Monday April 25, 2005

The San Marino race

Well this race was always going to be critical for both Ferarri and BAR if they were to show their respective seasons were not going to be duds. Mclaren had Wurtz in place for Montoya who is still out on injury leave.

Alonso won by the skin of his teeth holding off Schumi during the last few laps. Schumi got past Button when they were chasing backmarkers. Amazing shots as the cars flew over the kerbs of Imola. On average the cars are now one and a half seconds slower than last year and catching that speed back fast. Nice to see a good mix of different cars at the front of the grid and some drivers doing better than expected.

Teams who did better than expected.

BAR who seem to have recovered well after the first three races of the season. Lets hope for them they continue to move forward. A strong double points finish was their reward.

Sauber finally get points for JV. He drove a strong race, lets hope he continues to improve with the team.

Teams who did as well as expected.

Renault with a good win with a slice of luck perhaps. Fisi's DNF again a concern and to his annoyance.. Nice of flav to say he'l stick around until the end of 2006 with Alonso.

Ferrari with all the testing they have done, this finish was expected and Schumi was just awsome in a car that appeared even under heavy fuel load to be one and a half to two seconds faster than anyone else. As usual Rubens got the reliability troubles.

Teams who did not do so well.

Williams - hero to Zero with Heidfeld doing ok to get a point and be ahead of his teamate. Webber again making mistakes.

Toyota - an historically bad circuit for them, but a bad performance for them in Spain will not be excusable.

RBR - who hit the reality landing strip with a bump.

Mclaren - who have a fast but fragile car for Kimi.

Others.

RBR who have secured Ferrari engines for next year which must mean Sauber will get BMW power. A one qualifying session on Saturday might return soon - thank you Bernie. ITV ran adverts when there were three laps remaining. I could not believe this especially as it was at a critical point of the race. When they got the deal to show F1 they promised innovative ways of working around the adverts. All they did yesterday was to reshow the final three laps after the race. I have seen F1 on other European commercial channels and they really do handle adverts very well. either way I watched the race using the time slip mode of our DVD recorder. Finally with all the fuss about making overtaking easier with the new regulations the drivers are saying once you get close to another car the 'dirty air' problem is even worse than before. Anyway Spain in two weeks, where because most teams test so much there, a very tight grid will be formed I think during qualifying.