Drivers: 1 – Lewis Hamilton (McLaren), 2 – Pastor Maldonado (Williams), 3 – Fernando Alonso (Ferrari)

Q: Lewis, McLaren’s 150th Formula One pole position today. You really had to manage to the process though, particularly with the tyres. You were in the groove from the start, but what happened at the end when you stopped out on the track?

Lewis Hamilton: Well, firstly it was a fantastic qualifying session for me. Really, I’m very happy with the way… I think it’s one of the best ones I’ve ever had. Amazing job by the guys in the garage. Huge thanks to the guys in the factory for bringing us the upgrades, which have worked fantastically. I stopped on the track. I was told to stop. I don’t really have any idea why. But the car was feeling great today. It’s a great day for the team, I think. I don’t know what happened with Jenson, but he’s got great strength and pace throughout the race, so I have no doubt that he will make his way up through the grid.

Q: Pastor, a sensational session for you and Williams. Where did you find the speed from?

Pastor Maldonado: I think we’ve been working so hard from the beginning of the year trying to understand these tyres and to develop our car around the tyres and I think we actually did a really good step forward for this race. We need to continue to like that, keep pushing. I think at the moment there is a great atmosphere in the factory, a great atmosphere here in the team, the car looks pretty consistent and fantastic, especially in the race pace, so I’m looking forward to tomorrow. It’s a great feeling to be here, it’s my first time in the top three, so I’m really happy and hopefully we will continue like that and I would like to say thanks to the whole team.

Q: Fernando, a lot of updates also on the Ferrari. Are you heading in the right direction now?

Fernando Alonso: Yeah, I think so. Obviously for us it was impossible to even dream about being in the top three in the four races, we just had eyes on Q3 with no new set [of tyres] left or anything like that, so definitely it’s a step forward. The grid is so compact now that if you improve two or three tenths it makes a huge difference in terms of positions: five or six positions. So we did a step forward. I still doubt how much we did, because I think maybe P3 is a little bit over-performing what we can do at the moment. But I’m extremely happy with the lap; it was perfect. I don’t think there is much more to come. I think I could put 100 more sets of tyres on and I could only repeat the lap time probably. It is the way it is. I’m extremely happy for today and hopefully we maximise or capitalise on this good starting position tomorrow with a good result.

Q: Back to you Lewis. Obviously a lot of tyre tactics going on in qualifying today. What about the race tomorrow? What’s your read on how things are going to shape up and what kind of shape do you feel you’re in to become the fifth different race winner in five races?

LH: Well, we’ve looked after our prime tyres, which is generally the better tyre for the race, or so it seems at the moment – the longer lasting tyre. Also the option tyres are all in good condition so… I think it’s going to be a massively tough race tomorrow. Of course, I’ve got these two great drivers next to me. I’m really happy to see this guy [Pastor Maldonado] up here and to see Williams up here and also Fernando. It’s really great to see my old team-mate up here as well and I’m going to have a great battle with these guys and I really hope we’re going to put on a great show for all the fans.

Q: Lewis, congratulations. That was a great lap at the end. You must be so satisfied with it?

LH: I really am. I think every time you go out, every time you qualify you’re searching for that perfect lap. You’re searching to put the car in just the right sweet spot, where you’re gaining all the time you could possibly gain and you’re not losing anywhere and I really felt that throughout Q1, Q2 and Q3… after Q1 I was like ‘damn, that should have been my Q3 lap’ but I was really grateful that I was able to continue that throughout the session and yeah, fantastic feeling really – overwhelmed.

Q: Lewis, you’ve started third on the grid here for the last three years and you haven’t yet won this grand prix, you’ve been twice second. Do you really want to tick this box, win this grand prix, one of the ones you haven’t yet won?

LH: Well I’m very much aware that I have an incredibly tough race tomorrow with these guys who are massively quick – also on their long runs – and just how tricky it is in general. But it would mean a huge amount for me to win here in Spain. It’s always been a great place for me, it’s beautiful weather all the time and the people are just incredible and the support that I’ve had continues to grow year by year. And it’s become such a pleasure for me to come here. So, to win at one of the circuits where they have one of the biggest fan bases for Formula One in general, would be fantastic.

