McLaren driver Heikki Kovalainen has won his maiden Grand Prix of his career after major rivals suffered bad luck. At first Hamilton suffered a tyre puncture and 3 laps from the end, the leading Ferrari of Felipe Massa blew its engine. Timo Glock is a magnificent second, ahead of Raikkonen.
Those dumbo winglets on the McLaren seem to have done the trick. Of course we don't know fuel loads, but Ferrari don't have an answer as it stands now.
and i don't think it is the ears it is the package on the whole
Of course one part alone cannot claim to be a silver bullet. But the car this afternoon with the winglets is quite a bit quicker than the morning session. If the track stays dry and the rubber isn't washed away, then it looks good for McLaren.
What is interesting to me is that in the first practice, both Ferraris set quickest times. Yet in the second practice, they fell behind McLaren and Renault. MY opinion is that Ferrari have the pace, and spent the second session working on the details, like tire evaluation, etc. So we'll just have to wait until qualifying, but I expect Ferrari to be right up there, possibly a pole.
And while BMW seem to have not found pace, the Renaults displayed strength. Hmm, going to be an interesting race.
Racing should be decided on the track, not the court room.
DaveKillens wrote:What is interesting to me is that in the first practice, both Ferraris set quickest times. Yet in the second practice, they fell behind McLaren and Renault. MY opinion is that Ferrari have the pace, and spent the second session working on the details, like tire evaluation, etc. So we'll just have to wait until qualifying, but I expect Ferrari to be right up there, possibly a pole.
That may be. One thing I also thought of is that maybe it has something to do with more mechanical grip of McLaren that worked better when track got cleaner. However, Ferrari were slower than P1...
I hope you're right, DaveKillens. It does seem that Ferrari is NOT QUITE keeping up in the development race with McLaren. One more Hamilton runaway and we might have to consider Ferrari #1A, with McLaren a clear #1. Early days, I know.
Certainly McL are making more visible developments in the aero area, and are certainly VERY strong in the "no visible change" areas like engine and mech grip.
Enzo Ferrari was a great man. But he was not a good man. -- Phil Hill
was going through all the pics from fridays practice...
i did notice that both the mclarens changed quite a bit of front wing configuration from 1FP to the 2FP
1FP
2FP
in the 2FP it can be clearly seen the elephant ears and extra slit on the 4th profile of the front wing ..... they seem to be fine tuning the aero department alot
in fact there has been quite a lot of change in the front wing for FP2
i really don't know most of the technical terms but i see the outer part of the fron wing also changed . the one that has a small speedBREAKER like thingi