chinese grand prix

Well, as mentioned yesterday, it was the Chinese grand prix this last weekend.

It was another action-packed, non-stop race. I seem to recall the Chinese is normally one of the better ones among the newer circuits, but I don't recall it being quite as intensely busy as this year.

It seems pretty sure then that this increase in stuff is as a result of all the changes that they brought in for this season. The biggest impact seems to come from the Pirelli tyres, which have been specially designed to be nice and grippy for a relatively short period of time and then to "fall off a cliff", dramatically loosing grip.

This means that if you're on a newer set of tyres you'll stand a chance of catching and overtaking your opponents. And that means two things - firstly conserving and being kind to your tyres can pay dividends and secondly that tactics such as making sure you're on the right tyres at the right time become very important.

Now the first of these could potentially lead to an element of endurance racing. We've seen that Sauber have consistently managed to do fewer pit stops and this has meant they've tended to end up being higher up the order than you might otherwise expect.

Of course you could argue this leads to less exciting racing due to less overtaking, but actually I don't mind this, because a big part of F1 has always been the tactical element. The difference now is that the tactics can be played out in lots of different ways and involve the driver and dynamic decision making.

The problem with what happened to the tactical element in recent seasons is that all the teams would run simulations and computer models and all come up with the same results. Also, because bringing in your driver slightly later than the other guy was often the way to go, it meant things were predictable. Now, if he comes in sooner than you he'll have a lot more grip and may overtake you - it's more dynamic, more interesting.

Which again comes around the first point of conserving and being kind to your tyres. This weekend showed that Lewis Hamilton was able to create an advantage for himself by saving a set of fresh tyres for the actual race instead of using them in qualifying. This didn't detract from qualifying, but it did make things more exciting in the race.

It also involves the driver in the tactics more and again adds complexity and interest. I guess a way to think about it is that there are now so many permutations and options for drivers and teams that the predictive, simulation element of the tactics becomes much more difficult and less certain - it's not necessarily going to turn out as they'd planned.

These are all good changes that have really helped. It remains to be seen whether they'll only really enhance the racing at certain tracks. Australian didn't benefit so much, so I'm guessing some other circuits won't, but they do seem to have actually had the desired impact this year.

One weird thing though is it does actually emphasise the point about aerodynamics in a weird way. The cars have become so reliant on aero-based grip that clearly a much less artificial way to affect the racing might have been to give them bigger, fatter tyres.

Increasing the mechanical grip so that aero doesn't matter as much might have been a simpler way around it. Especially since they seem to be unable to find ways to really curb the aero.