News On F1 Forums - Talk Formula 1

5 laps remaining and Massa leads Hamilton by 8.4 seconds

Kubica in 3rd is 39 seconds behind the race leader

Final lap and Massa looks set to win the inagural European Grand Prix in Valencia

Massa wins ahead of Hamilton and Kubica

Kovalainen 4th ahead of Trulli, Vettel, Glock and Rosberg

Here is a team by team summary following the race (GMM)

FERRARI

Pole, fastest race lap and well-deserved victory for Felipe Massa, but a messy overall performance by the Ferrari team. The Brazilian, now 6 points behind championship leader Lewis Hamilton, was lucky to escape a post-race stewards' investigation with only a 10,000 euro fine, after his crew released him from a pitstop into the path of Adrian Sutil's Force India. The operation of the sister car, meanwhile, was a disaster; not only another weak showing by Kimi Raikkonen, but - after Massa's Budapest failure - another blown V8 engine. Before that, the reigning world champion dropped the clutch before his crew had finished refuelling and before he was shown a green light, and his rear wheel struck mechanic Pietro Timpini, who despite a trip to hospital only has a fractured foot.


MCLAREN-MERCEDES

Despite finishing second to Massa, Hamilton - revealing he has struggled with the 'flu, fever and severe neck spasms all weekend and nearly didn't race at all - actually extended his overall championship lead from 5 points (to Raikkonen before the race) to 6 points (to Massa after the race) at Valencia. "We opted fairly early on to take the championship-strategic option of settling for second place," team boss Ron Dennis said. Over 30 seconds behind the primary MP4-23, Heikki Kovalainen finished fourth, ensuring that - with Raikkonen's failure to finish - McLaren actually also clawed back 3 points to Ferrari's narrowing lead in the constructors' championship.


BMW-SAUBER

Half a minute behind Hamilton, Robert Kubica secured the final podium spot, his fifth this season, surviving a fright when a plastic bag got trapped under the car, robbing him of steering at one point. Nick Heidfeld started eighth but dropped back a position and didn't score points. "This was one of the worst races ever for me," said the German, who struggled for pace. "His pace was simply too slow," technical boss Willy Rampf said.


TOYOTA

Along with Toro Rosso's Sebastian Vettel, Jarno Trulli was among the stars of the Valencia weekend, finishing fifth from seventh on the grid on Sunday. "This shows how good we are getting and how nice it is to race with a competitive car every weekend," he said. From 13th on the grid and with a heavy cold, Timo Glock climbed to P7 at the flag courtesy of an excellent start and a one-stop strategy. A further testimony to the reigning GP2 champion's input is the fact that, following his struggles on Friday, Trulli only began to resurrect his form after adopting the wholesale setup of Glock's car.


TORO ROSSO-FERRARI

Vettel capped his excellent form throughout the Valencia weekend with a thoroughly-deserved three points for sixth place, although he was lucky to survive the first lap including a knock against Raikkonen's Ferrari. Albeit nearly 40 seconds further behind, Sebastien Bourdais - who for a long time carried front wing damage after a clash with Heidfeld - completed Toro Rosso's impressive weekend with P10.



WILLIAMS-TOYOTA

More than a minute behind the winner, Nico Rosberg secured the final championship point on offer at Valencia -- the team's first since Silverstone. "It shows we are getting back on track," he said. Kazuki Nakajima was just 15th, however, after nearly stalling on the grid and then incurring the wrath of the local crowd by hitting the popular Spaniard Fernando Alonso. "There was a bit of a battle going on in front and I couldn't avoid him," said the Japanese, who had to pit for a new nose while Alonso retired with rear damage.



RENAULT

To the despair of his local supporters, crowd favourite Alonso retired from the second of his two home races this year after Williams' Nakajima crashed into the rear of his Renault. Nelson Piquet carried damage to the front of the sister R28 to 11th place. "It's a weekend to forget," said boss Flavio Briatore.



RED BULL-RENAULT

Beaten comprehensively by the 'junior' team Toro Rosso this weekend, boss Christian Horner admitted Valencia has been "disastrous" for Red Bull. "We've got a lot of analysis to do," said Mark Webber, who finished P12. David Coulthard, dead last at the chequer, was hit from behind at the start and later collided with a Force India as he tried to recover. "Sorry to them for that," he said after nursing his damaged RB4 home.


