Monday, September 24, 2012

F1 Alternate Standings: NASCAR Style (Part II)

DISCLAIMER: Part I here features the explanation of the points system and several assumptions I've utilized to make the conversion possible. If you're a bit confused and don't want to be, that's where I'd look.

In the previous post I've made on this little fantasy league idea, I've mentioned that, if F1 were to adapt the Chase system, then the points conversion would kick in after Singapore. Well, here we are after Sebastian Vettel won the 2012 Singapore Grand Prix so let's dive right back into counting.

The three races after I've done the first "NASCAR Style" post have created quite a bit of confusion for the way in which I am to continue this. First and foremost, Romain Grosjean's race ban and the one-off appearance of Jerome d'Ambrosio created a little bit of pandemonium in the standings, as, if I were to count that race as a "0" for Grosjean, he'd be at a massive disadvantage compared to everyone else, since I haven't counted DNSs as 0 points before to allow for deeper analysis of the backmarker situation. In this case, I could've done it only if I were to go back and also award "0"s to Timo Glock and Vitaly Petrov, as both missed races, as well as Pedro de la Rosa and Narain Karthikeyan, who didn't make the start for the Australian Grand Prix due to failing to meet the requirements of the 107% rule. As such, I gave Grosjean 25th place for Monza with 19 points, which is a little silly, but in the end will have little impact on the standings.

The three rounds after the torturous August break have mixed up the standings quite nicely, as it seems. Alonso is still in the lead, but, with his retirement at Spa, his lead has decreased a bit. Raikkonen went from 4th to 2nd with a string of consistent points finishes (which, as we've seen, is the most important thing for these standings). Vettel stayed in 3rd, while Webber lost a fair amount of ground. Due to the 2 DNFs, Hamilton dropped below Rosberg even, although F1 fans will attest to the fact that Lewis has done an excellent job for the three races.

In the back, Grosjean lost a lot of ground due to what essentially was 2 DNFs, while Ricciardo has noticeably moved up. In the back, everything remained virtually in place as de la Rosa finally began to build up a gap to Karthikeyan.

Funnily enough, all the people originally set to make the Chase are the ones who would end up making it in the end - Hulkenberg, despite having two unfortunate races, easily remained in 11th to grab the Wild Card spot based on most points, while Maldonado's position was never really in danger due to his race win. As such, Schumacher and Grosjean would be the most noteable drivers to miss the Chase with their inconsistency and Mercedes reliability issues at fault. Kamui Kobayashi would also be another major driver missing out in a fitting development of his less-than-fortunate season.

With the points reset for the Chase, Alonso would keep the lead due to the bonus points for his three wins, but Hamilton would be equal on points with him, only losing out due to having no second places. Button, Vettel and Webber would be contesting third due to having two wins, while Rosberg would be firmly in sixth due to his one win.
Maldonado, being a Wild Card, would not be eligible for any points for his win, but it would still put him ahead of everyone else in the standings, with the latter half of the Chase drivers at 2000 points.

For predictions, you'd be really hard-pressed to call this one, as it looks like the points lead would just go to whoever out of the top 6 would have less retirements. Alonso's win in this one doesn't look that likely, but if Ferrari have excelled at one thing so far, it has been reliability, so he might still have this in the end. Raikkonen is also a decent bet despite being eighth due to a lack of wins, since he has been very consistent with his finishes and has generally managed to avoid any trouble.

With all that wrapped up, we have a six race Chase ahead of us and it might just be harder to call this little fantasy experience than it is to call the actual thing. The next update in this is planned after the Indian Grand Prix, which will mark the halfway point of the Chase. Stay tuned.

The Young Driver Test Situation

I am no specialist when it comes to the different feeder series and other junior racing categories in the pre-F1 ladder, but even a casual onlooker could tell you there's a lot of things wrong with the way F1 teams handle the Young Driver Test in 2012. As I'm writing this, the second part of the hopefully only-three part festivity recently took place at Magny-Cours where Mercedes, Force India and Ferrari were supposed to give some car time to their hot prospects but instead were doing who-knows-what. Without further ado, let's cut to the chase - this thing is wrong and I can tell you why it's wrong and why somebody should probably fix it.

