March 23rd 2008
I made the comment last weekend that McLaren doesn't need to get their hopes up until they see how fast the competition is. This week Ferrari showed them that the silver arrows are not the fastest cars on the grid this year and it probably will be a long season for everyone. The Scuderia shook off their Australian season opener mess and was on track to have their front row starting grid turn into yet another 1-2 finish, but Massa still has not figured out how to get the most of the car without traction control. One has to imagine that there will be a lot of yelling in Italian and Portuguese this week in Maranello.
The Start
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Kimi monopolized the result that was handed to him when his Brazilian team mate spun out and cruised to victory. The Ferrari finished almost twenty seconds ahead of Kubica's BMW and would have been much further ahead if he didn't back off with approximately 25 laps to go. The pace of the Ferraris sent shockwaves up and down pit row. McLaren was whining that Hamilton was held up by slower traffic due to his penalty at the start for blocking other cars in qualifying and a pit crew member that still hasn't figured out how to put the hubcaps on the car.
Kimi Räikkönen and Felipe Massa
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McLaren tried to make the most out of Kovalainen's third place podium position, but the timing and scoring sheets said it all, he was 40 seconds back and had no chance of challenging for the lead. The tide also has turned with McLaren's PR machine starting to position the Finn as the lead driver within the team. I guess Ron Dennis has given Lewis his 15 minutes already. The last time I saw team infighting like this was the democratic party in the USA about six months ago, and everyone is seeing how this one is shaping up. Seems a bit early for the silly season to start up this year, n'est ce pas?
What had to be more galling to McLaren was that a Toyota, yes, a Toyota split their ranks with Jarno Trulli finishing in fourth. The Cologne based team gets the Japanese bragging rights for the weekend and Ron Dennis had absolutely no chance of smiling as a result. But one fourth place finish is just a data point and not a trend.
Nick Heidfeld's BMW finished in sixth place indicating that, while it may not be the ultimate driving machine, the ex-Sauber engineers are capable of building a reliable race car that is easy to drive. As for looks, I wasn't aware that Herr Bangle was designing the race cars...
Mark Webber and David Coulthard both finished in the top ten for Red Bull, with DC missing the points by one position. I did enjoy Webber also finishing ahead of Fernando Alonso's Renault. It seems that the Spaniard may become a two hit wonder. Can't wait to see him end up in Nascar with the rest of the washed up has-beens.
Filipe Massa
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Jenson Button and Nelson Piquet were the last two to finish on the lead lap in ninth and tenth place, respectively. Honda definitely has their work cut out for them and Renault is still trying to figure out what they had going for them when the team ran under the Benetton colours.
With two rounds complete, we're only getting some indication of how this is going to play out. It seems for now that we're going to see the same three teams as being the dominant ones as we had last year, McLaren, Ferrari and BMW. BMW has shown improvement, but we don't yet know if it is sustainable. Ferrari seems to have the best car out of the box this year, with their drivers being the ones on the learning curve without all of the electronic aids. McLaren, after two races, looks to have potential, but will probably end up with strange inter-driver politics. In other words, the season is shaping up as expected.
Team Ferrari
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The circus is slowly moving back to Europe with the Bahrain round in two weeks. Massa won it last year and is surely hoping to repeat in the desert. The one guarantee that we have at this point is it is going to be hot.
Race Results
