Easy Music for Difficult Ears

Bahrain 2008
I asked last week for an exciting Spanish Grand Prix so that there will be less talk about the Mosley on-going saga and I think we got it, which was a bit of relief considering the Bahrain Grand Prix some weeks earlier. Bahrain really wasn’t a good race – it got processional very quickly with interest peaked on momentary occasions, such as the Alonso/Hamilton crash and the Button/Coulthard incident.

I’m going to stick my neck out, but Fernando Alonso did not break test Lewis Hamilton – one of the drawbacks of traction control being banned is that a driver gains excessive wheel spin. Alonso lost traction, gained wheel spin, couldn’t accelerate and Hamilton hit him – it would’ve made no sense for Alonso to brake-test Hamilton when he was on the crest of the points – something that has since been proved by telementary from the Renault team. As for the Jenson Button/David Coulthard collision, it seemed fairly fifty-fifty as Coulthard left a gap, Button went for it, but when the gap disappeared he was too committed to withdraw… bang!! It seemed to be a case of both drivers should have being paying more attention.

Felipe Massa won the race easily from his team-mate, but you could sense that Raikkonen was busy conserving points on a track he openly doesn’t like and it is this sort of consistency that won him the 2007 World Championship, however it was a great win for Massa that may see him stick his nose into the championship race.
For me though the biggest point of interest was the speed of the BMW cars, as for the first time really look like they could influence the final points standings come the final race on November 2nd. Whereas the BMW drivers of Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld may not be race winners, it is their plucking of 2nd, 3rd and 4th places from the top two teams that could dramatically shape the season. Although I was disappointed to see Kubica miss the pole position spot in Australia in March, it was about time that he got it in Bahrain.

Spain 2008
For the first time this season, Renault actually look competitive. A few thought that Alonso may be pushed by the Spanish crowd, but the reality is Piquet Jr also drove much better. The French car appeared stable through corners while maintaining good speeds through the traps around the track, however it was inevitable that Alonso would lose third place to Hamilton during the pitstops once the Englishman was in clear air, but it definitely showcased the improvements that the French team have made since Bahrain. That neither Renault driver finished is unfortunate (Alonso – engine, Piquet Jr. – taken out by Bourdais), but the French team have made a blatant step forward in car development and as such their battle with Williams, Red Bull and Toyota as the best of the rest starts now.

Today Red Bull driver David Coulthard was involved in two accident – on the first lap he was clipped by an underachieving Adrian Sutil which inadvertently resulted in Sebastian Vettel’s retirement and later on Clock hitting Coulthard in a similar fashion. That Coulthard was involved in two crashes today (neither his fault) has once again opened debates with regards to how much longer he’ll be in Formula 1. The main contention with these accidents seem to be that due to newly raised cockpit sides and smaller, repositioned mirrors (ironically in response to an accident caused by Coulthard in Australia last season) makes it next to impossible to see behind, which goes some distance to explain why a majority of the accidents involving Coulthard this year have been identical.
However, even Sebastien Bourdais complained vociferously, following his accident with Piquet Jr., that the drivers simply cannot see anything that is close or alongside them, however they get good views of what’s directly behind them over the rear wing. The chances are this is something that might no be solved this season unless it results in a serious crash, but thus far all the accident relevant to this have been fairly low speed.
Apart from one other that happened this weekend….

Heikki Kovalainen was a passenger in what must go down as one of the most frightening crashes in Formula 1 for some time. After a wheel failure, Kovalainen was sent straight into the tyre barrier at turn 9 at approximately 140 MPH and got buried underneath the tyre. For fifteen minutes all that was seen were the marshals digging the McLaren out of the barriers followed by the ambulance service attending the Finnish driver.
That he was removed from the wreck with only a slight concussion and bruising is nothing short of miraculous and another indication of how much safety has come in Formula 1 and other forms of motor racing in the last few decades. Had that happened in the 70’s (or even the 80’s), the chances of Kovalainen’s survival would have been very slim, however the driver was released from hospital on Monday night and pending an examination on Thursday evening coming, he should be driving at Istanbul.

On what must seem like a truly polar day for Finland, Kovalainen’s fellow countryman Kimi Raikkonen cruised to an easy victory in Barcelona and never looked under threat. It was a slightly strange experience as the Bahrain situation was reversed here, as Raikkonen looked comfortable and Massa sat back and took a second place on a track that he is not fond of – consistency rears its head once again. There are a growing number of people thinking that the points system should be changed again from it’s current format to give more of an emphasis on race victory’s, as many races are often decided by drivers sitting back and taking comfortable points.
Congratulations also to both Honda and Jenson Button – both of whom score their first points in one-and-a-half years in Spain. After a year of hell in 2007, the team has come together in a stunning fashion to create a much better car and whereas he is deemed to be very influential in knitting the team together at the moment, it won’t be until 2009 until the Brawn effect will be fully apparent as that will be the first Honda motor designed under his leadership.
Honda are hoping that Brawn’s knowledge and experience will be as effective as it was when he was technical director of Ferrari during the golden years of the early 00’s.