The Lineup

It is to my and, I believe, every other spectator's understanding that the Young Driver Test is supposed to show off the best upcoming talents to F1 teams so that they could later hire the driver into their programme, for a test role or even as one of their two drivers in F1. The punchline is, though, that the reality does not reflect on that little dream world of ours at all, with F1 teams either using the test opportunity to give the car to moneybags who have no business in F1 or to give some more time to the main driver of their programme. Both of those things shouldn't be happening yet it's this year that they've reached an absolute high point. Out of the six teams that have run (or are running) the Young Driver Test by now, I can point to one team and one team only that isn't completely wasting it. 

Williams - despite the fact that they're kind of sort of supposed to run the F2 champion during the YDT, the team decided to go ahead with the mid-season test at Silverstone and ran Valtteri Bottas during both days. Bottas is unquestionably talented and it's great that Williams are giving him an opportunity... that totally isn't like the other 15 opportunities they will give him this season as that's the number of FP1 sessions he's supposed to complete in 2012.

HRT - the Silverstone test might've ran for two days, but HRT figured they didn't need that much, instead of opting to run on Thursday only. Who did they run? Ma Qing Ha, who would later go on to become the first Chinese driver in a official timed F1 session and whose single-seater record suggests he's about as deserving on F1 seat as I am. 

Marussia - the only team with a semblance of sense and decency when it came to that question ran Max Chilton and Rio Haryanto. Both men are talented, have been impressive in GP2 this year (Chilton in particular) and run for Marussia's squad in that series. Good job.

Force India - the team ran Jules Bianchi, Luiz Razia and Rodolfo Gonzalez in the YDT. I can't question the involvement of Razia, as his GP2 campaign has been stellar so far. But Bianchi and Gonzalez just shouldn't be there - one because he already does a ton of FP sessions for the team and has run in YDTs before and the other because his 10 points in 4 seasons of GP2 don't exactly make him worthy of that. And I'm pretty sure he's already a Caterham tester. Just what in the hell, guys.

Mercedes - the German factory squad ran their usual test driver Sam Bird but also decided to give Brendon Hartley a shot because they felt real generous. Bird is long overdue an F1 seat, but he has previous F1 car experience and has no business in a test like this. Hartley, meanwhile, has raced all of four GP2 races this year, instead mostly focusing on prototypes... and also has previous F1 car experience. 

Ferrari - the Italian team ran Davide Rigon and... Jules Bianchi. Again. Rigon has been listed as a Ferrari test driver for a while but this is his first proper shot at driving the car, so that's kinda okay, except for the fact that the guy hasn't done single-seaters since 2011 and has been mostly doing endurance racing. 

The Dates

Previously, the YDT took place right when it should - i.e. at the end of a season with F1 almost over and most of the junior series wrapped up. It made lots of sense, too - F1 would be looking for people to hire for next year with teams having all the results of this year available so that they can make a reasoned choice. Plus, a YDT test would be used as a reward, like for Robert Wickens and Mirko Bortolotti last year (both winners of a junior series that got a day of testing for their success).

Well, it's now looking like that's a thing of the past, since the F1 season isn't exactly over and neither are the junior categories yet we've already had 6 out of 12 F1 teams run their YDTs. This honestly does a great deal to undermine the initial point of the whole event as F1 teams, very clearly instead of looking at what goes on in the world of junior series racing, just lend the YDT opportunity to the biggest bidder or run their usual test driver. They don't care about who achieves what down the ladder and they're making it pretty damn obvious.

The most irritating thing, however, is the impact this has on the "series win" reward idea that generally was pretty good for drivers who lacked funds in the past. Last year the reward for winning the Formula 2 title was testing the Williams at the YDT - but I'm not quite sure how that can continue this year, seeing how Williams already did their tests and the Formula 2 season isn't even over. You still have to see what comes out of this, but it's upsetting at best.

The Testing

Here's another reason why running the YDT midseason should just be outright forbidden - because teams use it as a testing opportunity and pretty much every team lacks those in F1. It makes sense, I can't blame them for it, but it gets ridiculous when the main thing discussed about the Mercedes YDT is the upgrades they're gonna test, not the actual "young driver" they're running. Again, there's clear shoddy organization and a conflict of interests here, but doesn't mean it's not seemingly really easy to fix.