Q: Can you explain why there should be such changing fortune, even between team-mates? For example, your team-mate didn’t get through to Q3, his [Maldonado’s] team-mate didn’t get through into Q2 even and his [Alonso’s] team-mate starts 17th. It seems extraordinary the changing fortunes even for team-mates.

LH: I think it’s surprising all of us. We are all very surprised. Obviously we are very happy that we’re up here! It just fantastic to see how close it is. You lose a tenth or two, that means you have to use your next set of tyres which then has a knock-on effect for the next session if you do or don’t get through. And so it’s massively competitive and it’s great for… I’m sure the fans are loving it – maybe not enjoying Q3 so much, but we definitely did.

Q: Pastor, where did it come from? How much did you get sorted out in Mugello? Do you think it’s a knock-on effect after Mugello?

PM: I think all the guys in the factory did a wonderful job because the upgrades we have for this race, everything is working on the car. I was pretty happy yesterday in the free practice and the balance is there. Even though our strongest point has always been in the race, so I’m looking forward for tomorrow. Actually we improved – our worst thing was the qualifying pace so pretty happy for that, pretty happy for the team, for my country, for myself. It’s a great job today.

Q: Is this a favourite circuit, one of your best? I know Bruno [Senna] said it was one of his favourite circuits…

PM: I think all of us, we know very well this circuit, we enjoy this circuit because of the combination of corners we find here, even the teams know very well. I think we have been working so hard in the winter tests here and so we find a good balance in the car and a good compromise for quali and race.

Q: Did you feel yesterday ‘hey, we can really do something here’? Did you already feel that yesterday?

PM: Yes. I think yesterday we were thinking about top ten, it was possible. This morning I was quite surprised about our performance because the car was so quick with lower fuel. This morning it was possible.

Q: Fernando, I don’t think anyone was ever going to discount you here. I don’t know what it was, maybe the crowd, or Ferrari etc, etc, How much satisfaction, third on the grid?

FA: Really happy. No doubt that this is a special weekend for me. And as I said on Thursday, there is always some extra motivation, some over-performing a little bit of what you have on hand, and yeah, thanks to the updates we had here, definitely we did a step forward, in the right direction because we hardly get into Q3 in the first four races and now we arrive with a little bit more comfortable way and then in Q3 the lap was good. I said before in the other conference with another hundred new tyres I would repeat the same time – I don’t think there is any time left. But the points are given tomorrow, not today. We did as much as we could today and we are happy to start in a much better position that what we did in the previous grands prix. But we need the points tomorrow. Especially… the grid positions are mixed a little bit as you said, with some of the people that are in front of us in the championship, they start at the back tomorrow – so we need to take benefit of this good position today and score more points than them.

Q: We remember in particular your start last year. Are we going to see a repeat of that?

FA: I’ll tell you tomorrow. Definitely, a little bit like Pastor and Williams, our race pace is much better than qualifying pace – that is normally our weakest point and we suffer on Saturday some bad positions and then compromise a little bit our race pace. So tomorrow we have a privileged position to start, so the first corner will be important if we can gain some positions, but it’s important also not to lose. The race tomorrow is very long with the tyre degradation and, as I said, we must score points tomorrow, good points, with this position we have. So, aggressive start yes, crazy start not.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: (Adrian Huber – Agencia EFE) Fernando, will you be happy tomorrow repeating this position or will you be looking for something more?

FA: You never know in Formula One. I think a podium position, we tend to agree in the team, if someone tells us two or three days ago, before coming to Barcelona, or after the Mugello test, that in Barcelona you will be on the podium, I think we all agree, we all be happy with that position. Today, obviously with this position, that dream or that target is closer. But I think the race is very long tomorrow and we saw even in Bahrain, Kimi started ninth, (11th), he was P10 or P11 in lap one and he nearly won the race in the end, so the positions are not crucial anymore as previous years. I think it will be an extremely tough race tomorrow to take care of the tyres again. Degradation, DRS, KERS to overtake. Pitstop strategy, we will see probably a lot of pitstops for everybody. The more pitstops you have, the more risk you have to have a problem in the pits. There are a lot of factors tomorrow that we need to take account. It will be a difficult race. A podium, I think, will be a good result for us and happy.

Q: (Leonid Novozhilov – F1 Life) Lewis, are you happy? What are you feeling now? What do you think about tomorrow, this position?

