The 2007 Spanish Grand Prix

News:
Massa downplays Alonso incident

Leader Hamilton ‘leaving a dream’

Alonso says lucky to survive first corner

Heidfeld laments missed podium finish

Q & A with Almondo and Baldisserri

Ferrari vow to focus on reliability

Ferrari quotes
Kimi Raikkonen comments: "Honestly, there’s little to say, except that I’m very disappointed. I
lost a place to Hamilton at the start, but made the most of the fight
between Felipe and Fernando to get back to third place. I was running
at a good pace and could have had a good result, but suddenly the car
had an electrical problem and all I could was come back to the garage.
I have lost precious points but there are still thirteen races to
recover."

Oh dear, poor Kimi didn’t finish the race today. Just as well, I have a terrible cold and am not fit to do anything right now. Autosport.com will have to do!

Massa wins, Kimi DNF
Felipe Massa took his second successive victory with a dominant performance in the Spanish Grand Prix.

Local hero Fernando Alonso could only finish third after tangling
with Massa at the start of the race, while Lewis Hamilton now takes the
championship lead thanks to his third consecutive second place finish.

The British rookie is yet to win a race this season, but thanks to
Formula One’s scoring system, he is two points ahead of teammate Alonso
after four races.

Massa, winner of two races this year, is three points behind
Hamilton, with Kimi Raikkonen, who retired from today’s race, eight
points adrift.

Alonso tried to go around the outside of Massa at the first corner,
but banged wheels with the Ferrari as he did so, sending the McLaren
across the gravel and allowing Hamilton and Raikkonen to sweep past.

Massa proceeded to command the rest of the race, although he had a
scare at his first pitstop when a small fuel spillage caused a dramatic
fire on the side of his Ferrari as he pulled away.

But the damage was only superficial, and the Brazilian was able to
resume his dominant progress towards another win, extending his
advantage to nearly 20 seconds before backing off in the closing stages.

A longer first stint made little difference for Hamilton, who could not challenge Massa but was never threatened for second.

Alonso made a spirited early attempt to pass Raikkonen on the
outside at Turn 10, and then benefited when the Finn suffered a rare
Ferrari failure and parked with electrical problems after just 10 laps.

But Alonso did not have the pace to catch the leaders, instead
falling as much as half a minute behind after struggling with the
harder tyres during a long middle stint.

Robert Kubica took fourth after his best race of the year, having got within two seconds of Alonso in the middle of the race.

The Pole’s BMW teammate Nick Heidfeld briefly led thanks to a long
first stint, but dropped out of contention with a disastrous pitstop,
in which he was waved out before his right front wheel was properly
attached.

Heidfeld nursed the car back around to the pits so that the problem
could be rectified, and then made progress through the backmarkers
before retiring.

David Coulthard held on to fifth despite a late gearbox problem that
saw Nico Rosberg and Heikki Kovalainen charge onto the hobbled Red
Bull’s tail.

Both Renaults had been affected by a fuel rig glitch that forced
them to make three stops. This left Giancarlo Fisichella only ninth
behind Takuma Sato, as Super Aguri celebrated their first ever points
finish.

Fisichella had lost ground by running wide on the first lap, leading
to an incident in the pack behind in which Alex Wurz ran into the back
of Ralf Schumacher. The Toyota rejoined after repairs but later
retired, as had teammate Jarno Trulli, who had stalled on the grid and
had to start last.
Rubens Barrichello took 10th for Honda, dropping back from eighth
during the final pit stops. He survived a brush with teammate Jenson
Button, who lost his front wing after tagging Barrichello’s car as he
rejoined following his first pit visit.

Classified:
Pos  Driver        Team                      Time
 1.  Massa         Ferrari              (B)  1h31:36.230
 2.  Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes     (B)  +     6.790
 3.  Alonso        McLaren-Mercedes     (B)  +    17.456
 4.  Kubica        BMW Sauber           (B)  +    31.615
 5.  Coulthard     Red Bull-Renault     (B)  +    58.331
 6.  Rosberg       Williams-Toyota      (B)  +    59.538
 7.  Kovalainen    Renault              (B)  +  1:02.128
 8.  Sato          Super Aguri-Honda    (B)  +     1 lap
 9.  Fisichella    Renault              (B)  +     1 lap
10.  Barrichello   Honda                (B)  +     1 lap
11.  Davidson      Super Aguri-Honda    (B)  +     1 lap
12.  Button        Honda                (B)  +     1 lap
13.  Sutil         Spyker-Ferrari       (B)  +    2 laps
14.  Albers        Spyker-Ferrari       (B)  +    2 laps

Fastest lap: Massa, 1:22.680

Not classified/retirements:

Driver        Team                      On lap
Heidfeld      BMW Sauber           (B)    48
R.Schumacher  Toyota               (B)    46
Liuzzi        Toro Rosso-Ferrari   (B)    21
Speed         Toro Rosso-Ferrari   (B)    11
Raikkonen     Ferrari              (B)    11
Trulli        Toyota               (B)    10
Webber        Red Bull-Renault     (B)    9
Wurz          Williams-Toyota      (B)    4


World Championship standings, round 4:                

Drivers:                    Constructors:             
 1.  Hamilton      30        1.  McLaren-Mercedes      58
 2.  Alonso        28        2.  Ferrari               49
 3.  Massa         27        3.  BMW Sauber            23
 4.  Raikkonen     22        4.  Renault               11
 5.  Heidfeld      15        5.  Williams-Toyota        5
 6.  Fisichella     8        6.  Toyota                 5
 7.  Kubica         8        7.  Red Bull-Renault       4
 8.  Rosberg        5        8.  Super Aguri-Honda      1
 9.  Trulli         4       
10.  Coulthard      4       
11.  Kovalainen     3       
12.  R.Schumacher   1       
13.  Sato           1 

Videos:

< Kimi on the starting grid
< The GP start

< Kimi’s retirement

My thoughts:

Bullthard Only he could have done a race like that, bril-li-ant!



