United States Grand Prix!!

[bigC]

the tenth race of the season, the United States GP!! :D :beer:

well, qualifying is over and it is Ferrari dominating with a 1-2 positioning, with Schumie taking the pole, beating Massa by over half a second. Alonso managed only a 5th place, behind Fisi in 3rd and Ribens in 4th. JV got a good 6yh place for BMW, beating Heifeld who finished 10th. the rest of the top 10 are the best driver in F1 (never to win a race) in 7th, Ralf S. in 8th and Kimi in 9th.

story: http://www.formula1.com/race/news/4582/760.html
results: http://www.formula1.com/race/result/760/24.html

hopefully, this isn't the last race in the US. Ecclestone can't be crazy enough to leave the richest market in the world (or is he)?? http://www.tsn.ca/auto_racing/news_story.asp?id=170114

[BrianG]

Ferrari back with a vengeance, or at least all the pieces fit this track.

It is funny how a lot of the drivers dis the Indy track as being "simple", but none of them can get the balance right. All of them are complaining about setup, etc. Guess the track isn't so easy after all.

It was a good showing from Scott Speed. I know the guys on Speed TV are trying to hype the young driver to get more popularity for the sport in the US, but listening to his in-car conversations with the engineers seems to prove that Scott is more than a publicity stunt to get American viewership. I never liked him as a driver until this weekend. I will be quietly cheering for the kid.

Fisi seemed REALLY wigged out during the interview. You guys see that? I don't know. But then towards the end, he had a wry smile like Renault had something up their sleeves like a REALLY long first stint. Idunno.

BMW is making strides (I have a natural allegiance given the two bimmers in the garage and the three previous owned).

Anyone else hear the interesting whine coming from the Honda cars? New transmission and diffy package?

Derek Daly is a moron.

It should be an interesting race.

[bigC]

last year, only 6 cars started/finished the race. this year 22 cars started, but only 9 finished, as Schumie won his 5th US GP in 7 tries, beating Massa and Fischella. Alonso was back in 5th place, so the championship gap closes to 18 points with 8 races left.

Trulli, for Toyota, finished 4th, Barichelo was 6th, followed by DC in 7th, Liuzzi for Torro Rosso in 8th position. thw greatest driver in F1 (never to win a race) did not finished, nor did the two BMWs, as Heidlfeld flipped several times during the first turn crash and JV's engine failed.

story: http://www.formula1.com/race/news/4589/760.html
results: http://www.formula1.com/race/result/760/8.html

Ron Dennis refuses to blame anyone for the accident that knocked both McLarens out of the race, as well as a few other cars: http://www.itv-f1.com/News_Article.aspx?PO_ID=36503

but Button blames JPM for causing the first turn incident: http://www.itv-f1.com/News_Article.aspx?PO_ID=36513

[mikechai]

I'm actually waiting for NAZCA M12's excellent post race analysis.... :D

[BrianG]

Someone needs to call Button a WAAAAAAAAmbulance. Even Scott Speed was saying racing incident. What was Montoya gonna do? He was jammed from the front, blocked on the sides and no buffer in back, ie typical first corner in F1. How can he "blame" Juan Mon when:

"“I don’t know what happened. I think Montoya hit my back wheel. He had so much room on the inside, I don’t know if he just understeered or what."

Precise analysis there Booton (as Derek Daly says).

Aside from that, drive of the day goes to Trulli. Fisi did well to get out ahead of the scrumptious one.

Can Ferrari carry over the pace? Can Bridgestone hold off Michelin? The season just got better.

[bigC]

I'm actually waiting for NAZCA M12's excellent post race analysis.... :DQFT.

his Canadian GP analysis was a good read. :)

[Shamrock]

Anyone else notice the team orders that arent suppose to be? Massa passes Schumie early in the race, and continues to sail off into the sunset, leaving Schumie out to dry...last pit stop comes....

Steve Matchett estimated that Massa needed 6.6 seconds of fuel to go to the end of the race...what does he get? 10.8 seconds, to "conveniently" let Schumie pass him...Massa couldnt recover because he had WAY too much fuel to catch Schumie again...

Just for calculation reasons... an F1 refueler can put fuel into a car @ 12 liters PER SECOND! He needed 6.6 seconds of fuel, got 10.8. Massa ended up with 50.1 liters of fuel EXTRA than what he needed...hmm....

That BMW took a tumble didn't it? I thought that guy was dead, but he walked away!

[NAZCA M12]

Heh, even i ended up waiting for that post race analysis. ******* Windows. All is well now. I didn't know there were actual heroes out there who can read my looooong posts :thumbsup: Here it is.

