A Few Conclusions From The Spanish GP

FEATURES

Editorial | Off On F1 | Letters | Race Features

Sunday 27th April 2008

A lot of what was supposed to be happening did not happen at all...

Appearances Can Be Misleading
The Spanish GP was a deceptive race. It promised much throughout but in reality it produced the outcome that was on the cards from the first corner onwards: Kimi Raikkonen victorious with Felipe Massa just behind him; Lewis Hamilton in third, closely followed by Robert Kubica.

The only twists in the tale were Fernando Alonso's Renault succumbing to an engine failure and the shock of Heikki Kovalainen's 140mph shunt. Such was the severity of the Finn's accident that the Safety Car toured the circuit for around ten minutes, wrecking Nick Heidfeld's race in the process and artificially bunching up the top four. McLaren will not have welcomed Kovalainen's crash but it did have the bonus of propelling Hamilton under Felipe Massa's rear-wing. Without F1's equivalent of a doping aid, McLaren's defeat would have appeared as comprehensive as it was in reality.

Barcelona Is A Zzz-List Circuit
Nor was it ever really the case that either Hamilton, Kubica or Massa had a realistic chance of overtaking the man in front. On a circuit such as Spain, a rival for Monaco and Hungary as the least viewer-friendly on the calendar, overtaking a rival car that has all four wheels still attached is a near impossibility. The gap of two seconds or so which existed between Raikkonen and Massa, Massa and Hamilton, and Hamilton and Kubica, looked enticing yet it might as well have been two minutes for all the genuine likelihood of a positional change.

It is a damning indictment of both the circuit and the sport that the Barcelona pole sitter has gone on to win the race in eight successive seasons. How can F1 expect to retain its global audience - the sport's lifeblood - when it does not blanch at races being decided at the first corner and a two-hour procession being held in its wake? Adding a couple of corners that offer overtaking potential is not straightforward around Monaco's residential confines, but there are no excuses for the current design of the Barcelona circuit, situated on a vast expanse of scruffy land many miles outside of the city limits, remaining fundamentally unaltered.

McLaren Need To Improve - And Quick
"Pretty quick" was how Ron Dennis described McLaren's performance at Barca. Which is a world away from quick, let alone very quick.

In some respects the team will be satisfied with their work, particularly the way in which Lewis Hamilton bounced back from his error-strewn weekend in Bahrain with a commanding performance. And yet, when it mattered most in the race, the team were a distant second best to Ferrari, trailing by as much as half a second per lap. Their comparative performance improved during the second and third stints but by then it was too late (or at least it would have been without the appearance of the Safety Car).

With that in mind, it's worth returning to Malaysia and re-reading Dennis' post-race comments:

"We don't really know what our pace is at the moment. We won't really know how competitive our car is until after Barcelona. As I have said before, Australia, Malaysia and Bahrain are very different circuits and do not reflect the true pace of the car. Barcelona will be where it is all at."

And where's it's not.

Maybe McLaren Are Missing What Revived Renault Now Have
The follow-up to Renault's sudden revival - Fernando Alonso's stunning lap in qualifying was one of the few aspects of the weekend that wasn't publicly deceptive given that the team admitted he was light and Felipe Massa pitted only two laps later than the former World Champion - must be the contemplation that it is a vindication of the Spaniard's claim that he brought sixth-tenths to McLaren in 2007. Which, by neat coincidence, is the margin that McLaren, now sans Fernando, are trailing Ferrari by in 2008.

The fear before the season was that armed with two drivers boasting two years of F1 experience between them, McLaren lacked the required wherewithal, technical feedback and leadership to keep improving their car in order to keep pace with Ferrari's monotonous development. At the quarter stage of the season, McLaren have produced nothing to alter that view (or, it could be said, their car).

It Is Kimi Raikkonen's Title To Lose
What - or who - can stop him? Massa? Not on the evidence of three races out of four. Hamilton? Not unless McLaren can produce the sort of dramatic improvement that, for the reasons stated above, already seems beyond them. Reliability? The Ferrari looks bullet proof and if the team is infested by gremlins then they are likely to harm Massa as much as Raikkonen. Only if Raikkonen makes the sort of mistakes that the superiority of his talent and car should preclude can he be caught.

Incidentally, Raikkonen is currently eighth in the all-time points scorers in F1 with a tally of 485. Expect him to eclipse the third-placed Ayrton Senna, who earned 614, by the end of the season and trail only Alain Prost (798pts) and Michael Schumacher (1369).

Heidfeld Should Have Stopped On The Track
Just because it is stating the obvious to declare that the law denying cars the right to pitting for fuel under the Safety Car is an ass doesn't mean it shouldn't be repeated.

The directive wrecked Heidfeld's race, with the German forced to stop in the knowledge that it would mean a stop-and-go punishment (although he was apparently unaware that he would have to serve his penalty once the Safety Car had been called in). "I had just passed the pit entry when I got the signal to come in. I then tried to save fuel and delay my pit stop, but in the end it was the choice between running out of fuel on the track or getting a stop and go penalty," he reported disconsolately after the race.

Given that a ten-second stop-and-go penalty actually adds up to a driver losing around thirty seconds to the rest of the field, Heidfeld might as well have stopped. Indeed, perhaps it will require a driver and team to make such a protest against the rulebook's absurdity before the authorities finally act to amend F1's ridiculous malfunction.

Mosley's A Goner
Clinging on like a limpet, Max Mosley is merely delaying the inevitable. Hiding in Jordan this weekend, even Mosley must be aware of the significance of reports that Bernie Ecclestone chaired a meeting at Barcelona in which the teams were invited to sign a letter calling for the FIA President to resign. Although the letter will not be posted after three teams refused to put pen to paper, the disclosure that Ecclestone himself was willing to sign confirms that Mosley's time is up.

On a side note, it is understood that Ecclestone informed the team that former Ferrari team principal Jean Todt was "locked on" to replace Mosley. 'It is just a question of how quickly you want him' was the gist of Ecclestone's commentary, according to the BBC. Which makes it all the more curious that Ferrari - along with Toro Rosso and Williams - did not sign up to hasten the process of succession

Pete Gill