The season so far in junior single-seater categories has gotten us to notice some very talented guys who most of us would probably like to get a shot at F1. The names of James Calado and Felipe Nasr popped up in GP2 with both of them mounting great rookie campaigns and putting up more than a fight against the regulars. The four people in contention for the GP3 title produced a wonderful show with some really mature and cool-headed racing. Robin Frijns has been setting the world alight in WSR, regularly beating Bianchi and Bird and, at the moment of writing, being the clear title favorite. Yet, with 6 teams out of 12 having gotten their YDT out of the way, none of them seemingly got an invite. And THAT is pretty shameful for the sport and an indication that something isn't quite working right at the moment. It's up to the FIA to figure out what that is.

Sunday, August 12, 2012

F1 Alternate Standings: NASCAR Style

DISCLAIMER: Idea quite shamelessly stolen from BackmarkersF1's "Alternate WDC". However, this is much more ambitious and pointless. So there.

"If you and I are running in an election and I make the rules, no matter how popular you are, I'll screw you every time". That's a rough approximation of what our professor of American politics told us during the first lesson. While it concerned elections and other forms of political decision-making, you can surely extrapolate that to any other form of competition, such as sports.
As a professional sport that operates mostly through championships and continuous events, autosport is hugely rule-dependent. While to the casual observer, that rule dependency is mostly seen in steward decisions and technical regulations, the sporting regulations side of it all also plays a huge part. Since racing is rarely a standalone event, the different types of it are full of complex points systems that follow a recurring pattern but differ in scale and selectiveness.
Let's take, for instance, the two subjects of today's little example - NASCAR and F1. It is quite natural that the two championships would have different scoring systems due to inconsistent grid sizes and the number of events. However, while F1 only rewards less than 42% of its grid with points, the American series hands them out to every participant. And, while both series place extreme value on winning (as is epitomized in NASCAR's campaign titled "Nothing Beats First Place"), the advantage a race winner gets is not proportional. It's 25 for first, 18 for second in F1, yet 46 for first and 43 for second in NASCAR (bonus points not included).
As such, it would be a fun exercise to see just how much impact a series' scoring system has on the standings. And I'll do just that since it's a Sunday, there's barely any racing and I got jack shit to do. This is F1 2012 by NASCAR rules.

First, I do feel I need to clarify what the NASCAR scoring rules are:
  • As the maximum amount of drivers taking part in a NASCAR race is 43, that's the amount of points the winner gets. The points awarded for finishing in a certain place follow an arithmetic progression, with each next finisher receiving 1 point less than the previous. However, to encourage fighting for the win, NASCAR award 3 bonus points to the driver in first place, effectively making it 46 for the win, while the amount for every other place is unchanged. This scoring system awards consistency to a much greater extent than F1 as every finish is valuable and DNFing is a bit of a disaster.
  • To counter that, NASCAR doesn't exactly have a distinction between being classified and non-classified. To receive points for the race, you don't have to complete a certain percentage of the race distance like in F1. If you started, you're getting your points - you're just not getting a lot of them if you happen to end your race in a wall.
  • Each driver, who finished at least one lap of the race in first, will get a bonus point after the race. The driver who lead the most laps during a race gets another bonus point. As such, you effectively get 47 or 48 points for winning.
Obviously, I took a few creative liberties with applying this system to F1. Even though HRT drivers Pedro de la Rosa and Narain Karthikeyan could not qualify for the first race of 2012, I awarded them the points as if they finished in 23rd and 24th (based on their qualifying results). I did the same for Timo Glock, who didn't start the European Grand Prix due to being ill (even though he didn't take part in qualifying either), and Vitaly Petrov, whose car gave up on him before the start of the British Grand Prix.

The revised standings

The implementation of a new scoring system has had a pretty sizeable effect on the virtual standings. While the first three places remain virtually unchanged (even though Alonso's lead is not quite so sizeable), the rest of the field is significantly different. Here's the list of the major changes:
  • Due to Raikkonen's impressive consistency, he'd be occupying 4th in the championship, ahead of Lewis who had a 19th place and a retirement.
  • Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado would be much lower in the standings due to their proneness to accidents.
  • Same goes for Michael Schumacher, whose terrible run of luck would put him last out of the drivers who don't race for the new teams.
  • Even though the new teams would now be capable of scoring points, that would impact the standings rather predictably. The Caterham drivers would occupy 19th and 20th place with Heikki ahead. The Marussia drivers would be in 21st and 22nd with Timo ahead. The HRT drivers would be 23rd and 24th with Pedro ahead.
  • Due to being fairly consistent finishers, Perez, di Resta and Massa would do much better in the standings.
  • The positions of teammates in the standings in relation to each other would largely remain the same with the only exceptions being Williams, STR and HRT.

