This week's Grapevine brings you information fresh from the paddock on: Ferrari Getting a Roasting Sauber's Qualifying Boost

Ferrari Getting a Roasting

With so little going on in Formula One at the moment, much focus remains on the season gone by, and Ferrari are spending as much time in the spotlight off-season as they do in.

The latest broadsides from the powers that be basically point a finger of blame regarding the dropping television figures at Ferrari's feet, based on their contempt for the "sport" aspect of the business, and specifically pulling up the two controversial finishes as significant events. Apparently, they have a point.

Over the course of the season, the television figures have told a story. Ferrari's dominance is far from the first that the sport has encountered - McLaren, Benetton and Williams have all been there in the last decade. This time around, however, the manner of the dominance is being blamed for switching off the viewers in droves.

Examining the figures, there's some pretty interesting reading to be had, no matter which statistical adjustment is used to spin it. The bottom line is, the numbers are down, and in steady decline to around a twenty percent loss by the end of the season. More to the point, considering the drop-off in magazine sales - one of the best markers of the 'hardcore' fan base - the damage is far from limited to the casual observer of the sport.

It might seem a bit harsh to point the finger at Ferrari as the root of the problems in this sport, but it does at least appear to be a correlation between the drop-off in hardcore fans and the aftermath of the Austrian Grand Prix, that single event alienated a quarter of the sport's most faithful fans.

Ironically, the powers that be are not especially concerned by the loss of the hardcore fan base, as it only makes up some five percent of the overall viewing figures. The teams are more concerned: these are the people who make up the bulk of their fan-clubs, and buy considerable merchandise. Renewals have suffered, and merchandising is looking set to miss budgets for next year.

Moving on to the casual viewers, the dropping figures make a lot of sense. Through the nineties, the sport attracted ever increasing audiences, with the Schumacher-Hill, Hill-Villeneuve, then Schumacher-Hakkinen tussles appealing to an ever wider base. Alongside the on-track action, coverage has been extended and - to a large extent - improved. However, these viewers have a relatively casual interest in the sport, and are notorious for switching on only when an event captures their attention.

By the time Schumacher and Ferrari closed down the second Championship in 2001, the novelty of their success was wearing thin. New talent in the forms of Raikkonen and Montoya, mid-season mayhem with Frentzen being sacked and Alesi moving to Jordan, and some signs of Williams returning to form provided new interests, and kept the viewers coming back. For 2002, a competitive season was called for to maintain those figures, so the predictable Ferrari results simply didn't fit the bill.

None of this is really new: viewing figures have been coming out through the season, so there have been few surprises as successive numbers came in. The latest round of finger pointing brings nothing new to the table. However, what it does do, despite the negative slant, is keep the sport in the public eye, at a time when there is limited real news available. As for pointing the finger at Ferrari, specifically, it provides the ever faithful tifosi something to talk about, and makes little difference to anyone else.

Sauber's Qualifying Boost

Every year, Sauber spark at least one new rumour about something they are going to be doing with their new car that surprises the competition, and this year is no different.

Capitalising on the changes being implemented for next season, this year's rumour has Sauber looking to produce something particularly special for qualifying, which will take the concept of running qualifying components to a whole new level, and it centres around the cooling systems.

Last season, Sauber were compelled to redesign their sidepods and the back end of the car to accommodate a slightly smaller, and somewhat hotter new Ferrari engine. The impact of these changes is surprisingly high: bigger sidepods to house bigger radiators means more drag. Bigger radiators, as a result of passing more air through them, means more drag. Controlling the flow of the hot exhaust gasses means routing compromises, or effective heat shielding. All told, introducing the engine brought an overall three percent increase in drag to the Sauber, despite a year of development. It goes without saying (or Sauber would not have followed the route) that the increased power of the unit more than compensated for the higher drag!

On hearing about the new qualifying format, Adrian Newey commented: "The engine only has to do three laps and only one of those is timed - that means lower mileage and so you can take things to more of an extreme - revs are obvious but also with cooling, you might even choose to have very small or no radiators at all." The comment has made Sauber's designers think hard about what they can do with the car next year, and they believe there is a significant opportunity to be investigated, if they followed up on the reduced cooling idea in qualifying.

The Ferrari engine Sauber are running next year has a significantly reduced cooling requirement: the sidepods have apparently been restored to 2001 proportions. Much of the reason for being able to run smaller radiators is due to the increased operating temperature of the engine, and, vitally, an improvement to heat conduction within the block. This, apparently, is key to the concept of running a whole new cooling concept for a single hot lap: compressed air assisted cooling.

Ideas are being thought through at the moment, with the expensive key factor - developing a whole new chassis to run in parallel is just not economically viable. The drag benefit of a closed monocoque, and the practical aspects of running compressed air through the radiator, not to mention the FIA's response to another cylinder in the car (there's already one to drive the valves in the engine), all need to be considered, as does, vitally, the amount of testing that will be required to make this a viable proposition.

Getting this system up and running would certainly require sufficient ongoing development work, to prevent Sauber from opting to go with the FIA's proffered Friday testing plan, so there is a mid-December deadline on the decision coming out of the designer's office.

Of course, should Sauber really follow this route, and it is shown to work, there is going to be a rush of teams following suit. Then, it will be interesting to see how many have engines that don't quite have what it takes to finish the qualifying session, as they struggle to play catch up!