Last but not least, can someone please tell what the fuck is up with ITV’s coverage of the sport. Fair enough that it’s a British television station and that Formula 1 currently has a young successful driver, but canceling out interviews with everyone else and then Martin Brundle announcing him as “Driver of the Day” is taking the fucking piss. He drove a good race, but both Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa drove better races and while Hamilton did very well to finish third, he displayed no push after the initial laps (he did get a very good start) and didn’t look even close to breaking the Ferrari’s at any point.
It was something that was confirmed later when both Ferrari drivers claimed that they were not pushing at 100% for most of the race (they have to make their engines last the Turkish Grand Prix next week), while the McLaren team seemed to be pushing at maximum. In the meantime, it would seem that the Hamilton-lovefest will continue for quite a while yet, which is a shame considering that he is an excellent driver, but his celebratory is quickly becoming an irritant.

Currently watching:
1989 Formula 1 World Championship “German Grand Prix”

Hoopla!!
Leigh

Apologies for the lateness of the post, but I’ve been rather busy this week with work (etc…) so I’m just going to stick up my Formula 1 bit now quickly. This is my third main love in life (behind music and Doctor Who).
I quite enjoyed the first two races of the season with some wonderful drives and performances, mainly from Honda and BMW – nobody quite thought they’d be that fast. For the two teams to gain over a second in late developments is astonishing by Formula 1 standards and it is fantastic to see Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello further up the running order, especially Button who has really put his career on the line with the Honda group.

Heikki Kovalainen looks like he could seriously challenge Lewis Hamilton later on in the year, but as with Renault last season he seems to be taking a few races to really get settled in the car and this may give Hamilton the edge for the season. However, Kovalainen was excellent in Malaysia and thoroughly deserved his third place at the end of the race.
Hamilton, however, had problems in the Malaysian race following an excellent win in Australia. After being correctly penalised in qualifying (along with Kovalainen for impeding Heidfeld on his final run), he got stuck behind the Red Bull of Mark Webber and when the McLaren finally pitted, his front right wheel got jammed thanks to those new aerodynamic frisbee’s and as a result lost approximately twenty seconds.
Webber to his credit drove brilliantly with his own reliability problems (his fuel-pump was faulty) to keep the faster car behind him.

I was especially pleased with Kimi Raikkonen’s performance in Malaysia after a couple of slip-ups in Australia, although people talking about the championship now is pure silly – we all knew the basis of this years championship would be between Raikkonen and Hamilton, I do not need ITV to tell me this every twenty seconds!! Two races and two non-finishes from Felipe Massa though tells a different story, he really needs to up his game and stop making the kind of mistakes he made at Sepang.

Pass of the year so far must go to Nick Heidfeld with his move on both Davis Coulthard and Fernando Alonso (turn 15, lap 4 of the Malaysian Grand Prix) – Heidfeld took advantage of Alonso attempting a pass the Red Bull and managed to get around both of them.

There are a number of concerns regarding the 2008 Red Bull with regards to its structure in light of it’s failure’s over the Malaysian Grand Prix weekend, and also let us not forget Mark Webber’s brake failure in qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix. Apparently the car only passed its first crash test four days before arriving at Melbourne, so it’s conceivable that there still problems with the machine.

I used to be an occasional visitor to the ITV-F1 forum on the broadcaster’s website, but I just cannot do it anymore. So many Lewis Hamilton fans attacking anything remotely negative about the driver and constant conspiracy theories surrounding Ferrari and McLaren are just too much – so goodbye ITV literally…
As news filtered through last week that the station has lost the rights to show the sport on terrestrial television and that the BBC have regained them. No figures have been released yet as to how much the sale was, but all I care about is the fact that there will be no more ad breaks. I do hope they lay off the Lewis Hamilton love-fest (I’m looking at you James Allen) which has gotten very, very irritating in the last year – don’t get me wrong, the young Englishman is an excellent driver, but other shit is going down.

So in seven days the championship moves to Bahrain to the circuit of swirling sands where the Ferrari’s are destined to be strong and both the BMW’s and Williams are expecting stronger performances.
In the meantime, I’ve discovered a motor-racing archive site that will keep me busy for a long time yet. Imagine my thrill at being able to watch the 1963 Australian Grand Prix. Fantastic stuff!!

Current listening:
Suicide “Suicide”

Grand job,
Leigh