Scarlet success in Spain
The Spaniards are an excitable lot. Saturday saw them in paroxysms of glee as local hero, Fernando Alonso, flew past the timing line and into provisional pole position. The ferocity with which he punched the air in delight was only matched by the sullenness of his expression minutes later when Kimi Raikkonen calmly squeezed his accelerator and sailed his peerless Ferrari into a quicker time. Alonso's reasoning was transparent and very Spanish: "sod the race - I can't win it anyway - but I must have myself at the top of the timesheets on Saturday!" Like a bullfighter playing to a crowded arena, he wanted the glory of the moment more than anything. He wanted to hear the echoing cheers of the thousands upon thousands of Spaniards who had filled the Circuit de Catalunya to the rafters. Alonso knew his Renault did not stand a chance in a race against the Ferraris, McLarens and BMWs, so he chose instead to go for the big one on Saturday by having his team fuel his Renault as lightly as possible on Saturday. Sadly, it did not work.
This is where one has to ask oneself whether a racing driver should behave like a sprinter or more like a marathon runner. Having been pipped from second to third at the start of the race by a storming Felipe Massa, Alonso inevitably lost his third place later in the race. Lewis Hamilton performed one of the starts which made him famous last season and managed to leapfrog himself from fifth to third. All he then had to do was wait until Alonso came in for his very early pit stop and then pump in some super-quick laps. In a notoriously processional circuit, this meant that the podium order was then definitively decided. Alonso suffered even worse humiliation when Bang! His engine gave up the ghost halfway through the afternoon. I rather think he could have made it last the race distance and salvaged some useful points from the day if he hadn't flogged it so hard on the day before. But that is thinking like a marathon driver.
Think Michael Schumacher and you will see what I mean. Schumacher would read a race, see how things were going and restrain himself from going for glory. At the back of his mind always was the simple fact that the world championship is always decided on the basis of the chap with the largest number of points at the end of the season. Going for glory was what did for Hamilton last year. He succeeded in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in China and will never ever forget about it if he lives to be a hundred.
Some might argue that the numbers game is a cynical approach to motor racing. Each race should be viewed as just that: a race. Every Grand Prix weekend should be a spectacle; something to be looked back upon and cherished. This argument would hold true if we still had decent circuits where drivers raced each rather than danced behind each other in a never ending processional snake.
And they don't get much more processional than the Circuit de Catalunya. It has now been statistically proven to be even worse than the street circuit in Monaco. The television anchor man pointed out to us yesterday that Barcelona now has the record of poles to wins. In other words, in circuits as pathetically designed as this one and nearly all of the new ones created by Hermann Tilke - the German architect with about as much imagination as a pancake - you might as well cancel the Sunday event and restrict the weekend exclusively to Saturday qualifying. Admittedly, yesterday's event was rescued by the number of incidents that happened on track. For a warm, dry day in Barcelona the sheer number of crashes and engine blow-ups was remarkable. I lost count after the third safety car episode and the sixth retirement.
In the end what we saw was a return to the two race days when Schumacher was at the helm of Ferrari: the race the Ferraris were in and the one in which everybody else was participating. The Raikkonen and Massa one-two result was phenomenal but, ultimately - yawn! - boring.
One incident gave me pause. Heikki Kovalainen suffered a front left tyre blow out that forced his McLaren to go shooting through the gravel trap and into the tyre barrier at a speed of 145 mph. Ten years ago he would probably have suffered a serious injury or worse (this was almost exactly how Michael Schumacher broke his leg at Silverstone in 1999). Fifteen or more years ago he would have been dead. In the event, he had to be carted off to hospital, concussed but alive and well.
What is refreshing about this season is the form of the BMWs. Hamilton had a reasonably tough job holding off Robert Kubica, who eventually bagged fourth place, but what is more interesting is his and his team-mate, Nick Heidfeld's, consistency thus far this season. The rewards of this are clearly demonstrated on the constructors'' championship league table. Ferrari leads with 47 points and BMW is second with 35. That is significant progress. Mario Theissen, BMW team boss, must be a very satisfied man.
Someone said at the start of the season that this year would be a lot more difficult for Hamilton than last. Undoubtedly. Reason? The return of Ferrari.
Gitau
28 April 2008
This is where one has to ask oneself whether a racing driver should behave like a sprinter or more like a marathon runner. Having been pipped from second to third at the start of the race by a storming Felipe Massa, Alonso inevitably lost his third place later in the race. Lewis Hamilton performed one of the starts which made him famous last season and managed to leapfrog himself from fifth to third. All he then had to do was wait until Alonso came in for his very early pit stop and then pump in some super-quick laps. In a notoriously processional circuit, this meant that the podium order was then definitively decided. Alonso suffered even worse humiliation when Bang! His engine gave up the ghost halfway through the afternoon. I rather think he could have made it last the race distance and salvaged some useful points from the day if he hadn't flogged it so hard on the day before. But that is thinking like a marathon driver.
Think Michael Schumacher and you will see what I mean. Schumacher would read a race, see how things were going and restrain himself from going for glory. At the back of his mind always was the simple fact that the world championship is always decided on the basis of the chap with the largest number of points at the end of the season. Going for glory was what did for Hamilton last year. He succeeded in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in China and will never ever forget about it if he lives to be a hundred.
Some might argue that the numbers game is a cynical approach to motor racing. Each race should be viewed as just that: a race. Every Grand Prix weekend should be a spectacle; something to be looked back upon and cherished. This argument would hold true if we still had decent circuits where drivers raced each rather than danced behind each other in a never ending processional snake.
And they don't get much more processional than the Circuit de Catalunya. It has now been statistically proven to be even worse than the street circuit in Monaco. The television anchor man pointed out to us yesterday that Barcelona now has the record of poles to wins. In other words, in circuits as pathetically designed as this one and nearly all of the new ones created by Hermann Tilke - the German architect with about as much imagination as a pancake - you might as well cancel the Sunday event and restrict the weekend exclusively to Saturday qualifying. Admittedly, yesterday's event was rescued by the number of incidents that happened on track. For a warm, dry day in Barcelona the sheer number of crashes and engine blow-ups was remarkable. I lost count after the third safety car episode and the sixth retirement.
In the end what we saw was a return to the two race days when Schumacher was at the helm of Ferrari: the race the Ferraris were in and the one in which everybody else was participating. The Raikkonen and Massa one-two result was phenomenal but, ultimately - yawn! - boring.
One incident gave me pause. Heikki Kovalainen suffered a front left tyre blow out that forced his McLaren to go shooting through the gravel trap and into the tyre barrier at a speed of 145 mph. Ten years ago he would probably have suffered a serious injury or worse (this was almost exactly how Michael Schumacher broke his leg at Silverstone in 1999). Fifteen or more years ago he would have been dead. In the event, he had to be carted off to hospital, concussed but alive and well.
What is refreshing about this season is the form of the BMWs. Hamilton had a reasonably tough job holding off Robert Kubica, who eventually bagged fourth place, but what is more interesting is his and his team-mate, Nick Heidfeld's, consistency thus far this season. The rewards of this are clearly demonstrated on the constructors'' championship league table. Ferrari leads with 47 points and BMW is second with 35. That is significant progress. Mario Theissen, BMW team boss, must be a very satisfied man.
Someone said at the start of the season that this year would be a lot more difficult for Hamilton than last. Undoubtedly. Reason? The return of Ferrari.
Gitau
28 April 2008
posted by Gitau at 3:56 pm
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