F1-Blog

Kimi comes back

Kimi Raikkonen has shown that he still has it in him to win a GP by taking a strong win in at the last Magny-Cours race in France.

The win happened because Kimi had more fuel on-board and managed to make it count by overtaking his Ferrari team mate Fillipe Massa during the second round of pit stops.

Third place was taken by the young Brit Lewis Hamilton, who ran a 3 stop strategy, as was his team mate, although Fernando Alonso was switched to a 2 stop race after the first stops. Lewis for the first time, was mugged off the line, and never seemed to be able to make a move on the Ferrari’s at any point in the day. After all 8 podiums from 8 starts is not a bad record.

Race of the day Robert Kubica managed to bring his BMW Sauber in for 4th spot, after a hard race in the second stint with Lewis Hamilton. The second BMW Sauber of Nick Heidfeld made finished in the fifth spot, with a close run battle between Giancarlo Fisichella and Fernando Alonso finishing 6th and 7th.

Jenson Button and the Honda team grabbed their first points of the season, with an 8th place finish for the Brit. The Honda certainly is starting to look better, but still has a way to go to keep up with the front runners.

Besides that there was very little real action, the camera’s followed the Fernando Heidfeld battle for most of the race, as it was the most interesting race on the track. There were a couple of issues at the start, Anthony Davidson ran into the back of Toni Liuzzi and span them both out. There was also an incident at the hairpin, where Jarno Trulli ran into the back of Heikki Kovalainen, ending the race for the Toyota driver, and ruining the day for the Renault one.

The best pass of the day has to go to Fernando whilst overtaking the BMW Sauber of Heidfeld. This was a good pass as Fernando made it somewhere that a pass is not really possible (through one of the quick chicanes).

So Lewis now leads the championship by 14 points from Fernando, and the two Ferrari’s have shown that the new aero changes, along with engine work (to the extent allowed) has brought them back into the challenge.

Silverstone should be a good race.

1 6 Kimi Räikkönen Ferrari 70 Winner 3 10
2 5 Felipe Massa Ferrari 70 +2.4 secs 1 8
3 2 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 70 +32.1 secs 2 6
4 10 Robert Kubica BMW 70 +41.7 secs 4 5
5 9 Nick Heidfeld BMW 70 +48.8 secs 7 4
6 3 Giancarlo Fisichella Renault 70 +52.2 secs 5 3
7 1 Fernando Alonso McLaren-Mercedes 70 +56.5 secs 10 2
8 7 Jenson Button Honda 70 +58.8 secs 12 1
9 16 Nico Rosberg Williams-Toyota 70 +68.5 secs 9 
10 11 Ralf Schumacher Toyota 69 +1 Lap 11 
11 8 Rubens Barrichello Honda 69 +1 Lap 13 
12 15 Mark Webber Red Bull-Renault 69 +1 Lap 14 
13 14 David Coulthard Red Bull-Renault 69 +1 Lap 16 
14 17 Alexander Wurz Williams-Toyota 69 +1 Lap 18 
15 4 Heikki Kovalainen Renault 69 +1 Lap 6 
16 22 Takuma Sato Super Aguri-Honda 68 +2 Laps 22 
17 20 Adrian Sutil Spyker-Ferrari 68 +2 Laps 21 
Ret 19 Scott Speed STR-Ferrari 55 +15 Laps 15 
Ret 21 Christijan Albers Spyker-Ferrari 28 +42 Laps 20 
Ret 23 Anthony Davidson Super Aguri-Honda 1 +69 Laps 19 
Ret 12 Jarno Trulli Toyota 1 +69 Laps 7 
Ret 18 Vitantonio Liuzzi STR-Ferrari 0 Accident 17