Formula 1 Season Opener: Melbourne OZ

F1, with its new hybrid cars, is having its first race tomorrow at the Grand Prix of Australia in Melbourne. F1 races are on Sunday, but tomorrow is Sunday across the international date line. The initial practice sessions in Bahrain showed the cars had SERIOUS problems with their new powertrains, a mixture of V6 turbo engine, twin turbo charger with electric boost so it acts like a supercharger (no turbo lag) and electric powerplant which generates the equivalent of 220 ft-lb of torque on demand, meaning it can LEAP forward and that's been tearing up tires something fierce on corners. The drivers are overrunning corners because the power comes on too quick. I'd worry about wrecks in traffic, but some of these cars can't even make it out of the pit lane onto the track.

Yesterday's track practice, which they do timed in two sessions prior to the qualifying the day before the race. Qualifying is this evening, which is tomorrow morning in Melbourne. Practice found that Sebastien Vettel, four time F1 world champion, has been having terrible problems with his car. Some of the key engineers have left his team at the end of last season going elsewhere, and they may have played crucial roles after all. He's a good 8 seconds slower per lap than the leader, Hamilton who is in a Mercedes powered car. Jacques Villenueve, former F1 world champion and son of another, said that Renault is completely lost with this new engine technology. Unkind words considering that Jacques Villenueve isn't an F1 driver these days. Still, his point seems accurate. The Renault engines aren't able to stay running and Ferrari is scarcely better though all seem to be figuring stuff out. It seems that the sensors and electronics really needed more of a shakedown, and running the turbo with an electric motor as well as using that as a power generator at full speed, yet limiting the RPMs is making things very difficult for the teams.

I noticed that Kamui Kobayashi is racing for Caterham Lotus again. He's not the fastest F1 driver but he sometimes finishes a race and provides traffic to the leading cars to pass. While he is the slowest F1 driver, that also means he's faster than all non-F1 drivers, meaning the rest of the world. With only 32 or so active F1 drivers, and twice that retired or backup that could come back to the series with sufficient funding, buying a ride with sponsors who follow the driver, not the team, this small cadre of expert drivers with intense focus and discipline and courage, Kobayashi is among the very best of the entire world. So being the worst of the best is still the best.

I also watched a program, a documentary and travelogue with Will Buxton on the Ferrari factory and history, including visits to tracks like Monza, and a small shop that restored and improved old Italian race cars, some of them with hand written and drawn catalogs of parts. The original Fiat 500 was TINY, and had a push-down reverse gear like the Porsche and VW did. Those are tricky because they can pop out again as you release the clutch and go the wrong way. If you have never driven one of these cars, you wouldn't understand, but there's a certain element of suspense when you try to back out of a parking space facing a $90K Mercedes whose bumper is inches from your own, swing your head to the right, slowly back of the clutch and lurch forward stopping before you can hit the brake because you only have two feet, not three. Those who only drive automatic transmissions are missing out on the joy and excitement of driving a proper vintage car. Buxton sat in one in Trieste and said it was one of his dreams. The owner responded "Make me an offer". The flimsiness of an original Fiat 500 is like two sheets of bent metal making friends but nothing actually solid inside, and scarcely thicker than tinfoil. I will note that there is no door handle on the inside, so you have to roll down the window to close it. That must be miserable in the rain. There's no seal on the fabric roof, either. So any speed at all means its coming in around the edges. If it doesn't blow off entirely. Must be miserable in real weather. The Fiat 500 is clearly a car so cheap you wear a coat inside if there's a chance of actual cold. They ought to sell them to college students who want more wheels than a scooter so they can experience proper poverty and keep their hopes down. Keeping them UP is why we're in this mess. Down is what we need.

The F1 race tomorrow night, which I'll watch with my Dad Sunday morning, intensely cheering while sipping hot coffee, will be great fun. Mom liked F1 too. Dad used to take me for drives in the country when I was a kid, and those were roads the Italians liked. I know this because Tour De France cyclists came there in the winter to train because they were just as bumpy, twisty, steep, and bad as those in Europe without getting the snow. That was my fortune, to be raised loving bad roads, and having the ability to drive them. F1 doesn't go on roads like that (Monaco is twisty but smooth), but the visitors take them to reach the tracks. I really wish that someone would combine the road courses and cars of Forza Motorsport with the rain and track condition changes of 2012 F1 (game) and threw in the Rally courses and roads of both Europe and California and Colorado and Appalachia (this is a place. Anyone living there will tell  you so) and more twisty roads of Japan, which I'm starting to suspect probably has a fantastic underground road racing sport going on there. Combine all those and throw in the various sections of the old and new Dakar Rally and you'd be able to train drivers, serious dedicated drivers, for a tiny fraction of the costs and those who do it without the cheats would be self posted on the database BBS so racing recruiters could actually follow up for potential test drives. Think that's insane? Not really. Hamilton got started in go-cart racing and was snatched up with a long contract to his eventual F1 team, McLaren. And he's in the top 10 every year, and usually ends up on a podium finish. So it really is possible to see potential in a teenager, train them, and turn them into a winner.

Its going to be really interesting, seeing this race. I have no idea what it will be like. We haven't had enough laps to tell if they can make these cars work consistently, and with 38 laps in the race around the lake there, very FLAT corners and chicanes (that's a dogleg obstacle on a straightaway), with walls either side, its is the exactly the sort of place where rain makes it very exciting, and dry makes it very fast. The vacuum effect under the cars means they throw huge rooster-tails of spray behind them and dry the track off pretty fast, even from huge downpours, so they have to switch tires in just a few laps from soaking wet to dry, rain tires to slicks, which makes for some pretty important strategy and consequences. F1 is not a brute force sport. Racing is NOT all about horsepower. It is about handling and stopping strategy and passing at the right time, and timing in general and a tenth of a second per lap adds up to winning or losing. A bad pit stop, more than 3.7 seconds to change all four tires, can lose your race. It's fascinating. NBC Sports channel is broadcasting the F1 season this year. Check to see if it is available where you live. And that your DVR is HD so you'll see how beautiful it is.