....and to stay awake during the race! It's good that Ferrari won, but seriously, it really wasn't an exciting race IMHO. Great job from Hamilton, he really had FA in his pocket!! McLaren no team orders? Yeah right! Massa did drive a good race considering he started 21st. He had a heavy car, so it's pretty normal his times weren't the fastest! And then when his tank was finally getting empty, his tires were probably shot! I wonder where he would have ended if he went for 2 stops like the rest of the field?
I can imagine that Alonso would be super p!ssed if a rookie team mate beat him in the first race. could have caused a huge rift for the team. Better for the team if Alonso wins this year. Maybe they'll let Hamilton go for it next year. Just my opinion. Nothing to back this up except Alonso can get emotional and moody. It would have been interesting to see Alonso's reaction had Hamilton had the better pit stop and beat him. Could have been real interesting!
yea, plus, don;t forget Sato interfered on his inlap to the pits. that played a good role for FA to beat him, if not, i think Lewis will be on the 2nd step of the podium..
hamilton looked great all weekend, he's got a very bright future....hopefully with ferrari in a year or 2
This often happens because qualifying is done with extra fuel on board. Q2 can sometimes be a better predictor because it is done on light tanks. Alonso and Heidfield ran 1:25.3xx's in Q2. However Q2 times arent always representative because the really fast runners dont have to push that hard to get in the top 10. In this case Kimi ran a 1:25.6xx. Still not as fast as his fastest lap (1:25.235) but closer than his Q3 time (1:26.0xx). It would be nice to see a session where the teams push all out on light fuel to see the maximum of each car and driver.
In 2006 Kimi started last in the first race of the season in the clearly inferior McLaren and finished second place. During the post-race interview he said that "even though I started last, I knew I had a good shot at winning." This may be blasphemous to some around here, but I'd rather have Kimi in my car than Schumacher.
Kimi seemed to do a lot better job coming through traffic than MS. I think Massa played it exatcly the way MS would have, don't take chances, just get the car up into the points. The sad thing is that while winning the race is great, the game is to win the championship and to do that you need points in as many races as possible. With Massa getting up into the points, Ferrari is just 1 point behind in the constructors championship.
Wow! I didn't even think about that carbon fiber edge! You're right, it might've been able to cut through his neck, wow... DC was dumb to try and pull off that move.
The Two Stars of this race were in my book, Kimi for doing what he needed to do (Pole, Fastest Lap, Win), oh and lapping Massa (just kidding). Seriously does anybody think Kimi would have been stuck so long behind those Hondas as Massa was? The next star and in my opinion the Next MS was Lewis Hamilton. Fantastic job, and boy he looked like he had second locked up, what a terrific start he made.
Well if that's the case you'd better have a team that was already dominant and won many championships. Otherwise you'd miss out on everything else that Schumacher can bring, i.e his work ethic and ability to influence the team to work their ass off for him, and get Ferrari to spend more money. Also, which Schumacher are we talking about? Younger Schumacher from the 90's? Or the older more complacent Schumacher, after he won his titles? This is also one race out of what 16-18? You may change that opinion as the season goes on.
Well, one thing is clear from that race: The stupid "one of each kind" tire rule really undermines the one stop pit strategy. Which is a really bad thing, given how many ways a car can get pushed down the grid from all the other rules.
do you seriously think that ron dennis will let hamilton go? He's been in the McLaren system for half his life............
I was shocked when Kimi admited he was distracted/bored when he almost went off track. I guess he needs a slower car to keep him interested in racing.
Hell no he woln't, Ron will hang on to him for years. Even if Mclaren becomes less competitive like in 06 or the mid 90's, he'll still be there just like Mika, he's a Mclaren man. It would be interesting to see who Ferrari goes after once Kimi quits, because I think he'll only be driving for a few more years, and Massa's contract is up. Maybe they can snag Hamilton out of some contract loophole, and they can get Kubica to replace Massa.
Not me. After enduring many years of watching the other guys winning, I enjoy every win - the more, the better.
I was in the stand as the cars came onto the main straight and could see them coming into the second last corner as well, the attitude of the cars was that the Ferraris were always going to dominate, the McLunkens were good but not enough speed. The Red Bull's looked very slow but the Ferraris really were in a class of their own, I doubt KR ever had to hit the "+" button on his cruise control Can some of you Finnish guys please post a picture of you lot having fun and smiling, Mika and Kimi are giving you a bad name I thought the Toro Rosso cars looked the best but it's always a great day when the red cars with the horse come home first Gentleman racing car driver I was with said the BMWs will be the surprise packet of the season
Mika was always smiling and joking... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtlNxwu43g8 Heiki cracks a smile often too, but Raikkonen? I've seen statues with more exuberance.
Just finally had a chance to watch a replay of the race, I am very happy to see Kimi win in a Ferrari. Should be a great season. Also, THANK YOU to the mods for not letting any thread titles spoil the race before I had a chance to see it.
Had another look at the start. Hamilton can thank BMW for his getting ahead of Alonso. While McLaren seems to be sporting "team sideburns", the BMWs looked like they went with light fuel and a strategy of doing a team formation mugging of the McLarens. Hamilton was sitting behind Alonso when Kubica did a Schumi style "chop", squeezing him inside, and indeed did get Hamilton to yield the position. Hamilton then moved to the outside behind Kubica. When Heidfeld cut over on Alonso, taking 2nd, Alonso braking down held up Kubica, giving Hamilton a chance to pass both Kubica and Alonso down the outside. In retrospect, if Kubica had stayed on his line, it would have been Hamilton boxed in behind Alonso, leaving Kubica the chance to run outside of Alonso. That's racing. Then when McLaren brought Hamilton in out of traffic for his third stop, Alonso in traffic actually did better than Hamilton using the pits to get clear of it -- putting Alonso ahead of Hamilton. I wonder if that was the team not being confident in Hamilton's ability to handle traffic, or just a tactical mistake. All things considered, I don't think this race showed anything conclusive about any of the drivers. Kimi did well -- with a good car. Nothing new there. How will he do when he has to nurse a problem more serious than "no radio"? Oh, okay; it showed that Coulthard may be thinking that a Williams is a "speed bump".
Coldheart is past it, time to leave the scene and give the reins to someone deserving of it, Coldheart spends too much time involved in accidents which end up in flying racecars, been doing it for some time now Webber in the other RB was damn lucky to even finish the race when he spun going into the pits, he didn't "catch it" , it just happened to stop spinning in the right direction, happened right in front of me