LH: I really feel fantastic. I’m very, very happy. Normally you can always be happy with a pole position of course, but for some reason even more so this time than maybe any other qualifying that I’ve had, except for the first pole position I have had in Formula One. Just because, as I was just saying, you’re always looking for that perfect lap, and I really, really felt that I got everything just, just sweet there and got absolutely everything out of my car. I didn’t miss apexes or anything like that. It’s an incredibly feeling when you have that. It’s really just a very unique experience. But tomorrow’s going to be a tough race. As you were just saying, Fernando had a great start here last year and it’s such a long drive down to turn one – but he was also saying people are coming to win from quite far back, or to compete for wins from quite far back, so tomorrow’s just going to be about looking after your tyres, getting the right pitstops at the right times and really being patient, I think, at the most important times during the race.

Q: (Fulvio Solms – Corriere Dello Sport) To all three drivers; they have chosen new rules and tyres to have an unpredictable Formula One. Do you think this championship is just unpredictable, or technically less logical as well?

FA: I don’t think they choose the tyres for the championship to be unpredictable. We have the tyres that we have.

LH: I’m not sure that they were expecting it to be as it is, but I definitely think that it is a bit unpredictable at the moment, massively close. There have been several different winners in the races and you can make such a big difference, if you don’t finish one race but then you win the next race, it can still keep you in contention so it feels for me – out of all the championships that I’ve been in – it feels to me to be one of the most exciting ones. Regardless if I haven’t won yet, it just feels like one of the best, I imagine, for people to watch.

PM: I think that the tyres are the same for everybody so all the teams and all the drivers are working hard to adapt ourselves, even the cars to these tyres and to get the best performance we can.

Q: (Marco degli Innocenti – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Pastor when you reached Williams, there were a lot of people, among journalists too, who expressed doubts about you and they said that you have got the seat because of your rich sponsors and so on. Now, are you convinced that you have proved that you are one of the top drivers, thanks to your qualities?

PM: I’m think that I’m lucky, I’m lucky to have not only a sponsor behind me but also a country behind me, pushing me so hard. Here I am, doing my job, doing my best, trying to improve every time. I have a mission, which is to be back with Williams to the top, so here we are. We still need to keep pushing, to keep improving and I think that is possible.

Q: (Silvia Arias – Parabrisas) Pastor, congratulations, I want to know about the start tomorrow. What do you think? Is it going to be easier to attack Lewis at the first corner, or defend from Fernando?

PM: I think it’s going to be a very tough race, because not only us three but even the other drivers have a very close pace. Our strongest point was always race pace so hopefully our car will be very consistent and pretty good in the race. I hope to continue like that, I hope to stay in the position, the podium is very important for us, the points, so it’s very important to keep calm and to do good race.

Q: (Laurentzi Garmendia – Berria) Lewis, we have such a close championship in terms of times in qualifying, but I think your gap was over half a second to Pastor. Does it surprise you? It looks like a dominant car.

LH: Yes, I’m definitely surprised to have such a big gap. I wasn’t surprised that it was a good lap because it felt that I switched the tyres on the right way and I feel that I extracted everything but yeah, considering that all the sessions are so close, all the teams are so close, I definitely wasn’t expecting to have such a big gap. That’s quite a big gap for us but we definitely can’t take it for granted. I think we’ll go to other races and it will be slower and in some races we will be faster but we really, really hope that with the continuous upgrades that we get we can try to maintain the pace that we have, especially through qualifying but most importantly to try and improve through the race.

Q: (Mike Doodson – Honorary) Fernando and Lewis: I think we all agree that it’s a good thing when Williams is doing well in Formula One and both of you have had moments this year when you’ve been racing with Pastor or the other Williams driver. I wonder if either of you or both of you could tell me where the car has strong points that you’ve noticed while racing with it on the circuit.

LH: I can’t remember exactly what your strong points are but for me it’s fantastic to see Williams up here, really, really very happy for them. I know Sir Frank quite well since I’ve been here and I’m a huge admirer of him and his team and to see them up here again, I think Formula One’s just not been the same without Williams being at the front, competing. So it’s good, it’s great for them and for the whole team. I’ve always thought they had quite a good car, it always looked quite beautiful but I think this year it’s performing as well as looking good, so we’ll definitely be on our toes to try and make sure we’re ahead of them.

