September 30, 2007

Rain Heroes.

Am I alone in wondering what in the world is going on in the Ferrari pits?

Forget for a second the whole issue of the FIA mandated full rain tires for the start of the Japanese GP, who in the world from the red team looked out at that track and thought it might be a great idea to start both cars on intermediate tires? Perhaps Monsier Todt needs to got fishing for a year.

Massa and Raikkonen were heroes climbing into the points from essentially dead last in those conditions. Yeah, Hamilton was very good but he was also out front, take a look at this clip of Massa and Kubica fighting it out for sixth place on the very last lap. It's every bit as good as the famous Villeneuve-Arnoux fight in the 1979 French GP. Play this clip next time you hear someone complaining Formula 1 is dull....



7 comments:

  1. I swear the producer for the Speed channel needs to be fired. Everytime there was a battle for position on track they would cut to some car driving by itself. Thanks for the great clip.

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  2. I don't think Speed has control over that at all. The main world feed is what it is. I tell you what though, I would certainly pay good money to have access to the multi feed setup Premiere has. It's brilliant.

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  3. Did you notice how Kimi made a faint attempt at saving the team some shame by saying that he felt ok on the intermediates and wasn't sure why they needed extreme wets? He said that in the post race interview.

    Ferrari have become a joke (once again) without Schumacher and Brawn. It's a shame because Kimi should have won the championship this year.

    By the way I hate to plug my own site but I have a little writeup on the 1979 battle.

    http://www.f1blog.org/race-features/1979-french-grand-prix/

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  4. The only difference between the French battle and the Japanese battle is the French battle was all skill versus the Japanese battle contained nothing more than two great F1 drivers trying to run each other off the road. sure it was insanely wet and there's only so much you can do but they're good enough to create a safety of margin which they totally ignored. Although wow this is great for Formula 1.

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  5. Agreed. Way too much of them assisting each other off track.

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  6. 1979 vs 2007. Skill still plays a significant part today, but the driver aids, like traction control, do help to tame what is essentially a missile on four tyres. Don't discount the skill it took to drive on that wet track. But look to Shanghai for an example of Massa's less than formidible set of conjones as he let Alonso get ahead of him coming out of the pits. That was when the 'team orders' should have given him leeway to punt Fernando off the track.

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