Aaron Favila/Associated Press Red Bull team mechanics perform a pit stop in preparation for the Malaysian Grand Prix, which races on Sunday. Every action down to the timing of wheel changes is measured in seconds and milliseconds.
SEPANG, Malaysia – The big concept to emerge from the Formula One paddock Friday during preparations for the Malaysian Grand Prix was certainly that of big margins and small margins. Formula One is normally said to be all about the smallest differences, the milliseconds of speed on the track, ruled by the millimeters of difference in technological settings on the cars.
On Friday morning, Mark Webber in the Red Bull set a lap time that was 1.6 seconds faster than that of his closest competitor, Lewis Hamilton in a McLaren Mercedes. That looked to be such a large margin that no one would ever catch him. As it turned out, the afternoon session proved such conclusions wrong — but there was still a large margin of difference between the top two teams and the rest.
In the afternoon, Webber again set the fastest time. But Jenson Button, in the other McLaren, was only 0.005 seconds behind him. Hamilton was third at 0.1 seconds from Webber while Sebastian Vettel, in the other Red Bull, was 0.2 from his teammate. These were small margins, but Michael Schumacher, who was fifth fastest in a Mercedes, was a whopping 1.2 seconds behind Webber.
After the session, there was talk during the FIA press conference about small margins of difference again. There were several questions about the amount of flexing that the front wing of the Red Bull does while on track and whether it is not a little bit over the regulatory limit. Publicly, the team directors present at the press conference – like Ross Brawn of Mercedes, Eric Boullier of Lotus Renault, Colin Kolles of Hispania and Monisha Kaltenborn of Sauber – would not accuse the director of the Red Bull team, Christian Horner, of going over the limit.
But the most interesting point for me was when Kaltenborn answered a question about how her two drivers were disqualified from the Australian Grand Prix two weeks ago after both scored points, but both were considered to have a rear wing that failed to fit within the regulatory dimensions.
“All it was, was a minor error,” said Kaltenborn. “We were, by a few millimeters, not in conformity with the regulation. The small mistake cost us 10 points, which is quite a lot for us.”
Just a few millimeters is what it is all about.
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