting for podiums, and perhaps even wins. What makes 2013 also unique is that it will be an end of an era, the V8 era, forever. With 2014 switching back to Turbo V6's, and bigger electrical energy recovery systems, 2013 will be a tricky year. All teams need to direct a majority of their resources toward 2014, to ensure that they remain competitive. So most of the updates and development of the car will take place quite rapidly towards the beginning of the year, and will tail off midway, and most teams will shift almost all resources to develop the 2014 car.


The 2014 car is so different from the previous cars that the team have to design the cars from scratch. The cars will bear almost no family resemblance to the current cars. It is a huge change. So 2013, with the newPirelli tyres which promises more tyre wear and faster lap times make this one the most challenging seasons in Formula 1 history. Changing the regulations dramatically might actually ruin the racing and we might see only the top teams dominate. The resources required for 2014 are too much for smaller teams to handle. As a result, Timo Glock was fired so that Marussia could get a pay driver just to survive. So only the bigger teams will be competitive in 2013 and in 2014 as well, as they can afford to develop both cars at the same time. I don't think this massive change is a good idea, as it will ruin the competitive racing we've seen lately. If the FIA had proceeded stepwise, they could've have made it work, but then again, the FIA had to do something to justify Formula 1 in current climate of Global Warming, and with various conference being held around the world to save the environment.

McLaren MP4 28

The 2013 season will be a difficult season to predict. Caterham and Marussia will barely have an impact on the proceedings of the race, and are simply trying to survive 2013 for a competitive car in 2014. Sauber and Williams might try to score a few points this year so that they get sponsorship and prize money to help develop the 2014 car, so I expect them to be very competitive this year. Torro Rosso will continue to be average this season, and will finish just ahead of Caterham and Marussia in the contractors standings. They will serve as training program for future Red Bull drivers, and Jean Eric Vergne will probably get Mark Webber's seat in 2014. Force India might surprise everyone and be challenging for podiums this year with Paul Di Resta committed to put in a good performance to impress the bigger teams and will have a good year. Mercedes will have an average year as well, but with Lewis Hamilton committed to prove to everyone that he made a right choice, they might just win a few races, and a handful of podiums.

Force India at Silverstone

Lotus will be a very competitive team. The have a lot of potential. James Allison's car and with a fast and consistent Raikkonen along with Grosjean who is looking to prove his worth adds up to a team which will probably finish in the top 3, with Raikkonen in the mix for the drivers championship. The problem Lotus faces is that, in this hyper competitive top 4 teams of McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull, they cannot make a single mistake. Red Bull, and McLaren will have the fastest cars from the word go, and Ferrari will be up there as well, with Fernando Alonso as motivated and consistently quick as ever. It will be brutal in the fight for wins between the top 4 teams, and the championship will be won by the team which keeps developing till the very end. It will be very very exciting to see what happens and the fans will have fun.

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