Over the weekend the F1 party made its final stop in Hungary before it takes its summer break which is nearly a month long. Some of the controversy from the last few races died down a bit but Ferrari’s team orders were still fresh in the minds and on the mouths of almost every person on the grid. However, there weren’t too many opinions shared as understandably all the teams wanted to focus on the race at hand.
As usual the weekend started off with the Red Bull team dominating qualifying and Sebastien Vettel capturing the pole position and Mark Webber qualifying 2nd lining up against his hot shot teammate. The two Ferrari’s of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa earned their grid spots just behind the Red Bull team and were poised to pounce when the time was right.
When the lights went out on Sunday only one Ferrari, piloted by Fernando was able to make a move on Red Bull. Just as Mark Webber was shoving Vettel out of his way, Alonso took it upon himself to get in between the fight and steal 2nd place away from Sebastien. As Mark Webber ran away from the rest of the grid we saw a few shocking things happen: first was Lewis Hamilton’s Vodafone McLaren Mercedes suffered a driveshaft failure putting him out of the race and ending his championship points lead. The next gasp came when Nico Rosberg came into the pits for a tire change when one of his wheels literally came off and rolled through several pit crews before bouncing 20 feet straight up into the air and landing on a crew member. Luckily the crewman only suffered minor injuries.
Then just a short time later Sebastien Vettel was slapped with a drive through penalty for holding up the field by staying longer than 10 car lengths behind the safety car after an incident. As I’m writing this I am sure he is still pretty pissed off about it.
While all of that craziness was going on Mark Webber continued one of the best F1 drives ever seen, making a set of soft compound option tires stretch for a 45 lap stint! Once he built a comfortable 23 second gap on 2nd place he came into the pits to switch to the hard compound tires and finished off the race capping off a dominant performance. Since Lewis Hamilton suffered a DNF Mark Webber has officially taken over the lead in the championship points! Check out a full race report on SPEED.
Before the Indy Cars started a boring race that ended spectacularly (you’ll see in the post after this), Formula 1 put on a show in Sebastien Vettel’s hometown of Hockenheim, Germany which temporarily re-named “Vettelheim” in honor of Sebastien Vettel. The weekend started off dramatically with many drivers crashing hard during a rainy practice on Friday and Sebastien Vettel edging out Fernando Alonso for pole position by just .002 of a second at the end of Q3 in qualifying on Saturday. To make things even more dramatic for Sebastien, Alonso’s teammate Felipe Massa qualified in 3rd position. This meant Red Bull’s young ace would have to start the race with two angry Ferrari’s right behind him.
It was Ferrari’s performance in qualifying that showed the world that they were definitely not going to lay down and let Red Bull or McLaren take away a championship which they feel is still within their reach. Despite having only one win so far this season (with Fernando Alonso taking the win at the first race in Bahrain) Ferrari strongly believes they have a fighting chance at the driver’s championship.
As the lights went out to signal the start of the race Sebastien tried to pull a classic Schumacher move and slice in front of Fernando Alosno but he failed miserably as both Felipe and Fernando split him and lead the pack 1-2 into turn 1. Felipe was actually the biggest benefactor from Sebastien’s blunder as he took first place with Fernando ducking in behind him. However, things didn’t stay quite in this order for the whole race.
At around lap 19 of the race as Felipe and Fernando weaved through slower traffic Fernando attempted a few moves to pass his teammate but both tries were expertly shut down by Massa. It was at this point (lap 22) that Fernando got on the radio and expressed his frustration stating that “this is ridiculous” expressing that he has a faster pace than Felipe and should be let by. Now, Ferrari can’t simply tell Felipe to “let Fernando pass you” because that would be considered “team orders” which are against the rules in F1. Instead the team got on the radio to Felipe and said something to the effect of “Fernando has a much faster pace than you, please respond if you understand this message.” Felipe did not respond but he did eventually and blatantly let Fernando pass him to take first place.
