Monte Carlo GP Review

For me Monaco is right up there with Abu Dhabi (Yas Marina Circuit) in terms of exicitement and track layout.

There was a lot of talk about teams not being able to overtake and how important the qualifying session is as the track is so narrow. People forget that what Monaco misses in overtaking, is more than made up with in crashes and the practice and qualifying didn't disapoint. In practice Schumacher & Luizzi both crashing out, with Schumacher adding weight to the argument about DRS not being safe on the Monaco track by using the DRS on the home straight and not having enough time to turn into turn 1 and ending up into the St Devote barriers. Qualifying saw crashes to Rosberg and Perez. Rosberg looking helpless as he hit the apex and skidded into the barriers but managed to get back out with 8 minutes left on Q1. Perez had an awful crash coming out of the tunnel, oversteering the corner and gliding into the barrier and then skidded for a distance of 40 yards sideways on into the barrier. The crash was so bad and because of the location of the crash a red flag was raised suspending the session with 2mins 26 left on the clock. With all 9 drivers going out with the remaining 2 and a half minutes left to try and get a quick flying lap in it was always going to be a struggle to get a competitive time in to knock Vettel off pole. Hamilton getting fustrated at Massa for not letting him past on his flying lap, Hamilton not realising that everyone was trying to get a flying lap in before the time ended.The real surprise again was Maldonardo who obviously has got used to driving his Williams car qualifying in 8th although Monaco is his favourite circuit and has had a lot of practice on it during his GP2 days.

Due to Perez interupting the flow of the shootout all the racers lined up on the grid like this:

POS DRIVER

1. Sebastian Vettel

2. Jenson Button

3. Mark Webber

4. Fernando Alonso

5. Michael Schumacher

6. Felipe Massa

7. Lewis Hamilton

8. Nico Rosberg

9. Pastor Maldonado

10. Sergio Perez *

Q2

11. Vitaly Petrov

12. Rubens Barrichello

13. Kamui Kobayashi

14. Paul di Resta

15. Adrian Sutil

16. Nick Heidfeld

17. Sebastien Buemi

Q1

18. Heikki Kovalainen

19. Jarno Trulli

20. Jaime Alguersuari

21. Timo Glock

22. Jerome d'Ambrosio

23. Narain Karthikeyan **

24. Vitantonio Liuzzi **

* Perez was taken to hospital with concussion and a sprained thigh so did not take part in the race.

** Hispania did not post a competitive time

Martin Brundle and David Coultard were on form in the commentary box and you could experience the bromance between them.

Alonso joining the queue at the restart (after perez crash) Martin Burndle "Surely the most expensive traffic jam in the world"

"Oh that's close, I wouldn't like to measure that, how close?" says Coulthard. "About as thin as your wallet," quips Brundle.

The race couldnt have started on a much better scene, the sun was shining on the Monte Carlo streets, locals looking out onto the track from their balconies and of course Martin Brundle on the grid walk trying to cause mischief. He was trying to talk to a mixture of various people associated with F1 and some celebrities looking for some much need ego-gloating and PR time.

Twenty three grid places were filled, with the only driver missing being Perez all lined up soaking up the heat. The fives red lights lit up and disappeard before you blinked. Mark Webber obviously blinked too long with Fernando Alonso jumping in front of him like a Jack in the box. The Spaniard jumping from 4th to 3rd just behind Button and Vettel. Jenson Button had history on his mind when he knew the last 6 Monaco GP's the driver on 2nd place has lost his place to the driver sat parallel to him in third due to the amount of grip on the right hand side of the grid.

The slowest corner on the track "the hairpin" saw the most action on the track. Hamilton, Di Resta and Schumacher all trying to overtake on the inside of the hairpin with only Schumacher managing to pull it off succesfully. Hamilton and Di Resta squeezing through on the inside trying to pass another car but getting it all wrong and using the other car as a bumper car. Hamilton and Di Resta being given a drive through penalty each. Jenson Button was right up the front the whole race and they nearly made a monumental strategic error by being on the soft-soft-super soft tyre stratgey giving them no plan B. Vettel was on the soft-super soft-soft stratgey which gave him a plan B becuase he could stay on the 2 stop strategy and finish if required.

Mark Webber was looking good for the first few laps until his first pitstop of which Red Bull mechanics werent ready for him to come in catching them off guard which meant the Australian lost so much time and came out in 14th place. With any Monaco race you are expecting safety cars and the race was very subdued until the first crash started the ball rolling. The safety car coming out first as Schumacher breaking down by the pit lane coming to a sudden halt.

