Chaotic I think would be the best way to describe todays race! Alonso cruised to at easy win (he said as much) after dispatching a poor performing Button on lap four. His problem, like others, was down to not getting enough heat into his tyres.
As an aside there was an interesting quote from Sterling Moss in Friday’s Daily Mail.
“There’s racing drivers and there’s racers,” said Moss. “It’s the racers that become world champions. I don’t see Jenson as a racer”.
I know the argument that whilst Button has 100+ starts without a win, so did Nigel Mansell, but I’ll errr… just ignore that. Point is I can never see Button winning a championship, he doesn’t seem to have that desire when out on the track. As an English man I shouldn’t say that, but I just can’t see him doing it. Moss goes on to say that even when he wasn’t in an F1 car, he was out racing in other events because he loved racing. As an example former British Touring Car driver Yvan Muller drives in all sorts of events and is an excellent driver. Perhaps Button should do the same?
Anyway, I have to admit he was very unfortunate to have his engine grenade itself on the last corner of the last lap and it was clever thinking to retire him so he doesn’t lose 10 places at the next race. It was impressive to watch from Fisichella’s car as Button’s engine blew up. He must have shat himself! (I know I would have).
Alonso drove a superb race and did well to pull out strong leads after each safety car period, of which there were four! For a change they were caused by crashes of one kind or another instead of engine failures, which didn’t seem to be that big a problem. Well, except for Buttons!
Fisichella showed his inconsistency again and was publicly berated by his engineer to get a shift on since he was 4 seconds off the pace and given that his car was identical to Alonso’s, he shouldn’t have been.
Kimi didn’t have the greatest of races getting held up by the Midlands on a couple of restarts, which as Martin Brundle would put it were mobile chicanes today! Finishing second isn’t a bad result though. Montoya didn’t have much luck with his electrics cutting out after narrowly missing the wall and then hitting a small rise in the run off area. I have to say I like how he took it all in his stride, joking and smiling away.
Michael Schumacher crashed heavily on the start of the pit straight, but that was hardly surprising given he was pushing incredibly hard. Wrong tyre compound was the reason. I was amazed to see Ralf Schumacher on the podium in 3rd, especially after his drive through penalty. I suspect that if more of the top teams had finished he’d have been in 6th or above.
It was certainly the most gripping of race of the season so far. Imola is next up in three weeks time and all the big teams have planned upgrades, so it should just get better and better!
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