HONDA

Amid perhaps the worst weekend performance of his long career, Honda opted to pull Rubens Barrichello's car out of parc ferme overnight - thus requiring him to start from pitlane - and change all his braking components. He finished 16th of the 17 runners at the chequer. Jenson Button has fared better all weekend but was nonetheless still lapped.


FORCE INDIA-FERRARI

An eventful but fruitless race for Sutil, who as well as being involved in the Massa pitlane incident, then exited the race by crashing into the barriers. "Adrian was honest enough to admit he made a mistake," said technical boss Mike Gascoyne. Giancarlo Fisichella crossed the chequer 14th of the 17 finishers. "Our pace was good, it wasn't far off the others," he said

Congratulations to Felipe Massa, he drove a faultless race and deserved the win.
Lewis Hamilton couldn't match Felipe Massa but finished comfortably in second. Given that he wasn't feeling to well, that is a good result.
Robert Kubica did well to finish on the podium helped by the fact that this circuit is very hard to overtake.
Heikki Kovalainen managed 4th but one has to question why is he more than 30 seconds slower than his teammate
Jarno Trulli benefited from the pit problems for Kimi Raikkonen and managed 5th.
An impressive result for Sebastian Vettel finishing 6th. The Toro Rosso team are really improving.
Timo Glock did well on a single stop to finish 7th while Nico Rosberg manages to finish in the points.

The circuit proved to be a difficult one to overtake on and that made the race processional however, the incident with Massa as he exited the pitlane and then the refuelling problem for Raikkonen then his engine failure. Some drama for Ferrari and something they need to work hard on if they are to win the championships.

Your thoughts and the driver of the day ?

Congratulations to Felipe Once again he shows everyone a clean pair of heels.

The circuit seemed to offer so much in the form of overtaking and in GP2 there was a lot of opportunities taken and fumbled. Ron Dennis said the McLaren team elected very early on not to contest the win and play for the points. There are two possible motives for this statement, 1) Attempting to keep Ferrari guessing as to whether or not they really have an advantage at this crucial stage of the championship.
or 2) they actually could have attempted to win the race and instead chose to manufacture an exceedingly boring race and jeapodise their chances of winning the WDC in the process.

It seems to me that in the past McLaren has had little success in subduing Lewis's urge to win races, so we should probably discount senario two which leaves us with one inexcapable conclusion: Ferrari have a superior package in Felipe and the F2008. The one consolation for McLaren is that Ferrari are still faced with the cunundrum of which driver to fully throw their weight behind. However in light of the fact that they only trail by six and thirteen points in the WDC it isn't critical just yet. . . or is it?!

Vettel had a great weekend but Felipe gets my driver of the day by a nose hair!

The circuit looked great.... love the bridge over water.. troubled waters perhaps.... but I digress....
The race itself wasn't particularly thrilling. Great drive by Massa. Not sure what Ferrari were up to in the pits.
Lewis did well considering he was not 100%.
One good thing was that I actually got to watch the race and LIVE!!! Yay.
Have Ch10 been showing the races live all year on their 10 HD channel??
At the moment I have the rotten cold/flu thing that everyone has either had or got or is getting. Great.......... NOT!!! I need an avatar that sneezes.

A well deserved victory for Massa if only for his heartbreaking retirement at Hungary.

I think assuming no more engine failures, Massa has to be the hot favourite now.

No matter what happens to Hamilton, he won't have any sympathy from me. Those clowns at ITV just make me filter out anything Hamilton in the race!

Vettel did very well but how much of that is engine related ?

Raikkonen is certainly not on form. He was responsible for that pit problem and he needs to switch back on somehow, if for anything, to start taking away points from Hamilton.

Race itself was pretty boring which surprised me as it is a new track and it should have been designed with overtaking in mind. Lets hope Singapore will be different!

Oh and thanks very much Nakajima!

jacfan wrote:One good thing was that I actually got to watch the race and LIVE!!! Yay.
Have Ch10 been showing the races live all year on their 10 HD channel??

Not all year but certainly the last few F1 races were broadcast live on the 10 HD channel.

Earlier in the year they were showing the IPL live and the F1 in delay so it really depends which sport 10 think rates better!

Next step would be qualifying live!

MotoGP is also broadcast live on 10 HD.

Hope you are feeling better

Ed wrote:

jacfan wrote:One good thing was that I actually got to watch the race and LIVE!!! Yay.
Have Ch10 been showing the races live all year on their 10 HD channel??

Not all year but certainly the last few F1 races were broadcast live on the 10 HD channel.

Earlier in the year they were showing the IPL live and the F1 in delay so it really depends which sport 10 think rates better!

