Splash! Hamilton dominates the British Grand Prix
Lewis Hamilton did the best thing he could do to answer his critics by putting in a stunning performance to win yesterday's rain soaked British Grand Prix at Silverstone. The Englishman pushed on through the spray to take his second win of the season and put the bad memories of Canada and France to rest. 'Quick' Nick Heidfeld made something of a comeback to take second in the BMW and Rubens Barrichello put in a fine drive to get third on the podium.
Elsewhere, Ferrari were having a dog of a day, with Massa spinning five times during the course of the race. With his copybook well and truly blotted, the Brazilian trailed home 13th and last. Raikkonen managed to salvage what was left by coming home fourth, but it was an important strategy decision that really mauled the Ferrari's chances. By lap 18, the Finn had cut Hamilton's lead to just 2.3 seconds but the different decisions made by the Ferrari during the pit-stop (surprise, surprise) really ruined Raikkonen's chances. McLaren put fresh intermediate tyres on Hamiltons car, however Ferrari chose to keep Raikkonen's original tyres. Then it rained again and Raikkonen's worn tyres couldn't do the job as well as Hamilton's. The Ferrari dropped down the order as Raikkonen lost touch with Hamilton and fell prey to Heidfeld at Luffield.
Ross Brawn must have been smiling on the pit wall as his old team floundered and Barrichello, on extreme wet tyres worked his way up the order to third. The Honda tech chief took no chances in the awful weather and his decision paid dividends. Ferrari on the other hand, must be taking turns hitting themselves with a very big stick.
So now we have a three-way tie at the top, with Hamilton, Raikkonen and Massa all having scored 48 points each so far. Kubica (who found the sandtrap yesterday) is just two points off the top as well. The next round is Hockenheim in Germany and with a championship and the erratic form of the top drivers, who knows what will happen next?
Other news
David Coulthard has announced his retirement, however he probably won't want to remember too much of his last British GP, careering off the track with Vettel in tow. What he will want to remember are his thirteen Grand Prix wins, particularly his vitories at Silverstone in 1999 and 2000. Whilst I've not always been a fan, the man is a true racer, a proven winner and speaks a lot of sense. He reckons that he won't be hanging up his helmet just yet, so who knows where he'll go next? How about a crack at Le Mans? I'm sure any sports car team would welcome his talent and experience. Anyway, all the best David!
Mid-Week Round-up 11/06/08
Lots of things have happened in the high-octane (couldn't resist) world of motor-sport over the last few days, but unfortunately, I haven't been able to write about it as I've been a bit busy. So here are some snippets of what has been going on:
Formula 1
Robert Kubica won his first Grand Prix at Montreal in Canada. Lewis Hamilton made a bit of a tit of himself by driving into Raikkonen, who was waiting behind a red light at the end of the pit lane. I don't think Ayrton was watching over him then, do you? Massa ignored the adage of overtaking with pit stops and just took two cars in one great, scrappy move at the hairpin. The BMW team are probably still drunk.
MotoGP
Dani Pedrosa won the Catalan Grand Prix by a country mile. Rossi held off current champ Casey Stoner for second. Plus, Britain's James Toseland (imagine Murray Walker's voice reading this) brought his bike home for a sterling sixth place, despite not having rode on the Barcelona track before.
Rallying
Citroen's Sebastien Loeb (the scruffy one, remember?) is leading the World Rally championship by one point from Finland's Mikko Hirvonen after seven rounds. The next rally will be held in Turkey, starting on the 13th of this month. I must apologise for not writing much about rallying at the moment, I intend to correct this asap.
Sportscars
Le Mans is ready to get going this weekend with Audi looking to take a third win for their R10 sports car. We will also be treated to the sight of a whole host of ex-F1 drivers taking part, including Jacques Villeneuve. Qualifying will be getting under way today this lunchtime.
Landrovers!
I found out about the Land Rover G4 Challenge event the other day. Things are still in the preliminary stages, but it looks to be a really interesting event. 4x4's being used for their real purpose: going off-road and covering terrain that an ordinary vehicle can't. Not driving two spoilt kids to school (although to be fair, Land Rovers are usually used by farmers for real work on the land, unlike the Porsche Cayenne). I'll be writing more about this event later.
There, conscience clean.
Formula 1: Canadian Grand Prix Preview
And so we come to the only North American round of the championship. The American Grand Prix at Indy is no more (the track was rubbish, only the banking was worth watching), leaving us with just the Canadian round in Montreal. The US is not short of excellent race tracks (Road America, Watkins Glen, Laguna Seca to name a few), but because none of them were designed by Hermann Tilke and are not situated in a dirty rich Middle-Eastern principality, means that they will probably wouldn't be considered at this moment in time. So for better or worse, I think we can wave goodbye to the American Grand Prix for the time being.
