French Grand Prix Review

The interesting thing is that each of Raikkonen, Felipe Massa, Hamilton and Alonso have won two races each, and only in Canada has any team other than Ferrari and McLaren made it onto the podium. On that alone, the championship battle should be close, but Hamilton leads Alonso by 14 points, Massa by 17, and Raikkonen by 22, and with nine races to go will probably feel fairly comfortable. McLaren still leads Ferrari by 25 on the constructors' table despite the red team pulling ten back at Magny-Cours.

In a year when the margins are finer than ever, the difference is that Hamilton has yet to finish off the podium, whereas Alonso slipped in Spain, Canada and France. Massa lost early ground in Australia and Malaysia, plus his costly disqualification in Canada. Raikkonen missed the podium in four races straight from Spain to America. If Canada is the common thread, then it should be remembered that Hamilton was leading easily throughout and was the only one of these four not to be shafted by the safety car.

In other words, Hamilton's consistency, McLaren's reliability, and a little slice of luck has him in his current position of strength in which he has three non-podium finishes to spare before he's brought back on par with his rivals. Yes, Ferrari were undeniably stronger at Magny-Cours, but whereas McLaren's recent resurgence showed all the signs that they had usurped Ferrari as top dog, only if Maranello continue to dominate in Britain and Germany should Hamilton and McLaren start worrying.

But Ferrari were definitely impressive in France. It's hard to believe that some new parts and the recent Silverstone test has made all the difference, or maybe the smooth Magny-Cours surface just suited them, as it has tended to do in recent years. The more welcome news, though, was that this was arguably Raikkonen's best performance of the year. Having finally found the car to his liking, he was excellent in practice and qualifying, and missed the front row of the grid probably only by virtue of his heavier fuel load.

Don't get me wrong, it's refreshing to see the Ferrari drivers given equal status and being allowed to race, but the reality is that this result has not done Ferrari's driver's title prospects much good. The problem for Ferrari is, who would they back anyway? Raikkonen is reputedly the better driver who is coming into form, but Massa is ahead on points. If Jean Todt and co decided to throw their weight behind either one from now on, they'd never know if they backed the right horse. Better to let them race, in that case.

Overall, Massa had a decent weekend, pushing his car right to the limit to secure pole and controlling the first two-thirds of the race. It was his misfortune to come out from his second stop behind a midfield gaggle whilst Raikkonen was running on low tanks and better tyres, but Felipe wasn't exactly harassing those backmarkers straight away. In other words, afterwards he was right to say that that had cost him the race, but one wonders if he had also been slow to get up to speed after his second stop.

Ferrari's life was made easier by McLaren somewhat strangely putting Hamilton on a three-stop strategy that had him destined for 3rd place right from the start. True, he was on the back foot immediately after losing 2nd to Raikkonen at the start, but even if he had made a demon start and leapt into the lead, the McLaren was never going to have the pace to make up a full pit-stop's lead (i.e. around 22 seconds or more) to steal the victory. One wonders what McLaren's rationale was.

In the end, Hamilton came under a little bit of pressure to beat off Robert Kubica's BMW for 3rd. The defining moment was when Hamilton came out of his second stop side by side with the BMW around the Estoril corner, diving inside the Pole at the Adelaide hairpin assertively in his first genuine passing move in a race this year other than at the first corner. Hamilton's life has been so comparatively easy this year, it was good to see him finally get a chance to display his racecraft in a mid-race tussle for position.

If McLaren's strategy for Hamilton was hard to understand, then they similarly erred in Alonso's case. As much as he would like to play it down, Fernando has surely increasingly felt as though he hasn't been getting the rub of the green at McLaren, and this weekend would have done nothing to assuage those doubts. Problems in Saturday practice and again in Q3 left him starting in 10th place, without the freedom to adjust his fuel strategy. So he started the race on tanks as light as Hamilton's.