FA: Yeah, I don’t know. Obviously I fight a little bit more with them than Lewis probably in these four races. The car looks strong in race pace as Pastor said and basically taking care of the tyres. I remember in China they did like 32 laps with the same set of tyres that no one could adapt to. Apart from the car, they are doing a very good job, setting up the car with the engineers – I know some of them, very talented and a fantastic job from the drivers as well. Pastor has this year proved, not only today, but many times this year that he’s doing a fantastic job, also with Bruno but less lucky sometimes. In Australia, on the last lap, Pastor crashed behind me but I was already fighting in the top five so it’s not new that he’s fighting in these top positions so well done to all of them.

Q: (Jaime Rogriguez – El Mundo) Fernando, after the last free practice this morning, did you imagine that after qualifying could be fighting for pole? When did you feel the real change in the car?

FA: No, obviously this morning’s practice we didn’t think we could be in the top five or top six. I think P8 to P12 was more or less our position after practice, same as after yesterday’s practice as well, that we were fastest in the morning and P14 in the afternoon, so we were something in between those positions in practice as well. Yeah, I’m happy and a little bit surprised to be in front of one McLaren, both Red Bulls, both Lotuses, so definitely this is not what we were expecting but qualifying went like this, it went our way this time and as I said, today means nothing if we don’t finish the job tomorrow.

Q: (Carlos Miguel – La Gaceta ) Fernando, are you worried that you might not to be able to finish the race in the same position you are in now, or are you worried the rhythm of the Renault – because they were very strong on Friday – and maybe some of the guys behind. I ask about Kimi because I think he could be a contender for the race.

FA: Yeah, yeah, definitely, the Lotus will be a threat tomorrow, starting fourth and fifth. They’ve been quick all weekend so tomorrow no surprises if they are fighting for the podium or even for a race win. Sebastian is P8 so he will be fighting for a top position later in the race. With Jenson and Mark having the possibility to chose which tyres to start on, I’m sure that they will prepare something good to recover position because they have the pace. They had the pace yesterday in FP2 and I’m sure that tomorrow they will be quick. The race will be tough to maintain positions because we believe that there are quicker cars behind us but let’s see what we can do. On the other hand, this is not an easy track to overtake on,

Q: (Michael Schmidt – Auto, Motor und Sport) The forecast for tomorrow is significantly cooler, can that change the picture that some cars which hadn’t been up to speed today might fall into the operating window of the tyres tomorrow?

LH: I think it could be the opposite. If people are struggling today to switch their tyres on then potentially they would struggle even more if it was cooler but that is a real tricky situation to be in, that sometimes three tyres come in and one, your left front doesn’t work and then you just have understeer and you don’t get the time. If it is the case and it’s cooler tomorrow it will be tough for everyone, even the guys who did switch their tyres on today.

FA: Maybe rain.

Q: (Livio Oricchio – O Estado de Sao Paulo) To all drivers: you approach the times that you registered in winter testing today, with the same tyres but 20 degrees hotter asphalt. Can you make an analysis about this?

LH: Did we do these times in the winter?

FA: Yes, 21.6s for Grosjean in winter I think. We did 22.2s, we did 22.5s today, something like that. I think the cars improved a lot between February and now but the temperature… we know that the hotter it is the slower you are. It happens in the winter as well. If you do your best time at 9 ‘o clock in the morning, then you cannot repeat those times in the afternoon. In a way that shows how much the cars improved for everybody from February to here. It’s good.

PM: I agree. I think today was a bit more windy, which is a penalty for everybody.

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Sir Frank Williams was pleasantly surprised in the paddock by a 70th birthday celebration for him on Saturday evening, just as it emerged that Pastor Maldonado had taken the team’s latest pole position. Many friends stopped by, including Bernie Ecclestone who made a speech, Adrian Newey and Lewis Hamilton despite the Briton’s impending penalty from the race stewards.

On Thursday Ron Gourlay, chief executive of British football club Chelsea, brought the team’s recently-won FA Cup to Sauber as they initiated their new relationship, one that proves Formula One racing is not as insular as some might like to think.

At the recent Chinese and Bahrain rounds Sauber’s cars featured the mysterious inscriptions ‘Out of the Blue’ and ‘True Blue’ on their engine covers, but in Spain Chelsea’s official logo – in the team’s distinctive blue – has pride of place on the C31s. And drivers Kamui Kobayashi and Sergio Perez were even given their very own Chelsea shirts.