Hamilton's caused Massa to crash through the tunnel, their fight starting from the hairpin and continuing through the tunnel until Massa clipped the side wall. A few safety cars came and went until the biggest crash of the race happened on lap 71 where the leaders were trying overtake the back lappers when Algsusuari crashing into the back on Petrov right infront of Alonso and Hamilton which caused a big pile up. The leaders calmly passed through the ruckus leaving the Russian Petrov behind in pieces. The crash happened at such a key corner that the race had to be halted via a red flag being waved to all drivers due to the trouble of removing the remains of the renault car off the track.

All the drivers being lined up on the starting grid in the position they were in when Petrov crashed. Whilst people were watching the Monaco Grand Prix for the crashes and accidents the re-start did spoil the competition between Vettel, Alonso and Button. Alonso who thought he had a chance of winning the race would get a good chance on the re-start to jump Vettel knowing how quick he is off the start. It was a 6 lap shootout, with the last 72 laps counting for nothing.However the re-start was under safety car conditions which gave Vettel a huge advantage not having to worry about being overtaken for the first lap. Maldonardo up in 6th place and again Hamilton doing his best to wreck other drivers races. Hamilton crashing into Maldonardo by trying to drive on the inside of the Columbian. Maldonardo being left facing towards the barrier. The Columbian is starting to look promising after his shaky start.

Vettel finished the Monaco Grand Prix in P1 with Alonso and Button grabbing the Pole positions. Webber finishing 4th and Hamilton finishing down in 6th place behind Kobayashi in 5th. Hamilton is under investigation post race so keep and eye out on that situation

Driver of the day was Vettel with villian of the day being Hamilton. For me it was Hamilton's worse race of his career trying too hard, and not having enough patience.

Overall a fantastic race which started off slowly but grew into a race that filled its potential. Not much overtaking but a lot of crashes occurred creating a busy day for both the stewards and strategy teams.

See you all in Montreal in 2 weeks time!

Catalunya Review

Qualifying Review

Nick Heidfeld's car caught fire in practice meaning that he couldn't get his car ready for the start of qualifying. He had to take up last place on the grid for the race. Barrichello had a shocker of a qualifying session finishing in p19, both Barrichello & Williams haven't turned up this season. The same can be said to his team mate Maldonardo this season (who I thought was a ghost driver the amount of times he got shown on the BBC) however Moldonardo decided to put his racing shoes on this weekend. He surprised everyone by getting through to the shootout. It seemed to be the most tactical qualifying of the season as teams were deciding which tyres to use.

Everyone was on soft tyres to get the fastest time possible except for Force India and Michael Schumacher. Schumacher getting into the shootout and changing his tyres to the hard composite. Meaning he would settle for 10th as he was losing 2 seconds a lap off everyone else. Force India chose to change their tyres in session 2 to hard composite as they knew they weren't going to get into the shootout so they qualified down in 16th& 17th. But with hard tyres they knew they would have a slight advantage over the surrounding teams. Kovalainen finishing 15th was a great achievement for Lotus too but he was on the soft tyres so you always knew he was going to struggle holding off the Force India’s behind him in the race. It was expected that Red Bull would be fighting it out for pole and it went along with that trend. Sebastian Vettel having a KERs issue (as always) allowing Mark Webber to snatch pole from the young German. Vettel had to settle for second as he didn’t want to use unnecessary tyres in order to pip his team mate.

Qualifying results

1 Mark Webber RBR-Renault 2. Sebastian Vettel RBR-Renault 3. Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 4. Fernando Alonso Ferrari 5.Jenson Button McLaren-Mercedes 6. Vitaly Petrov Renault 7. Nico Rosberg Mercedes 8. Felipe Massa Ferrari 9. Pastor Maldonado Williams-Cosworth 10.Michael Schumacher Mercedes 11. Sebastien Buemi STR-Ferrari 12. Sergio Perez Sauber-Ferrari 13. Jaime Alguersuari STR-Ferrari 14. Kamui Kobayashi Sauber-Ferrari 15. Heikki Kovalainen Lotus-Renault 16. Paul di Resta Force India-Mercedes 17. Adrian Sutil Force India-Mercedes 18. Jarno Trulli Lotus-Renault 19. Rubens Barrichello Williams-Cosworth 20. Timo Glock Virgin-Cosworth 21.Vitantonio Liuzzi HRT-Cosworth 22. Narain Karthikeyan HRT-Cosworth 23. Jerome d'Ambrosio Virgin-Cosworth 24.Nick Heidfeld Renault

Quotes from Qualifying

Martin Brundle to David Coultard - ‘Good thinking Batman’

Jake Humpreys – ‘There is no luck in formula one and there is no logic either’.