He also started on soft tyres to try to make up early positions. The Spaniard only got as high as 7th before he got stuck behind Nick Heidfeld's BMW, who in turn had Giancarlo Fisichella ahead of him. Alonso had one dive down the inside at the Lycee which he couldn't hold onto, but after that he never threatened the German's position. McLaren brought him in on the same lap as Hamilton, and filled him for the same length, keeping Fernando on a three-stop plan as well. That, already, was a bit of a nothing tactic.

If they wanted to make sure Alonso got clear of Heidfeld, who was still half a dozen laps away from making his first stop, whilst keeping Fernando on a three-stop strategy, they should have mega-short filled him. As it was, Heidfeld emerged from his stop still ahead of the McLaren, and Fisichella was still ahead too. Fernando disposed of Fisi quickly, but had to continue pushing and prodding against Heidfeld, and eventually found his way past the German thanks to his breathtaking, sensational move into the Imola chicane.

It was revenge for Heidfeld's move on Alonso in Bahrain, but it came to naught when Alonso made his second stop on lap 37, and was filled to the finish for a 33-lap stint as McLaren converted him into a two-stopper. Heidfeld did not pit for another 10 laps, Fisichella for another 13, and once again Alonso found himself behind those two after the stops. Despite several pathetic stabs around the outside at the hairpin, a demoralised Fernando never looked like getting through on Fisichella and remained stuck in 7th.

Pace-wise, this was not BMW's most competitive outing, but nine points for 4th and 5th did represent their best points-haul to date. Much credit goes to Kubica for a sensational return weekend after his mammoth Montreal shunt. 4th on the grid was his best qualifying result to date, and all race he never looked as though a 4th place finish was in doubt. His performance will have gone a long way to assuring the BMW hierarchy that at this stage there is no point preferring Sebastian Vettel over him.

It was unusual to see Heidfeld not being able to match Kubica, although Nick suffered back problems all weekend. Still, he got past Fisi at the first stop, and his defensive racecraft in holding off Alonso for as long as he did deserved praise. The way he enticed Alonso into that unsuccessful move at the Lycee, the way he held the inside line at the Adelaide hairpin, and the way he took the wider entry line into the 180 corner to ensure a better run out were all signs of an experienced campaigner at the top of his game.

On Renault's home soil, Fisichella would have been somewhat disappointed that he was no match for Heidfeld's BMW. The third-row start for Giancarlo and Heikki Kovalainen was Renault's best qualifying all year, confirming that they have sustained their improvement and were starting to get near the BMWs. But on race pace there remains something on a gap to bridge to the Swiss-German cars. Of course, we never saw how Kovalainen's race could have turned out after he was punted on the first lap.

The last point, then, turned out to be a battle between Jenson Button's Honda and Nico Rosberg's Williams. Rosberg was in amongst Alonso and Heidfeld early on, but faded after his first stop. By contrast, Button was having by far his strongest run of the year. The heavily revised RA107 is a clear improvement - not to get into the top four teams, but enough to genuinely mix it in the midfield. Jenson out-qualified Rubens Barrichello and found himself with clear running for most of the race.

Still, that is not to take anything away from Button's effort. If anything, out of the four Englishmen in the race, his was the best performance and a good lead-in to the British GP, as he scored Honda's first point of the year. In the last two races, he has shown signs that he has come to grips with the Bridgestone tyres, and that as the car has improved, Jenson has likewise, and he has started turning the tables on Barrichello after the Brazilian had the much better first third of the season.

Rubens wasn't far off Button in qualifying, but in the race he was nowhere, holding up a train of cars consisting initially of Ralf Schumacher's Toyota, the Red Bulls of Mark Webber and David Coulthard, Alexander Wurz in the second Williams, Takuma Sato's Super Aguri, and Scott Speed's Toro Rosso. Although Schumacher got past after the first stops, the Honda still kept the others at bay, despite losing ground to those in front. The race pace disparity between Button and Barrichello was puzzling.

