All-Toyota front row in Bahrain

In the wet of last week’s Chinese Grand Prix, Jarno Trulli was so slow he was a hazard. Yet in the baking desert heat of qualifying in Bahrain yesterday he was sublime in slotting his Toyota on to a scintillating pole position ahead of teammate Timo Glock. Such is the enigma of Trulli, which Glock alluded to, saying: “I made a small mistake at the beginning of my lap and I knew that meant Jarno was going to beat me, because he is just so good at squeezing everything from the qualifying lap. But I’m very optimistic for the race.” That last comment was also a reference to their respective fuel loads, Trulli being fuelled light enough for a three-stop race compared with the two of most of the others.
In Trulli’s long Formula One career - he made his debut 12 years ago - the 34-year-old Italian has f r e q u e n t l y b e e n devastatingly fast in qualifying but has won only once, for Renault in 2004. That is one more win than Toyota have secured since entering the sport in 2002. As F1’s biggest spenders during that time, they have been criticised for their lack of hard results. But the Cologne-based team have been steadily improving their competitiveness in the past two seasons, and as one of the three teams to find the double diffuser loophole in the 2009 regulations, they have hit the ground running this year.
The car is now fitted with the next evolution, the triple diffuser, which extracts the underbody airflow from the car even faster, increasing its grip-inducing downforce. The car was staggeringly good through the Sakhir circuit’s fast corners. Toyota were the only diffuser team to have attended an off-season test at this circuit, so amplifying their advantage.
Which Toyota driver is favoured for the race is a moot point. Trulli is a demanding perfectionist, which is reflected in an extreme driving style. Hugely effective in a well-balanced car, he is intolerant of the changes in handling as a race progresses, the track and tyre grip change and the fuel load comes down. He is superbly precise and commits to this precision with enormous entry speeds into a corner. But when the front of the car doesn’t grip as he needs it to, he is poor at improvisation. This is in contrast to his young German teammate, whose more extrovert style is less precise but better able to adapt to changes in grip.
Their personalities reflect these styles. Trulli tends to be either bouncy and chipper or down in the dumps - something accentuated by a typically Latin flamboyance of gesture. Glock is regular as clock-wo r k . F r o m a y o u n g e r generation than Trulli - he’s in his second full season of F1 - Glock spends much of his spare time playing computer games, whereas Trulli spends his making fine Abruzzo wines. They are the artist and the craftsman; which of them is better depends on the circumstances.
Neither Toyota driver is rated as highly as the man who appears to pose their strongest threat today, last week’s winner Sebastian Vettel. He put his Red Bull third on the grid with a heavier fuel load, so he is in a better position to be ahead after the first fuel stops.
All of which is a bit of a concern for world championship leader Jenson Button. He was fourth-quickest, his Brawn apparently not as well suited to this circuit as the three previous tracks. The car lacked stability in the braking zones, which Button finds difficult to deal with, and it was all he could do to fend off Lewis Hamilton in the hitherto difficult McLaren.
In advance of the team’s appearance before the governing body’s world council on Wednesday to answer disrepute charges over lying to stewards in Australia, Hamilton has often seemed emotionally charged this weekend but he focused fantastically well in qualifying to transcend the level of his car, which has had no significant upgrades since the previous race. Regardless of the controversies surrounding him and the limitations of his car, Hamilton is driving out of his skin. What’s more, he is equipped with Kers, the energy recovery technology that has been introduced as an option this year. None of the cars ahead of him on the grid features this technology. It gives a brief extra burst of 80 horse-power, which will probably be overwhelming down to the first corner.
The Bahrain track is perfectly configured to suit Kers, with lots of heavy braking areas to recharge the batteries quickly and two key uphill sections where the extra power is particularly valuable. Seeing how Hamilton can deploy it in an effort to keep what is probably an inferior car in a flattering position could be one of the highlights of the race, but the real intrigue centres on whether the Toyotas can work as a team to thwart the theoretically faster Red Bull of Vettel from winning. To expect Hamilton to figure in that battle is perhaps asking too much.
Button will be fuelled heavily, so he should be capable of challenging the Toyotas and Vettel, but his chances may be compromised by being stuck behind the faster-starting but ultimately slower McLaren. “I’m effectively fifth on the grid thanks to the McLaren’s Kers,” he said. “We have potentially very good race pace but so much depends on what happens in the first two corners.”
Rubens Barrichello was sixth-fastest in the second Brawn but is also expecting to be swamped at the start by Kers cars starting behind him, notably Fernando Alonso’s Renault and Felipe Massa’s Ferrari, which line up seventh and eighth respectively.
Victory prospects seem to centre on the artist, the craftsman or the Wunderkind. But as Formula One has shown many times already this year, a surprise is always possible.
- Mark Hughes writes for Autosport magazine
Source:The times