Race Report 5: Viva
Barcelona
As Freddy Mercury
would say if he were alive, interested in F1 and prone to using his lyrics to
comment upon GPs. So in many respects it’s Viva Barcelona as Freddy Mercury
wouldn’t have said at all.
Anyway I enjoyed the race. After the ‘Boredom of Bahrain’ anything would have
been an improvement in the entertainment stakes but to me Barcelona was a
pretty good race.
The crucial moment
of the weekend appeared to occur on Saturday when my old issue with Martin
Whitmarsh resurfaced once more. Some how Mclaren have turned up this season
with the best car but being Mclaren led by Whitmarsh they have failed to take
advantage of this situation at all. Admittedly Button has won a race but
Hamilton has yet to stand on the top step of the podium post race despite
qualifying on pole 3 times out of five races and qualifying second on the other
two occasions. Somehow incidents, bad luck and bad management have combined to
prevent Hamilton take advantage of any of these situations. The Spanish GP
failure though has to be most embarrassing and costly of the year so far and to
me seems indicative of the cautious management style that has in my opinion
ruined Hamiltons’ chances of victory over the last two years. Once again at the
last race Hamilton suffered a penalty which effectively ended his hopes of
winning the race due to two factors.
1 an error made by his team which at the end of the day Whitmarsh has to
take responsibility for and 2 the decision to stop the car out on track as this
would leave enough fuel to give a sample, but with the knowledge that stopping
the car out on track would lead to a penalty for Lewis. This strikes me as
another cautious decision by Whitmarsh that just made the situation worse. In
my opinion they should have just got Lewis back to the garage as slowly as
possible. Then they could have tried to find a sample for the scrutineers and
if they succeeded great and if not then they get a penalty but by stopping out
on track the penalty was inevitable.
The continued failure of Mclaren to win a race (Button’s win accepted) when
there is not one other great car out on the grid when one looks coldly at the
teams is a catastrophe. Williams, Sauber and Ferrari continue to be hugely
impressive but they shouldn’t be winning races with their budgets, drivers or
in the case of Ferrari, with what is clearly not a championship winning car.
If Mclaren fails
to win the title I think it will be time for Whitmarsh to step down as boss.
So the race.
It was quite good
wasn’t it? I was a little disappointed that Alonso didn’t manage to keep up the
pace and chase down Maldonado. Obviously none of us predicted Pastor would take
the victory and top step of the podium who would have? I must admit being a
little disappointed he won rather than Bruno Senna which would have been a huge
story. The Renaults looked briefly pacey and then faded but perhaps this year
unlike last year they will continue to develop he car rather than pointlessly
give up to work on next years car which in turn they will give up on a few
races in to the season to develop next years car, and on and on… Anyway perhaps
as I say they will continue to work on this car as it seems to have pace and
they have two great drivers who could definitely win races this year.
Hamilton performed admirably to get from 24th to 8th.
Sadly despite it benefiting my points Vettel did manage a surge past him late
in the race. Webber was once again nowhere and Button the champion professional
winger (a title he has won form Webber) spent the entire weekend bleating about
understeer, oversteer any bloody steer that means he escapes blame for another
weak performance. Congratulations are due to Maldonado. He drove well,
qualified amazingly and didn’t crack under the pressure (this time). However a
pole to flag win has never really impressed me so I must admit struggling to
muster much enthusiasm for Pastors win. He also sounded a little keen talking
about the championship in the post race interviews. On the other hand seeing
Williams back where I think most of us have wanted to see them again after 8
years was a wonderful thing. Shame of course that someone lit the BBQ inside
the garage but hopefully all is well, everyone is fit and healthy and it won’t
effect their performance at the next race.
Of course one can’t
produce a race report without mentioning the bizarre and hilarious Michael
Schumacher vs Bruno Senna incident. Schumacher bizarrely claimed after he left
the garage that if we watch the video like he just had we would see Senna move
once, and then weave back leaving him no room and making a crash inevitable.
Well I don’t know what computer enhanced footage he was shown but in the tape I
saw multiple times from multiple angles showed that if Senna had moved to his
right is was no more than half a foot, he then moved smoothly and
un-dramatically back slightly to take the line through the corner as drivers
are permitted to do. Schumacher claimed Senna had moved in the braking zone.
Well firstly as I described above a driver is allowed one move to defend and then
can take their line through a corner. Secondly if they were in the braking
zone, why wasn’t Schumacher braking? He hammered into the back of Senna’s car
almost at full pace, where was this breaking you were speaking of Michael? The
fact that everyone has come out uniformly damning Schumcher for his part in the
incident reassures me I can understand what I’m seeing occurring in a race
(something I rarely doubt as I seem to spot things minutes before the
commentators on a regular basis) and it pleases me that he wont get away with blaming
other drivers for his terrible mistakes. The main thought I’m left with is,
what was he doing? I can’t understand what Schumacher expected to happen coming
into the corner that fast and closing on Senna as quickly as he did?
Tyres thought:
Can’t they make a tyre you can drive flat out on for say 10 laps and then drops
off a cliff, not a tyre that drops over that cliff edge after 3 flat out laps?
It’s so dull not getting to see the top speed of the cars and listening to the
pundits go on and on and on about the bloody tyres again.
Anyway enough of
that, our league table
So there have been
questions regarding penalties for predictors who pick a driver for pole who
then receives a penalty and drops down the grid before the race. Well as
clarified at the last race if this occurs you too will suffer the penalty to
add that extra jeopardy to predictions and really mix up our point scoring.
This week this rule really came home to roost as a few of us predicted Hamilton
for pole and after Mclaren’s standard balls up we have felt the pain of Charlie
Whiting’s surprisingly harsh punishment and with Jack, Alex and myself
predicting him for pole perhaps we would have been better off not submitting
any predictions after all as we each received an eye watering -14 for that
element of prediction. So another low scoring weekend
generally with Simon pulling a second place out of the bag with Alonso yet
again finishing well in what is supposedly a dog of a car. Whilst Jack picked
up a third with Raikkonen which alleviates the Hamilton punishment a little.
So top scorer this
week Simon with 22 and bottom Alex with -8
After
5 races here is the league table. Simon has once again risen to the top in
ominous form whilst the two low scoring and largely unpredictable weekends have
bunched the table up a bit. So we go into race 6 wondering whether it will be 6
races, 6 winners?
The
League Table after 5 races
|
Week 5
|
|
|
Predictor
|
Points
|
|
1
|
Simon
|
89
|
|
2
|
Becx
|
88
|
|
3
|
Alan D
|
87
|
|
4
|
Jack
|
83
|
|
5
|
Alan WA
|
75
|
|
6
|
George
|
68
|
|
7
|
James
|
64
|
|
8
|
Alex
|
49
|
|
9
|
Martin
|
44
|
Predictions for
Monaco by 12:10 26/05/12 please. Best of luck.
