Wednesday, August 27, 2008 Make up your mind time By Steve Slater Special Contributor
IT WAS about this time last year that Ferrari were forced to make a tough ecision.
Despite scoring three victories, a suspension failure in the 2007 Italian Grand Prix removed the last chance of Felipe Massa being able to bid for the World Championship title. Immediately Massa took on a supporting role to teammate Raikkonen, who snatched the title from the dueling McLaren drivers in the final round of the series.
This year it seems Ferrari is going to have to make a similar decision.
Only this time, it is Massa who looks like the title contender and one suspects that Raikkonen might be less willing to play the supporting role.
Three weeks after being cruelly robbed of victory by a blown engine in Hungary, Felipe Massa received his due reward after dominating the European Grand Prix in similar style. The Brazilian drove a flawless race to take a comfortable victory and to move ahead of his team-mate in the points standings.
Behind Massa on the track, by 5.6 seconds to be precise, Lewis Hamilton’s second place in the Valencia race was a damage limitation exercise. The McLaren driver admitted to being simply ‘blown away’ by Massa and the Ferrari’s pace. Hamilton still leads the championship though, with 70 points to the Brazilian’s 64, with Raikkonen third on 57.
From the very start of qualifying, it was clear that Massa was going to be the driver to beat. His self-belief and commitment was breathtaking, particularly at in the opening series, where he ran the car right up to the concrete walls.
It was the same story for every one of the 57 laps of the race. At the entrance to the Astilleras Bridge, no other driver got as close to the parapet as Massa. Yet, he flawlessly skimmed the wall with millimeter precision every lap.
Massa it seems has an on /off switch. He is either hero or zero. Sunday was definitely a hero day.
Massa’s performance may have been flawless, but worryingly, his team was far from trouble free. A few hours after the checkered flag, the result of the race still hung in the hands of the FIA Stewards, who had the power to penalize Massa after the team released his car into the path of Adrian Sutil’s Force India car after his second pit stop.
The stewards deemed it an unsafe move by the team and could have invoked a 10-second penalty. It would have handed the win to Lewis Hamilton, which would have been a travesty. Fortunately good sense prevailed and the incident resulted in a reprimand and a hefty 10,000 Euro fine.
It wasn’t the only pitlane debacle for Ferrari either. Kimi Raikkonen made an almost unbelievable error of judgement, when he began to pull out of the pits before his refuelling was completed. His ‘hose man’ Pietro Timpini went along for the ride before being run over by the Ferrari and sustaining a broken foot.
Frankly Ferrari are no longer the rock solid, reliable organization we used to see during the Todt/Brawn/Schumacher era.
That was further demonstrated a few laps after Raikkonen’s pit stop when his Ferrari engine expired in a similar manner to Massa’s had in the previous race. The Finn was in a lackluster sixth when the engine blew, which must put yet more pressure on the team to give Massa his chance at the title.
In third place, Robert Kubica once again demonstrated his rock-solid racecraft in a BMW car outclassed by McLaren and Ferrari. A sign of the Polish driver’s talent is given by Nick Heidfeld’s performance in the similar car. He finished a lowly ninth. Fourth in the title standings, Kubica is now just two points behind Raikkonen.
Sadly for his adoring Spanish fans, who had thronged the Valencia track, Fernando Alonso didn’t even complete a single lap of racing. He became the victim of a typical
mid-field melee when his car was hit by Kazuki Nakajima’s Williams.
Alonso was philosophical, blaming the accident on his poor qualifying placing him in the middle of the pack. It has to be said though that his underpowered Renault, never looked a likely contender. Again look at his teammate’s performance. Piquet finished a lowly 11th.
The new Valencia track delivered plenty of dramas, but little overtaking. Part of the reason is that the design of the track has curving approaches to many of the slow corners which preclude side-by-side running.
The good news is that the Singapore track, while similar in width, layout and speed, has many of its slow corners at the end of long straights.
I’ve got high hopes that the Marina Bay track will deliver just as much drama, plus overtaking too!
