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Felipe Massa has easily won the French GP at Magny-Cours. While Ferrari was dominant in the race, Kimi Raikkonen was ahead until he suffered an exhaust problem and failed to hold on to his lead. The Finn finished second while Trulli got on the podium and succesfully marked Toyota's tribute to Ove Andersson.
The officials were sooo prompts to hammer Hamilton with a drive through for an incident that is never sanctionned usually (cutting a chicane once with no gain of position), yet they let Ferrari run at 300km/h with a loose 3kg metal piece, putting the rest of the field in danger, not to mention Raikonen's own risk of being thrown off track, in the past similar events have led to suspention burn & fail. Shame!bit over the top thatvyselegend wrote:yet they let Ferrari run at 300km/h with a loose 3kg metal piece, putting the rest of the field in danger
Maybe they will use the expropriated Super Aguri cars next race???vyselegend wrote:I find the BMW's drop in performance rather difficult to explain. Even if others (namely Renault & Toyota -with Red Bull lurking around as usual-) have progressed more than them during last test, it's hard to believe they have lost their (3tenth at least) advantage on the chasing group, to the point of being now 2 tenth behind. It is unreasonable to think one can have gained as much as 5 tenth in two week times, and even then it would means the german team made no progress meanwhile, which is unlikely. No way Renault & Toyota have catched them up on race pace.
I think WhiteBlue has a clue, they messed up their strategy and misjuged the importance of qualy preparation, maybe because they were overconfidents, which they won't admit of course as the press would jump on the occasion to say it's because they won two weeks ago.
Anyway we'll have the answear tomorrow after the race, when we'll analyse race pace.
The Williams case is strange, it doesn't really seems that FW30 is losing to it's competition on a linear basis, but it's looking like the car is somehow street tracks biased. I remember discussing that here in another topic after Monaco, but now even Nico admited in an interview in french that their car "doesn't suit normal circuits like Magny-Cours". Indeed, Williams pace has been impressive in Melbourne, Monaco & Montreal, but they're struggling in smooth permanents tracks like Sepang & Magny-Cours. Could it underline a design bias in suspention geometry / damping?
I feel for Honda. Obviously the RA108 wasn't supposed to beat records, but still from this year's debut I thought 2007 bitterness was behind them, and now for two races they are in the fight with Force India again. More worrying is the comment made by Button, backed by Barichello:Jenson Button wrote:The car was well balanced and we are pretty much getting the maximum performance from it, however unfortunately our pace reflects where we are at this track.I think it's the worst think that can happen to a team on a race week end (appart from accidents & tragedies obviously). The car is well balanced, it's braking well, it has good grip,drivers are getting good laps with no mistakes, but it is slow! That means there is no points to work on, the overall design isn't just efficient enough, as last year...Rubens Barichello wrote:We are really pushing the limit of the car to try and achieve more pace but it is evident from how close Jenson and I have been all weekend that there is no more to come from the car.
I'm looking forward to tommorows race, as this qualy asked more questions than what a race can usually answear.
Are the margins on these cars tight enough that Kimi's car may have been legally underweight at some point in the race? Would it be a contravention of the rules if it was?Saribro wrote:Nasty hole:
If there is evidence that the car was underweight during the race, Kimi will be disqualified. However, cars are built with a 605 kg target in mind (for qualifying) but are allowed to weigh 600kg after the race for incidents like this. So as long as that particular exhaust weigs less than 4 kg (give me a margin), it will be OK.myurr wrote:Are the margins on these cars tight enough that Kimi's car may have been legally underweight at some point in the race? Would it be a contravention of the rules if it was?
Although Nelson has driven very well this time, one advantage Lewis had with Alonso is that, this time, they weren't really fighting each other. Fernando didn't have to fight with Lewis for position and most of the times they've been together this time the weight difference was large.He lost so much time behind NP, if he was half as calm and calculated as he was behind FA, I think he would have passed him in no time.
So, to be back at the line he would have to break very hard, loose speed and let Vettel in, don't you think? Or it is alright not to break into the corner, overtake driver who breaks at the right place before the apex and then clip it, and go away with itben_watkins wrote:I can't see however he made an advantage from it.
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