Nothing new here but Kubica is a savvy player as is mentioned with his 1 yr deal. Team-Mate Wars: Valencia Wednesday 27th August 2008 - PlanetF1.com In F1, the first person you have to beat is your team-mate... Ferrari Season: Raikkonen 5 Massa 7 Race: Massa Given the view that Felipe Massa often takes a series of different lines round the same corner, its hard to know why Kimi Raikkonen has fallen behind him in the qualifying stakes. You would think that to grab pole position you'd need to be consistent and unwavering. But it is Massa who is leading the Ferrari charge right now. Kimi is suffering from poor grid slots and poor starts and Valencia was no different. Unlike previous races where Kimi has shown the same kind of race pace as Massa once he has cleared the traffic, in Spain he hardly ever got close to Felipe's times. Now it could be that the engineers warned him not to extend his rev range because he had an engine with the same batch of con rods as Felipe had in Hungary. That might explain the consistent slowness plus the identical late race failure. Whetever the case, Ferrari will be sorely tempted to throw their team weight behind Massa now. Until the next wet race, that is... BMW Season: Heidfeld 3 Kubica 9 Race: Kubica Nick Heidfeld had some last-minute escapes in Q1 and Q2 but made it through. Kubica's path to Q3 was more straightforward and he put together a blistering lap to get himself into third on the grid. Though he fell a long way back from the Massa vs Hamilton battle, he still managed to maintain a gap to the other McLaren in the race. Now that Robert's signed a one-year extension to his BMW deal he's poised to make a move to Ferrari, McLaren or stay at BMW in 2010, which is probably the best positioning of all. Renault Season: Alonso 10 Piquet 2 Race: Alonso Alonso was way and above Piquet's performance level in a Renault that is looking more and more sluggish. He may have returned to his "family" this year, but there are signs that he is going to turn into the prodigal son again. It was impressive the way he handled the disappointment of his retirement. Williams Season: Rosberg 7 Nakajima 5 Race: Rosberg Williams looked like contenders again and not before time. It's interesting to see how the factory team are doing much better with their Toyota engine units than the customer team. Renault and their Red Bull team are very much on a par. Nico Rosberg was in danger of becoming the forgotten man of F1 (and is probably still regretting his loyalty to the team when he could have been in a McLaren in 2009) and so a solitary point will be a welcome boost. Nakajima was extremely lucky to come away from the race without any kind of penalty after driving into the back of Alonso with enough force to remove his rear wing. Toyota Season: Trulli 10 Glock 2 Race: Trulli Trulli did well in Valencia, but he could have done even better had he got some decent running on Saturday morning. Glock seemed to have blown his chances after failing to get into Q3 but handled his fat old Toyota (30 laps worth of fuel on board compared to Massa's 15) brilliantly in the early stint - he developed no significant train. If there were good odds with a bookmaker for finishing fourth in the Constructors' Championship I'd take them. Red Bull Season: Webber 10 Coulthard 2 Race: Webber Mark Webber reckons that the Renault engine unit is 0.4 slower than the Ferrari and there's no way the team are going to find aero improvements to make up that kind of difference in the remaining six races. Being a wet weather specialist Webbo has to pray for rain in September and October (except it never rains at Monza in September) if he wants to finish on the podium. Coulthard tried to inject some life into the dullest race of the year, but only got as far as Sutil. Honda Season: Barrichello 6 Button 6 Race: Button Button was in a bit of a testy mood when he was interviewed post-qualifying, basically claiming that the team cocked up in the tyre choice. And he was right. Now that Force India are more competitive and Toro Ross have hiked their speed up, Honda have to make sure they maximise every possible opportunity. In the race, Button got through Lap one in 12th and sat there for the race, while Rubens Barrichello gave one of the worst performances of his F1 career and finished at the back Toro Rosso Season: Vettel 10 Bourdais 2 Race: Vettel Vettel was lucky to get away with a first lap misdemeanour that could have put Raikkonen out of the race. He had already qualified the car ahead of both Red Bulls and drove the rest of the race impeccably. Bourdais, too, made use of the extra bananas from their Ferrari engine units. Force-India Season: Sutil 5 Fisichella 7 Fisi outqualified Sutil and now that they have that seamless shift gearbox they can race people again. All praise to Vijay Mallya for putting his hand in his pocket and investing in the team. No offence to Sutil or Fisichella, but it would be good to have a competent Indian driver on the grid and spread the gospel of F1. Judging by the videos on YouTube, (look up "India Driving"), there are far scarier rides out there than the one Mike Gascoyne engineers. McLaren Season: Hamilton 9 Kovalainen 3 Race: Hamilton Before we get stuck into the Hamilton versus Kovalainen - which frankly won't take very long - a short comment about Ron Dennis's hilarious news item yesterday. Ron was praising the Spanish organisers of Valencia's concrete white elephant and saying how brilliant they'd been in getting the GP off the ground so quickly, and how good they were in investing in capital projects in Spain. All fair enough. He said in contrast that he felt embarrassed going through Heathrow airport - which is also fair, parts of it creak with age. So who are the owners of British Airports Authority plc - the company that runs Heathrow and fails to invest? The Spanish. In the race Hamilton was mega despite his ailments and Heikki didn't have any but drove as though he did. Star of the Race Hamilton 3 Massa 3 Raikkonen 2 Alonso 1 Sutil 1 Kubica 1 Glock 1 Overtaking Move of the Race Hamilton 2 Kovalainen 2 Massa 2 Heidfeld 2 Raikkonen 1 Barrichello 1
