F1 – Some of the Old and a Lot of the New in Spain

With four races done and dusted it’s the most competitive season in years. Well most everyone was looking for Alonso to win his home GP (some even expected him to run away with the race). The qualifying session was probably an indicator (in hindsight) that this may not quite be the case. There was also some good work done by Truli (too bad his race got messed up even before the start) and good old DC (perhaps Bernie really riled him up).

Once again an incident at the start pretty much decided the outcome of the race. I guess it was the law of averages catching up with the Spaniard after Massa did him a favour at Malaysia. Perhaps knowing that it would be difficult to overtake on the circuit, Alonso pushed too hard at the start into the first corner and pretty much left Massa with no choice but to push him of the track. I guess good driving on both their parts ensured that they both didn’t crash out. Alonso was also quite lucky that the pack couldn’t take advantage of his off track adventures and he managed to rejoin in fourth place. Lewis continued his good starting form bettering his qualifying position, the Ferraris must be sick of the sight of the back of his car by now.

The race seemed to have settled down among the top four, till the famous jinx seemed to strike kimi again, engine failure would cause hi retirement from the race. To win the world championship, sometimes you do need luck and the early signs don’t seem too favourable to Kimi. While Lewis had managed to keep the Finn behind him, he seemed to have trouble keeping up with the Ferrari ahead of him. Massa was on a roll and by the 10th lap had pretty much had the race in his pocket barring any mechanical problems. Alonso meanwhile seemed to have problems keeping up with his teammate and any chances of him leapfrogging his teammate slowly but surely evaporated. At the end of it all we had a rookie leading the world championship. We have a world champion suddenly looking to be the fastest in his team, and suddenly Massa in the Ferrari looks like the package to beat.

Most of the action and the drama in race happened in the pits and in the middle pack of the race. Massa had a vapour fire, Heidfeld lost a nut, had to come in after a lap and then eventually retired, and the normally reliable Renaults messed up the fuelling of their cars forcing them to make an extra stop. Unfortunately there wasn’t a single overtaking maneuver or even a serious attempt. Overall a good race for DC, Kubica, Nico & Sato, their best performance this year. The Super Agurri have a point and get the travel subsidy for the year. The biggest irony this year is except for the Ferraris, all the non-factory teams seem to be performing better than the factory teams. The Adrian Newey designed Redbull seems to be coming on, but there are reliability issues on the engine and the hydraulics.


So all in all a reasonably interesting GP, but the implications seem to be more interesting. Here are some of the highlights:


1) We have a rookie leading the world championship
2) We have a championship leader who has yet to win a race.
3) Four podiums in his first four races has never been done before. (Fangio had 3)
4) Ferrari have won 3 out of the four races and still trail in both the championships.
5) Super Agurri have a point while he factory Honda team does not!
6) A BMW has finished 4th in all the races so far. (Heidfeld 3 times)
7) Ferrari has had an engine failure and Mclaren hasn’t.


Monaco should pretty much be about qualifying on pole and hope your engine doesn’t give up, but lets hope for some surprises!!

PS
Wonder how much Steve Slater is paid, it might be worth our while to replace him (Akki, Mr. Ranjan) ! Can’t take too much more of his commentary.