Next step would be qualifying live!

MotoGP is also broadcast live on 10 HD.

Hope you are feeling better

I concur with Ed; I hope you're feeling better, jacfan!

BTW, Ed, I've started a music lyrics thread in the trivia section; I'm going to put up the next set of lyrics sometime this evening.....take a shot at 'em if you want.......

Ed wrote:

jacfan wrote:One good thing was that I actually got to watch the race and LIVE!!! Yay.
Have Ch10 been showing the races live all year on their 10 HD channel??

Not all year but certainly the last few F1 races were broadcast live on the 10 HD channel.

Earlier in the year they were showing the IPL live and the F1 in delay so it really depends which sport 10 think rates better!

Next step would be qualifying live!

MotoGP is also broadcast live on 10 HD.

Hope you are feeling better

Thanks for the info Ed. We only just got the new TV and love it. Can't wait to watch the next motogp on it.
Qualifying live would be great too.
Come on CH 10 make good with the promises.

Thanks guys for your well wishes. Getting better but this damned thing keeps hanging on. Cough cough.....

Snowy wrote:Congratulations to Felipe Once again he shows everyone a clean pair of heels.

The circuit seemed to offer so much in the form of overtaking and in GP2 there was a lot of opportunities taken and fumbled. Ron Dennis said the McLaren team elected very early on not to contest the win and play for the points. There are two possible motives for this statement, 1) Attempting to keep Ferrari guessing as to whether or not they really have an advantage at this crucial stage of the championship.
or 2) they actually could have attempted to win the race and instead chose to manufacture an exceedingly boring race and jeapodise their chances of winning the WDC in the process.

It seems to me that in the past McLaren has had little success in subduing Lewis's urge to win races, so we should probably discount senario two which leaves us with one inexcapable conclusion: Ferrari have a superior package in Felipe and the F2008. The one consolation for McLaren is that Ferrari are still faced with the cunundrum of which driver to fully throw their weight behind. However in light of the fact that they only trail by six and thirteen points in the WDC it isn't critical just yet. . . or is it?!

Vettel had a great weekend but Felipe gets my driver of the day by a nose hair!

Excellent Post Snowy! You're dead on: what McLaren boss R.D. has to say about his strategy should be treated with the same degree of skepticism as what Ferrari team bosses and drivers have to say about THEIR strategy.

In AutoSport's latest (I subscribe on line) one of the regular writers had some very interesting things to say about Kimi's recent run of bad luck. It's certainly true that if he had anything like Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton's lucky charm (whatever they are!) he'd be, like Fernando, a two time WDC at least!

And he may well be before it's all over. Ferrari LOVE's Spa and so does Kimi. I'm going to go ahead and pick him AGAIN for pole and win.

Alas, last time, I think I 'hexed' Kimi by saying Lewis was due for some of his (Kimi's) famous bad luck. Then Kimi's engine expired.

I was, like you, disappointed by the processional nature of Valencia. I hoped for something more like the GP2 race. But let's face it: when drivers are paid the kind of dough they are in F1, and when teams care more about points than wins because points pay the bills, you get defensive driving.

I've always said a win should be worth AT LEAST AS MUCH in points as all the other points awarded. That would mean winning netted you 29 points. Second, which is, remember, best of the losers, would then (at 8 points) be worth about 3 tenths as much as winning.

Which it is. In truth, if not in fact.

But if the second place driver would ONLY LOSE about 3/10 by trying and not succeeding, to take first, wouldn't he try A LOT HARDER?

Maybe someone should start a "World of [F1] Outlaws" series?

On to Spa!

Jim Watt

It was an inspired move changing the points system from 10,6,4,3,2,1, NOT! The sentiment was that 7th and 8th got nothing and probably deserved some reward, a non finish was a big blow and the championship would be more likely to go down to the wire, even in years dominated by one constructor. They forgot the essential prerequisite for exciting racing and innovative race car design, incentive!

A far better way to incentivise the entire grid would have been to award points from first to last. Then we'd have had every driver in every team doing their utmost to overtake the car in front!

Snowy, thats unlikely especially if they made 20, 19, 18 etc points down to 20th place...

I suppose the top 10 could get points in this way:

15 - 10 - 8 - 7 - 6 etc.

My feeling with FELIPE being pretty close to MICHAEL in 2006 and consequently having the best chance becoming the quickest successor seems to be proved right.....

..if there werent some wet GPs..!?

Cheers