This year’s 2008 Monaco Grand Prix was a real challenge as bad weather continued to change the race. Even the winner Lewis Hamilton and Mclaren were dominated by the weather on lap 5 when Hamilton’s Mclaren hit a barrier puncturing his right-rear tyre forcing him into an early pit stop. He managed to come back and win the shortened event, after his 76th lap, BMW’s Kubica coming in 2nd and Ferrari’s Massa 3rd..
The race was wet at the start and saw many mistakes and errors take place, however these conditions did not continue and we saw the track start to dry, the weather kept looking like it was going to rain but it just never happened. As the drivers and manufacturers didn’t have the privilege of time, travel they had to decide what tires to use, intermediate or dry. Most drivers went with dry tyres and this decision ended up paying off.
Because Lewis had an early pit stop it meant he had enough fuel to gain the lead while the others had to have pit stops during the middle of the race. Eventually he had a good 40 second lead, which was all undone by Nico Rosberg’s bad crash on lap 61. The safety car came out for a few laps and then the race continued. On lap 69 Kimi Raikkonen ran into the back of Adrian Satu who was sitting in comfortable fourth and then disqualified. This is being looked into. The race was then continued with Lewis Hamilton and Mclaren taking the win. This was a great race to watch! Can’t wait till the Canadian Grand Prix starts!
Brazilian pilot Felipe Massa won the Istanbul Grand Prix, for the third time in a row and managed to send Ferrari in the first place for constructors consolidating their leadership, while he is second in pilots championship. The podium was completed with Lewis Hamilton (McLaren) who was 3.7 seconds slower and then followed by the other Ferrari pilot, world champion, Kimi Raikkonen just half a second behind Hamilton.
Massa was in pole-position at the start and finished first when the checkered flag was waved. Istanbul is the first grand prix ever won by the Brazilian pilot, so it’s obvious why he ended up with a passion for Turkey.
Here are the results of the Turkish Grand Prix:
1. Felipe Massa (Brazil) Ferrari 1 hr 26 min 49.451 secs
2. Lewis Hamilton (Britain) McLaren +00:03.779
3. Kimi Raikkonen (Finland) Ferrari 00:04.271
4. Robert Kubica (Poland) BMW Sauber 00:21.945
5. Nick Heidfeld (Germany) BMW Sauber 00:38.741
6. Fernando Alonso (Spain) Renault 00:53.724
7. Mark Webber (Australia) RedBull – Renault 01:04.229
8. Nico Rosberg (Germany) Williams – Toyota 01:11.406
9. David Coulthard (Britain) RedBull – Renault 01:15.270
10. Jarno Trulli (Italy) Toyota 01:16.344
11. Jenson Button (Britain) Honda 1 lap
12. Heikki Kovalainen (Finland) McLaren 1 lap
13. Timo Glock (Germany) Toyota 1 lap
14. Rubens Barrichello (Brazil) Honda 1 lap
15. Nelson Piquet (Brazil) Renault 1 lap
16. Adrian Sutil (Germany) Force India – Ferrari 1 lap
17. Sebastian Vettel (Germany) Toro Rosso – Ferrari 1 lap
r. Sebastien Bourdais (France) Toro Rosso – Ferrari 34 laps
r. Kazuki Nakajima (Japan) Williams – Toyota 57 laps
r. Giancarlo Fisichella (Italy) Force India – Ferrari 58 laps
(rank: r = retired, nc = not classified)
No Formula One race the weekend that just passed but we still have some news. Honda Racing F1 Team decided to sign a contract with Will Stevens, a 16 year old, just like McLaren did years ago with Lewis Hamilton. The guy is not even out of high school but he has a signed piece of paper with Ross Brawn and Nick Fry’s signatures, that will probably put him in the big league of F1 racing in the next few years.
Is it just me or it’s becoming a trend to recruit young fellas with badass driving instincts? Could this be the winning recipe.
Will Stevens, has the FIA-CIK KF2 European and Asia-Pacific, International Open Masters KF2, WSK Junior ICA and MSA British Junior titles to his name and five national championships. When did he got the time?
via AutoBlog
Massa managed to get his first points in this year’s championship, after returning to one of his favorite race tracks and winning the Bahrain F1 Grand Prix. He won it in 2007 and came back for another medal after big issues in the first two races this year, when he retired. “I love this circuit. I’ve always been very, very strong here. We knew we could count on a great car and that certainly proved to be the case,” Massa said. These are his first 10 points after failing to finish in Australia and Malaysia.
Second place, Kimi Raikkonen, wasn’t that happy (”It’s not bad” he said) for his second place, 3 seconds behind Massa, but the fact that he’s now the leader of the world championship brings satisfaction.
BMW did good, with Kubica in the third place Nick Heidfeld taking the fourth, 4.9 seconds behind the winner and respectively 8.4 seconds.
Lewis Hamilton made a mess of the race. Started third, inexplicably hit Fernando Alonso of Renault in the back and headed to the pits for repairs. He finished on the 13th spot.
Kovalainen of McLaren on fifth and Jarno Trulli from Toyota finished the top6.
Picture copyright : F1-Live
What would you expect from a Formula 1 driver that had a great season this year and finished 2nd on Top Gear’s test track, to do 80mph on the high way? I guess Lewis Hamilton, the boy wonder as newspapers call him, can explain that speed is in your blood so I guess that’s the reason why he was caught speeding with 40mph more than the limit, near Laon, a city in the north of France.