Tyres have be dominating on-track proceedings this weekend, but they’ve also been garnering attention off track, with Pirelli test driver Jaime Alguersuari trying his hand at tyre fitting at the Circuit de Catalunya. Alguersuari, who has just completed a three-day test at Jerez with the Italian manufacturer, went through the whole process.

“It’s certainly more complex than it looks!” said the Spaniard. “The tyre doesn’t just click on: you really have to know what you are doing and place it exactly: sometimes using a lot of strength. And then you have to get the balancing precisely right, while not forgetting the other important things like putting a special glue on the bead of the tyre to stop it rolling around on the rim. There is really a lot going on, and this just makes me appreciate the work that the fitters do all the more. As well as a specialised skill, they also have a very big responsibility.”

Elsewhere the paddock has been teeming with familiar faces from the racing world. Among them were former team owner Giancarlo Minardi, ex-Force India driver Adrian Sutil, and former racers Derek Daly, David Kennedy, Carlos Abella, Randy Mamola, Emilio de Villota and Adrian Campos. Sportscar star Tom Kristensen was the driver steward. Team owner Joan Villadelprat visited on Saturday, as did Renault number two Carlos Tavares, Dorna MotoGP boss Carmelo Espolito and former Lotus chief mechanic Glenn Waters.

One of the best of many supporters’ banners which appeared opposite the pits read: ‘Six world champions true, but we’re waiting for you, Robert’ demonstrating that Robert Kubica is far from forgotten.

There was also a presentation for Kimi Raikkonen, who helped Formula One group CEO Bernie Ecclestone and race organisers unveil the plaque that will add the Lotus driver to the Circuit de Catalunya’s Champions’ Avenue.

On the track, British rising star James Calado took pole position for Saturday’s GP2 feature race and finished a fighting second, 0.8s behind Caterham’s victorious Giedo van der Garde. Calado took his Lotus GP car into the lead off the line and defended his position strongly against Racing Engineering’s Fabio Leimer going into the first corner. Together with van der Garde they pulled away in the lead with Stefano Coletti chasing for Scuderia Coloni.

Calado and van der Garde both made their mandatory pit stops on the 13th lap, but Leimer was adjudged to have been released unsafely into Calado’s path after they’d exited the pitlane side by side. As Calado quickly pulled clear, cleverly putting two backmarkers between them, the Swiss was given a drive through penalty.

Van der Garde, meanwhile, had stayed out an extra lap, and crucially only changed the rear tyres, whereas Calado had switched all four. That was the turning point for the Dutchman, who led Calado and Coletti home as they fought each other over the final 10 laps.

Behind them DAMS series leader Davide Valsecchi was a lonely fourth place ahead of Racing Engineering’s Nathaniel Berthon, while Coloni’s Fabio Onidi, and the Carlin cars of Max Chilton and Luiz Razia finished line astern, with iSport’s Jolyon Palmer and Lotus’ fastest lapper Esteban Gutierrez claiming the final points.

Razia started Sunday’s sprint race from pole, and led from to start to finish, eventually shaking off a tenacious Berthon to finish five seconds clear at the flag. Valsecchi fended off Calado in the closing stages to claim the final podium spot and retain his championship lead.

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Copyright. 2012. 
© 2012 FOWC Ltd   All Rights Reserved

Nature, Nurture, Know-How

12:15 PM Thursday February 16, 2012 
by Graham Jones | Comments (9)

I feel privileged to have had some amazing experiences in my work with top performers in business, sports, and the military. I’ve always been intrigued by exactly what sets these people aside from those who don’t make it to the top. More recently, I’ve become especially interested in what enables them to stay at the top when they get there. Sustainability and longevity as a global leader, in particular, has never been in more jeopardy, and the next generation will need to heed the harsh lessons that some current incumbents are experiencing.

Recent headlines have borne ample witness to how demanding it is to be at the top. The most senior leaders at organizations such as Barnes & Noble, Pfizer, and Lloyds have stepped down due to reported fatigue, exhaustion, and stress. However, there are many examples of people who have reached the top and stayed there for a long time. Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan and Jeff Immelt at GE immediately come to mind as leaders who have come through thick and thin and demonstrated an impressive sustainability and longevity.