The race ended with a 1-2 finish by Ferrari with Fernando Alonso taking first and his bitter teammate Felipe Massa taking second while Sebastien Vettel landed third place.
When F1 officials learned of the radio transmission between the Ferrari pit and Felipe Massa they were not happy. They allowed Fernando Alonso to keep his victory however, Ferrari was fined $100k for violation of the “no team orders” rule. They were also submitted to the World Motorsport Council (WMSC) for further possible penalties. That is certainly a tough break for Ferrari who fought valiantly to get a much needed win.
The F1 grid landed in Malaysia over the weekend and battled unpredictable weather mixed in with severe heat at the Sepang Circuit. There was a lot of pre-race speculation on the ability of Red Bull Racing to get their ace driver Sebastien Vettel through an entire race. In case you forgot Sebastien had two consecutive DNF’s due to mechanical reasons and both came after dominant performances. The pressure was on the Red Bull garage to complete an event much less win. Fortunately it seems as if the Red Bull team does well under pressure because not only did Sebastien finish the race he won and with teammate Mark Webber right behind himRed Bull Racing got their first 1-2 finish of the season! Now that the fastest driver is in a car with no issues McLaren and Ferrari need to start sweating. It looks like there will be a three-way battle for the title this year.
There was talk after the Bahrain GP that perhaps the FIA took the gonads out of F1 competition with their new rules and such. In fact some were even referring to the Bahrain GP as the “Boring GP”. However all that was erased over the weekend in Australia. There was a ton of passing and dicing, including a demolition derby into turn one during the first lap. As I suspected Sebastien Vettel was on a mission to redeem the win he felt was rightfully his after his dominating performance at Bahrain was nullified by a busted header during the final laps.
This time Vettel shot his way to the front and wasn’t going to let a cracked exhaust header keep him from victory. Technically he accomplished this goal, because it wasn’t a cracked exhaust header that kept him from victory it was a busted wheel! Once again a dominant performance was dashed by a car malfunction. You can imagine that someone from Renault is getting yelled at right now by the young German.
After Vettel was taken out of the race by his own car Jenson Button took over the lead and held on as a epic battle between hometown boy Mark Webber, Robert Kubica, Lewis Hamilton, Felipe Massa, and Fernando Alonso raged on behind him. But those guys weren’t able to kick up enough dust to disturb Jenson’s drive and he cruised along to victory followed by Kubica (2nd) and Massa (3rd).
I would have loved to see Mark Webber win in his home country or Lewis get a repeat win in the place where he made his F1 debut but Jenson Button was just delt the right hand in this round. It looks like the old McLaren/Ferrari battle may be making a comeback for 2010.
I may be a little late in reporting this but it has been confirmed that 7 time world champion Michael Schumacher will fill in for the recovering Felipe Massa for the remainder of the 2009 season. It was rumored that Fernando Alonso would fill the seat since his team is banned form participating in his home race at Valencia. However with this announcement that puts the kibosh on that possibility. In other good news doctors reported today that Felipe Massa won’t have any long term injuries from his crash in Hungary and is expected to be back in racing form by next season.
The previous weekend was one of ups and downs for Formula 1. Things started off very badly on Saturday when Felipe Massa was knocked unconscious in what some could only describe as a “bizarre” accident. Felipe was rushed to a local hospital and put into a medically induced coma from which he has since awoken and is responsive. However some are reporting that due to sever damage to nerves in his left eye his racing career may be over. Hopefully that won’t be the case. Although if Felipe is unable recover before the next race (Valencia GP) Bernie Ecclestone is hoping that Ferrari may ask Fernando Alonso to take over driving duties. How is this possible? Well the entire Renault team (except drivers) are banned from the next race due to a saftey infraction.
