July 5, 2008

The other Flying Finn



Fantastic qualifying today. Heikki Kovalainen scored his first ever Formula 1 pole over a very surprised Mark Webber and a somewhat disappointed Kimi Raikkonen.

Ferrari are either slow or running a heavy fuel-wet race strategy. We'll see about that tomorrow. Also to be seen is how light the Mclarens were running. It's a fair guess they might be light as they would naturally do whatever was needed to have Lewis Hamilton on pole and Heikki filling the front row. Hamilton looked on track for pole but he made a mistake on his first hot lap .... Videos inside



Hamilton looked to overdrove the car, turned in early and lost the rear end at the Priory corner, inevitably he ran out of road on exit. On his final attempt Lewis was ragged again and failed to make it onto the front row.


The other strange thing was that Hamilton did not go straight into the pits after his off. He possibly wasted a lap of fuel for tomorrow's race, another variable to look for Sunday.

Heikki pretty much blew everyone away, his half second lead from second place Webber is huge considering positions two through six are all bunched within half second!

A few words about Silverstone, it will be very sad not to have Formula 1 there, such an amazing track. I think the following compilation from practice speaks for itself. We ride with Kovaleinen, Raikkonen, Hamilton, Button, Fisichella, Rosberg and Sutil.
Knowing how flappy the barge boards on the Force india cars are. Considering how critical it is to control the turbolence, it's not wonder Fisichella and Sutil have a hard time....


3 comments:

  1. Heikki looks a lot neater than Lewis did. Not fighting the car nearly as much, although it could be the camera angles.

    That exit of the last corner then through copse and the run up to Beckettes is just awesome.

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  2. I added the video of Hamilton going off.... It's right what the commentator said about his turn in, Hamilton in practice was turning in much later, but many other drivers, particularly Raikkonen were turning in early there. Maybe there is time to be had by cutting distance there? or maybe it shows that the Ferraris are carrying more wing?

    Too bad about Massa, he and Kubica got shafted by technical issues with the cars.

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  3. I really hope Kovi isn't too light on fuel...

    Hamilton looked insanely fast but also destined to go off !

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