Team-Mate Wars Silverstone

Sunday 28th June 2009

Nelsinho and Rubens both logged their first team-mate points for 2009 - Rubens' through speed, Nelsinho's through Heidfeld. Now only Nico Rosberg is unbeaten.

Ferrari
Season: Raikkonen 4 Massa 4
Race: Massa
This is a tricky one because Raikkonen did all that was asked of him at Silverstone. He qualified in front of Massa, got a great start and was running in fifth place until the first pit-stops. Massa didn't make it to Q3, started with a bigger fuel (load which as chance would have it worked favourably against the cars around him) and also dropped a place to Jenson Button on the opening lap with a mistake that could have been very costly. Though Massa took a surprised 4th place; in terms of mistakes he had made more. Had there been just a few seconds or one place between them then Raikkonen could have got the TMW point.

BMW
Season: Heidfeld 5 Kubica 3
Race: Kubica
Having made a bigger impression in Turkey, it was groundhog day for the BMW duo at Silverstone and the team-mate points going to the least worst as opposed to the best.

Nick Heidfeld produced the Mr Stampy Foot moment of the championship when the team notified him that he was losing time at such a rate that the computer had predicted it would be better to stop and get his front wing changed than keep on going with a queue.

"Nein danke." Said Nick, actually without the danke bit. He almost managed to beat Kubica, though that was probably because by holding him up he ruined the Pole's strategy - as well as Fernando Alonso's. Ickle doesn't look much of a fixture at BMW any more.

Renault
Season: Alonso 7 Piquet 1
Race: Piquet
Like Michael Jackson's sad demise this week, it's hard to come to terms with shocking and unexpected news. Nelsinho beat Fernando at Silverstone. The world rocked on its axis. It would have been nice if Junior had done it on sheer pace, but in truth it was only because Fernando was so outrageously held up by Heidfeld in the first stint.

Toyota
Season: Trulli 5 Glock 2
Race: Trulli
Jarno Trulli's qualifying was a league ahead of Timo Glock's. (Which is a sentence left in place from the last GP) Despite all of Trulli's qualifying advantage, Glock was only a couple of seconds shy of his team-mate at the end of the race. If Toyota truly believe that they are close to Brawn's speed, they haven't told the cars.

Williams
Season: Rosberg 8 Nakajima 0
Race: Rosberg
Another race for Kazuki Nakajima where a poor result was plucked out of the air when a good result looked on the cards. The Japanese driver lost out in the strategy battle, one of the few things that Williams have managed to do consistently this year. It wasn't so long ago the team were being sponsored by Lenovo, surely they've got more computing power than a couple of old laptops to work out what to do.

Rosberg was combative on the opening lap which meant he could run close to the pace he wanted. Incredibly the team are continuing to slug it out with Ferrari and their success gives Nico a huge problem. Does he stick with Williams for 2010 or does he get lured to McLaren who are not up to the Williams' speed right now...?

Brawn
Season: Barrichello 1 Button 7
Race: Barrichello
A far calmer Rubens this weekend; he aced his team-mate in qualifying and from the moment Trulli failed to get away quickly, the tucked up Button's race was compromised. It shouldn't be this way given the amount of man hours that have been put in by the technical panel on overtaking. But what was a disadvantage for JB was an advantage for RB in that he could keep Mark Webber's Red Bull at bay even though it was considerably quicker. Now it may be that Silverstone exacerbates the problem because there are few big braking zones to dive into, but it's not great when a damaged car like Heidfeld's, can keep Alonso behind when it's a whole 1.5 seconds slower.

Red Bull
Season: Webber 4 Vettel 4
Race: Vettel
We were denied an almighty Red Bull shoot out by Rubens Barrichello's intervention on the front row of the grid and Mark Webber's poor Q3 laps. Vettel dominated the race with little pressure, other than that which he applied to himself during the opening stint. It will be interesting to see what happens when the races get hotter from here till September.

Toro Rosso
Season: Buemi 4 Bourdais 4
Race: Buemi
Bourdais may have had a point when he said that Kovalainen's racing line was less than textbook as he approached Vale corner, precipitating their accident. But it also looked like Bourdais was late on the brakes going in and would never have made the turn. It would probably help if the Toro Rossos and the Red Bulls had more distinctive paint jobs to establish their own identity, too. Kovalainen's hesitant line was uncharacteristic and it may have been that he thought it was one of the leaders coming through when he looked back in his tiny mirror.

Force India
Season: Sutil 5 Fisichella 3
Race: Fisichella
Fisichella's performance relegated the McLarens to being the third-rate Mercedes team for their home race. Force India's first points can't be far away now.

McLaren
Season: Hamilton 6 Kovalainen 2
Race: Hamilton
Forget the placings, Lewis Hamilton has never driven so hard for so little reward. He set about putting on a show at Silverstone and succeeded brilliantly. Though he tried to overtake where he could, he wasn't going to wreck two cars just for the sake of it, unlike Barrichello at Istanbul, a couple of weeks back. As it was he put breathtaking manoeuvres on Heidfeld and Alonso, the like of which he couldn't have afforded to do had it been 2007 or 2008.

Star of the Race
Button 5, Vettel 2, Webber 1

Overtaking Move of the Race
Button 2, Webber 2, Glock 1, Rosberg 1, Piquet 1, Hamilton 1

Driver most likely to lose their drive earlier than expected
1. Kovalainen (1)
2. Piquet (2)
3. Bourdais (3)
4. Nakajima (4)

Andrew T. Davies

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