Fun F1

I know it’s still early in the season, but it might be a good time to put that bet on Lewis Hamilton for the championship. McLaren are clearly faster than Ferrari now and the fact that Kimi’s driving is leaving a lot to be desired doesn’t help the cause at all…

Lewis Hamilton – Simply in another class, again…

McLaren – Talk about shooting yourself in the foot – their strategy of not bringing Lewis in during the safety car period was plain stupidity. They would have had egg on their face if Lewis had tangled with the cars he had to pass to retake the lead (which could have so easily happened given Lewis’ all-or-nothing passing style).

Nelson Piquet Jr – What a fantastic drive to 2nd place!! Well, not really… that was sarcasm there…   Still, I’m happy for Nelson but talk about luck! I wonder where he would have finished without the pace car.. 6th….. 6th last that is..?

Fernando Alonso – While I’m sure he’s happy for Nelson, he’d also be a bit disturbed that the Brazilian has outperformed him for a few races in a row – regardless of the luck involved. I think the turning point was when Sebastian Vettel forced him over the white line on the exit from the pits. I think Alonso was justified in being angry about that but it then seemed he lost the plot from then on. To his credit he did perform some nice passes throughout the race – usually with Kimi then passing him each time though…

Felipe Massa – Well, he did better than teammate Kimi at least but still…

Kimi Raikkonen -  What on earth is going on there? Kimi just hasn’t been himself in the last few races. It’s as if something was changed on the Ferrari that doesn’t work for him at all. Any ideas? Anyone? Aside from the lack of outright pace he did well to stay out of trouble while passing the likes of Alonso and others.

Ferrari – They’ve certainly lost a lot of ground to McLaren.

BMW – They’ve lose even more ground to McLaren and Ferrari…

Nick Heidfeld – If this guy could qualify better he’d probably be up there with teammate Robert Kubica in the championship.

Robert Kubica – Seems to be suffering by the fact BMW are dropping off the pace. Give him a quick car and he’s super quick. Give him a slow one and he just doesn’t seem to get much out of it.

Edit: Seems YouTube has taken down the original video, so we had to link to a video with commentary from, erm… Borat…

I didn’t realise until after the race, but before the British Grand Prix on Sunday Kimi Raikkonen pushed the well renowned photographer Paul-Henri Cahier to the ground when he got a little too close. According to the Ferrari camp, Paul was standing on Kimi’s equipment. According to Paul’s web site, he never touched Kimi’s equipment nor touched Kimi himself.

To me it looks like his camera lens touched Kimi’s helmet as Kimi bent down. The fact that Kimi takes his helmet off straight away would seem to confirm this (is he checking the helmet isn’t damaged?). In any case I put this down as a “racing incident” (ie. both parties are to blame)

What does everyone else think? In any case, it’s not quite as entertaining as Kimi’s former teammate Juan Pablo Montoya though…

Thanks to terrible strategy from Ferrari and Felipe Massa and Robert Kubica going AWOL, Lewis Hamilton absolutely obliterated the field during his home Grand Prix. After the first round of pit stops the only person that could have stopped Lewis was Lewis himself.

Lewis Hamilton – Very impressed with how he handled the pressure of his home race. Always in control, always fast (even though he could have backed off). A brilliant performance. I was a bit worried he was pushing too hard toward the end, but he’s one of those drivers that only knows one way around the track – the fast way

Kimi Raikkonen – A real shame Ferrari didn’t change his tyres during the first round of pit stops. He certainly looked like he could have challenged Lewis and it would have been great to see some on-track action. Quite a good little comeback toward the end of the race – but one that shouldn’t have had to happen in the first place.

Nick Heidfeld – Drove a solid race. Somewhat lucky with Raikkonen and Alonso’s strategies, but still did a great job in outperforming his teammate and keeping it on the black stuff

Rubens Barrichello – WOW! You go Ruby Ruby Ruby!   I don’t think Barrichello is anything special in terms of talent but it’s always great to see a “nice guy” and an underdog like him up there with a great result

Fernando Alonso – In the early stages of the race, Alonso was coming through the pack so fast I thought he might be able to even win the race. Then he messed up by telling the team to keep his (worn) intermediate tyres on. Sure, it could have gone either way – it could have dried up and he could have been the hero. However what’s slower – new intermediate tyres on a drying track or old intermediate tyres on a wet track. I’m sure in most cases it’d be the latter…

Kazuki Nakajima – Hmm… When does Jarno Trulli’s contract run out? This guy is starting to look hot for a Toyota works seat…

Mark Webber – It was hard enough seeing pole position slip away from the Aussie, but the start of the race was even more painful. When he kept the car in a straight line, he certainly seemed to be quick, yet the scrappiness at the start was horrible.

Felipe Massa – WTF!? Seriously… WTF!? 8)  I can only hope Felipe gambled with a dry set up before the race hoping it would dry up because if that car was set up for the wet, either the engineers messed up big time or Felipe will be now known as Felipe Mess-up…

The French Grand Prix proved to be yet another exciting race. This was mainly due to Lewis Hamilton pushing too hard yet again, but there were some other interesting points…

Felipe Massa – Thought I’d put Felipe first to get the boring part out of the way. Felipe’s drive was clearly 2nd rate today and he clearly deserved 2nd. At least it makes the championship a bit more exciting I guess!

