Conclusions from the 2014 Bahrain GP
F1 silences the critics, Hamilton comes of new age with a new way of winning, Perez gives Hulkenberg a midfield lesson, and Big Ron is back...
Tuesday 8 April 2014 11:32, UK
In the lonely defence of Pastor Maldonado
So Pastor Maldonado made a clear and obvious mistake. That much is indisputable. But go careful with those demands for an instant race ban. It's argument which, once the subjectivism of antipathy towards a driver with a big temper and an even bigger wallet, and the very natural reaction that Something Must Be Done after Esteban Gutierrez was spent spiralling airborne has been removed, doesn't stand up to scrutiny. First and foremost, mistakes happen, even bad and unnecessary ones, and if Maldonado's misjudgement was worthy of an instant suspension then so, too, for instance, would Rosberg's thoughtless swerve into the path of Sergio Perez in Practice One. And once F1 starts to dish out race suspensions - the F1 equivalent of a red card - with regularity then it's inevitable races will soon be littered with the yellow card equivalent of drive-throughs. We want less interference from officialdom and the stewards, not far more. Nor can a race suspension for Maldonado be justifiably advocated on the basis that Daniel Ricciardo suffered a ten-place grid penalty for an infringement already twice punished, or that the Lotus driver's mistake put the Sauber rear over front; for the former, them the rules and, for the latter, that's the urgent concern the governing body ought to be investigating this week. Maldonado can't be punished just because his infringement revealed an apparent safety flaw in the new car designs. No, the only justifiable reason for banning Maldonado is that he has form - and plenty of it. But that's precisely why the totting-up process was introduced at the start of the year. If Maldonado continues to be a serial offender - and he almost certainly will - then he'll get his just desserts in due time. Whilst we may not instinctively like it, let F1's justice take its fair, if slow, course. Big Ron is back
If you've not seen Ron Dennis' withering denouncement of F1's ridiculous 'Ratnering' - as it must be called after Pat Symonds' equally-eloquent denouncement of the sport's current self-loathing - then don't prolong the mistake a moment longer. It's a tour de force in reasoned, trenchant argument. There is, of course, absolutely no reason to link the quality of a team's off-track public pronouncements with an expectation of better times ahead on the tarmac, but, even still, you can't help but feel that McLaren will, like their boss, be back in power again soon. The contrasting middle management of Hulkenberg and Perez
Too frequently anonymous but occasionally sensationally brilliant, Sergio Perez will never be a seven-out-of-ten driver. When driving for a top team, as we saw last year, the bouts of anonymity are anathema to retention. But for a midfield outfit, as Sauber and now Force India can testify, frequent anonymity is a small burden to accept in return for the occasional race-long flash of brilliance. Especially when the results are priceless: Sunday's breakthrough was Force India's first podium score since 2009 while Perez's hat-trick in 2012 still accounts for three of Sauber's four top-
So Pastor Maldonado made a clear and obvious mistake. That much is indisputable. But go careful with those demands for an instant race ban. It's argument which, once the subjectivism of antipathy towards a driver with a big temper and an even bigger wallet, and the very natural reaction that Something Must Be Done after Esteban Gutierrez was spent spiralling airborne has been removed, doesn't stand up to scrutiny. First and foremost, mistakes happen, even bad and unnecessary ones, and if Maldonado's misjudgement was worthy of an instant suspension then so, too, for instance, would Rosberg's thoughtless swerve into the path of Sergio Perez in Practice One. And once F1 starts to dish out race suspensions - the F1 equivalent of a red card - with regularity then it's inevitable races will soon be littered with the yellow card equivalent of drive-throughs. We want less interference from officialdom and the stewards, not far more. Nor can a race suspension for Maldonado be justifiably advocated on the basis that Daniel Ricciardo suffered a ten-place grid penalty for an infringement already twice punished, or that the Lotus driver's mistake put the Sauber rear over front; for the former, them the rules and, for the latter, that's the urgent concern the governing body ought to be investigating this week. Maldonado can't be punished just because his infringement revealed an apparent safety flaw in the new car designs. No, the only justifiable reason for banning Maldonado is that he has form - and plenty of it. But that's precisely why the totting-up process was introduced at the start of the year. If Maldonado continues to be a serial offender - and he almost certainly will - then he'll get his just desserts in due time. Whilst we may not instinctively like it, let F1's justice take its fair, if slow, course. Big Ron is back
If you've not seen Ron Dennis' withering denouncement of F1's ridiculous 'Ratnering' - as it must be called after Pat Symonds' equally-eloquent denouncement of the sport's current self-loathing - then don't prolong the mistake a moment longer. It's a tour de force in reasoned, trenchant argument. There is, of course, absolutely no reason to link the quality of a team's off-track public pronouncements with an expectation of better times ahead on the tarmac, but, even still, you can't help but feel that McLaren will, like their boss, be back in power again soon. The contrasting middle management of Hulkenberg and Perez
Too frequently anonymous but occasionally sensationally brilliant, Sergio Perez will never be a seven-out-of-ten driver. When driving for a top team, as we saw last year, the bouts of anonymity are anathema to retention. But for a midfield outfit, as Sauber and now Force India can testify, frequent anonymity is a small burden to accept in return for the occasional race-long flash of brilliance. Especially when the results are priceless: Sunday's breakthrough was Force India's first podium score since 2009 while Perez's hat-trick in 2012 still accounts for three of Sauber's four top-
