After the four week mid season break I'm back - and I can almost hear the collective groans from across the digital universe echoing through the halls of cyberspace. We left for the summer break after the manic Hungarian GP with many questions and rumours circulating throughout the paddock - the majority of those involving the future of Kimi Raikkonen and his place within the Ferrari team. Suggestions floated round the pit lane that Valtteri Bottas was on course to replace the other Finn in the red overalls. But in the past few days that story has run it's course as Ferrari have announced that they will in fact retain Raikkonen's services for another season - as they were asked for £10m to buy out Bottas' contract by Williams. A sum of money they clearly didn't feel like paying - and Valtteri's 2015 campaign hasn't been as electrifying as the previous season and is more on par with Massa, a former Ferrari resident.
The second piece of interesting news coming into the Belgian GP as this is going to be first race with the new start regulations in place. To some degree I find messing with the regulations half way through a season to be a little out of order, but the summer break was the ideal time to introduce a change. The new rules focus on the amount of electronic assistance involved in selecting clutch bite points and start procedures. Drivers will no longer be able to perform extensive bite point practice starts - the idea being that it places start procedure more in the hands of the drivers rather than the underlying software. This can only be a good thing, if done properly, because I can imagine that the top teams have already planned and strategised various loopholes to get around the regulations. For example in Hungary we saw the Mercedes drivers performing bite point checks when they pulled the cars into the parc-ferme area at the end of qualifying. The end result is that we are likely going to see a wider variety of starts on Sunday afternoon as there is a lot more variability in human judgement than in a bunch of computer code optimising the settings for the best launch down to turn one. Some, slightly more pessimistic critics have predicted a slightly destructive start, one akin to the race which saw Romain Grosjean banned for wiping out several cars in La Source.
Of course the mention of La Source can only mean one thing - the annual pilgrimage to Spa for one of the most highly anticipated races. Home of so many championship highlights and turning points.
Spa-Francorchamps
Few venues in the 2015 calendar draw the appreciation of fans and competitors alike, the hallowed ribbon of tarmac winding through the Ardennes is legendary and rightly so. It has featured on the schedule for generations and is in the top echelon of circuits the F1 parade sets up cap. Circuits like Spa and Suzuka have managed to retain some a lot of what has made them great in the face of continuous pushes for wider run off areas and less gravel. Admittedly even the grandeur of Spa has been ever so slightly compromised by the addition of tarmac escape areas in Malmedy and Pouhon. But the worst crime of all was to modify the bus stop chicane - where the pressure for circuit development proved to be just that bit too strong...
The mystical journey that is the Spa-Francorchamps layout begins at La Source - where Grosjean decided to play bowling with the field in 2012. The tight hairpin is only a short distance from the start line, so the grid doesn't have enough time to space out before the concertina of the first corner. The exit of La Source points the cars down the GT start line - plummeting down to the base of the most famous corner of the entire year. The mountainous and imposing cliff that is Eau Rouge. Over the years Eau Rouge has demolished cars for getting slightly out of line including both BAR's in one qualifying session in 1999. These days with the traction and downforce the modern cars are blessed with, that challenge is not what it once was. In the build up to the weekend Raikkonen has stated that it might not be easily full throttle as it was a few years ago. Some of the cars towards the back of the grid with lower downforce levels may have to have a confidence lift or two mid corner.
Those who rise over the crest at Radillion with all four wheels attached are then fired down the long kemmel straight between the trees. Where the rainfall can hang in the foliage when the typical Spa weather comes out to play. At the end of the Kemmel straight lies one of the most prominent overtaking spots at Les Combes - it was also the home of the 'incident' where Rosberg refused to move over for Hamilton and contact was made - triggering Toto Wolff's angry face. Les Combes flows directly in to Malmedy and the curving descent through Rivage. Each corner is exactly where you feel it should be as the flowing middle sector picks up pace. Rivage flows into Bruxelles before another sharp descent towards Pouhon. While the challenge of Eau Rouge may have been watered down by car advancement - Pouhon hasn't, the tricky downhill double apex left-hander remains one of the corners that can catch people out.