Kimi Raikkonen – Kimi was both lucky and unlucky. Unlucky to have such a strange mechanical problem. Lucky to finish the race and not be brought into pits with the black and orange flag (dangerous mechanical what-nots ).

Jarno Trulli – Great drive! What more can be said? The only sad part is the Toyota seems a bit hit and miss. On some circuits it can be up the front, on a lot of other circuits it seems to linger around the back…

Heikki Kovalainen – In the first half of the race I thought Heikki was doing a pretty average job. By the end I thought “hey, he did pretty good after all”. Thinking back to the race now, I think he did an average job if not a bad job. It’s clear McLaren is so much further ahead of everyone but Ferrari so he should be getting 3rd, at least. I know his grid spot made it hard but I still have my doubts…

Fernando Alonso – What a major disappointment! He appeared to have good speed all weekend. I (and many others I think) thought a podium was possible – then we were brought back to reality and it was just another typical Renault result – albeit with Nelson Piquet Jr finally pulling his weight and then some more!

Lewis Hamilton – Every time Lewis came up behind someone I was just waiting for him to hit them. I’d say it happened about 50% of the time he was behind someone in the French GP… I’m not saying I wanted Lewis to crash out of the race or anything – I’m just saying I literally expect him to come into contact with most of the cars he raced with because he really does bump n grind a lot lately (especially with Nicole Scherzinger?)…

Nelson Piquet Jr – Nelsinho! (did I spell that right??) Good to see him finally putting the Renault where it deserves to be! It’s amazing what talk of being dropped does to a driver…

BMW – Possibly a bigger disappointment than Fernando Alonso. Perhaps their car only works well on very fast circuits

It seems not a year goes by where there isn’t an issue with the red light at the end of the pit lane during the Canadian Grand Prix. As a result, we’ve got a very interesting Formula One World Championship now…

Robert Kubica – A well deserved win, even with a bit of luck thanks to Lewis Hamilton. You have to give it to Kubica – he’s always there at the front this year. It’s ironic that in Canada last year he had his darkest moment and now he has his brightest. Very happy for the Pole!

Nick Heidfeld – I feel Nick Heidfeld is one of those drivers that has had rough luck in F1 despite such an admirable effort. He was unlucky not to get on board with McLaren after being Mercedes’ golden child. He’s had a string of bad cars where he’s punched well above his weight. And now, his less-experienced teammate has come up with the first win for team he’s helped build for years. With all that said, Nick just hasn’t been a factor all year like Robert has. Sure, the fact that he has a smoother style and can’t warm his tyres quick enough in qualifying has compromised every race of his and he’s done great to fight back from low grid spots – but this is Formula One. If he’s got a problem in quali then he needs to change something – be it his driving style, set up, whatever… There’s really no excuses. Still, we feel for you Nick but get back to being Quick Nick before Alonso comes in and takes your seat…

Lewis Hamilton – Lewis is still a rookie in so many respects and in Canada it showed. With that said, I see shades of Michael Schumacher in him. Schumacher was also prone to some questionable moments but that’s ok when you drive that darn quick. Before the pit stops Lewis was in a class of his own. Canada is certainly a track that suits him and he probably would have had the win fairly easily if he didn’t stuff up.

Kimi Raikkonen – Amazing composure from Kimi after being taken out by Lewis! Truly worthy of the ice-man tag. I think deep down Kimi probably knew if they both stayed in the race Lewis probably would have increased his lead in the championship. Even so, Kimi’s friendly pat on the back of Lewis was a great sporting gesture.

Fernando Alonso – Never really in the race but a great qualifying effort.

Felipe Massa – Could Ferrari mess this guy’s pit stops/strategy up any more? I don’t think it’s so much a case of Ferrari missing Ross Brawn, it’s just a case of the team lacking polish at the moment. Full credit to Felipe for a good fight back in the race and one of the best passes of the year (2 cars in one hit!)

David Coulthard – Good to see him back on the podium, but based on the performance throughout the year you have to feel for Mark Webber and the fact he wasn’t up there…

Timo Glock – 4th place is a great result but it was largely due to the retirement of so many of his competitors. The best part about the result for Timo is that he outperformed his teammate Jarno Trulli.

Heikki Kovalainen – Hmm… Nico Rosberg for McLaren in 2009?

Nelson Piquet Jr – Thought I’d mention Nelsinho because he did seem to have a bit of speed this time around and looked very racey indeed (not that sort of “racey” girls! ).

Kazuki Nakajima – It’s funny how it’s taken then commentators so long to realise Kazuki isn’t that bad at times. We saw some speed when Kazuki debuted last year, but admittedly got it wrong thinking he wouldn’t drive for Williams or Toyota this year. We’re still waiting for the next Ukyo Katayama though…