Posts 
Atom Date: July 22 2007
[ 
Mood: Razz ]
Mood: Razz ][ 
Currently: Reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling ]
Currently: Reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling ]Warning! Long post alert!
I am quite aware that many interesting things happened during the European Grand Prix. Lewis Hamilton appeared to have picked up some sort of jinx (very unlike him). How else do you explain skipping off the track on lap 2 (OK, maybe that was just because Turn 1 resembled Sheffield a couple of weeks ago...), swapped to the dry behind the Safety Car when conditions clearly indicated the opposite, did the second pit stop too late to avoid getting baulked by Fisichella for nearly a lap and then swapped to the rain tyres too early?
As the ITV commentators said, it would be inadvisable for Lewis to visit a casino on the way home. About the only right decision he made today was to keep his engine running when everyone else in Turn 1 gave up. Even then, that one smart decision was nearly enough to net him a point.
There was a neat tussle for the final podium spot between Mark Webber, David Coulthard and Alex Wurz. All three had got there against the expectations of their grid slots to some extent. In the case of the Red Bulls, reliability had for once been impeccable. David Coulthard had done particularly well out of the early chaos, which explained his rise from 20th position. Wurz had fought like a tiger, while Webber had simply driven a tidy race and benefited from Hamilton and Raikkonen's woes. Well done to all three for keeping us entertained.
Heidfeld was being controversial, which would normally be like saying the Spyker is really fast (more on that later). Besides crashing into his own team-mate at the start, he also managed to be involved in a collision with Ralf Schumacher, which is being investigated as I write. Personally, I think Ralf Schumacher shut the door a little too tightly, but Nick probably shouldn't have expected there to be a space round the last term.
That said, if Nick had won the race, it wouldn't have been as important to him as the birth of his second child, Joda, the previous night. Joda is a cool name, and best wishes for his future. Congratulations also to Nick Heidfeld and his family.
As a Spyker supporter, though, the thing I will remember most from this race is the flash of orange in the first sector of lap 2 going round what appeared to be a cruising red car. The red car was Raikkonen, and he was cruising because he'd missed the pit entry on the previous lap. Those dry tyres really weren't up to much.
The orange flash was Markus Winklehock. This was the same Markus Winklehock who 24 hours earlier, had been 1.5 seconds slower than his team-mate Adrian Sutil, who in turn was considerably slower than his non-Spyker-equipped rivals. The same guy, I might add, who got his race debut because two richer blokes were stuck in testing contracts. How we grinned and laughed at my house when we saw the brilliance and absurdity of the overtaking move - and that's even with Dad being a Ferrari fan!
A few seconds before this overtaking move, they had passed a large body of water. This body of water had, two minutes before, been a dampish piece of road called Turn 1. Now it resembled the roads around Sheffield and Chesterfield a couple of weeks before. This wannabe lake had been responsible for several cars falling off the track. Dry tyres just don't deal with wannabe lakes very well. Just ask Lewis Hamilton, who spent a good two-and-a-half minutes removing his car from the gravel trap. And that was with the help of several well-muscled marshalls pushing him.
Lewis Hamilton did at least have company at this point. Felipe Massa spun there, but neatly regained the track without beaching himself. Jenson Button, Nico Rosberg, both Toro Rossos and Adrian Sutil finished their races with tyres full of gravel. Although Adrian Sutil nearly clipped Hamilton's car (that would have changed the complexion of the race if it had happened!) but the winner of the "scariest crash" award was Vitantonio Liuzzi. He crashed last out of the five retirees. After he began the aquaplane, he nearly hit the Safety Car. For good measure, he also tapped a crane that had come to retrieve the other stricken cars from the gravel. Fortunately, the crash wasn't very heavy and everyone was fine.
Even so, a lot of people were struggling in the conditions. Giancarlo Fisichella found somewhere else to spin on lap 2 without getting into too many difficulties, and most drivers were very, very slow. Especially as much of the first sector was only navigable at a slow pace. Nick Heidfeld said on the team radio that "the conditions are undriveable", and he had a point. Especially with Lake 1 needing a bow wave to get through properly, and F1 cars having no bow wave worth mentioning.