The Chase

One of the most fun aspects about the regular season of NASCAR is the Chase for the Sprint Cup. The Chase is sort of like the playoffs in other American sports, effectively splitting the NASCAR season in two. The first 26 out of 36 races are a bit like the regular season with drivers trying to qualify for the Chase. At the end of that, 12 drivers are selected, their points reset to 2000 (not counting the bonuses they receive).
When that happens, the fight for the championship effectively starts with 12 drivers having realistic chances of taking it.
The 12 drivers who are eligible for the Chase consist of the 10 who occupy the top 10 places in the standings at the time and 2 "wild cards". The wild cards are the drivers who occupy a place from 11th to 20th and have the most wins. If drivers are equal on wins, whoever has the most points goes through. If they're equal on points as well (as Jeff Gordon and Ryan Newman currently are), then the standard procedure of "most second, third, fourth, fifth etc. place finishes" is applied.
If we apply to F1 and keep the proportions in check, the "regular season" part of 2012 would be 14 races long and would end with the Singapore Grand Prix. Rather unexpectedly, people like Massa and di Resta would be set to make the Chase, despite their rather ordinary seasons. However, both Grosjean and Hulkenberg would be extremely close to making it as well.
The "wild card" spots would go to Hulkenberg, as he has the most points out of the 11-20 drivers, and Maldonado, thanks to his win in Spain.
Perhaps we should be thankful that the F1 scoring system is as it is.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

How Are the Champions Faring in 2012? - Rallying

As with many other sporting disciplines, motorsports have their own staples, people who you can see in the hunt for titles year after year. It could be argued that, in racing, the staples are even more prominent, partially because the conditions for them are radically different to those for newcomers. As such, some championships go as far as being dominated by a single person throughout a course of many consecutive years. Such a feat was accomplished by Michael Schumacher in F1, Valentino Rossi in MotoGP, Sebastien Loeb in WRC among many others. 
As July 2012 is winding up to an end, many championships are entering their final stages and the title contenders in those are already obvious. In some, this is a halfway point (sometimes, even less than that), but clear patterns are already emerging as to who can fight for the title. As such, it's high time to do a fun little cross-analysis of the many different motorsports series and to see how their respective champions are faring this year. And since this is quite a monumental load of information, let's split it into a few parts and start with rallying.

WRC
For the eight-time world champion Sebastien Loeb, 2012 has been absolutely magnificent. In no small part is that due to Citroen's behaviour during the transfer market and the small amount of drivers who had a realistic shot of taking on Sebastien. His 2011 teammate, Sebastien Ogier, left Citroen when it became clear he wasn't satisfied with being a "number two driver", instead going to Volkswagen to help them prepare their major WRC entry for 2013. As such, this effectively put Ogier out of contention for 2012, which surely assisted Loeb, as Ogier was a major part of the title hunt in 2011. In an even better turn of events for Loeb, Citroen signed Mikko Hirvonen, three-times vice-champion in WRC and Loeb's main title rival.
As such, after 7 events out of 13, Loeb is leading the championship with 5 wins under his belt, while, Hirvonen, funnily enough, is second with 5 2nd place finishes. None of the four times when Citroen pulled a 1-2 has seen the two fight it out either, as the team effectively ordered them to "maintain the gap". Mikko could've scored a victory in Portugal, when he finished first as all of his main rivals retired, but his car was disqualified from the event later on due to a technical infringement, giving the win to super-talented Mads Ostberg.
While Hirvonen isn't the only one who is capable of matching Loeb's pace, the other drivers have had it even worse. The Ford World Rally Team, Citroen's usual rivals, have had a massive streak of misfortunes that prevented them from bothering Loeb so far. Norwegian Petter Solberg (the last one to win a WRC title before Loeb's massive dominance streak) has mostly had minor problems and mistakes that still allowed him to finish on the podium, albeit not fight for the win. His teammate, Jari-Matti Latvala from Finland, has been lacking any sort of consistency. Pretty much always having the pace to fight for wins, he repeatedly squandered the opportunities by going off the road and, thus, only has 1 win to his name in 2012.
A possible challenge to Loeb could have also come from the Mini WRC team but, just as his former teammate Dani Sordo started impressing for them, BMW pulled the plug on the whole thing.