After Pouhon the track levels out on the run to the Fagnes chicane two medium speed sweeping turns unified to mark the approach to the end of the middle sector. The final part of the sector is Stavelot at the bottom of the track, it doesn't have any special characteristics but it just feels like it belongs there and that it matches the flow and rhythm of the circuit. After the second part of Stavelot the track winds back through the forest at full speed, exploiting every ounce of power on the blast back to the finish line. It is this dependence on raw power that may hamper McLaren and Renault powered teams this weekend. In the middle of this high speed sector is one of Spa's other infamous landmarks - Blanchimont - estimated to be the one corner on the entire international calendar with the highest entry speed. Despite the legacy of destruction that surrounds Blanchimont, including hospitalising Luciano Burti in 2001, it has fallen the same was as Eau Rouge. The unrelenting tide of rising downforce levels have made it easy flat - in the era of the dominant Red Bull cars, Vettel and Webber were able to drive through Blanchimont with the DRS open...
Then we come to the end of the lap, after miles of beautifully crafted race track to the disastrous eyesore that is the newer Bus Stop chicane. The bus stop has endured several modifications over the years, some of which were to accommodate changes to the pit lane entry and paddock area. But the older pre-2002 specification was always the best. It was simple, challenging and effective. What we have now is a cumbersome mass of hatred and despair, it is heresy to append such a malignant wasteland of tarmac and curbing to something as treasured as the Spa Francorchamps circuit. It is the equivalent of adding underbody neon lights and a gaudy spoiler to an E-Type Jag - but we have to live with it for the time being - until Bernie decides it is more fun to scrap Spa altogether for a rich middle-eastern oil state... Anyway the ruined chicane does mark the end of the lap so you can enjoy the rest of it once more.
The Form Guide
Well due to a reasonably tiring week involving covering 18 miles of countryside, meteor showers and lakeside hypothermia - my conventional schedule has been a little out of sync. Therefore this is being presented on Friday, rather than Thursday before any of the practice sessions have begun. But as we now have that data we can have a look at how things stand as of the conclusion of FP1.
On the whole nothing too much has changed - Mercedes still have an iron hold on the top two places, even if that didn't help them in Hungary. Manor are still languishing off the back of the field and Pastor Maldonado is in the wall, following an unfortunate line through Les Combes. However it is the set of cars in between which is more interesting, even through the times in FP1 are not really representative of true pace. Daniel Ricciardo was the Mercedes' closest challenger - which after his performance in Hungary doesn't seem too unusual, but we all (well probably just me) expected the Renault powered cars to be struggling to keep in tough with the Ferrari and Mercedes powered rivals. Yet all four of the Red Bull branded cars were inside the top ten - at the expense of supposedly faster cars.
Williams for example appear to be under-performing on where we expect them to be, as they had in Hungary - but on a power based circuit this is more of a surprise. Lotus are also quite far down the order, they do have an excuse - their reserve driver Jolyon Palmer was borrowing Grosjean's car, and Maldonado crashed his once more. Once those four cars get up to speed, the Toro Rosso's might find their grip on the top ten weaken slightly.
At the far reaches of the timesheet, we find McLaren - a second off the pace of the next car (barring Palmer, and Ericsson who's Sauber was short on power). They are only 1.3s clear of the Manors, which in a week where Honda were claiming significant upgrades to the power unit is quite the disappointment. One ray of hope for the team is that the they might have been using an older spec engine for FP1, and saving the newer one for FP2 - which might explain the deficit. Their nearest rivals have also received an engine upgrade as Ferrari have finally handed Sauber the newest version of their power unit. But the chassis has fallen so far behind in the development race, dreams of re-enacting that 5th place finish in Australia are a long, long way away. Sauber have said that upgrades are coming, but they might only be ready for Singapore.
But relative pace and grid position could all come undone on the Sunday, especially with the new start procedures and the faint but promising threat of some of that special Ardenne weather. After two great races in Britain and Hungary, lets hope Belgium can bring home the hat-trick.
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