formula one

So Sebastian Vettel has wrapped up the driver's title and Red Bull has the constructor's title.

It seems like after the mid-season break they have become unbeatable.  From what I understand this is partly because the change of tyres back to last year's compound following the tyre-failure issues played into the design of the Red Bull, but I also think they focused on the development of this year's car where others moved on to next year's car.

There are quite a lot of big changes coming next year - the engine changes to a 1.6 litre turbo, there's a much bigger energy recovery aspect (not just the KERS), but also the front wing is much smaller, the rear wing changes, the exhaust exit point changes and the fuel capacity changes.  I'm sure there are other things, but those are pretty big already.

I think that means that the teams had to make a decision much earlier to switch all effort to next year's car, otherwise they'd end up impacting their competitiveness, and I think Red Bull left that decision until much later.  Certainly McLaren were saying they'd switched before the season was half way in, Force India haven't done anything since the mid-season and I think Mercedes switched some time ago, just to name a few.

The other aspect of course is Vettel himself.  His big advantage, I think, over the others is his flexibility and willingness to listen to what the team tell him.  If they say "do this" he tends to do it (I mean specifically in terms of how to drive the car - we all know he'll ignore team orders and his engineer is always telling him off for going for the fastest lap), where I think other drivers try to get the car tweaked to better suit them, rather than adapting to it.

The last grand prix I actually blogged about was Singapore so I thought I'd give a very quick run-through of the races:

• Korea - I've always felt Korea was an okay track and the races were okay, it's just it suffers because it's in the middle of nowhere.  This year's race was pretty good, I thought.
• Japan - Japan is usually pretty good, but this year I thought it was okay.  This might have been a bit affected by my holiday issues, so I was watching it some way out of sink.
• India - a fairly dull, pedestrian race.  This isn't one of the better newer circuits, though obviously Vettel was crowned champion, so it wasn't totally uninteresting.
• Abu Dhabi.  The beeb's highlights suggest it was better than it actually was: it was a pretty dull race, with a few interesting moments.  I mean, it's better than when it was first held as they've tweaked the circuit a bit, but it's still pretty dull.

That leaves only two races, which are another double header: Austin next weekend and then the traditional closer of Brazil.