F1-Blog

Willi Weber, Michael Schumacher's manager has hi out at the comments from Joaquin Verdegay. He has been reported to have told Bild newspaper, “If you make a mistake and lose control of your car, then of course you brake harder, Everyone who drives a car knows this. This alleged proof is ridiculous. None of the three stewards sat in the car, only Michael.”

He has also said that Joaquin Verdegay should not have even been on the stewards comity, saying “The gentleman is Spanish, like Alonso, It was not a good idea to let him judge. Then you can ask the wolf how Red Riding Hood is.”

Well Willi, it works both ways, Schumi has got away with murder (in F1 terms) driving for Ferrari before now, as the FIA are too afraid to say Boo to the team. It's about time Schumi got told off. Plus there was only one Spaniard on the comity, and the other two members obviously agreed else the penalty would not have been given.

Yes Schumi made a mistake, we do no mind that, it's what he did AFTER the mistake that is cause for debate.

A piece on grandprix.com is speculating about the Toyota and Williams engine deal that has been touted for some time.The rumour has it that Toyota will supply V8 engines to the team re branded as Lexus to try distinguish between the teams, and improve the brand visibility.

Other things that they speculate about are the Red Bull/Toro Rosso engines, with TR possibly running the 2006 spec RB2/Ferrari car, and Red Bull themselves switching over to Cosworth in a new Newey designed chassis, and the VAG rumour that I commented on is back.

The thing is, if Williams get the Toyota lump, where does that leave MF1? Toyota will not want to supply 3 teams. There could be a Cosworth deal for them to have customer engines, although apparently they are going to try for Mercedes/Ilmore V8's. The problem there is that McLaren are well known to want to run a second team with Jean Alesi and Direxiv.

Next year and 2008 could be as interesting on the engine front as it looks to be on the driver’s front.

One of the stewards from this weekends Monaco Grand Prix has spoken out about the decision to penalise Michael Schumacer.

The Spanish steward Joaquin Verdegay has said that the decision was very difficult, as the reputation of Schumi was at stake, but after looking at all the data it was all that they could do.

“It was a difficult decision because we couldn’t afford to make a mistake when the reputation of a driver is at stake,” Verdigay told the Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport. “We do not know if the whole manoeuvre was deliberate but it is certain that at that point of the track he had never done anything of that sort all weekend.”

Joaquin also said that the evidence pointed to the fact that the incident could have been avoided, saying “He braked 50% harder than he had on the other laps and made a counter-steer movement which was absolutely not necessary, which lasted for five metres, to the point at which it was no longer possible for him to correctly turn the corner, He lost control of the car when he was travelling at 10mph, which is absolutely unjustifiable and the engine stalled because he wanted it to, losing the time necessary for engaging the clutch.”

He did however mention that if Schumi had taken the 'opportunity' to crash the car, even at slow speed into the barrier then the stewards would probably have never had investigated the incident.

What does this then bring to the sport and Michael? Well Michael will now know to crash it if h has the chance next time as he will not be investigated, and that the stewards do have teeth, and will punish people that break the rules.

This is good for the sport, never before have Ferrari been given a slap on the wrist like this, the FIA have usually stepped in to help them out.

Jacques Villeneuve has been reported as saying he is struggling to find a decent drive next year. His current BMW contract expires at the end of the 2006 season.

This is actually strange, as his driving this year is as good as he has been since 1997. The BMW/Sauber car has come along quite well under his leadership. He has also been continually out qualifying his team mate all year.

BMW could do worse than offer him a drive for 2007, however it seems there may be other seats going. Renault is probably a bad idea, but other teams on the grid could do worse. It may also be worth some of the lower 'wealthy' teams like Toro Rosso offering the drive, he would be a good development driver for the new car.

For those that missed the coverage, or would like to watch the ITV-F1 coverage of the Monaco GP then it's now available on Easynews. The coverage of the other sessions is available on Easynews as well.

If you are not a member of Easynews then I highly recommend joining.

Alonso has added another achievement to his increasingly impressive repertoire with a win at Monaco.

It was a fairly interesting race  by Monaco standards, there where bumps, bangs, and politics aplenty, and to add to it all some overtaking!

I'll lay out the podium order first, just to make those who missed the race wonder exactly what happened.

In first place was Fernando Alonso, second we have Juan Pablo Montoya, and incredibly in third we have David Coulthard.

The end results do not represent the whole race however, the race started fairly uneventful with just the Midland cars bumping each other. However on lap 2 Mark Webber made a mistake at Sainte Devote that allowed Kimi Raikonen to get passed into second place, he then set about catching the front running Alonso.

For the next 10 laps or so the first 4 cars ran within 4 seconds of each other, one of the tightest races we have seen this year in the championship.  Michael Schumacher who had started from the pit lane after the steward decision and an engine change was caught up behind the struggling Jenson Button.

However on lap 21 things started to happen, Michael Schumacher passed Jenson Button and proceeded to pull away from the ailing driver. Then the front runners started to pit, first up was Juan Pablo Montoya who took on around 10 seconds of fuel, then a lap later his team mate and then second place running Kimi Raikonen stopped for around the same amount of fuel.

We believed at that point the Renault team could probably go further, as we had expected the McLaren team to do as well, however on lap 24 and 25 the two Renault’s and Mark Webber pitted. However Kimi had upped his pace on his out laps from the pit and Renault had to short fill Alonso with just 7 seconds of fuel to maintain track position.

