Post Singapore 2010

Another disappointing race for us, as Mercedes pull further ahead, however fantastic driving by Kubica to recover 6 places in 9 laps after a puncture late in the race. Whilst we weren’t as competitive as we’d hoped, we are pleased with the job the whole team did.

First flyaway race for a while, so lots of setup issues for the IT side, loose cables on the pitwall and engineers desk and then heat issues for the servers throughout the weekend (even on Sunday!). We experienced more than double the IT issues we had in Monza. The remaining 4 flyaway races of the year should see us return to the lower levels of faults (I hope!).

Jake Humphrey posted a behind the scenes look on his blog which is well worth watching (UK only)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/jakehumphrey/2010/09/what_its_like_being_an_f1_pres.html

Pre Monza

Monza is one of my favourite tracks (behind Spa), but it probably doesn’t suite our car this year, so we may struggle behind the top 3 teams. From an IT point of view, a really untroubled setup and no major issues – but then it is the 14th race of the year and things should be settled.

We'll see what Saturday brings, but unlike Spa, we're not likely to see a Renault on the podium

Post FOTA Shutdown and Pre Monza

It’s been a while, what can I say, my enthusiasm for blogging has been re-ignited, so here goes (thanks to Andreas and his son for the push)

This year has been tough in many ways. The relentless pace of development has taken a toll on the team. I could see tiredness creeping in, the good news is that a two week break enforced by FOTA means we head to Monza refreshed and ready for the final push of the season. Especially after a fantastic podium for the team at Spa (and Vitaly scored points too!). The shutdown is really important for us in IT too, we undertake a number of important upgrades and maintenance we simply couldn’t do during the season

On the IT side, we continue to focus our efforts for the track on statistical and strategy applications, saving engineers days (literally) of work – automation is one of the main drivers of my IT Strategy. We had quite a few upgrades for Spa, but with the shutdown, just a few small upgrades for Monza – here’s hoping the final races bring us our main target – finish 4th in the constructors championship – now that would be a huge turn around in our fortunes and well worth celebrating!