* denotes partial participation
Bold Italic denotes current champion


Title repeat chances: 5/5 - Loeb is currently leading Hirvonen by 38 points with 6 rallies to go. With Solberg a further 17 behind, it's looking like only a run of mistakes could prevent Loeb from taking his ninth title and mistakes aren't generally what he's known for.

IRC
The points scoring system of this particular championship makes the title fight a bit unusual. Only a certain number of the driver's best scores from the season count towards the championship (this year, that would be 8 scores from 13 events). To add to that, the last event of the year, the Cyprus Rally, yields double points. Last year, that created a situation where something like six drivers had mathematical chances of winning the title coming into the last rally of 2011.
In 2012, there really is only one manufacturer team taking part in the championship and, as such, only they can really fight for the championship. The dominant Skoda team is represented by Andreas Mikkelsen, Juho Hanninen and Jan Kopecky. Yet, only one of those three turned up to every event so far - Mikkelsen, who also happens to be the 2011 IRC champion. Over the 8 rounds of 2012, Andreas has so far achieved two victories and four second-place finishes. Kopecky and Hanninen also have two wins both, yet they've only taken part in four and three events respectively. 
It's fairly safe to assume that Juho and Jan will turn their event counter up to eight at some point in 2012, probably in Cyprus, but by that time Andreas might already have four or five victories, as he is genuinely one of the quickest (if not the quickest) guys racing in IRC. In fact, him only having two victories is not due to lack of pace, but due to mistakes and bad luck. 
The two events not won by Skoda went to Dani Sordo, who entered one IRC event this year, and private Ford driver Giandomenico Basso. Sordo won't be a factor in the title hunt, while Basso might be, having taken part in three events so far. Basso's pace in some events has been fairly remarkable for a non-manufacturer driver, but it surely looks like a tall order for him to turn up for every remaining rally.
* denotes partial participation
Bold Italic denotes current champion

Title repeat chances: 5/5 - While Cyprus will again be a factor, it doesn't look like anybody can take this from Andreas Mikkelsen.

ERC
If you found the points scoring system in IRC a tad confusing, wait till you hear about the European Rally Championship. The season is divided into two halves, six events each, from which the best four results count towards the championship. A driver is only qualified for the championship if he has taken part in at least 4 events, a minimum of one from each of the halves. 
Last year, the championship went to Luca Rossetti, making him a three-times ERC champion. This year, however, Rossetti is clearly not going for the title, having only taken part in one event out of the first six, where he finished third.
Meanwhile, only two of the frontrunners had a somewhat regular rate of appearances - Juho Hanninen and Michal Solowow both took part in five events. Currently, they are occupying first and second in the standings, yet, while Solowow's best finish is 4th, Hanninen has won three events and also recorded a 2nd place. That currently puts Juho in the lead with over 100 points over Michal.

Title repeat chances: 1/5 - Probably mathematically possible, but Juho would have to not turn up to any of the events in the second half... and why would he do that?

APRC
The Asia-Pacific Rally Championship also refused to keep things simple with the points, having bonus points for those, who take a place in the top five during each leg of the rally (of which there are 2). To be fair, though, ERC totally does the same thing.
After 4 out of 6 events, 2011 champion Alister McRae (ex-WRC driver and late Colin McRae's brother) is in 2nd place with 81 points, 45 behind another ex-WRC driver Chris Atkinson. With such a massive lead that Atkinson has over McRae, it will be very difficult for the latter to catch up to him with two events to go. So far, Atkinson has recorded two wins and two second place finishes to McRae's one win and one second place finish. As such, only a DNF from Atkinson could allow Alister to catch up and, if he could do so, so could Brian Green and Gaurav Gill, 71 and 68 points respectively.
Bold Italic denotes current champion

Title repeat chances: 2/5 - Atkinson has to make some major mistakes, and, even if he does, there's still Green with his three third places and Gill with his win and second place.

