European Grand Prix

The Brazilian managed to capture the pole and stay there even through some tense moments. His team mate seemed to be the one with the bad luck this round with the lump giving up it’s ghost with only a handful of laps to go. There will be plenty of late nights in Maranello now that everyone is back from vacation to figure out the latest reliability glitches. The seaside town’s investment in the track and the facilities made a great impression for the usually cynical circus. Only China’s investment of $70 billion for the Olympics this past week topped the prep work in Spain. Of course Bernie will use this as leverage for some of the usual suspect tracks to make improvements or risk being dropped from the calendar. As long as we don’t end up back in a parking lot in the city of lost wages, we should be okay. 

Hamilton, Massa, and KubicaMcLaren thought they had a chance when Massa almost ran over Sutil in the pit lane, but the stewards only fined the Scuderia after reviewing the incident. Lewis Hamilton’s second place finish was enough to keep the Brit in the lead in the championship. Ferrari still leads the constructor’s championship, but that race is all about reliability, and they’ll need to fix their issues soon if they want to bring home another title. This weekend was definitely the Ferrari and McLaren show.  Kubica finished in third for the BMW team, but was well over a half minute behind the other two competitors. With his teammate not finishing in the points, BMW is less likely to play a spoiler in the constructor’s championship should things keep turning out this way. Kovalainen drove an uneventful race and finished in fourth.

Jarno Trulli is doing his best to prove that Toyota’s performance is not just wishful thinking and finished in fifth place. Sounds good, but he finished only two seconds ahead of Vettel driving the junior Red Bull car. With Glock completing the Toro Rosso sandwich, Toyota gets bragging rights in Japan for another couple of weeks. The last points paying position went to Rosberg (who is not living up to his family name) in the Williams. Not that anyone is paying attention to that team.  

Speaking of not paying attention, when the home favorite Fernando Alonso crashed out on the first lap, it seems like a quarter of the fans decided they had somewhere better to be. Sooner or later, they’re all going to realize that he was the Jacques Villeneuve of this generation; it was more the car than it was the driver. Ever since he has been at a team that is off the pace, he hasn’t been able to contribute enough in the development work to get them back to where they need to be. Making rumors of his move to Ferrari all the less likely. With the summer holidays over, it’s crunch time for both championships and it seems like they will go down to the wire in Brazil like last year. Only six races are left and it is way to close to call any of the championships at this point. It’s going to be one of the usual suspects, but we probably will not know until the end. Unfortunately, tickets for the Brazilian GP are already going for more than $1000, so a trip down there is almost as much as going to Monaco nowadays. It’s worth it… 

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Race Results

1	MASSA	Ferrari	1h35m32.339s
2	HAMILTON	McLaren-Mercedes	+ 5.6s
3	KUBICA	BMW Sauber	+ 37.3s
4	KOVALAINEN	McLaren-Mercedes	+ 39.7s
5	TRULLI	Toyota	+ 50.6s
6	VETTEL	STR-Ferrari	+ 52.6s
7	GLOCK	Toyota	+ 67.9s
8	ROSBERG	Williams-Toyota	+ 71.4s
9	HEIDFELD	BMW Sauber	+ 82.1s
10	BOURDAIS	STR-Ferrari	+ 89.7s
11	PIQUET	Renault	+ 92.7s
12	WEBBER	Red Bull-Renault	+ 1 lap
13	BUTTON	Honda	+ 1 lap
14	FISICHELLA	Force India-Ferrari	+ 1 lap
15	NAKAJIMA	Williams-Toyota	+ 1 lap
16	BARRICHELLO	Honda	+ 1 lap
17	COULTHARD	Red Bull-Renault	+ 1 lap
18	RÄIKKÖNEN	Ferrari	+ 12 laps, engine
19	SUTIL	Force India-Ferrari	+ 16 laps, accident
20	ALONSO	Renault	+ 57 laps, accident damage
Fastest Lap	MASSA	Ferrari	1m38.708s

Driver’s Championship Standings

1	HAMILTON	McLaren-Mercedes	70 Points
2	MASSA	Ferrari	64 Points
3	RÄIKKÖNEN	Ferrari	57 Points
4	KUBICA	BMW-Sauber	55 Points
5	KOVALAINEN	McLaren-Mercedes	43 Points
6	HEIDFELD	BMW Sauber	41 Points
7	TRULLI	Toyota	26 Points
8	ALONSO	Renault	18 Points
9	WEBBER	Red Bull-Renault	18 Points
10	GLOCK	Toyota	15 Points
11	PIQUET	Renault	13 Points
12	BARRICHELLO	Honda	11 Points
13	ROSBERG	Williams-Toyota	9 Points
14	VETTEL	STR-Ferrari	9 Points
15	NAKAJIMA	Williams-Toyota	8 Points
16	COULTHARD	Red Bull-Renault	6 Points
17	BUTTON	Honda	3 Points
18	BOURDAIS	STR-Ferrari	2 Points

NOTE: Super Aguri withdrew from the championship after round four. Constructor’s Championship Standings

1	FERRARI	121 Points
2	MCLAREN-MERCEDES	113 Points
3	BMW SAUBER	96 Points
4	TOYOTA	41 Points
5	RENAULT	31 Points
6	RED BULL-RENAULT	24 Points
7	WILLIAMS-TOYOTA	17 Points
8	HONDA	14 Points
9	STR-FERRARI	11 Points

NOTE: Super Aguri withdrew from the championship after round four.