F1-Blog

Massa made it two in a row at Turkey this weekend, by beating both of the McLaren’s and his team mate.

He actually made it look fairly easy in the end, Kimi got close a couple of times, but really didn’t seem to have the edge over his Brazilian team mate.

The race was quite a boring one as a result, with the only real action taking part on lap 43 with Hamilton’s front right tyre exploding, and him having to nurse the car back to the pits for a change. He did a good job and did not damage too much of his car, and still finished 5th.

The Turkish people did not turn out in the numbers that they have in previous years either, perhaps they thought F1 was dead now there is no Schumi to go and watch?

Kimi drove a decent race, managing to get into second spot before the first corner, as it seemed the Ferrari’s were capable of running the softer tyres on the longer stints, giving both of the scarlet cars a slight advantage off the start line.

Alonso grabbed third spot for the McLaren team, with fourth going to Heidfeld in the BMW, proving that not only is the car keeping up with the front runners in development (i.e. they are not loosing ground, but likewise unable to gain any), but also that BMW have decided the right way in keeping both him and Kubica in race seats for 2008.

Kovalainen had another good showing in the Renault, making his more illustrious team mate look bad, with Nico Rosberg brought the Williams in for 7th spot, with the last points spot going to Robert Kubica in the second BMW.

The Toyota’s after having a decent pre-race pace (ignoring Ralf’s mess of Qualifying that is), had a bit of a bad day. Jarno was tagged in the first corner by Fisi, putting him last, Ralf also had a hit and miss race, showing pace at times, then none at others, very odd from a driver that needs a seat for next year (and will doubtfully be at Toyota, with the name of Timo Glock being banded around for his seat).

So all in all not a particularly great race. It was nice to see the performance advancements from the ‘holiday’ break, but it’s also proved that neither of the top two teams have any advantage over the other.

It should be close for the drivers title though at the end of the year, and that always adds excitement to the last races.