Turkish Grand Prix Preview Wednesday 7th May 2008 Felipe Massa will look to pull back Kimi Raikkonen's lead at Istanbul, while Rubens Barrichello will celebrate becoming the most experienced F1 driver of all time. It's F1 Groundhog Day - the Turkish GP arrives much earlier than usual, but perhaps not soon enough for Felipe Massa who is looking to strengthen his position in the Ferrari team. Because, like Spain, it's not a question of which team is going to win the Turkish GP, it's a question of which Ferrari driver is going to win it. Sure Lewis Hamilton and Robert Kubica will have a go at interposing themselves in this redwash, but unless mechanical problems, driver errors or unexpected Safety Cars intervene, then it looks destined to go the way of Raikkonen or Massa. Massa will be super-confident going into the race as he has won in Turkey before and is consistently quick round the Istanbul track. However that won't be the most pressing subject of conversation around the paddock of the Istanbul Otodrome. No, that will be the demise of the SuperAguri team. With Honda refusing to pay the bills, and the general air of malaise surrounding the concept of customer cars any new investor would have to possess deeper than average pockets. The whole subject of customer cars has been one of the biggest fiascos inflicted on F1. Frank Williams and Patrick Head argued that Toro Rosso and SuperAguri can't be constructors if they don't construct a car and so shouldn't get a share in the TV revenue. It was a legal fight that their promoter, Max Mosley, seemed unprepared to fight for and now they're on the way out. After VonMosleygate Max said that if someone tells him he can't do something then he's rather inclined to dig his heels in - yet when the Williams team challenged his (one would have thought) carefully crafted vision of F1's future he just gave up. Very strange. Interesting too, that when Bernie convened a meeting of team bosses to slam Mosley at the Spanish GP it was only Ferrari and Williams who wouldn't join in. For Ferrari it was a logical step as they'd already pledged support through Luca Montezemolo and Jean Todt, but Williams joining in raised a few eyebrows. The cloud of Mosley's sex scandal hanging over the sport coming so soon after Spygate can't help attract blue chip sponsors, but the dwindling grid numbers is more down to the fact that very shortly everyone will have to make their own car. Could 20 soon become 18? The immediate impact of SuperAguri's demise will become apparent in Qualifying 1 on Saturday, when two of the mid-grid teams are sucked into the dropzone after the first twenty minutes. Coming into this race Mike Gascoyne and Force India's owner Vijay Mallya were hoping to get one of their cars into Q2, but the bar has just been put that much higher. If ever there was a motor racing circuit put on god's earth to give us an exciting overtaking-friendly spectacle then it's Hermann Tilke's Istanbul track and so grid position shouldn't be that important...or that's the theory. Ever since Michael Schumacher failed to get past Fernando Alonso's Renault in 2006 - despite having a faster car over much of the lap - you started to wonder. Because if Schumi couldn't do it, even with a World Championship at stake, then who could. That performance from Alonso was one of the single most impressive drives I've witnessed in the last ten years and he will need to perform similar heroics to get his car on the podium again. Since the Spanish GP, though, where Renault stuck on a whole barra load of new bits and borrowed bits on the R28, it's not out of the question. Lewis Hamilton also had his finest hour in Istanbul, recovering from a spin to score a P2 in the 2006 GP2 support race. Hamilton won't find overtaking people quite so easy if the same thing were to happen again. It will certainly be fun to watch Lewis take his McLaren through F1's most challenging quadruple apex corner - the fetchingly named Turn 8 - without the benefit this year of traction control. Turkish GP organisers should do the decent thing and name the corner after something aggressive such as Attaturk, or Schumacher (after the DTM driver, Ralf, of course...) or Ecclestone. Lewis is likely to be battling Robert Kubica, and Heikki Kovalainen will be slugging it out with Nick Heidfeld's BMW - whether or not Fernando Alonso can join in remains to be seen. It's likely to be fairly close in the mid grid between the Red Bulls and Toyotas (Trulli's anyway). Williams said that they would be back on the pace in Spain, but weren't really, while Honda have said that the smoother track surface will suit their car better and will be hoping to get both cars into Q3. Certainly in the week that they cut adrift Takuma Sato's F1 ambitions it will be a welcome distraction for Honda to provide the vehicle for F1's most experienced driver. Rubens Barrichello will break Riccardo Patrese's long-held record of 256 GP starts in Turkey. For what it's worth Patrese's achievement of coming through 256 races unscathed means a lot more than the Brazilian's. When Riccardo started racing in the mid-70s an opening lap shunt could result in death, as proven by Ronnie Peterson's death at Monza in the 1978 Italian GP. James Hunt always blamed Patrese for being the man responsible and British F1 fans grew up listening to Hunt lambasting him from behind the microphone whenever he could while Murray Walker stood by and tutted at his friend's behaviour. So the 2008 Turkish GP will be an historic occasion, provided Rubens doesn't do anything wild in practice or qualifying. Given the aerodromes of tarmac on the outside of the turns that's going to take some doing. Andrew Davies
