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Articles by Darren Galpin
| The British GP – Magny Cours Replayed - Sun 10th Jul 2005 |
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The British Grand Prix was the French Grand Prix replayed, just on a different track. The race was yet again decided by aerodynamics, with Trulli holding up Schumacher and the recovering Räikkönen, who again had a ten place grid penalty for an engine letting go in practice. The main difference was that the teams had better reliability this time. Montoya’s McLaren held together, so having overtaken Alonso at the first corner, he stayed there, and so did Fisichella’s Renault (he finished fourth). This meant that the Ferrari’s looked even worse than normal, and that the potential finishing positions for BAR were that much lower.
If the cars hold together, the finishing positions are being decided by the speed of the cars. The McLaren’s are a touch faster than the Renault’s, but are hampered by a propensity for blowing engines in practice, and by the odd red-mist moment for Montoya. The Renault’s are the best of the rest, but keep having niggling pit-stop issues with Fisichella.
Next up are probably BAR. On a one-lap shoot-out, Toyota can match them, but they have a far more consistently fast race pace. Toyota are a bit of an enigma – Trulli can wring the cars last ounce of performance during qualifying, and drags the car up the grid into places it has no right to be. But come the race, he ends up being a mobile chicane, to the extent that fuel strategy for the other teams is often decided by trying to work out where Trulli is likely to be and then fuelling accordingly.
Next up are Ferrari, the major disappointment of the season, which is just as well as it has allowed us to see racing between the other teams. It also seems as though the lack of performance has disheartened Michael Schumacher, as you are no longer seeing the kind of performance where he transcends the car. This was demonstrated clearly in today’s race, where he was no faster than Barrichello, and by his mistakes in qualifying – it’s almost as though he is throwing in the towel. The weekends’ performance will only increase the speculation about when he plans to retire.
Next? I can’t really make a clear break between Sauber and Red Bull – it depends on the circuit and the weekend, and their performances are fairly equal. Now that Villeneuve is getting a handle on his car, he is putting in some fighting drives, and his battles with Coulthard over the past couple of races have shown that both still have something to offer. What was more noticible in this race was Massa – or rather, he was so invisible during the race that you almost didn’t know that he was there. Massa is something of an enigma – he can put in some storming performances, and yet……. Now that Sauber has been bought by BMW, his position has to be at risk for next year, but there doesn’t seem to be many other berths for him to take. Mind you, Villeneuve is probably in the same position, as I can’t see his image suiting BMW very much.
The most noteworthy performance of the weekend has to be that of Daily Express journalist Bob McKenzie, who said on BBC Radio Five Live at the beginning of 2004 that if McLaren would win a race that year, he would run around Silverstone naked. It just so happened that Kimi Räikkönen won the Belgian Grand Prix, and Bernie Ecclestone and Ron Dennis held McKenzie to his word. So, dressed up in body paint in McLaren colours, and with a strategically placed sporran, he jogged his way around the track in the full glare of the exceedingly hot sun. There had been a vote on McLaren’s website as to whether he should do the run naked or clothed, but there were sufficient donations made to a children’s charity by the fans that a naked run it was. Beware the power of words……
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