hmm but remember most of his predecessor did not have a good
team like he does now.
And I've got a nasty suprise for you but engine failure CAN be due
to the driver's fault. If you consider the fact that Taku had more
failures than Button, then certainly driver factor is involved,
despite what the team says. Button is known to be very smooth. Taku
is less so. You may not know, but driving a car roughly, pushing it
too hard, braking later etc, actually subject the crankshaft,
engine, etc, to undue stresses. Its not just the engine's
temperature increasing and decreasing during a pit. Let me show u a
scenario:
For a certain corner, Button starts braking 5m earlier. He is on
the brakes gentler than Taku. He downshifts slightly later to allow
for the revs to drop more than Taku does. Taku, because he brakes
late, only can start downshifting later. He brakes from a higher
speed which means his engine is at a higher RPM, and he has to
downshift faster and sooner after he starts braking than Button. At
highr RPMs, the engine is subject to more stress. So perhaps for
those few seconds of downshifting, he subjects the engine to an
extra, say 500RPMs of stress. 500 RPM may not seem like much, but
as the RPMs increase, the stress and wear increase in a non-linear
fashion. And then add to the fact that there are possibly 5 to 6
such corners in a circuit(not including the fast corners), and the
fact that this situation is repeated over and over again. You can
see why Taku's engine breaks.
I am not being unfair in saying that Taku is still too rough on the
car. Jacques Villeneuve, 97 F1 champion, is known to be a rough
driver as well. When he was with BAR Honda in 03, the same
situation was happening, in that he broke more engines than Button
did. The key to Sato improving now, is that he actually smoothens
his driving out, and he will definately improve.
