F1-Blog

The Turkish GP again did not disappoint. We had all sorts of drama in the race, both on and off the track.

The Ferrari’s where surprisingly not as far ahead of the McLaren’s as we thought they would be, and the BMW-Sauber’s where miles off the pace. So it seems to have all moved at the top.

The race started with the McLaren cars on the harder tyre compounds and the Ferrari’s running the softer option tyres.

The first corner saw Lewis get the jump on Heikki, and took the second spot, whilst Heikki and Kimi had a small coming together, causing Heikki to pit for a puncture.

At the back of the field Fisichella was far too hot into the first corner, and out braked himself, launching the Force India over the Williams of Nakajima, causing a retirement for both drivers, and a couple of laps under the safety car to clean up the mess.

The race settled into a nice rhythm, with Massa leading by just a second or two over Lewis, and Kimi and Robert a little further back, as the two leaders were constantly quicker than the rest of the pack.

First to pit was the Renault of Fernando, showing that the Q3 pace, was down to light load’s in the car, but more of a surprise was that Lewis pitted shortly after, this showed that the McLaren team were running a very strange three stop race strategy. It turns out that Bridgestone were so worried about rear tyre wear on the MP4-23 that they forced the team to run three stops on race day.

This forced Lewis to drive out of his skin, and he caught and then overtook Massa in the lead, and then proceeded to romp off into the distance. Unfortunately for the Brit though, he could not make up the 25 seconds required to actually challenge for the win, even though the McLaren was clearly the most hooked up car on the track at that moment in time.

He did however manage to come in and go out on his third stop, and stay ahead of Kimi, but then seemed to struggle on the soft option compound tyres in the McLaren, and could not catch Massa, and in fact was struggling to keep Kimi at bay.

Further back, the BMW-Sauber of Robert Kubica was certainly not in the same league as either the McLaren of Ferrari’s this weekend, and as such they finished fourth and fifth.

Fernando showed that the Renault is certainly improving, and took sixth spot with a trouble free race, behind him was Mark Webber in the Red Bull with a strong performance from the Australian.

Nico brought the sole Williams in for the last point, and beat the factory Toyota drivers who finished down in tenth and thirteenth with a poor race day, after both showing pace in Qualifying.

Jenson again out paced his more experienced team mate and took eleventh, with Rubens finishing fourteenth on his 257th race.

Heikki brought his McLaren in twelfth after his problems at the start of the race, and showed that he is not afraid to pass the opposition, in fact if the team had have fuelled the McLaren to the end of the race, and not forced him to stop with seven laps remaining he would have made the points positions, a good strong recovery drive.

So we now head to Monaco, where historically the McLaren’s are stronger than the Ferrari’s, as they usually are at the Canadian race that follows.

So can McLaren take the fight to the Ferrari’s on the tracks that usually suit the cars, or can Ferrari bring a car that likes the tight twisty Monaco, and the bumps and humps in Canada. The season is only getting better.

I t seems that the young Brit Lewis Hamilton has signed a $10 Million deal with gaming Giant Electronic Arts (EA Sports).

This has lead to speculation that if the EA brand has invested so heavily in an F1 heavyweight for marketing of a game, then they are also in talks to purchase the F1 right’s, currently held by Sony.

If this is true, it’s excellent news in one way, and not so good in another. It would mean that the F1 games would be multi platform (XBox 360, PS3 at least) and people who are not on the Sony platform would again be able to play F1 games.

However it’s possibly not all good news, the current F1 game available on the PS3 is decidedly arcade’y and very easy. If EA bring the F1 franchise in house, then perhaps they are also looking to purchase the Sony Liverpool Studio’s (the current developers of F1), and if so the game would stay in it’s arcade form. It is possible though that the game would be taken over by one of EA’s plethora of in house development studio’s and get the treatment it deserves, and with a little luck, we could get back to something resembling Geoff Crammond’s greats (F1GP 1/2/3/4 from MicroProse).

Here’s hoping, as I can see the value of dumb’ing the F1 game to a level where it can be picked up by many, but us F1 fans would like something more, something that mirror’s the trials and tribulations of the F1 world a little more closely.

Hey we may even get a management part to the game, that would be fun, we can go through Stepneygate for ourselves…..

Lewis Hamilton will not walk away from the Chinese GP with the world championship. It seems that his rear right tyre delaminated, and in a strange twist of fate it seems that either the tyre gave up as he entered the pit lane, or Lewis just plane overcooked his entry. Either way Lewis finished up in the gravel trap just in front of the pit lane.

With his race ended Alonso will catch up to his younger team mate with one race to go.

We will have to wait to see where Alonso finishes, at the time of writing he was running in second behind Kimi, and ahead of Filipe.

If it ends in the current way then Fernando will be four points behind Lewis. This means Lewis will have to finish third to take the championship at Interlagos.

Looks like the FIA/FOM will get their last race showdown between the two McLaren drivers.

There have been some changes on the grid, so I thought I would mention them before the race starts.

Giancarlo Fisichella has lost five places on the grid due to a breach of article 31.7 of the FIA Sporting code. He was judged to have impeded Sakon Yamamoto in the first phase of qualifying.

Then we have the Alonso / Hamilton incident. The Stewards have decided that Alonso unnecessarily impeded Hamilton and so Alonso has a 5 place drop on the grid as well.

1  Hamilton  McLaren
2  Heidfeld  BMW
3  Raikkonen  Ferrari
4  Rosberg  WilliamsF1
5  R Schumacher  Toyota
6  Alonso  McLaren
7  Kubica  BMW
8  Trulli  Toyota
9  Webber  Red Bull
10  Coulthard  Red Bull
11  Kovalainen  Renault
12  Wurz  WilliamsF1
13  Fisichella  Renault
14  Massa  Ferrari
15  Davidson  Super Aguri
16  Liuzzi  Toro Rosso
17  Button  Honda
18  Barrichello  Honda
19  Sato  Super Aguri
20  Vettel  Toro Rosso
21  Sutil  Spyker
22  Yamamoto  Spyker

The Qualification session went well again for young Brit Lewis Hamilton. Lewis has been the fastest car over the whole weekend so far, and managed to put his car on the front row of the grid in second place, even though his lap was a little scruffy.

Kimi Raikkonen and Filipe Massa seemed to be sandbagging all weekend, Massa came out quick on the Q3 session, and claimed the pole spot. The second Ferrari managed the third spot on the grid.

It seems the second McLaren was not on the pace of his team mate all season. Strange considering that Alonso has won the race for the last two seasons.

The race should be good tomorrow, the McLaren’s have both been quick off the line this season so far, and if they manage to get the jump on the Ferrari’s then they should dictate the race. It looks like Ferrari are trying to run light with Massa, hoping to dictate from the front.

The race will be interesting, will Massa hold his pole spot off the line? or will Lewis get the jump and claim his first F1 race win?

Time will tell.

1. Filipe Massa
2. Lewis Hamilton
3. Kimi Raikkonen
4. Fernando Alonso
5. Nick Heidfeld
6. Robert Kubica
7. Giancarlo Fisichella
8. Mark Webber
9. Jarno Trulli
10. Nico Rosberg
11. Alexander Wurz
12. Heikki Kovalainen
13. Anthony Davidson
14. Ralf Schumacher
15. Rubens Barichello
16. Jenson Button
17. Takuma Sato
18. Antonio Luizzi
19. Scott Speed
20. Adrian Sutil
21. David Coulthard
22. Christijan Albers