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Autosport
These are troubled times for Rubens Barrichello. After six seasons in the support role to Michael Schumacher at Ferrari he came to Honda on absolutely equal terms to the incumbent Jenson Button. In fact for a time it looked like Rubens might even get to be the clear No1, with Button maybe obliged to fulfil his contract with Williams, leaving Barrichello to be supported by Takuma Sato. It didn’t work out like that of course. In fact so far it’s not working out at all.
Although his problems adapting to the Honda only really became apparent in Bahrain, he’d been protected by his team to an extent during winter testing. Then, while often nip and tuck with Button on the timesheets, in reality they were usually on very different programs and within the team it was obvious he was not quite on Button’s pace.
At this stage it was a minor problem. But in trying to put it right its become a great looming monster in Rubens’ mind, a monster that is coming to life with ever greater reality each GP weekend.
The trigger for the problem was that Button has inherently around 0.3 seconds faster. No serious F1 driver would be prepared to accept a team-mate’s superiority without a lot more evidence than that. He’d averaged a similar deficit to Michael Schumacher – even though on his day Rubens could give Michael a seriously hard time – but that was Michael, the world’s greatest driver, one of the greatest of all time. Much as that will have sat uncomfortably in the competitive heat of the moment, at least he could comfort that itch with the rationalisation of Michael’s standing. But Button? A man who hasn’t even won a race? That couldn’t be true.
So he set about studying the telemetry, pored over the data. He found a couple of key things. Well, three actually – braking, steering and throttle, the three fundamentals of driving, in fact. ‘Soft’ was the word that that kept coming to Ruben’s mind when he analysed Jenson’s inputs in these areas. Button would be less aggressive on the brakes and more progressive on the pedal and thereby keeping the diffuser airflow attached better. But then he’d come off earlier too, sometimes almost coasting into the corner entry – but with massively high entry speed. Rubens had always found himself to be smoother on the steering than Schumacher, but to his amazement that Button was yet smoother again. Minimal inputs, laser precision. Rubens always felt that his throttle application was ‘soft’, sympathetic to the melding of lateral and longitudinal grip. In fact he felt traction control was taking away some of the advantage of that facet of his ability. But now he was seeing that was yet softer – and that the more peaky V8 engines were favouring Button further in this.
It could not have been a balder, more horrifying thing to discover: that the three fundamental things that determine your speed as a racing driver, Button was doing better than him. Okay, it only mounted to 3 tenths of a second per lap. But that’s an age, a geological era in terms of driver in Rubens position.
But he’s a man with depth. So he set about understanding. Maybe Button was only doing these things better because he’d moulded the car around him his style better and that in working with his engineer, Jock Clear, Rubens could fine tune his car differently. After all, it wasn’t the just a change of team and car, but one of tyres too. There was a lot to learn, a lot of parameters to play with. This problem was solvable. For a start, such a fundamental tool such as the traction control worked in a way that was completely alien to Rubens. It had been developed that way to suit Jenson’s preferences. There was one thing they could play around with for sure.
Button prefers not to trigger the TC at all if he can help it. You hear it out on track. Go to a slow corner – the exit of China’s 1/2/3 for example – and listen to everyone else flooring the throttle and letting the traction control TC monitor the power. Then listen to Jenson waiting longer before he gets on the power, then feeding it in progressively with his long-travel pedal, like he hasn’t even got TC. And sometimes when it does trigger – and he doesn’t want it to – its programmed so that if he then goes full throttle, the TC will cut out and he can then come back from there if it begins to get too much out of line. For Rubens this was a counter-intuitive thing to drive.
Jock’s been around the block, he race engineered for David Coulthard, Jacques Villeneuve and Takuma Sato. After 2 years of trying to smooth out the sharp peaks and dips of Sato’s performances, he appreciated the consistency of performance and feedback from Barrichello, felt he was back with a seasoned professional. All that was needed was a little bit of massaging to find the missing tenths.
So together they begin making changes. Still the gap is there. In fact it seems to increase. Altering the fundamentals of the traction control has not been feasible so far, but there are plans for Rubens to try the new significantly tailored version next week. In the meantime he and Jock have been playing with other chasis settings. It feels better – and yet its slower. So then he drives as Jenson’s telemetry says he should – it feels horribly wrong. But yet his times improve! But not to Jenson’s levels. So Jock starts making bigger changes. Rubens raises his eyebrows and then goes along with it. It gets worse. At Malaysia they’ve made such little progress by Saturday morning that they are forced to concede and simply copy Jenson’s settings for qualifying and race.
The engineer/driver relationship is getting a little terse at times as this problem continues to snowball. The deficit’s no longer 0.3sec but more like 1sec. Now way is that representative. The snowball of fortunes is never more apparent than in Q1 for Melbourne when Rubens gets caught behind the Super Aguri of Ide at a critical moment – and fails to make it past the cut off into the next session. “Okay Rubens, that hasn’t done it, we’re not through. Pit at the end of this lap.” Barrichello angrily stays on the gas, as though he were another lap together. “Repeat Rubens, pit at the end of this lap”.
“Oh shut up” comes the static crackly reply. When a relationship breaks down…