This then seemed to put the next set of stops into the hands of the McLaren’s, as the Silver cars could run longer than the Renault’s and hopefully get track position.

This strategy was however ruined for the McLaren team as Webber still running in 3rd position seemed to struggle and loose power down the main straight on lap 47, his engine was then seen smoking and the exhaust’s caught fire forcing him to stop just passed the pit lane exit around the Sainte Devote corner. This caused the safety car to be deployed and all the front running teams to call their drivers into the pits for a fill up.

More bad news for the McLaren team, on lap 51 whilst still under the safety car pace, Kimi’s car overheats and sets fire at the Loews Hairpin , he pulls off the track just before the tunnel at Portier corner.

This then leaves the podium as Alonso, Montoya, Barichelo. Nico Rosberg understeers into the barrier at the Anthony Noghes corner, cementing a bad day for the Williams team. The unfortunate Klien has gearbox failure ending his day early, however this promotes David Coulthard to fifth behind Jarno Trulli.

Barichelo is then penalised and has to take a drive through penalty, promoting Trulli to 3rd and Coulthard to fourth. However more bad luck for the Toyota team as Trulli’s car is the third of the day to have a smoky engine failure. This promotes Coutlhard to his final third place podium spot.

What can be deemed from today’s race? Well the Renault’s are still strong, fast and reliable cars, as even Fisichela showed signs of speed in both qualifying and the race. We can also take it that the improvements to both the McLaren chassis and the Mercedes/Ilmore engine have helped both the McLaren cars, as they both looked fast all weekend. The Red-Bull car of David Coulthard finishing third, may not be because of the car necessarily, however a mature drive from Coulthard has lead to the teams first podium, that will boost the team in more than one way.

Other things to note, Toyota showed that the new TF106B car can be quick, it took some setting up as it showed little sign of speed all weekend up until the Qualifying session, but hope is there for the team. Michael Schumacher will be stinging from the decision in qualifying, and depending how the press respond to it could ring the end to his career at the end of the season.

The Cosworth engine in the Williams cars proved again that it can be quick, given a chassis that it can show itself in. I would not be surprised if the Red Bull team announced the purchase of the engine manufacturer, possibly alongside VW group sometime soon.

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News in from Don that MS has been penalised and will be forced to start from the back of the grid for Sunday's race.

It certainly took the stewards a long time to come to th decision, and from the announcement from Ferrari it looks like the team are not happy.

This from the stewards, "Having compared all relevant data, the stewards can find no justifiable reason for the driver to have braked with such undue, excessive and unusual pressure at this part of the circuit, and are therefore left with no alternatives but to conclude that the driver deliberately stopped his car on the circuit in the last few minutes of qualifying, at a time at which he had thus far set the fastest laptime."

and Ferrari's response, "We totally disagree with it (the decision).  Such a decision creates a very serious precedent, ruling out the possibility of driver error. With no real evidence, the stewards have assumed he is guilty."

Lewis Hamilton the up and coming English driver, is looking be getting closer to being the first black F1 driver with an impressive win at Monaco.

Hamilton finished a good 8 seconds clear of second place man Franck Perera and his team mate Alex Premat.

Apparently the race started with a big accident at the first corner between Tristan Gommendy and Jose Maria Lopez. Gommendy was apparently catapulted into the air hitting Nicolas Lapierre who in turn ran into Lucas di Grass.

Hamilton said "It's quite an emotional experience winning here in Monaco," said Hamilton. "It's something that, growing up, you dream of. To come into GP2 in only my first year and win here, and from pole, I couldn't ask for more."  about the win.

The win now means that Hamilton has 49 points in the GP2 championship, 10 ahead of Nelson Piquet Jnr.

Jacques Villeneuve has had his clashes with Michael Schumacher before (Jerez in 997 comes to mind). But he has taken the attack to Schumi over his 'mistake' at Rascasse corner that ultimately ended up in him stalling his car on the outside of the corner.

JV told reporters “I hope it was deliberate, because if that was a mistake he should not even have an F1 super licence, If you can make a mistake like that, you shouldn't drive a race car.

There’s no way you could make a mistake like that. It’s the kind of thing I couldn't dream of doing myself. I don't know what goes through your mind when you decide to do that, when you know that the rest of the world can see.

I don't understand it, it's stupid. He didn't need to do that, he's a seven-times world champion, he was on pole position. Why do that? It’s only going to make him look bad.

This is embarrassing. Embarrassing for a world champion. It would even be embarrassing for Ide.”

Harsh words from the French Canadian, classing the 7 times world champion alongside the now no longer super licensed Yuji Ide as harsh as it could possibly get.

Even Kimi has said "I don’t believe that he really had any problems", this from the driver that says nothing.

We shall see in the morning if the drivers and teams are correct in their thinking when the stewards announce their decision.

Giancarlo Fisichella has been penalised his fastest 3 laps for holding David Coulthard up during Qualifying.

This will drop him to provisional 10th place on the grid in a move that matches the one that JV had a few weeks back at Nurburgring for holding Fisi up in Q2.

The final grid order is still to be settled by the stewards after the investigation into Schumi's 'stalling' at the end of Q3.