F1-Blog

French Roundup

The French grand prix showed the domination of the Ferrari’s around the track, but the one-two finish for Massa and Kimi is not the interesting news.

No the interest comes from who finished behind them, and the orders they did it in.

After a clean start all the cars ran down to turn three, but the order had been shuffled. Fernando in the Renault got a horrible start, and had Jarno Trulli pass him before turn one. A strange occurrence when you consider how good the Renault’s used to be off the light’s. It seems they are struggling to come to grips with the new FIA approved ECU, as most of the other teams are now getting decent starts.

Kimi out front started to gap Felipe, and Jarno could not keep up with the Ferrari’s for very long, so the race at the front settled into a rhythm.

Behind them though Lewis Hamilton who started thirteenth on the grid was pushing hard, clipping the rear end of his team mate at one point, or at least getting very close to clipping him. However his race was to take another turn for the worst. He overtook the Toro Rosso of Vettel, but could not scrub the speed in time for the chicane, and was awarded a drive through penalty for taking road advantage by missing a corner. Lewis took the drive through on the very lap it was awarded (13). After looking over the footage, I am not 100% sure it was a justified penalty, as he was passed the Toro Rosso before he over ran the corner, it may have helped him keep the spot, but I’m quite sure that if he could have scrubbed the speed off, he would have left Vettel hanging out to dry on the outside of the corner any how. This left Lewis with far too much time to make up, and even running a very light car he could not make his way into the points as he battled through the Williams and Red Bulls in his way.

Jenson’s race ended after the front wing of his Honda collapsed over the kerbs of the final chicane. He had obviously just passed the pit entrance and had to complete the lap with the front wing tucked under the front of the car. This caused too much damage to the other aero parts in that section of the car, and ultimately forced him to retire.

After the first round of stops Kimi was still leading his team mate by over 5 seconds, and the Ferrari’s looked to be in ‘cruise home mode’ as no-one else on the track could match their performance.

However that all changed on lap 34, when Kimi’s lap times tumbled, he was obviously struggling with a technical issue. It turned out that Kimi’s right exhaust exit pipes had failed, and were causing the engine to run worse, on top of that the hot exhaust gasses were now directing themselves inside the rear of the car, causing the carbon fibre and airbox to burn. To Kimi’s credit he managed to control the issue and brought his laptimes back to something like normal, but was obviously worried about the damage the hot exhaust gasses were doing to the rest of the car and bodywork.

Kimi let Massa take the lead of the race during this phase, and after working out how to drive the failing car, could just about keep pace with Massa on the track.

Jarno was still running third in the Toyota, but was now over 20 seconds behind the two Ferrari’s, with a hard charging Heikki Kovalainen coming up behind him.

Lewis was battling the Renault of ex team mate Alonso, and the Renault was without a doubt holding Lewis up well. Eventually Lewis put in a good move to get passed Alonso on lap 47, but his chances of points was gone, however in a swing of fait his team mate was doing well after the team made some good stops, and a decent strategy to get him in the hunt.

The last section of the race was about how tenacious Jarno could be to hold onto the third place finish. To add to the difficulty of keeping the McLaren behind him it started to drizzle with rain, something Jarno is open and honest about when he talks of the Toyota, saying it does not like the wet weather.

Jarno seemed to be struggling with mechanical grip, and was clearly using his option tyres (especially the rear left that had by now lost it’s white ring), but he held on in, and even started to pull away a little when the track dried out after the rain shower. Heikki put some good moves on to try overtake while he could, but ultimately Jarno wanted it too much, and being the leavel headed competent racer that he is foiled all the McLaren attempts to get passed.

The other surprise finish is that of Renault’s rookie Nelson Piquet, who managed to get passed his more illustrious team mate, and took seventh spot, probably saving his drive for this season.

So a decent race, which is a surprise for Magny Course. And a great result for Toyota, who lost Ove Andersson last week.

Next race is Silverstone, and Ferrari are strong in the UK as well, so the Brit’s will have to try hard to make the race theirs.