Too close to call?

The F1 2012 season is being set up as an incredible year. Not only do fans have access to more F1 coverage than ever before, the rule changes for 2012 could cause the closest season for a long time.

(c) Octane Photographic

After the dominant years of the Schumacher era in 2001, 2002 and 2004 and the more recent 2011 domination by Sebastian Vettel F1 is desperate for a closely fought battle not only at the front but also at the back of the field. 2012 could be that year and I explain why here.

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The 2012 has been like every other season, with the publishing of the FIA sporting and technical regulations outlining a number of changes to the sport. Most controversial of those new rules saw the blown diffuser banned. This means teams are on the same level when it comes to exhausts as they all have to go to the drawing board to create new exhaust and diffuser layouts to attempt to retrieve some of that lost down force. This change means that team’s with refined blown diffuser and exhausts have lost the important data they had and lost the performance advantage they gained.

Another significant feature is the front wing being lowered to improve the car’s safety in a crash situation. This has caused the controversial step that has been the talking point of F1 over the testing period. Some teams have avoided that all together while other’s have taken their own approach. The different directions each team has taken in this vital area could see them closed up.

How do we know it will be close? Well during the winter tests the gap from 1^st to last, without HRT and Marussia, at the Barcelona test’s was on average 3 seconds. This is a significant step forward compared to last year where the gap to Caterham could stretch to 4 or 5 seconds. The last test at the Circuit de Catalunya in early March showed that the times were close. On day 1 the gap from 1^st to 10^th was 2.3 seconds, on day 2 it was 2.3 seconds again, on the penultimate day the gap was 3.3 seconds to Raikkonen in 11^th but he had problems all day, meaning it was just 9 tenths to the 9^th place car. On the final day of testing it resulted in the whole field being spread by 1.3 to the person in 10^th with 11^th place finisher Sebastian Vettel being 1.6 seconds behind after problems all day.

So you can see the pre-season pace shows it could be one of the closest seasons yet. The top 4 or 5 teams will undoubtedly be Red Bull, Mclaren, Ferrari, Mercedes and Lotus but Force India, Sauber, Toro Rosso, Caterham and Williams could easily beat them on the odd occasion. It is unfortunate that HRT and Marussia were so unprepared and unluckily failed the crash tests because with them it could be a 2 horse race at the back of the field between them, not good when the Caterham team started their journey in F1 at the same time and are latched onto the midfield.

The blown diffuser banning would of helped lower funded teams like Caterham, Force India and Toro Rosso to push forward and close the gap to the bigger teams because of this clean slate they have on exhaust design. However it is true to remember the era we are at in the sport, someone will always try and avoid the rules as best they can and find those extra crucial tenths.

So despite predictions being in place, this season could create fascinating results.