Dakar Rally
As the Dakar Rally is not a championship, but a standalone event that already took place in 2012, all I can do is present its results. So, let's see where the title changed hands and where the champion has triumphed again.
In the truck category, 2011 champion Vladimir Chagin was not available for another shot at the title as he announced his retirement at the end of last year. As such, his team, Kamaz, ran a squad of up-and-coming drivers. In those conditions (and with overwhelming allegations of cheating and conspiracy theories from the Russian side), the win went to Gerard de Rooy, who confifently drove his Iveco truck, making little-to-no mistakes throughout the rally.
In the car category, 2011 champion Nasser Al-Attiyah ended up driving a Hummer after his previous team, Volkswagen, left the event after 2011. The champion's car wasn't all that reliable and he himself didn't seem to have the pace to challenge for the win. As such, the win went to Mini driver and Dakar legend Stephane Peterhansel. Nasser himself ended up retiring closer to the end of the rally.
In the motorcycle category, KTM drivers Cyril Despres and Marc Coma continued their truly peculiar tradition of taking turns to win the title. As Coma won in 2006, 2009 (not held in 2008) and 2011, while Despres triumphed in 2005, 2007 and now 2010, it was now Cyril's turn to take the win once again. And, despite stern resistance from Coma, that he did, beating him by 53 minutes.
In the quad category, 2011 champion Alejandro Patronelli retained his title, beating his brother and 2010 champion Marcos Patronelli by an hour and twenty minutes.

Other events
In the Rally America National Championship (which saw the participation of two racing celebrities of sorts - Internet star Ken Block and Dakar frontrunner Krzysztof Holowczyc), David Higgins has retained his 2011 title with 1 event to go. In a series where a win gives you 22 points, David is leading over 2010 champion Antoine L'Estage by 32 points.
In the Canadian Rally Championship (which features the same scoring system as Rally America), Antoine L'Estage is leading the championship with 66 points after 3 rounds out of 6 - a perfect streak. His nearest rival, Leo Urlichich, is 21 points behind. Even though the season is at its halfpoint, you'd be most hard-pressed to expect L'Estage, who happens to be a 4-time champion already, not to retain his 2011 title.
In the British Rally Championship, the 2011 champion David Bogie (one letter short of having one of the coolest names in racing) decided to focus on another competition, leaving the title hunt wide open. After 4 rounds out of 6, two Welsh drivers (Tom Cave and Elfyn Evans, the 2011 vice-champion) are tied for the lead with 60 points, while Keith Cronin, who's won the series in 2009 and 2010, is right behind them with 58.
In the Scottish Rally Championship, current champion David Bogie leads the standings after 5 rounds out of 8. Bogie, having decided to focus on this series in 2012 (as I masterfully foreshadowed in the previous paragraph), has won 4 events out of 5, but his one retirement has his rivals very close to him points-wise. Still, he is expected to win the championship for a fourth time in a row.
In the Australian Rally Championship, current champion Justin Dowel is not taking part in the 2012 season. As such, Michael Boaden and Tom Wilde (12th and 6th in 2011) are almost exclusively fighting for the championship, currently separated by 2 points with 3 events to go.
In the NACAM Rally Championship, current champion Peruvian Raul Orlandini is not taking part in the series this year, instead focusing on car development for Toyota. As such, Mexican PWRC driver Ricardo Trivino is leading the standings. After 3 rounds, 2009 series champion Trivino has 2 victories and a 3rd place, but will surely face competition from his compatriot Carlos Izquierdo, who has a win and a 3rd place while having missed the third round. Since only the best 5 results out of 6 count towards the championship, the title hunt should be wide open.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

F1 Transfer Review: Raikkonen for Lotus F1

F1 Transfer Review:

Lotus F1 Team Transfer #2

 

Disclaimer: In case you happen to be a die-hard Kimi Raikkonen fan, you probably shouldn't read this.

In a certain sense, Lotus changing both their drivers after 2011 can be regarded as commendable, at least when you are faced with the example of their Maranello-based F1 counterparts. Despite the fact both Kimi and Romain had prior F1 experience, making them your new lineup was always going to be a risk. In the case of Romain, I have already argued that Lotus have made a good move. But what about his far more famous counterpart? Were Lotus in the right in signing him? Was Bruno Senna not given enough of a chance, when he was booted off after half a year of racing in a car that was, by most accounts, bloody terrible?

Imagine yourself as the head of the Lotus F1 team. As it is the end of 2011, you've got plenty of drivers lining up, ready to take the available seats in your team, even despite the, quite frankly, poor performance during that year. The guy you go with, however, is a person with no F1 experience under his belt for the last two years who, while unquestionably fast and talented, also has a bit of a tendency to become disinterested when not winning. Were this my choice, I'd wonder why this option even came up and then call Timo, Adrian or Heikki.