"Wow, what an absolutely stunning race. Fantastic spectacle and needless to say, the spectators were payed back for last years race, with interest too." Now that would have been my introduction had i been drunk but unfortunately i'm not so... Once again a typically **** race. So there was drama at the start? So what? It was just the usual, poor "let's wait for the pit stops in order to make up some positions" thing. I felt that was worse than last year.

At least last year, there was a problem, there were concerns of a possible big accident. This year, the spectators saw (at least i hope they understood that) how stupid rules by the FIA can turn up against the sport. Talking about shooting themselves on the foot once again. In my last weeks prophetic post i mentioned the stupidity of the safety car rule and gave an example of how unfair it can be in case of a big one. About two days after that, i read that the GPDA wanted the FIA to make changes to that system. While nothing more was revealed i thought that could turn out to be positive after all simply because it can't get any worse than it is now. In the first lap crash, you guys saw how safety car periods benefit F1 racing. We had a big accident which wiped out almost half the field on lap 1. Instead of having a red flag and a restart, they brought the safety car out. Why? Why should Button pay for an accident that wasn't started by him? Same for Heidfeld. Why can't at least one of the McLaren boys be given a second chance with the spare car? At the same time there was a smaller accident that took out 2 more cars iirc. One more reason to get a restart imo.

If there was a red flag and a restart 15 minutes later, chances are that we would have a full grid once again. Don't look at how badly some of those cars looked (you'll never believe how fast F1 mechanics are at fixing these things). Button and Heidfeld would jump to the third car (JB because his engine was damaged from the knock which subsequently resulted in an engine failure and NH obviously because the steering wheel was the only thing left from his car). One of the damaged McLarens would probably be repaired in time and of course since Montoya is the No.1 driver, he would get to race the third car :D Alas, they let them continue with half the cars missing. Add one or two retirements after that, and we almost got a repeat of last years race with very few cars on the track, only this time, it was very easy to avoid that. If those stupid idiots would at least modify the safety car proceduce it would be much better. They could make it like this: if an accident involving several cars occurs within the first say 5 laps of the race, then its a red flag with a restart with a shortened amount of laps to be completed to take place within 10-15 minutes. If it happens several laps in the race, fine, have the pace car come out. Having a 3rd car sitting in the pits doing nothing costs money to a team. Why not take advantage of it in case of an multiple accident? Also, there was one more reason to bring the race to a halt. There was debris all over the place. We saw a few times a car hitting them at high speed. This ain't "marbles" either. We're talking about carbon fiber stuff here. Can a small piece of those pierce a tyre? The answer is it won't just cut it. It will cut it like a mother****er. The federation has screwed up several things of racing in the name of safety in the past few years. How they let those guys out there racing in dangerous (in my opinion) conditions is beyond me. What if one of them had a flat tyre because of debris down the straight at 330Kph? Also one car went over some debris on the oval section and threw them to the grandstands. Do we need a repeat of what happened a few years ago in CART racing (when Fernandez crashed and parts of the car flew to the grandstands and killed spectators) to wake up?

Incidentally, i had also mentioned in my last weeks post an example of a driver trigerring an accident (Sato) and of course, Sato went on and collided with Monteiro. But then again, you don't have to be Nostradamus to predict that Sato will mess it up once again do you? The impressive thing is, and correct me if i'm wrong, that he had done a similar mistake a few years ago with the BAR Honda, on the same spot (first corner, under heavy breaking, hitting the curbs hard) knocking off his front wing or sth. One would expect him to at least to learn from these things but...yeah, you know the drill, you don't have to be Nostradamus to predict that Sato won't learn a thing eh?

Anyhow, there was a lot of finger pointing towards Montoya regarding the first lap incident. Kimi Raikkonen was initially trying to contain his rage stating "i think it was obvious" before the McLaren PR machine kicked into life (nothing against McLaren about that one, its a standard procedure from all teams when team-mates collide). Jenson Button was pretty sure that Montoya didn't brake down early enough and though one would expect JB to be looking ahead of him rather than behind, who am i to challenge his superior 360 degrees vision when we're talking about such a charismatic talent (never to win a race)? David Coulthard on the other hand thanked (!) Montoya for...taking care of the others at the start while Nico Rosberg was probably about to do the same when he was reminded that he didn't collide with JPM.

I think its unfair though. I'd say it was a racing incident. Of course there is this notion that if a driver hits another driver from behind, then it is he (the driver behind) who should get the blame, in our case Montoya. That's a bull**** argument though. It is logical on the streets, but then on the streets a driver has to keep a certain distance from the car ahead so that in case of an emergency, he has the space and time to react and readjust his speed compared to the driver in front. We're talking about racing here, we got a bunch of drivers who are in a hurry, especially in the first corner. There are no safety distances between the cars, just a few inches, and little time to react when a driver in front hits the brakes hard. In other words, i think that 1) any other driver in Montoya's place would probably have crashed just as well 2) Montoya is not exactly the most popular one among the other drivers atm so he is an easy target. The only one who might stood a chance to save his car from that mess was Heidfeld. He had a bit of space to his right yet he didn't use it and instead stayed too close to Villeneuve and Button.