So what is it that the next generation of global leaders can learn from those top leaders, athletes, and performers in any domain who are able to deliver success time and time again, rather than succumbing to the demands of being highly visible, scrutinized, and accountable?

Let’s start with how people get to the top in the first place. If you are one of the many who have delved into popular psychology books on this topic, notably by Geoff Colvin and Malcolm Gladwell, then you will know that the argument that “talent is overrated” is very much in vogue. These books focus on research by Anders Ericsson and colleagues at Florida State University which showed the importance of deliberate practice in predicting who will make it to the top. Specifically, it was estimated that experts spend typically 10 years or 10,000 hours in deliberate practice to attain exceptional performance. These works further minimize the role talent plays in reaching the top by emphasizing other factors such as birth dates, and citing case studies on people of the likes of Bill Gates and the members of the Beatles to show how “being in the right place at the right time” is also a crucial factor.

However, the narrow environmentalist position underlying these popular works reflects only half of the opposing nurture versus nature views which have dominated the scientific literature on expertise development. The opposing genocentric position is similarly limited so that neither is sufficient in isolation to explain how people get to the top of their professions and stay there.

Even when you combine these positions, there is still something missing. And this is where the sustainability factor in success sheds important light. Talent, hard work, and luck are indeed important in helping performers reach the top, but are insufficient to enable people — in any domain — to deliver high performance on a consistent basis when they get there. Having observed top performers at very close quarters in a variety of arenas over several years, I have come to realize that the missing ingredient in sustained success is what I believe to be a form of wisdom, know-how, or intelligence. It is very evident among the world’s best athletes and I have also witnessed it among the best leaders and performers in work and military settings. Since this intelligence is about delivering superior performance on a consistent basis, I did not deliberate for too long before naming it “Superior Performance Intelligence” (SPI).

Recently, I conducted a study of SPI with top performers and leaders from the worlds of business, sports, military, performing arts, and medicine which will be published in the scientific literature later this year. The study identified SPI as:

A common critical awareness and know-how that top performers, from business leaders to cardiologists to athletes to performing artists to military leaders to entrepreneurs, possess to apply their minds, skills, techniques, strategies, and tactics to the same high standard every time they perform.

SPI has three core know-hows:

1. Knowing how to maximize your potential, comprising three dimensions which reflect a self-knowledge and ability to self-regulate to realize your capability and potential: ‘Knowing yourself’, ‘Stretching yourself’, and ‘Sustaining yourself’.

2. Knowing how to work with your environment, comprising three dimensions which involve knowing how to shape and use the performance environment to your advantage: ‘Knowing your environment’, ‘Shaping your environment’, and ‘Being in tune with your environment’.

3. Knowing how to deliver top performance, comprising three dimensions around the process of performing to high levels on a consistent basis: “Planning and preparing,” “Delivering,” and “Evaluating.”

A gap or weakness in any of the know-hows will jeopardize longevity at the top. For example, the CEO of a company which had been acquired by a much larger organization had consistently hit his numbers —he excelled at knowing how to deliver top performance. And he had risen quickly through the organization, demonstrating a strength in maximizing his potential.

However, he was poor at knowing how to work with his environment. His suspicions about the acquiring company’s plans led to constant confrontation and working against the “new environment” rather than with it. He role-modeled a victim mentality, which soured relations between his own people and the acquiring company. This gap in his SPI had serious consequences — he was sacked.

So for the next generation of global leaders, getting to the top and staying will be about much more than working hard and long. And it will be much more than being in the right place at the right time. A big factor will be developing the know-how or intelligence identified here.

London

Thursday London votes for a mayor. It is a contest between the only two people who have ever held the position: Ken Livingstone for Labour, who ran London from 2000 to 2008, and the Conservative Boris Johnson, the incumbent.

They are caricatures of their traditional parties, and in that way quite similar. Both have messy private lives. Mr. Johnson is an old-school Etonian classicist who has no volume control and wants to popularize Latin. He was a newspaper columnist and the editor of the right-wing magazine The Spectator. He appears on television comedy shows, and he regularly makes pantomime gaffes. He is also quite popular.