Winklehock, on the other hand, was fine, because he was the only driver on the grid on wets. Why was this? Well, the Spyker staffers had looked around at the start of the formation lap and decided that the weather report stating that rain was due in 20 minutes (five minutes previously) might have been a little lengthy in their predictions. The people opening their umbrellas in the stands and getting wet hair in the pit lane were good clues. As a result, they split their strategy - Adrian Sutil did the conventional thing of using dry tyres, and Markus Winklehock pitted at the end of the formation lap for fuel and wet tyres.
After this, Markus flew on the extreme wet tyres. He clearly can race well in those conditions, and that combined with being the only bloke on the right tyres meant that he was 33 seconds ahead of the beleaguered field by the end of lap 3. The last had indeed become the first.
Alas for Winklehock and Spyker, the race director decided he'd had enough of errant drivers colliding with his safety vehicles and of drivers going water-skiing at Turn 1. Firstly, he called the Safety Car. This neutralised the field... ...but most of the F1 cars could not keep up with the Safety Car. Even Winklehock was struggling to go as fast as the Mercedes SLR. A great advert for Mercedes, but not much use for F1 cars, which need to go at a certain speed to keep their tyre pressures up. Therefore, Charlie Whiting did the sensible (but unfortunate for Markus) thing and flew the red flag.
This led to the only error of the race for Markus and his crew, albeit an understandable one. A prediction appeared that there would be more rain five minutes after the race re-started. Markus left his extreme wet tyres on. I know Jarno Trulli joined him in the extreme wets, but the rain didn't return until lap 51. And then it was heavy drizzle...
When everyone got going again 20 minutes later, everything was back to normal. Everyone except Lewis Hamilton passed Markus Winklehock (when you're on the wrong tyres, you sure do know about it!), Markus retired ten laps later with broken hydraulics, and I wondered if I'd dreamed up the whole thing. But no - the ITV crew assured me after the race that what I thought I'd seen was indeed true. Big grins resulted, as I confirmed my notes about my new favourite rookie.
Forgive me for being a little overexcited at what on the face of it seems a pretty unremarkable result. But rest assured, it is a result that will long be remembered by Spyker supporters everywhere. And it will be a long time before the paddock forgets Markus Winklehock's debut.
I wonder if he'll get a drive later this season? If Spyker can afford it, I would strongly recommend that they take Markus on again for the next wet race...
I am quite aware that many interesting things happened during the European Grand Prix. Lewis Hamilton appeared to have picked up some sort of jinx (very unlike him). How else do you explain skipping off the track on lap 2 (OK, maybe that was just because Turn 1 resembled Sheffield a couple of weeks ago...), swapped to the dry behind the Safety Car when conditions clearly indicated the opposite, did the second pit stop too late to avoid getting baulked by Fisichella for nearly a lap and then swapped to the rain tyres too early?
As the ITV commentators said, it would be inadvisable for Lewis to visit a casino on the way home. About the only right decision he made today was to keep his engine running when everyone else in Turn 1 gave up. Even then, that one smart decision was nearly enough to net him a point.
There was a neat tussle for the final podium spot between Mark Webber, David Coulthard and Alex Wurz. All three had got there against the expectations of their grid slots to some extent. In the case of the Red Bulls, reliability had for once been impeccable. David Coulthard had done particularly well out of the early chaos, which explained his rise from 20th position. Wurz had fought like a tiger, while Webber had simply driven a tidy race and benefited from Hamilton and Raikkonen's woes. Well done to all three for keeping us entertained.
Heidfeld was being controversial, which would normally be like saying the Spyker is really fast (more on that later). Besides crashing into his own team-mate at the start, he also managed to be involved in a collision with Ralf Schumacher, which is being investigated as I write. Personally, I think Ralf Schumacher shut the door a little too tightly, but Nick probably shouldn't have expected there to be a space round the last term.
That said, if Nick had won the race, it wouldn't have been as important to him as the birth of his second child, Joda, the previous night. Joda is a cool name, and best wishes for his future. Congratulations also to Nick Heidfeld and his family.
As a Spyker supporter, though, the thing I will remember most from this race is the flash of orange in the first sector of lap 2 going round what appeared to be a cruising red car. The red car was Raikkonen, and he was cruising because he'd missed the pit entry on the previous lap. Those dry tyres really weren't up to much.