Lotus, on the other hand, did not decide to call Timo, Adrian or Heikki. Perhaps a bit disenchanted after their experience with Nick Heidfeld (who I still maintain was reasonably quick and did not deserve to be dropped), perhapds just being the usual overly-ambitious squad they ever were, Lotus went ahead and signed 2007 World Champion, fan favorite and suspected robot Kimi Raikkonen.

I'll be honest here. As I write this, I still have no idea what to make of this move. After China, I was left sincerely doubting that Kimi had a shot at success here, yet then came Bahrain and his near-win. However, four races and two Kimi podiums later, I feel that some conclusions can already be drawn.

Why is it a good move?
  • Consistency - if we take all the races of 2012 so far, only once has Kimi finished outside of the top-10. To put that into perspective, out of the other 23 drivers the same is true only for Mark Webber and Lewis Hamilton, while Fernando Alonso is the only driver who finished every race in the points. In the standings, Fernando is first, followed by Mark and Lewis. Most experts have agreed that consistency is key this year and Kimi has plenty of that. He hasn't been involved in any major accidents with other drivers so far, while most of his overtaking manouevres have been clean and precise. It doesn't look like this is likely to win him the title or anything, but at least you can be certain it keeps Lotus happy.
  • Fan favourite - the fans love Kimi. Don't ask me why, because I sure as hell have no idea, but they do. He is fairly outspoken and honest, but I'm surprised anyone takes note because you can usually barely hear him. However, one way or another, signing Kimi was an undeniably great PR move and if there ever was a team that really needed some of those, it's Lotus.
  • Concentration - Kimi is obviously a lot more experience than Romain and that shows, not only just in races where, unlike the Frenchman, he usually has no issues going through lap 1. However, same thing really shows in qualifying. While Romain has the pace to fight for pole but never quite manages to get that lap together in Q3, Kimi, quite frankly, doesn't. However, even though his pace seems to indicate he should have trouble even getting into Q3, he usually manages to do that with one collected last effort. 
What could've been better?
  • Qualifying pace - it's... it's pretty dreadful. So far it's 6-3 in favour of Romain if we count the actual time set in qualifying. Not exactly the result you would expect if you were to pit a relative rookie against a world champion. Ande, despite his ability to get that one lap together, Kimi has managed to miss Q3 three times, while in one of those he didn't even get as far as Q2. You could blame it on the car, I guess, but you really shouldn't - as evident from Grosjean's results, Lotus hasn't brought a non-Q3 car to a weekend yet this season.
  • Complainer - the thing that possibly got Vitaly fired surely is an issue with Kimi. Since the Spanish Grand Prix or so, Kimi has been dissatisfied with his car's steering, which is nothing too unusual in itself - ex-Lotus driver Jarno Trulli complained about it for all of 2011. However, the response he got from the team was unlike anything I've personally seen before - the team said it already designed six(!) versions of the steering and that they won't be doing another one. To add to that, one of the team members was quoted by a German magazine as having said that the situation was like dealing with a child. Not sure who to blame here, but a bit of a disaster all around, ain't it?
  • Winning - so, Kimi, like, really really wants to win and isn't satisfied with anything but the top spot of the podium. And, while it's perfectly understandable for him to feel that way in a season where we've already seen Maldonado score his maiden victory, sometimes it gets more than a little ridiculous. After Valencia, Kimi didn't seem too happy with his second place which, for a guy who had a fairly low-key race and was gifted a podium after two retirements and a crash, is just wrong. It's easy to imagine Lotus are already having problems with that attitude.
Other options?

The other drivers Lotus could've went with I listed off already in my piece on Grosjean. It's hard to tell whether Adrian Sutil or Jaime Alguersuari would've been higher up in the standings than Raikkonen, the likely answer being "no" - quite frankly, neither of them have the experience of racing on that level. But surely they would also be less trouble for the team. As for Bruno Senna, the season he's having probably proves that Lotus have made the right call. More on that later.

Verdict: Lotus have done well with Kimi so far, but there's a sneaking suspicion that his overreaching ambitions might be too much even for Boullier. While not a lot of people doubted it after Bahrain, at this point you can't say for sure whether the victory Lotus wants so much is even going to happen in 2012 and, if it does, there's certainly a chance it could come from Grosjean. And, should Kimi not win a race this year, Lotus risk either losing him or, what could be even worse, completely demotivating the Iceman.