Wrong tyres for Monza and an unlikely winner
What is it about McLaren and tyres? How many times are we going to look back upon a missed opportunity because of the wrong tyre choices or ineptly handled tyre changes? It was tyre problems that did for Lewis Hamilton in Shanghai last year which ended up costing him the world championship. You would have thought he and the team would have learned from the experience but did they? Did they ever!
Monza was Hamilton’s race to lose. The weather conditions were atrocious and the Monza circuit is a very fast one: Hamilton territory! Everything pointed at a resounding McLaren victory. Possibly even a McLaren one-two. Instead we got a result which nobody would have predicted in a month of Sundays. Sebastian Vettel, aged just 21 and driving for the tiniest team in Formula One, won the Italian Grand Prix as commandingly as his fellow German, Michael Schumacher used to in his heyday. Vettel’s team, Toro Rosso, used to be called Minardi until 2005.
From its birth in 1985 Minardi was always the joke team in the paddock. David Coulthard when complaining about the difficulty he was experiencing in lapping slower cars would say things like “there seemed to be 22 Minardis out there today!” You always knew that Minardi would be uncompetitive, so they never posed a threat to anybody. Because of this they were popular and took the jokes on the chin. At the Australian Grand Prix in 2002, Mark Webber driving for Minardi in his home race, managed to finish in fifth place and scored two crucial points for the team. The shrieks of ecstasy and whoops of delight that followed this were as voluble as if Webber had been declared world champion. In other words, Vettel’s win yesterday could well be described as miraculous.
Not only did Vettel achieve victory yesterday but he also took pole position on Saturday. This surely was his weekend. Hamilton by contrast made a meal of Monza. During a wet qualifying session on Saturday, just as the rain was about to come down even more heavily, Hamilton and his race engineer decided that this was the moment for intermediate tyres. This was ridiculous in the extreme and Hamilton was made to pay for it. For the first time this season he was unable to make it into the top ten and effectively relegated himself to fifteenth place. Luckily for him, Sunday was another wet day in Monza and Hamilton’s team wisely chose to put him on a one stop strategy. It was all going swimmingly until the team made yet another poor tyre choice. When Hamilton came in for his one and only scheduled pit-stop, the team chose to do the opposite of what they had done on the previous day. Assuming it was going to rain some more, they sent him out on full wet tyres. As the track began to dry a few laps later, Hamilton was forced to come into the pits for an unscheduled stop so as to replace his full wet tyres for intermediate ones. From then on it was a case of damage limitation. All things considered, Hamilton was very fortunate to have finished in seventh place.
What must have been a relief for Hamilton was the poor form of the Ferraris. Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen also qualified poorly and had a less than impressive race on Sunday. Raikkonen, whose contract with Ferrari has been extended for a further two years, must now know that it is virtually impossible for him to win the championship again this year. He would be most useful if he were to serve the rest of the season protecting Massa from Hamilton – a job he failed to do yesterday by allowing the uncompromising Brit to overtake him in the early laps of yesterday’s race. Nevertheless, Massa still managed to finish ahead of Hamilton – only just. Now only one point separates the two (assuming, of course, that McLaren’s appeal against Hamilton’s Spa penalty is unsuccessful).
The person most humbled by Vettel’s win was Hamilton’s team-mate, Heikki Kovalainen. It is difficult to understand why he was so far behind the young German driving a vastly inferior car to Kovalainen’s McLaren-Mercedes. At one point the lead was more than twenty seconds and Vettel ended up taking the chequered flag at least twelve seconds ahead of Kovalainen. The future looks bright for the young German. As for Hamilton’s team-mate, the only conclusion one can draw is that Kovalainen isn’t terribly good in wet conditions. His face on the second spot on the podium was a curious blend of frustration and embarrassment. Kovalainen’s difficulties won’t be much good to Hamilton because he needs someone to take care of Massa with extreme prejudice. If Kovalainen can crash into Massa a couple of times and cause two retirements, he should be worth an extra few million next year.
Now that the speculation about Kimi Raikkonen’s future has been settled by the Ferrari announcement on Friday about his immediate future, Fernando Alonso’s petulance last year looks all the more foolish. It is no secret that he was angling for a Ferrari drive. He made that sufficiently clear in interview after interview. But that won’t now be possible for two years (Massa also has the luxury of a copper-bottomed contract with Ferrari until the end of 2010). I think it is safe to say that Alonso’s chances of getting a top drive are now very poor. There is no doubting the man’s talent – he has plenty of it – it is the lack of loyalty which puts people off. He would be best off doing a Schumacher and modelling the Renault team around him and then patiently striving to get to the top again. That would make him a legendary driver. Now he just looks like a whinger.
