Difficult questions for Sebastian Vettel as F1 grapples with awkward Pirelli dilemma

Team orders - fans simply don't like them.

Formula One itself has a dilemma. The Pirelli tyres are giving us great races with uncertainty all round until the race strategy begins to take final shape. It's not elegant to see large chunks of rubber flailing off the tyres and then accumulating in a carpet of doom just off the racing line, but this adds yet another challenge to the drivers. One-stop races can be dull, and Pirelli could easily have taken the hard compound to Melbourne and we would watch gripless F1 cars running on durable tyres. In my view, races which are borderline two to three stops are the most intriguing. Four stoppers such as we had in Malaysia, albeit partly to get shot of the initial intermediates, mean that the pit-lane looks busier than the pit-straight. Single stop races can be dull. Many drivers don't like the situation and I can understand that. It adds significant variables to their performances which are outside of their control, and Webber summed it up by saying they are driving at only eight-tenths simply to protect the tyres. A team boss said to me "I want to see who's the fastest not who's best at nursing tyres." This goes for the feeder series of GP2 too. The drivers all agree that the races are much less physical now that it's not a series of qualifying stints interrupted by brief pit stops. It's the perennial conflict, is F1 the purest engineering and sporting challenge, or is it a show to entertain the public? The first can't take place without the second, otherwise there's no money. Pirelli points out that it's been the same at the beginning of the past two seasons, and soon enough the teams and drivers get on top of the challenge and the pit stops will reduce. Whether this is the best Pirelli can actually do, or whether they are genuinely happy to spice up the racing, at least we have them. Other manufacturers left because they couldn't justify the cost or because in an exclusive supplier scenario they only ever got mentioned when there was a puncture or tyre delamination. And who might replace Pirelli? Do Michelin or Bridgestone may have the resource and stomach to return? Have Dunlop or Hankook, for example, got the resource and budget to supply a competitive F1 tyre out of the box. Set up and tyre management is clearly a knife edge issue, as witnessed by the relatively ordinary pace of Lotus and Ferrari through the race compared with just seven days before in Oz. It's very unusual to see Fernando Alonso making a clumsy mistake too, and quite why the team didn't call him in before his front wing buckled is a mystery. The interviews on the podium were interesting and mildly challenging. After rushing through the tunnel from the commentary box, changing my shirt and radio transmitter for talkback to the race TV director, and throwing on a jacket, I had two minutes to think about how to handle the situation. The podium is a celebratory moment of great achievement, not a piercing press conference as such. However, I had to ask the pertinent questions to the three very distracted drivers. It was pretty tense, but ultimately fine, and at least I was happy to be there. Happy Easter. Talk to you from China. MB