The start of the race was pretty much as I expected. Alonso made
the effort to make a move, as that was probably the only chance he was
ever gonna get. Would have been sweet had it worked, but not enough
room. Kimi got owned by Hamilton yet again, and Lewis did a great start
getting into 2nd position. Kimi was unlucky that he didn’t hit into
Alonso, would have preferred going home earlier eh? Damn… Alonso was
lucky Kimi retired, or he might not even had a podium finish at his
home race! LOL!



I was suprised at McLaren’s lack of pace against Massa’s Ferrari.
But like Lewis said, he’ll catch ’em sooner or later and win his maiden
F1 GP! OMG! IN MONACO! By the sounds of it (ITV )



The BMWs! Ahhh! Could have grabbed some serious points, felt bad for Nick The stupid thick Toyota mechanic had no brains, he couldn’t even pick up the damn wheel nut and acted very slow
And the pit marshalls were clueless too, now Heidfeld laments on a
possible podium finish. Good job to Kubica though, he kept BMW
reassured



What a car breaker this GP was, how many retirements? 8 and not a single overtaking manouvre apart from the start lap. Dreadful.



Glad to see Sato score a point, he makes me LOL everytime on the pit straight when he gets a good result.



Heikki, really good job by him Fisi should be ashamed



*sigh* Oh there’s probably more stuff to mention despite it being
quite a boring GP otherwise, but I’m not feeling well. Got a cold, got
a backache, and got Kimi driving like he actually has lost touch. Bad
day for Evenstar
Also, we all know its typically Kimi to leave the track early when the
race goes bad, but this is really poor behaviour from him. He retired
on lap 11, and should have stayed until the end of the race. At least
congratulate Massa and keep the team motivated. These are the things
where we’ll compare Kimi to Michael Schumacher, and frankly, Michael
would have done the right thing like he always did: stay with the team.
Kimi, if you’re reading, please please please think about it. You’re
letting everything slip through your fingers:

Saturday, Qualifying:

Massa beats Alonso
Ferrari proved to remain the team to beat in qualifying after Massa took pole position right on time, beating Fernando by just 0.030 seconds. Alonso looked set to savour first place helped with the huge support of his home crowd, but Hamilton gave some challenge and put in competitive and fast times in sector 2 and 3. Then it was Kimi, who was the fastest of the whole McLaren vs Ferrari saga in sector 1, however both he and Hamilton did not have enough against Massa’s suprising lap. It was a great last qualifying session and the race tomorrow looks to be very tight. Today showed the calm and cool mentality of Massa in qualifying and the serious competition between McLaren and Ferrari, despite the Silver Arrows dominating the practise sessions.

Kimi comments:
Raikkonen admitted he was happy with his car over the first two
sectors of the circuit, but struggled with the handling in the final
one.

"I think it is better than nothing," said the Finn. "I was happier
today with the car, I think we had good speed in the first two sectors
but lost it all in the last. The car was difficult to drive.

"We have to get that right for tomorrow so we can drive, but it is not a bad position and we will see what happens."

Full KR Post-qualifying quotes

Q. Kimi, a little bit of a margin between you and the two ahead but you explained that from the third sector; is that right?

KR: Yeah, well I know that we lost a little bit in the third
sector just because we lost the rear end of the car a bit. But apart
from that I don’t think it was too bad. I quite like the car but
unfortunately if you’re not strong in one sector it’s not enough. But I
think we still have a good chance.

Q. Was it a mistake in that sector or was that happening every lap?

KR: It was pretty much on all of the tyres, so it wasn’t just
one but there’s not much you can do once you start qualifying, so it
would be easier to change something, but the rules are as they are, so
anyhow, I think we can work on something for tomorrow, so hopefully in
the race it’s a bit different.

Q. Can you make alterations for the race?

KR: Little bit on the details, not changing anything but
there’s stuff that we do with the computers and it’s the same for
everybody, so I think we can play around with those things.

Q. (Ottavio Daviddi – Tuttosport) Kimi, do you think you have
improved your feeling with the car after the recent test or is the
situation more or less the same?

KR: I think it is definitely better. I am happier with the
car now than I was, so there is a gap still but we work on it and
hopefully we get it right.

Q. (Juha Paatalo – Financial Times Germany) Kimi, after the last
race in Bahrain you said that if you don’t get to the top in qualifying
it is very hard to get there in the race and your position now is the
same as there and is the position like it used to be or are you more
confident now?

KR: I don’t know, hopefully we can gain some places – it is
never easy – especially, I think, as in Bahrain where everybody thought
it was easier to overtake than here, but not much overtaking was going
on there, so it’s not easy but we do the best we can.

Videos:

Full post-qualifying conference

Jenni is in Spain:

check the GP album for more.