There are only four races to go and the championship is far from safe for either Massa or Hamilton. So then fingers crossed and belts buckled – it’s going to be a bumpy ride!
Gitau
15 September 2008
Monza was Hamilton’s race to lose. The weather conditions were atrocious and the Monza circuit is a very fast one: Hamilton territory! Everything pointed at a resounding McLaren victory. Possibly even a McLaren one-two. Instead we got a result which nobody would have predicted in a month of Sundays. Sebastian Vettel, aged just 21 and driving for the tiniest team in Formula One, won the Italian Grand Prix as commandingly as his fellow German, Michael Schumacher used to in his heyday. Vettel’s team, Toro Rosso, used to be called Minardi until 2005.
From its birth in 1985 Minardi was always the joke team in the paddock. David Coulthard when complaining about the difficulty he was experiencing in lapping slower cars would say things like “there seemed to be 22 Minardis out there today!” You always knew that Minardi would be uncompetitive, so they never posed a threat to anybody. Because of this they were popular and took the jokes on the chin. At the Australian Grand Prix in 2002, Mark Webber driving for Minardi in his home race, managed to finish in fifth place and scored two crucial points for the team. The shrieks of ecstasy and whoops of delight that followed this were as voluble as if Webber had been declared world champion. In other words, Vettel’s win yesterday could well be described as miraculous.
Not only did Vettel achieve victory yesterday but he also took pole position on Saturday. This surely was his weekend. Hamilton by contrast made a meal of Monza. During a wet qualifying session on Saturday, just as the rain was about to come down even more heavily, Hamilton and his race engineer decided that this was the moment for intermediate tyres. This was ridiculous in the extreme and Hamilton was made to pay for it. For the first time this season he was unable to make it into the top ten and effectively relegated himself to fifteenth place. Luckily for him, Sunday was another wet day in Monza and Hamilton’s team wisely chose to put him on a one stop strategy. It was all going swimmingly until the team made yet another poor tyre choice. When Hamilton came in for his one and only scheduled pit-stop, the team chose to do the opposite of what they had done on the previous day. Assuming it was going to rain some more, they sent him out on full wet tyres. As the track began to dry a few laps later, Hamilton was forced to come into the pits for an unscheduled stop so as to replace his full wet tyres for intermediate ones. From then on it was a case of damage limitation. All things considered, Hamilton was very fortunate to have finished in seventh place.
What must have been a relief for Hamilton was the poor form of the Ferraris. Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen also qualified poorly and had a less than impressive race on Sunday. Raikkonen, whose contract with Ferrari has been extended for a further two years, must now know that it is virtually impossible for him to win the championship again this year. He would be most useful if he were to serve the rest of the season protecting Massa from Hamilton – a job he failed to do yesterday by allowing the uncompromising Brit to overtake him in the early laps of yesterday’s race. Nevertheless, Massa still managed to finish ahead of Hamilton – only just. Now only one point separates the two (assuming, of course, that McLaren’s appeal against Hamilton’s Spa penalty is unsuccessful).
The person most humbled by Vettel’s win was Hamilton’s team-mate, Heikki Kovalainen. It is difficult to understand why he was so far behind the young German driving a vastly inferior car to Kovalainen’s McLaren-Mercedes. At one point the lead was more than twenty seconds and Vettel ended up taking the chequered flag at least twelve seconds ahead of Kovalainen. The future looks bright for the young German. As for Hamilton’s team-mate, the only conclusion one can draw is that Kovalainen isn’t terribly good in wet conditions. His face on the second spot on the podium was a curious blend of frustration and embarrassment. Kovalainen’s difficulties won’t be much good to Hamilton because he needs someone to take care of Massa with extreme prejudice. If Kovalainen can crash into Massa a couple of times and cause two retirements, he should be worth an extra few million next year.
Now that the speculation about Kimi Raikkonen’s future has been settled by the Ferrari announcement on Friday about his immediate future, Fernando Alonso’s petulance last year looks all the more foolish. It is no secret that he was angling for a Ferrari drive. He made that sufficiently clear in interview after interview. But that won’t now be possible for two years (Massa also has the luxury of a copper-bottomed contract with Ferrari until the end of 2010). I think it is safe to say that Alonso’s chances of getting a top drive are now very poor. There is no doubting the man’s talent – he has plenty of it – it is the lack of loyalty which puts people off. He would be best off doing a Schumacher and modelling the Renault team around him and then patiently striving to get to the top again. That would make him a legendary driver. Now he just looks like a whinger.
There are only four races to go and the championship is far from safe for either Massa or Hamilton. So then fingers crossed and belts buckled – it’s going to be a bumpy ride!
Gitau
15 September 2008
posted by Gitau at 2:57 pm
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