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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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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