The orange flash was Markus Winklehock. This was the same Markus Winklehock who 24 hours earlier, had been 1.5 seconds slower than his team-mate Adrian Sutil, who in turn was considerably slower than his non-Spyker-equipped rivals. The same guy, I might add, who got his race debut because two richer blokes were stuck in testing contracts. How we grinned and laughed at my house when we saw the brilliance and absurdity of the overtaking move - and that's even with Dad being a Ferrari fan!
A few seconds before this overtaking move, they had passed a large body of water. This body of water had, two minutes before, been a dampish piece of road called Turn 1. Now it resembled the roads around Sheffield and Chesterfield a couple of weeks before. This wannabe lake had been responsible for several cars falling off the track. Dry tyres just don't deal with wannabe lakes very well. Just ask Lewis Hamilton, who spent a good two-and-a-half minutes removing his car from the gravel trap. And that was with the help of several well-muscled marshalls pushing him.
Lewis Hamilton did at least have company at this point. Felipe Massa spun there, but neatly regained the track without beaching himself. Jenson Button, Nico Rosberg, both Toro Rossos and Adrian Sutil finished their races with tyres full of gravel. Although Adrian Sutil nearly clipped Hamilton's car (that would have changed the complexion of the race if it had happened!) but the winner of the "scariest crash" award was Vitantonio Liuzzi. He crashed last out of the five retirees. After he began the aquaplane, he nearly hit the Safety Car. For good measure, he also tapped a crane that had come to retrieve the other stricken cars from the gravel. Fortunately, the crash wasn't very heavy and everyone was fine.
Even so, a lot of people were struggling in the conditions. Giancarlo Fisichella found somewhere else to spin on lap 2 without getting into too many difficulties, and most drivers were very, very slow. Especially as much of the first sector was only navigable at a slow pace. Nick Heidfeld said on the team radio that "the conditions are undriveable", and he had a point. Especially with Lake 1 needing a bow wave to get through properly, and F1 cars having no bow wave worth mentioning.
Winklehock, on the other hand, was fine, because he was the only driver on the grid on wets. Why was this? Well, the Spyker staffers had looked around at the start of the formation lap and decided that the weather report stating that rain was due in 20 minutes (five minutes previously) might have been a little lengthy in their predictions. The people opening their umbrellas in the stands and getting wet hair in the pit lane were good clues. As a result, they split their strategy - Adrian Sutil did the conventional thing of using dry tyres, and Markus Winklehock pitted at the end of the formation lap for fuel and wet tyres.
After this, Markus flew on the extreme wet tyres. He clearly can race well in those conditions, and that combined with being the only bloke on the right tyres meant that he was 33 seconds ahead of the beleaguered field by the end of lap 3. The last had indeed become the first.
Alas for Winklehock and Spyker, the race director decided he'd had enough of errant drivers colliding with his safety vehicles and of drivers going water-skiing at Turn 1. Firstly, he called the Safety Car. This neutralised the field... ...but most of the F1 cars could not keep up with the Safety Car. Even Winklehock was struggling to go as fast as the Mercedes SLR. A great advert for Mercedes, but not much use for F1 cars, which need to go at a certain speed to keep their tyre pressures up. Therefore, Charlie Whiting did the sensible (but unfortunate for Markus) thing and flew the red flag.
This led to the only error of the race for Markus and his crew, albeit an understandable one. A prediction appeared that there would be more rain five minutes after the race re-started. Markus left his extreme wet tyres on. I know Jarno Trulli joined him in the extreme wets, but the rain didn't return until lap 51. And then it was heavy drizzle...
When everyone got going again 20 minutes later, everything was back to normal. Everyone except Lewis Hamilton passed Markus Winklehock (when you're on the wrong tyres, you sure do know about it!), Markus retired ten laps later with broken hydraulics, and I wondered if I'd dreamed up the whole thing. But no - the ITV crew assured me after the race that what I thought I'd seen was indeed true. Big grins resulted, as I confirmed my notes about my new favourite rookie.
Forgive me for being a little overexcited at what on the face of it seems a pretty unremarkable result. But rest assured, it is a result that will long be remembered by Spyker supporters everywhere. And it will be a long time before the paddock forgets Markus Winklehock's debut.
I wonder if he'll get a drive later this season? If Spyker can afford it, I would strongly recommend that they take Markus on again for the next wet race...