That accident and "the driver who is behind is always at fault" rule, reminded me of those two incidents between Barichello and R Schumacher a few years ago and how easily the blame was tweasted to fit Barichello's defence or in other words, how both scenarios can sound convincing: There was this one accident with Ralf ahead, Rubens behind, the two of them colliding. Verdict? "******* Ralf hit the brakes too early. I mean i tried to avoid him, i really did. Alas...". Then there was the other one with the roles reversed: This time its Rubens ahead, Ralf behind, they're approaching the corner, Rubens says "**** it, i'm slowing down", Ralf says "**** it too, i'm taking the **** off then", and so Ralf took off indeed, and flew over the Ferrari (and we witnessed a beautiful, oportunistic overtaking manoevre). Verdict? "******* Ralf hit the brakes too late this time. I mean i tried to avoid him, i left my braking as late as possible. Alas..." :D See how easy it is to twist it? Don't both explanations sound logical? Essentially they were similar to the Raikkonen/Montoya opinions.

[NAZCA M12]

Whatever, i think it was pretty obvious that Michelin had brought a very hard, "no-risk" tyre this time around. You could see them during the pit stops, they looked to be in decent condition which indicates a harder than usual rubber was used. It was evident that cars equipped with Bridgestone tyres that started behind those with Michelins, were slowly catching them up during the race. Now that could be masked during qualifying and only one fast lap, but during the race, the Michelin-shod teams struggled for pace and slowly fell behind. It's a good thing for a change since Michelin has been ****ting all over Bridgestone the whole year. Fisichella was the biggest exception to the rule for two reasons: 1) he had a much better setup from Alonso who seemed to struggle and 2) well, being so **** the whole year, he had to make one good race didn't he? Alonso seemed uncomfortalbe with the setup from the word go and he wasn't too smart either to throw a car that already slides a lot, to the curbs (which are slippery). A spin would have served him well, but this guy has ability AND luck. Toyota had a good race, although Ralf's car was hit with reliability problems, Trulli did very well. I wouldn't go as far as saying that he was the driver of the race, because i have to ask against whom? Half the field was missing, and i don't remember him passing anyone on the track except for the classic "fill it up with gas and we'll get as many as we can on the pit stop" way. Still he did a good job.

Rosberg was the biggest disappointment for me but then again this track was new to him. He blamed the handling of the car for being so slow. That is weird cause i thought the driver plays some sort of a role in correctly setting the car up. Obviously he had little knowledge of the track so i don't see why his bossom buddy Webber couldn't lend him his settings? :D It was known before the start, that the two McLarens were heavy with fuel so it would have been interesting to see how far they could go. Jenson Button was heavier than Barichello and once again we saw how RB started well but mysteriously went backwards during the race. The two BMWs were heavy with fuel too as they traditionally are, but Heifeld didn't go too far and Villeneuves car suffered an unforgivable engine failure which prevented him from improving his position (after the stops). I think they took a part of that terrible luck from Williams with them. When they're fighting for a 6th or 7th, everythings working great. When they're genuinely faster and fighting for better positions, everything turns to ****. Remember Heidfeld was a strong 4th iirc in the second race of the season or sth till he (d'oh) broke the engine 8 laps from the finish. This weekend Villeneuve concentrated more on race setup than qualifying so couple that with Alonso's problems and i think he could score a 4th. Still, JV did his little mistakes in that race: After a great start which had him pass Barichello, he was so conservative entering the first corner, that RB regained the position with ease from the inside line. About a lap or two afterwards, he did the opposite, left his braking too late, went to the grass and R Schumacher went by him. Both mistakes on the first corner. Despite all that, he was faster than Barichello and R Schumacher and was waiting for the pit stops when his car failed. Oh well, i guess his mechanics can now take that broken engine from his car and put it in Heidfeld's striken car, then they'll have "teh complete package" :D

Great race by Ferrari though. I particularly liked the way they handled things with their usual care and respect for the sport. Terrific passing manoevre by Schumacher on Massa. You know, back in the old days, if a football team had bribed a ref to give them the advantage, he wouldn't exactly try to hide it from the other team or the spectators. So from the 1st minute it would be a bit like this:

(Ref): RED CARD. You cannot touch the ball with your hands. That's a red card and a penalty. Get out of the pitch.
(Goalkeeper): But ref, i'm the goallie of the team and i have the right to touch the b...
(Ref): I don't care who you are sir! Who the **** do you think you are? Are you asking of special treatment or something? OUT!

