GULF AIR – FORMULA ONE 2010 SEASON REVIEW
We are the proud title sponsor of the FORMULA 1™ GULF AIR
BAHRAIN GRAND PRIX. Our sponsorship of this prestigious
sporting event since 2004 has put Bahrain on the world
sporting map, increased sport tourism and turned the
country into the home of motor sport in the Middle East.
Coincidently, in 2010, both Gulf Air and F1 celebrated 60
years, making the F1 season even more exciting.
Welcome to the Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix Blog which will start by a season review of last year’s exciting Formula One season, we take a look back at how the top five teams of 2010 and how they have performed during the season, in this first issue we review Red Bull Racing’s season and how it cumulated into its magical win at the end of the championship.
The 2010 (and 60th) FIA Formula One World Championship has been regarded by many experts in the sport as one of the greatest seasons in recent memory.
The season opener in Sakhir a the Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix laid out the scene for a close championship battle between five drivers from three different teams down to the wire at the penal-time race at Abu Dhabi, a first in the sport’s history books.
All of the championship contenders were tested to their limits throughout the gruelling 19-race calendar as Alonso crashed his Ferrari during qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix while Vettel and Webber got involved in their infamous crash in the Turkish Grand Prix. Some teams made pit-stop errors and others’ had botched strategies that back-fired when it mattered the most, we can’t miss mentioning Ferrari’s strategy that cost Alonso a podium place in Abu Dhabi, and subsequently his third championship.
Throughout the thrilling rollercoaster season, the lead swung astonishingly 7 times between four drivers; Fernando Alonso of Ferrari, Mark Webber of Red Bull, and the McLaren champion-duo Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button (the defending 2009 World Champion), only for the driver who never took the lead during the season to grab it at the very final round!
Sebastian Vettel’s incredible drives on the last two races earned him two wins, therefore closing the gap to the leader then, Fernando Alonso, taking the title and becoming the youngest ever Formula One World Champion at the age of 23 years and 134 days, a special addition to his impressive records in Formula One as the youngest point-scorer, race-lap-leader, and race winner in the history of the sport.
Away from the race track, and unlike the previous three seasons, the 2010 season saw no controversial headlines within the sport, the only political issue was related to the team-orders controversy caused Ferrari team in which it publicly instructed Felipe Massa to let Fernando Alonso pass him and win the race in the final laps of German Grand Prix, breaching the team-orders ban which, ironically, was triggered by Ferrari themselves in the 2002 season when Rubens Barrichello was ordered, again in front of TV audiences, to let Michael Schumacher through to win the race. The FIA has decided to remove the rule for the 2011 season, citing the difficulty to determine whether a team has breached the rule or not, and the team’s strategic decision whether a driver must let his team-mate, who has a better shot the title.
The 2010 season saw the rise of Red Bull as a formidable force within the sport, disturbing the order of the established teams such as Ferrari, Renault, and McLaren who dominated the last decade, as well as the establishment of a new force to be recognized with in the coming years in the shape of Mercedes GP, a manufacturer team that has come to the field after splitting from McLaren and acquiring 2009 champions Brawn GP.
Red Bull Racing - 9 wins - 20 Podiums - 15 Pole Positions
Red Bull started the season from where they left in the previous season, where they appeared to be the only team capable of stopping Brawn GP from running away with the title, thanks to genius aerodynamics designer Adrian Newy who, after spending a couple of years building the team from scratch, started to see the fruits of his hard work in Red Bull’s 2009 challenger. Some experts say that if it wasn’t for the double diffuser design that Brawn GP pioneered through a loophole in the regulations, Red Bull might have been the ones who were running away with the title with their perfectly designed single-diffuser car.
When the 2010 campaign started, followers of the sport knew that all the teams will start integrating the double-diffuser design into their 2010 cars, and therefore, closing the gap in performance advantage to Brawn GP (now became Mercedes GP) and making it redundant. Once again Red Bull proved they have the best aerodynamics expert in town, their car started to top all the qualifying sheets, and proved to be ultra fast and suitable for all different types of circuits on the calendar.
But there was an Achilles’ heel to Red Bull’s starling car, its reliability proved to be a headache to the team in the first two races, where Vettel losing his car, due to engine and brake failures, during the Bahraini and Australian Grand Prix while he was in the lead from pole. Before the media was going to stamp the car as “fast-but-fragile”, the team ironed out all of these problems, and the results started to show up by the third race with Vettel’s win in Malaysia.
Now, with reliability problems well behind them, the problem started to have problems from a different kind; drivers rivalry, both of Vettel and Webber knew they had a definite winning car under their hands, what started as team-mate competitiveness was shifted into inter-team tensions which started to show on track when they crashed into each other while they were leading the race first and second, the blames started to appear within the garage and there were media reports suggesting that Red Bull were favouring the younger Vettel. What added fuel to fire was the decision of switching some new parts from Webber’s car to Vettel’s prior to the British Grand Prix.
Nevertheless, the team stood by its motto of absolute equal treatment for both of its drivers, a policy that was questioned when Alonso, with Ferrari publicly backing him over Massa, was pulling ahead on top of the standings. This firm policy by the team, even though it appeared they were risking their championship chances, paid very well in the end with Vettel’s miraculous triumph as the drivers champion in the end, given he was behind his team mate and Alonso in the standings, two races after Red Bull secured their first ever constructers’ championship.
Red Bull proved, as a young independent team, that it could take the fight to big well established teams like Ferrari and McLaren and beat them while sticking to their sport-spirited rule; letting drivers race freely!