Mr. Livingstone is a lifelong left-wing activist, a local government apparatchik, a consummate manipulator of subcommittees and votes of confidence. In 1981 he was elected to run the Greater London Council, where he named everything that didn’t have a name, and a lot of things that did, after Nelson Mandela. He supported Palestinian rights and flat-earth Muslims, and he would regularly send fraternal messages to Polish dock workers. He takes his holidays in Cuba and keeps newts.

We were all quite fond of him, not least because it annoyed the Tories. Margaret Thatcher got so incandescently fed up with having Mr. Livingstone’s strident, whiny, left-wing council over the Thames, opposite Westminster, that she closed down London’s government altogether.

The job of mayor, along with a new, elected Assembly, was created by Tony Blair in a fit of half-baked American out-of-the-box, can-do thinking. He did it because “devolution” was his word of the week, and he wanted to retrospectively annoy the Tories. London was Labour; it had always been Labour, and so with much fanfare and bright speeches, Ken Livingstone was elected the city’s first mayor in 2000.

Now, those of you with young children will be shouting, “Hang on, wasn’t Dick Whittington the lord mayor of London, with his cat?” and you’re right. But the lord mayor isn’t the same as the mayor, and that was the City of London, which isn’t the same as London, which is a city, though often referred to as London Town. What we call the City is the square mile that holds the banks, the suited businesses and the stock exchange, which accounts for a large percentage of the City’s — and the Town’s, and the country’s — wealth.

The position of lord mayor is an ancient, honorary job that involves riding in a coach wearing a big hat, eating a great many dinners and proposing a lot of toasts. The person filling it is elected by medieval guilds whose jobs more or less no longer exist: fletchers, farriers, witch-burners, that sort of thing.

The problem with the new office is the depressingly predictable problem of so much of British public life: Its role and its responsibility have never been sufficiently thought out. We are in thrall to the unwritten codes of heritage and convention, but we are congenitally bad at setting out the new, or rectifying the old.

Still, Mr. Livingstone’s tenure in office was a fat time. The city pumped out profits and pumped up property prices. It sucked in immigrants to staff all the new cool restaurants and take out all the new rubbish, and Ken saw that it was good, and called it Mandela.

He hoarded power like Scrooge; as no one knew where the mayor’s new powers were supposed to start or stop, he appropriated everything. The new devolution was swiftly centralized into one office.

And then came Boris, who was funny and smart and self-deprecating, and he sounded like a Wodehouse character, and said things he shouldn’t, and was found in places he shouldn’t have been. But he talked hard, libertarian sense, and he won the 2008 election.

Mr. Livingstone had been good at everything but losing. He was a really, really bad loser, and has been waiting for a rematch. It’s predator versus alien, and it was always personal.

But, perhaps fittingly, the result of their times in office has been the same: they have made the mayor’s job an octopus of oversight and patronage, neutering the correcting check of the Assembly.

That power only adds to the constant conundrum of London as a city grown too large for its country. In terms of population and importance — cultural, political and social — its gravity sucks the ambition out of the rest of the nation. The mayor is responsible for what happens around Parliament, and everybody suspects that Mr. Johnson has larger ambitions. A lot of Tories would dearly like to siphon his popularity into the leprous national government. Last week I asked him if he wanted to move to the national stage. He said no — three times.

For Mr. Livingstone, though, there is nowhere else to go. He is getting on in years, and London was always his calling. But is it still his London? The city that was traditionally socialist through a decade of success and square-mile-city money has grown Conservative, and in recession, fearful. The last opinion polls seemed to be in Mr. Johnson’s favor, even though his party has had a terrible month and nationally is at its lowest point in years.

On Friday we will wake not with a new mayor, but with one of the old mayors, who will face a city that has serious challenges: unaffordable housing, declining commerce, youth gangs and the assimilation of new immigrant communities. All this in a job with ill-defined powers and ad hoc structure.

It is, though, a megaphone job, with big P.R. potential, particularly in 2012, the year of the Olympics and the Royal Jubilee, not to mention the anniversaries of Shakespeare and Dickens. In London, it never rains — but it pours.

WASHINGTON — The Army is reshaping the way many soldiers are trained and deployed, with some conventional units to be placed officially under Special Operations commanders and others assigned to regions of the world viewed as emerging security risks, particularly in Africa.       