Though Hamilton was “polite and cooperative” consequences included a suspended license for one month and his Mercedes impounded. We will see the 22 year old racer in the 2008 F1 season driving for McLaren, but in the meantime his teammate Heikki Kovalainen should give him a ride if needed.
via TopGear
Kimi Raikkonen has become the 2007 Formula One World Champion. In a hectic race where each of the top three could have won it, it was Raikkonen who led his team mate over the finish line to win his first Brazilian race and his first world champion. After so many close attempts, Kimi is a worthy champion, and after his convincing display today around Autodromo Carlos Pace, McLaren will be kicking themselves for letting it slip away. From the first lap, it looked as though Ferrari would dominate, but what happened over the course of the Grand Prix wasn’t what was expected. Read the rest of this entry »
Vodafone McLaren Mercedes driver Fernando Alonso finished the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai in second place. Whilst his team mate Lewis Hamilton retired, when he went off and got stuck in the gravel with worn wet tyres on a drying track. Kimi Räikkönen took victory, so the championship will now be decided among those three at the final race in Sao Paulo in two weeks’ time. After 56 laps in changeable conditions, 305.066 km and a total race time of 1:37:58.395 hrs, Fernando came home 9.8sec behind Räikkönen’s Ferrari. Despite his first retirement in 16 Grands Prix, Lewis maintained his lead in the Drivers’ Championship after 16 out of 17 races with 107 points followed by Fernando in second position with 103 points; Räikkönen is third on 100 points with 10 points available in the remaining race. For the first time since 1986, there are three drivers to fight for the title in the final race. Read the rest of this entry »
Lewis Hamilton is on the verge of signing a $110 million deal to stay on at the McLaren team until the end of 2012. The German newspaper Bild claims the contract, representing a mammoth pay-rise over his debut salary, is worth $17m every year plus – oddly for a McLaren contract – the ability for his father Anthony to negotiate separate marketing arrangements.
Mercedes-Benz’s Norbert Haug confirmed: “We would like to cooperate with Lewis on a long-term basis. He is a great person and a great driver.†Hamilton’s father said they are yet to sign the deal. “Not yet,†he said, then referring to the upcoming FIA inspections at Woking. “There are still things to go through, such as whether the team is definitely in formula one.â€
The news coincides with Hamilton telling reporters in the McLaren motor home that he has earned more respect from the team than his championship rival Fernando Alonso. “And since what’s gone on in the last few weeks they’ve realized who the real people are in the team and who they really should back,†the Briton, 22, added.
“We arrived at Spa and he is sitting there laughing and joking. I don’t understand it.†Hamilton confirmed suspicions that his relationship with the Spaniard is almost non-existent. “He is not the person I imagined him to be,†he said. (GMM)
Related ‘Lewis Hamilton” news
Feud between Alonso and Hamilton
Lewis Hamilton wins the Montreal Grandprix
Hamilton leads the F1
Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen has outperformed his team mate and shattered the pace of the McLarens this afternoon as he cruised to a fine win in the Ardennes forest. Felipe Massa brought home his Ferrari in second place, and the Scuderia have now officially sealed the 2007 constructors championship following McLaren’s exclusion. The loosing of the point over his team mate now means that Massa is unlikely to be pushed ahead for the title. Instead, Jean Todt will have to put the majority of resources behind todays winner as the season progresses away from Europe and into Asia.
The start of the Belgian Grand Prix was always going to be watched closely as the circuit tends to narrow going down into the impossibly tight La Source hairpin. The remodeled corner though has a slightly wider exit, and more importantly perhaps, is the large flat run-off area, penalising less if you overcook it. And it was this new area that saw some action on lap one after McLaren drivers Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton attempted to prove their worth to each other. As the red lights faded, Alonso moved across from third to defend his position from Hamilton. The pair went into La Source very close to one another, Lewis on the outside and Alonso on the regular line. As the pair squeezed the throttle Alonso moved towards the outside and just kept moving. Hamilton was forced off the circuit and onto the run-off area. Not one to shy away though, Hamilton kept his foot in it and came back down alongside Alonso. They went into the fast Eau Rouge corner together, but as Alonso was on the inside, Lewis backed off and conceded the position.
From here on in, the Belgian Grand Prix simply became a tour and ultimately, proved to be very boring. Perhaps the lack of changeable weather (something we have come to expect from this spontaneous track) took the edge off the race. Perhaps it was the sheer dominant pace of the Ferrari’s that led to the race becoming dull, and although there were many other battles down through the field, we really wanted to see a battle between the top four.
A two week interval now allows the teams to ship every thing over to Shanghai for the Chinese Grand Prix at the end of the month.
Results after the jump Read the rest of this entry »
Italian law enforcement authorities paid an unannounced visit to the McLaren pits on Saturday, as the team prepared for the Italian Grand Prix the following day. They informed McLaren team manager Ron Dennis that he was under investigation and also informed six other members of the McLaren team that they were being investigated. The investigation centers on Team McLaren’s possession of 780 pages of confidential documents stolen from Ferrari. Read the rest of this entry »
Fernando Alonso trimmed McLaren team-mate Lewis Hamilton’s title advantage to just three points by delivering a Monza masterclass in the Italian Grand Prix.
The world champion stamped his authority on the race from the off and was never challenged en route to his first win at the historic venue and his fourth victory of 2007.
Hamilton was unable to match Alonso’s pace but protected his points lead by putting a bold pass on Kimi Raikkonen after the Ferrari driver used a one-stop strategy to leapfrog the rookie following his second pit visit.
The 1-2 result was the best possible tonic for the beleaguered McLaren team on a traumatic weekend in which the latest developments in the spying controversy threatened to reduce the race to a mere sideshow. Results after the jump..
Read the rest of this entry »