We are the proud title sponsor of the FORMULA 1™ GULF AIR
BAHRAIN GRAND PRIX. Our sponsorship of this prestigious
sporting event since 2004 has put Bahrain on the world
sporting map, increased sport tourism and turned the
country into the home of motor sport in the Middle East.
Coincidently, in 2010, both Gulf Air and F1 celebrated 60
years, making the F1 season even more exciting.
Welcome to the Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix Blog which will start by a season review of last year’s exciting Formula One season, we take a look back at how the top five teams of 2010 and how they have performed during the season, in this first issue we review Red Bull Racing’s season and how it cumulated into its magical win at the end of the championship.
The 2010 (and 60th) FIA Formula One World Championship has been regarded by many experts in the sport as one of the greatest seasons in recent memory.
The season opener in Sakhir a the Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix laid out the scene for a close championship battle between five drivers from three different teams down to the wire at the penal-time race at Abu Dhabi, a first in the sport’s history books.
All of the championship contenders were tested to their limits throughout the gruelling 19-race calendar as Alonso crashed his Ferrari during qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix while Vettel and Webber got involved in their infamous crash in the Turkish Grand Prix. Some teams made pit-stop errors and others’ had botched strategies that back-fired when it mattered the most, we can’t miss mentioning Ferrari’s strategy that cost Alonso a podium place in Abu Dhabi, and subsequently his third championship.
Throughout the thrilling rollercoaster season, the lead swung astonishingly 7 times between four drivers; Fernando Alonso of Ferrari, Mark Webber of Red Bull, and the McLaren champion-duo Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button (the defending 2009 World Champion), only for the driver who never took the lead during the season to grab it at the very final round!
Sebastian Vettel’s incredible drives on the last two races earned him two wins, therefore closing the gap to the leader then, Fernando Alonso, taking the title and becoming the youngest ever Formula One World Champion at the age of 23 years and 134 days, a special addition to his impressive records in Formula One as the youngest point-scorer, race-lap-leader, and race winner in the history of the sport.
Away from the race track, and unlike the previous three seasons, the 2010 season saw no controversial headlines within the sport, the only political issue was related to the team-orders controversy caused Ferrari team in which it publicly instructed Felipe Massa to let Fernando Alonso pass him and win the race in the final laps of German Grand Prix, breaching the team-orders ban which, ironically, was triggered by Ferrari themselves in the 2002 season when Rubens Barrichello was ordered, again in front of TV audiences, to let Michael Schumacher through to win the race. The FIA has decided to remove the rule for the 2011 season, citing the difficulty to determine whether a team has breached the rule or not, and the team’s strategic decision whether a driver must let his team-mate, who has a better shot the title.
The 2010 season saw the rise of Red Bull as a formidable force within the sport, disturbing the order of the established teams such as Ferrari, Renault, and McLaren who dominated the last decade, as well as the establishment of a new force to be recognized with in the coming years in the shape of Mercedes GP, a manufacturer team that has come to the field after splitting from McLaren and acquiring 2009 champions Brawn GP.
Red Bull Racing - 9 wins - 20 Podiums - 15 Pole Positions
Red Bull started the season from where they left in the previous season, where they appeared to be the only team capable of stopping Brawn GP from running away with the title, thanks to genius aerodynamics designer Adrian Newy who, after spending a couple of years building the team from scratch, started to see the fruits of his hard work in Red Bull’s 2009 challenger. Some experts say that if it wasn’t for the double diffuser design that Brawn GP pioneered through a loophole in the regulations, Red Bull might have been the ones who were running away with the title with their perfectly designed single-diffuser car.
When the 2010 campaign started, followers of the sport knew that all the teams will start integrating the double-diffuser design into their 2010 cars, and therefore, closing the gap in performance advantage to Brawn GP (now became Mercedes GP) and making it redundant. Once again Red Bull proved they have the best aerodynamics expert in town, their car started to top all the qualifying sheets, and proved to be ultra fast and suitable for all different types of circuits on the calendar.
But there was an Achilles’ heel to Red Bull’s starling car, its reliability proved to be a headache to the team in the first two races, where Vettel losing his car, due to engine and brake failures, during the Bahraini and Australian Grand Prix while he was in the lead from pole. Before the media was going to stamp the car as “fast-but-fragile”, the team ironed out all of these problems, and the results started to show up by the third race with Vettel’s win in Malaysia.
Now, with reliability problems well behind them, the problem started to have problems from a different kind; drivers rivalry, both of Vettel and Webber knew they had a definite winning car under their hands, what started as team-mate competitiveness was shifted into inter-team tensions which started to show on track when they crashed into each other while they were leading the race first and second, the blames started to appear within the garage and there were media reports suggesting that Red Bull were favouring the younger Vettel. What added fuel to fire was the decision of switching some new parts from Webber’s car to Vettel’s prior to the British Grand Prix.
Nevertheless, the team stood by its motto of absolute equal treatment for both of its drivers, a policy that was questioned when Alonso, with Ferrari publicly backing him over Massa, was pulling ahead on top of the standings. This firm policy by the team, even though it appeared they were risking their championship chances, paid very well in the end with Vettel’s miraculous triumph as the drivers champion in the end, given he was behind his team mate and Alonso in the standings, two races after Red Bull secured their first ever constructers’ championship.
Red Bull proved, as a young independent team, that it could take the fight to big well established teams like Ferrari and McLaren and beat them while sticking to their sport-spirited rule; letting drivers race freely!
0 comments:
Post a Comment