Race Review

Fernando Alonso may as well have pulled a rabbit out his hat whilst driving to the first corner. Nobody expected him to be in front after the first corner especially the two Red-Bulls. A brilliant start from the Spaniard allowed him to take the lead and lead for the first 18 laps until he pitted. Mark Webber was covering Vettel but didn’t expect to be fighting more than Vettel at the first corner allowing Alonso to slip up the blind side. Webber continuing to keep up the trend of getting over taken and losing his position before the first corner.

There was action at the back of the grid too with Heidfeld having to start at the back and take inspiration from Webber’s previous races which meant he had to do ‘a Webber’. He started off brightly and gradually moved up the field slowly. As he didn’t do any laps in qualifying he had lots of tyres to use up which gave him an advantage on people driving on old tyres. He supremely moved up the field and whilst not doing as well as Webber he did do amazingly well to get from 24th to finish 8th.
After Alonso pitted on lap 18, Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel decided to slug it out at the front. However both were hindered by technical problems as Vettel’s DRS stopped working and Hamilton had problems with KERs. Which meant it would be a stalemate and Hamilton would have to pass the German using his talent alone, yet he couldn’t manage to muster it as Vettel defended his position well using KERs to cancel out the DRS of Hamilton. For all the hype about Alonso Fever at the start of the race he did well to get in front however he couldn’t keep up the pace however still did well to finish p5.

Sauber had a great day in Catalunya as both drivers finishing in the top 10. Perez proving why he was given a seat and matching the race he had in Melbourne. Kobayashi as standard getting into the top 10 too, which confirms he is the best newer driver on the grid. He is supremely consistent and bold which could see him get given a seat at either Renualt, Mercedes or even Ferrari next season.

Some racers had a horrid race along with Barrrichello who seemed to disappear in and out of the race as people must have thought he had gone home and watched the race on his couch. Rosberg was unproductive too when his DRS failed early on and had to stick behind his team mate all race as he couldn’t gather enough speed to overtake leaving him extremely frustrated. Massa had a very bad day at the office and was struggling around not really bothering anybody and then he just pulled up. It was later explained as gearbox issues. With Alonso signing a new 5 year deal at Ferrari he looks bewildered and it looks like his seat will be stolen by another driver next year with Hulkenburg or Kobyashi taking it.

Drivers of the day

Lewis Hamilton
Nick Heidfeld
Sergio Perez

Villains of the day

McClaren Overall Designers, Lewis’s overalls looked like the child who designed the Conservative party logo had designed them.

Rubens Barrichello

Martin Brundle – hates me to say it as he is such a great commentator but he moaned about the Catalnya track too much you thought he despised it.

Next Race is Monaco in 4 days time. See you all there!

Instanbul F1 Review

After a small hiatus over the last three weeks F1 finally returned to hopefully carry on where Shanghai left off. Fans were so enthralled be Shanghai there was a sense of excitment overload, especially if every race this season matched its predecessor. After all the build up Qualifying took place and was over in a flash. I felt sorry for Kobayashi who in qualifying didnt even make it round the first lap due to mechanical errors so had to take up the last position on the grid. ( I could imagine there was a party in the Hispania garage at that point). Vettel had a mixed qualifying session in which he crashed his car into the barrier so badly that the engineers were working overtime to get his car driveable again. They managed to get the car up and running but took up most of the young germans remaining time. This meant he only had 7 laps worth of the session left. Mind you watching Vettel this season you could sense he only needs one lap to appear up the top of the leader board. He used all 7 laps before the time ran out and guess where he ended up, Yep on Pole. Familiar ground for the young german this season. The star of Qualifying was Rosberg who upset McClaren and Red Bull by geting amongst them and qualifying 3rd. And a quick note on Michael Schumacher who after 20 years in the sport learned something new about his car which his engineer kindly pointed out that he was using one of his paddles wrong.