On to Montreal and Sunday's race. McLaren will be looking to build upon their success last time out in Monaco with Hamilton finding himself in the lead of the championship by three points. Raikkonen is probably none too pleased about his off-colour performance two weeks ago and should be fired up to do better this weekend. The two teams are both very evenly matched at the moment so things could go either way. Also, keep an eye out for the BMW team as they continue to become ever more competitive, with Kubica leading the way as Heidfeld continues to have tyre problems.
The Gilles Villeneuve track is surrounded by concrete walls that are in close proximity to the track and there have been some big smashes over the years, none more so than Robert Kubica's crash last year. As unsettling as the thought of that incident was last year, Kubica will probably have wiped that from his mind in order to get on with this years race (such mental discipline is something the top line drivers all seem to have). However, do expect someone to lose a wheel or a wing on those unforgiving walls.
Crash, bang, wallop!!
Buckets of rain, no traction control and the twisting Monaco race track all added up to an excellent Grand Prix on Sunday. Don't listen to the techno-boffins and their constant harping about how technology should never be constrained etc. The loss of traction control has made Formula One far more interesting as drivers no longer have their safety net, leading to some slightly embarrassing incidents this year (Massa and Coulthard in Australia springs to mind). Sunday was no different, as many highly rated drivers found themselves thrashing about in the puddles, missing wings and bodywork. Even the eventual winner Lewis Hamilton, crashed early on in the race!
Many of the great and the good found their way into the uncompromising Monaco Armco, including Coulthard, Alonso and Bourdais. Nico Rosberg had a real bone-cruncher at the Swimming Pool. Massa even ended up down an escape road whilst leading the race, allowing Kubica through. Raikkonen smashed into the back of Adrian Sutil at the nouvelle chicane, who until that point was a career best fourth. So you could say it was an entertaining couple of hours...
Hamilton picked his way through the wreckage to win his second Grand Prix of the season. It was a lucky victory, as most other drivers would have found themselves back in the pits with their wrecked car being winched off the track. However, fortunately for Great Britain and Lewis, he exhibits that almost Schumacher-like ability to come out smelling of roses, when by rights, he should have ploughed into the poo.
Anyway, comedy car crashes aside, Hamilton has moved into the lead of the drivers championship. Ferrari are probably a bit cheesed off by this. Ha! Ha!
Monaco Grand Prix Preview
Yes, it's that time of the year again. Time to watch highly powered racing cars darting through streets barely wide enough to accommodate them, all for the pleasure of the royal family of Monaco and Bernie Ecclestone's cash register. However, I'm not complaining as Monaco is one of the high spots of F1 calendar, one of the only circuits left with any kind of character and provides a stern test for the drivers.
Precision is the name of the game in Monaco, an inch off line and you could find yourself eating Armco or coming off worse with a concrete wall. There is next to no run-off, no gravel traps, no overtaking opportunities and absolutely no room for error. A good qualifying position is key and a knack of 'hustling' the man in front to make a mistake is also handy. Last but not least, reliability is probably your biggest ally here, Monte Carlo is a car breaker par excellence. Seventy-seven gruelling laps can break gearboxes, transmissions, engines and drivers who've been indulging in too many pies.
So who's hot and who's er...not? Well, Lewis Hamilton was looking very handy around the track yesterday as the McLaren is improving with every race. On paper, the Ferrari's look strong, although don't be surprised if Raikkonen is off the boil and Massa puts his prancing horse in the barriers. The BMW's are currently looking good, so don't be too surprised if they pull off a coup and win it. Red Bull's David Coulthard is also worth watching as Scotland's finest is always impressive at what is practically his home race.
As for me, I'm not going to relax on my yacht with a couple of lady friends and watch the qualifying. Martini anyone?
Massa beats off the opposition
Phillipe Massa put in a dominant display during yesterdays Turkish Grand Prix, coming first in front of Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari team mate Kimi Raikkonen. It is the third time Massa has triumphed at Istanbul Park in the last three years. However, it was not all plain sailing as he had to content with a sustained challenge from Lewis Hamilton, who was on a three stop strategy to cope with the tyre demands of the anti-clockwise circuit.
The lighter McLaren allowed him to overtake Massa in the middle part of the race, however Massa was still able to reclaim the lead and take the chequered flag. As the race progressed, Hamilton came under pressure from Raikkonen and only narrowly beat him to second place. Further down the field, the BMW team carried on their quiet march into the big league with a solid fourth and fifth for Kubica and Heidfeld respectively.
By clinching victory, Massa underlined just how good he is on his day. The problem for him is to sustain that performance over the course of a season, something that he has previously not been able to do. It is not unlikely that after yesterdays performance, he'll be wedged in the barriers on the Monaco harbour side at the next race....