The pending changes reflect an effort to institutionalize many of the successful tactics adopted ad hoc in Afghanistan and Iraq. And as the Army shrinks by 80,000 troops over the next five years, its top officer, Gen. Ray Odierno, also is seeking ways to assure that the land force is prepared for a broader set of missions — and in hots pots around the globe where few soldiers have deployed in the past.       

General Odierno’s initiatives are a recognition that the role — and clout — of Special Operations forces is certain to grow over coming years, and senior Pentagon policy makers briefed on the plans say they are fully in keeping with the new military strategy announced early this year by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.       

With cuts ordered in the Pentagon budget — and cognizant of public exhaustion with large overseas deployments — the military will focus on working with partner nations to increase their capabilities to deal with security threats within their borders. The goal would be to limit the footprint of most new overseas deployments. Those scenarios would reflect a shift from conventional forces to Special Operations forces, and General Odierno’s plans would increase the support of Army general-purpose units to those types of missions.       

Creating new sets of formal relationships between Army general-purpose units and the Special Operations Command would be a significant change in Army culture. For more than a generation, the large, conventional Army and the small, secretive commando community viewed each other from a distance, and with distrust. Armor and infantry units trained and operated separately from counterterrorism and counterinsurgency teams.       

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, changed that. The demands of combining high-end conventional combat and counterinsurgency missions for complementary and overlapping missions in Afghanistan and Iraq pushed conventional and Special Operations forces together. General Odierno, who now serves as Army chief of staff, oversaw many of those tactical initiatives firsthand.       

He was a division commander in northern Iraq when Saddam Hussein was captured there in a mission that combined armored units and the elite counterterrorism force. And during his tours as the No. 2 and then the top commander in Iraq, he integrated conventional and Special Operations missions on a daily basis.       

Under the emerging plans, conventional Army units would train alongside Special Operations units, and would deploy with them, under their command, on overseas missions.       

Other units would remain in the conventional force, but would be told in advance that their deployments would focus on parts of the world, like Africa, that do not currently have Army units assigned to them. This would allow officers and soldiers to develop regional expertise.       

General Odierno foreshadowed his planning in an essay published last week in Foreign Affairs, in which he wrote that “the Army will need to preserve and enhance its relationship with joint Special Operations forces.”       

“The evolution of this partnership over the past decade has been extraordinary, and the ties can become even stronger as we continue to develop new operational concepts, enhance our training and invest in new capabilities,” he wrote.       

On the effort to prepare Army units with a regional focus, General Odierno wrote, “We must align our forces, both active and reserve, with regional commands to the greatest extent possible.”       

The military’s global combatant commanders would guide whether the units focused on high-end combat skills, disaster relief or training missions to improve the capability of militaries within partner nations. “Regional alignment will also help inform the language training, cultural training and even the equipment that units receive,” General Odierno wrote.       

The first unit to be designated for this new regional orientation will be a full brigade that will train for missions under the command of the military’s Africa Command, Army and Pentagon officials said.       

Formalizing what had been impromptu ties between conventional units and Special Operations forces was a focus of official “Warfighter Talks” held last February by General Odierno and Adm. William H. McRaven, who leads the Special Operations Command. The Army has held similar, chief-to-chief talks with the other armed services, but it was not the norm with the commando community’s top officer. General Odierno and Admiral McRaven have pledged to make the formal dialogue an annual event, according to Army officials.       

The Army contributes more than half of all personnel to Special Operations Command. But even as the Army shrinks, its Special Operations personnel roster is slated to grow to 35,000 from 32,000, Army officials said.       

The conventional force can vastly increase the capability of Special Operations units by providing logistical support to those teams in the field. Transportation, security, medical evacuation, food, fuel and other logistics needs are routinely provided to Special Operations units by the conventional force.       

More specifically, in Afghanistan today, for example, two conventional Army battalions are assigned in support of Special Operations units carrying out a program called Village Stability Operations, which trains and partners with local security forces.       

Formal training linking a conventional unit to a Special Operations unit will begin in June at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, La., Army officials said. The units will join for a training mission that begins at “Phase Zero,” the time when the military hopes to shape the battlefield in advance of combat, and through completion of the training mission. That style of training will be expanded to the larger desert facility, the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Ca., in the autumn.       

The training will focus on what the military calls “hybrid” scenarios, in which a single battle space may require the entire continuum of military activity from support to civil authorities to training local security forces to counterinsurgency to counterterrorism raids to heavy combat.    

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