These days though, that **** is handled diferently, sneaksier. It's more refined. If there's a chance to make the whole thing not too obvious to the public, then it will be done this way. So in our football example, the ref noawadays would simply try to break the balls of the players he'd like them to loose by continuously giving fouls in order to disrupt the flow of their game, give unfair yellow cards so as to to anger the players and affect their state of mind, or (for those who saw the Sweden Vs Germany match), give a red card while laughing his ass off. A penalty is the last resort unless they pay them really good money.

Similarly, gone are the tactics of the past for Ferrari (like Austria '02 or whenever the hell it was or Indy a couple of years ago). It's difficutl to see that straightforward "you guys keep your positions for the time being but switch places on the straight on the very last lap" tactic. Now they can do it in the pits, and nobody will understand ****. So how did Massa managed to loose over 2.5s all of a sudden? He didn't loose that only to fuel, he went slower down the pit straight when he came into the pits for his first stop and he did the same when he left his pit crew. Heh, one thing's for sure. Massa would never get a penalty for speeding in the pits. Disgusting tactics, who the **** is Ferrari kidding? Once again they show that they don't give a fig about the sport, only themselves, which is fair but it should be up to a point. Renault wasn't blameless either. Fisichella was a lot faster than Alonso for once. Did he really need Alonso to back off down the oval section and let him do that artificial pass? Unless of course it was Alonso's decision although i don't believe in his altruism that much plus i don't see why Fisi can't do it on his own. I'm just wondering, when these tactics happened between Barichello and Schumacher a few years back, the spectators were furious. Did they understand this time that they were tricked once again only differently?

Somebody should tell that master of servants Massa a little story: There was once a Ferrari driver (Schumacher) who broke his leg in an accident and couldn't fight for the championship. The team then had to shift all its weight to the worlthless No.2 sitting in the other car, Irvine. They also had to temporarily find a servant to serve the ex-servant for a few races: Salo. Irvine needed to get a bunch of points pretty badly so we got at Hockenheim when Salo after a good race was leading it, en route to his first GP win, Irvine was close but didn't seem to have the speed to catch him. Then of course Salo had to lift/encounter various problems with his brakes/start feeling unwell/whatever you please so as to let his team-mate get by him and win the race which Irvine duly did. Salo had a chance with a very competitive car to win his first grand prix and he let it past. He never won. I hope that Massa gets dropped next year to a not so competitive team and he never gets a chance to win a race. That will teach him a few things. His chances of winning a race this year rest on Schumacher scoring a DNF. If he's dropped next year, it's a case of "follow the engine" game because he'll probably end up at the team that Ferrari will agree to give customer engines.

Broadly speaking, the federation has forbidden team orders. No kidding. Unfortunately it's something that is out of their control. By listening to the radio conversations between a team and its drivers they don't control a thing. They can't solve it either because these tactics are agreed before the race. The problem is the teams themselves. They should all take a look at how Williams treated its drivers in the past and use that as an expample of sportsmanship. Williams would let his drivers fight like cats and dogs on the track, as long as they didn't end up with the cars on the wall. The only "solution" that at least i can think of is to have all teams and the FIA sign up an agreement which will stipulate that the teams will not insert certain clauses in the contracts with their drivers regarding helping a team-mate etc, and each new contract should be monitored. I know it doesn't sound pretty, but it was contractual reasons that cause these stuff. Salo had to lift and let Irvine pass him because his contract said so, similarly Irvine had to help Schumacher get by him whenever he was ahead, and at the same time try and block Hakka in case he was behind Irvine's car etc. Barichello had to do the same as well, see a pattern building up? I bet Massa has a similar contract too. Schumacher doesn't need that. He is supposed to be the best driver. If for some reason he is behind his team-mate, i expect him to get by him cleanly. Why? Because he is the better driver. I would expect his ego to make him demand that his team will treat both drivers equally, but the opposite happens. Alonso recently said that a team should get behind one driver and provide him with better equipment. Nobody knows if his contract with McLaren doesn't have anything like that. That alone makes Montoya and Raikkonen uneasy about staying in the team. Hopefully next year, the other McLaren driver (whoever he ends up signing) will be faster than Alonso so that the team will follow Alonso's advice and provide him with the inferior package :D

Next race is the French GP. Normally one would say that the Michelin-shod teams would be right up there with the rest if not in front and that should be the case. I expect McLaren and Sauber to go well but i'm not so sure Renault will be on top. See, Ferrari will be bringing an improved 248 if everything goes according to plan. They also need Massa to play the "rabbit" role as he did this time around. Don't be surprised if Alonso is fighting for 2nd or even 3rd behind the two Ferraris, or even 4th behind Button, Schumacher, Massa. Ok i made that up it ain't happening :D