So the complete grid after qualifying looked like this:

1. Sebastian Vettel 2. Mark Webber 3. Nico Rosberg 4. Lewis Hamilton 5. Fernando Alonso 6. Jenson Button 7. Vitaly Petrov 8. Michael Schumacher 9. Nick Heidfeld 10. Felipe Massa 11. Rubens Barrichello 12. Adrian Sutil 13. Paul di Resta 14. Pastor Maldonado 15. Sergio Perez 16. Sebastien Buemi 17. Jaime Alguersuari 18. Heikki Kovalainen 19. Jarno Trulli 20. Tonio Liuzzi 21. Timo Glock 22. Narain Karthikeyan 23. Jerome d’Ambrosio 24. Kamui Kobayashi.

So 23 drivers lined up on the grid ready for the race (Glock did not start), for the first time this season 95% of the grid was as predicted with no real surprises. Although Webber must have found his position unfamiliar as he is not normally on front row this season. However he kept up his trend of not making the first corner without being overtaken. Rosberg kindly snuck up beside him and snatched 2nd place from him, to be fair it was like watching candy being taken from a child. McClaren's Hamilton and Button start together and after last year with the two Red Bulls crashing together the McClarens thought it would be fun to see if we can see how competitive we can get without crashing into each other. Button and Hamilton were overtaking each other several times luckily for Martin Whitmarsh not coming together and ending up in a heap alongside the tarmac.

The star of the show this weekend was not a driver but was the pit-stops. 73 in all during the race partly due to the prielli tyres and partly due to drivers covering each other. There were some real horror shows on display too, no matter how hard they practice it seems you cannot get it perfect all the time. Hamilton and his McClaren team in the thick of it nearly crashing twice in the pitlane. Coincidently it was the Ferrari's who were getting in his way. First of all Massa trying to get out of the pit lane too quick and not looking in his mirrors to see Hamilton right along side him. Then the McClaren team not being able to get the nut in place on the tyres which cost Hamilton an extra 20 seconds. His lollipop collegue did well to stop Hamilton from going as you could see he was fustrated but the lollipop guy didnt let him out of the pit as there was traffic coming in. Time and time again this season we have seen the outcome of if you do more pit stops the more succcesful you are. Button and Buemi fell foul of this rule when they tried the 3 stop rule but were being overtaken by all the people who have done 4 stops. Michael Schumacher had an afternoon to forget, being overtaken alot and not being very productive. The fustration got the better of him as every time the camera was on him he was getting overtaken and for once he even admitted he was in the wrong when he collided with Petrov.
Alonso had a great race to claim a podium position, although the McClaren's did hand it to him on a plate with their poor strategies. The real star driver who had his 'Do a Webber' moment starting from last on the grid to pick up a point by finishing 10th. A solid drive from the bold and daring driver. He drives like he has nothing to lose every week so it didnt daunt him one bit and he moved up to field in timely fashion and got his strategy spot on.

Stars of the day - Kobayashi and the Pit-Stops.
Villan of the day - Michael Schumacher

Final race finishing positions:

01. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull 1:30:17.558
02. Mark Webber Red Bull +8.807
03. Fernando Alonso Ferrari +10.075
04. Lewis Hamilton McLaren + 40.232
05. Nico Rosberg Mercedes + 47.539
06. Jenson Button McLaren + 59.431
07. Nick Heidfeld Renault + 1:00.857
08. Vitaly Petrov Renault + 1:08.168
09. Sebastien Buemi Toro Rosso + 1:09.300
10. Kamui Kobayashi Sauber + 1:18.000
11. Felipe Massa Ferrari + 1:19.800
12. Michael Schumacher Mercedes + 1:25.400
13. Adrian Sutil Force India + 1 lap
14. Sergio Perez Sauber + 1 lap
15. Rubens Barrichello Williams + 1 lap
16. Jaime Alguersuari Toro Rosso +1 lap
17. Pastor Maldonado Williams + 1 lap
18. Jarno Trulli Lotus + 1 lap
19. Heikki Kovalainen Lotus + 2 laps
20. Jerome D'Ambrosio Virgin + 2 laps
21. Narain Karthikeyan HRT + 3 laps
22. Tonio Liuzzi HRT + 5 laps

Retirements

Paul Di Resta - 44 laps
Timo Glock - DNS

Next race is in Spain: It is the home race of Fernando Alonso. Prepare for Fernando Fever!

See you all in two weeks!