In appreciation of… Nigel Mansell
This is the first of an occasional series of articles about people who have made their mark on motor racing, whether they be heroes (Clark, Peterson, Fangio, Moss), villains (Pironi, Balestre,) or sources of pure entertainment (Taki Inoue). Funnily enough, my first subject could be placed in all three of the categories, depending on who you talk to.
Nigel Mansell can claim, quite rightly, to be one of the all time greats of Formula One. He won thirty one Grand Prix, the 1992 Formula One World Championship and the 1993 CART Indycar Championship at his first attempt.
Like Marmite, you either love him or you hate him. He is a man of whose sometimes odd behaviour out of the car had left him labelled with the tag of the 'whining Brummie' (melodramatically falling to the floor after pushing his car over the line in Dallas; declaring his intention to retire in 1990, then signing for Williams the next season; flouncing off to race in America after a pay dispute with Frank Williams, the list goes on ). However his nail-hard determination and jaw dropping speed gained him much admiration and even the nickname of 'Ill Leone' (the lion) by the partisan Ferrari fans. His relentless, aggressive driving style won him a legion of British fans off the track and a fair few enemies on it.
One of Mansell's main calling cards was his mastery of the overtaking manoeuvre, if there is any doubt, check youtube for his dummy on Senna at the Hungaroring in 1989, or the 180mph move he made on Gerhard Berger around the outside of the banked Peralta corner at the 1990 Mexican Grand Prix. In an era where most drivers seem to be trained to wait for the pit stops, instead of going for broke and getting past the guy in front (admittedly, the aerodynamics do tend to discourage this), watching footage of Mansell going wheel to wheel with Senna, Prost and Piquet seems a real breath of fresh air.
Despite his undoubted talent and determination, success was slow to come to 'Our Nige'. Before starting F1 with lotus in 1981, Mansell had quit his job as an Aerospace Engineer and remortgaged his house to continue racing. In Formula Ford, he won the 1977 British Formula Ford Championship, despite braking his neck during a race at Brands Hatch. After graduating to Formula 3, he suffered a broken back and had to stuff himself full of painkillers to make his first test with Lotus.
Where others would probably thought that things weren't meant to be and pursued some other avenue in life, Mansell carried on. Even after making it to Formula One, things were still tough. The death of Colin Chapman left him without many allies in a team which was by then past it's best. He would have to wait until he was 33 before he won his first F1 race, the 1985 Grand Prix of Europe, driving a Williams-Honda.
Once he'd took his first scalp, there seemed no stopping him. 1986 saw him hammer team mate Piquet and almost claim the championship, until he suffered a massive tyre blow-out during the final race of the year. Piquet took the title the next year due to his more consistent point scoring and yet another big accident for Mansell. Over the following years he would drive for Ferrari, then Williams again; chalking up the wins, falling out with other drivers, playing golf, comparing injuries with Barry Sheene and always coming close to the title yet leaving without the cigar.
In 1992, he did it. After a dominant season in the Williams Renault and almost reducing Murray Walker to tears, he took the title at the Hungaroring beating Ayrton Senna. Never had a moustache been worn with such pride since Graham Hill in the 1960's.
Since then, Mansell has left F1, returned and left again. He has driven a Ford in the BTCC, an Audi in the DTM, set up his own golf club, won races in the F1 Masters series and is now masterminding his two son's racing careers. At 54, he probably thinks he could wipe the floor with Alonso, Hamilton and Raikkonen even now.
Another one bites the dust…
Unfortunately, it seems that my first post is going to be a sad one, following the announcement that Super Aguri are shutting up shop as of today. The team cites the failure of their sponsor, the SS United Oil and Gas Company, to pay up as a large factor in deciding to call it quits. This means that the F1 field is now down to only ten teams out of a potential twelve, as David Richard's Prodrive outfit didn't even get around to turning up for the first race.
It also means that Anthony Davidson and Takuma Sato are out of jobs. Davidson is highly rated and Sato, whilst a bit crazy, is also pretty handy. However, the music has stopped for this season and all the seats have been taken.
In your writer's own humble opinion, this is undoubtedly a shame for F1, whose grid is now largely populated by manufacturer teams such as Toyota, Honda and Renault. Formula One has always been an expensive business, but with budgets now sky high despite attempts at capping, the privateer doesn't stand a chance.
"What about McLaren and Williams?", I hear you ask. Well, Williams would probably have gone against the wall if it wasn't for signing with Toyota, and McLaren have to keep Norbert Haug sweet if they want money and engines. Plus, these chaps have been around for quite a while and have a fair few trophies in their cabinet, meaning that a proven track record will stand you in good stead when looking for sponsorship/engines. However, Super Aguri had substantial backing from Honda (in order to provide a home for the wayward talent of Sato) and they still couldn't survive.
So, if you are a new team with a couple of sponsorship deals, no major backing, no previous success in F1, a customer Ford engine...Good luck!