So now for some good news. It looks like Lewis Hamilton is back to old form as he had a dominant performance all weekend and eventually charged his way to his first win of the 2009 season while the current leader Jenson Button and the Brawn GP team suffered a sudden and harsh downturn in performance, only able to muster a 7th place finish for the weekend. Has Brawn GP hit their limit? Can McLaren and Lewis Hamilton turn the season around and become a contender again? Stay tuned! Same F1 time, same F1 channel! I’m so cheesy sometimes…anyway.. Check out the video below for the SPEED discussion on the results.
So Jenson Button and the “underdog” Brawn GP team has been sweeping up all season so far while Ferrari and McLaren where spinning their wheels and not really getting anywhere. It was almost starting to get boring with Brawn GP and Jenson Button dominating the field in almost all the races, but this weekend F1 came back to Turkey AKA Felipe Massa’s playground. Massa has one the Turkish GP the previous three years consecutively. For a moment I genuinely thought that Brawn’s dominance wouldn’t be enough to overcome Massa’s Turkish streak. I was totally wrong…
After Sebasten Vettel made a mistake and went off track in turn 10 on the first lap Jenson took the lead away and that was all she wrote. He remained in the lead for almost the entire race there-after, save for the pit stops. He had both Red Bull F1 cars on his tail but neither Mark Webber nor Vettel had anything for Jenson Button who went on to take his sixth win in seven races.
He now has a 26 point lead over his teammate and points runner up Rubens Barrichello. I’m thinking we should just give Jenson Button the trophy now and call the rest of the season F1 “exhibitions” instead of races!
Check out the vid below for a recap from the SPEED guys. Photo courtesy of BrawnGP.com.
Ok this has to win the award for one of the greatest conversation starters ever. If you go to the Ferrari Store right now you could pick up a 1:1 scale full replica of the F2008 steering wheel. The every same type of wheel held by Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa last season complete with all the buttons and dials that you’d expect from one of the world’s most advanced race cars. There isn’t a cruise control button though…I checked..
The surprizes just keep coming with Formula 1 this year. Just when I was starting to think Brawn GP would be the dominator all season Red Bull Racing gets their driver Sebastien Vettel the pole position and then Vettel and his team mate Mark Webber get RBR a 1-2 finish respectively! This is the second time that Vettel has earned a team its first win. The first time he did it was last year with Red Bull’s junior team Toro Rosso by doing the same thing with RBR he is the first person to earn maiden wins for two different teams since Jackie Stewart back in the 70s.
The conditions for this race were beyond horrible with a massive down pour that flooded the entire track. So much so that the first 8 laps were under caution until the rain let up. After that all Vettel had to do was make sure he treated the car like a newborn child and nursed it around the track without spinning. While back in his pit box his team had to make sure they knew what tire to give him and at what time. When all was said and done Sebastien crossed the line first and brought home RBR’s maiden victory.
Talk about your upsets! A team that was created from the ashes of the recently deceased Honda F1 teamrises up gains a sponsor in Virgin, dominates qualifying, and then sweeps their first race in a team 1-2 finish! All of this while both Ferrari’s finished outside of the points!
If you’re lost let me attempt to catch you up a bit. In Late 2008 Honda shocked the racing community by annoucing that they were going to pull out of F1 completely. Naturally this shocked everyone and many were hoping for a big sponsor or someone to pull through to save the team.
After months of rumors and heresay former Honda F1 Team Principal Ross Brawn along with a few other members of management and investors bought Honda’s F1 Team assets and formed the “Brawn GP” team. They also announced that they would retain Jenson Button and Rubins Barrichello for their driver line up. They also shook things up by stating that they wouldn’t become another Ferrari customer and instead chose to source their engines from Mercedes.
Fast forward to this past weekend and the little team that could dominates qualifying with Jenson Buttontaking the pole and his teammate Ruben qualifying 2nd right next to him. Come race day the lights go out, Jenson rockets away to an early lead, and that was pretty much all she wrote. Jenson and Ruben spanked the whole field and brought home a 1-2 victory for their team in its first ever race, a feat that was last accomplished in the 70s!
Check out the Speed Rountable for all the news bits I may have missed
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