Although Ralf escaped from the train after the first stops, he was so far behind the likes of Rosberg and Button that it made little difference. He will be ruing a poor start having qualified ahead of the Hondas. However, for once he was not the perpetrator of Toyota's embarrassment. That fell to Jarno Trulli, whose wretched lunge inside Kovalainen on the first lap destroyed the Finn's race and put the Toyota out, after another creditable qualifying effort. At least Trulli was man enough to claim responsibility for the incident.

Webber and Coulthard will be wondering what has gone wrong at Red Bull. From Spain to Canada they were the fourth fastest car in the field. By France, they had slipped behind the Renaults, the Williams, the Toyotas, and even the Hondas. And, what's more, reliability continues to be disastrous in what seems to be the story of Webber's career. Unreliability costs development time in a vicious cycle, and clearly Red Bull have not made progress in recent weeks whilst other teams very obviously have.

Speed had the edge over Vitantonio Liuzzi in the Toro Rosso intra-team battle, coming as high as 3rd in Friday practice and getting through the Q1 cut whereas the Italian didn't, but the American showed little in the race, falling foul to more Red Bull gearbox issues. Liuzzi was another first lap victim, hit from behind by a careless Anthony Davidson and taking immediate revenge by slamming into the side of the Super Aguri as he corrected his tank-slapper. Liuzzi needs a finish soon; he hasn't seen the checkered since Malaysia.

Davidson's error continues an unfortunate trend in which his mistakes have not balanced out his impressive moments enough to silence his doubters. As for his team-mate Sato, thankfully this was a weekend in which Super Aguri was not particularly on form, with both cars missing the Q1 cut, and as such his grid penalty carried over from Indianapolis, which we still believe was a grave and absurd injustice, did not have any particularly detrimental effect on his race.

Super Aguri were, however, in the middle of the revived customer car controversy, with Spyker sending a dossier to the FIA, to Bernie Ecclestone, and to all the teams showing apparent photographic evidence of how Super Aguri seem to be getting Honda development parts. If that were the case, it would not be entirely surprising, but as Super Aguri pointed out, F1 cars are hardly distinguishable from each other these days anyway. Besides, isn't the Toro Rosso a carbon copy of the Red Bull?

It all seemed like a bit of grandstanding from Spyker to get the issue back on the agenda, especially since it appears as though Super Aguri are the only ones not agreeing to a revenue-sharing arrangement with Toro Rosso and Spyker. Given Super Aguri's current position in the constructors' table (8th), compared to Toro Rosso in 10th having been jumped by Honda, and Spyker stuck in 11th, Super Aguri's refusal to agree is understandable, if not in the best interests of the sport.

REJECT OF THE RACE
Christijan Albers
It was the driver, not the lollipop-man, who was to blame

In such incidents, the finger of blame firstly gets pointed at the lollipop man, but closer inspection reveals that it was completely Albers' own fault. He reacted to the lollipop being turned from 'brakes on' to 'in gear', and to the car being dropped off the rear jack, and he started moving of his own volition. The lollipop man lifted so as not to clatter Christijan in the head! For such a fundamental and dangerous error, Albers is the clear winner of the 'Reject of the Race' award on this occasion.

In all, an intriguing race with flashes of excitement to mark Magny-Cours' swansong from the F1 calendar. Interesting how all of a sudden, people were waxing lyrical about some of the circuit's corners, now that the track will be axed. 2008 will mark the first season since 1955 in which there is no French GP, but it has now long been established that F1 is not always a respecter of tradition and history, and this year there was not even a French driver on the grid.

As Alonso pointed out, if people were sick of travelling to the desolate middle of France, the race will now probably be replaced by an even longer journey to some new flyaway destination. Go figure. In the meantime, it's only a short hop, skip and jump to next weekend's British GP, where Ham-mania promises to reach the feverish levels of Mansell-mania 15-20 years ago. After all, Lewis is just about the only sporting success story that the British have to celebrate at the moment...