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Articles by Darren Galpin
| The British Grand Prix - Sun 11th Jun 2006 |
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The British Grand Prix – how boring. It was moved forward because of the football World Cup, and quite frankly the World Cup showed up Grand Prix racing, as in the first five matches we have seen underdogs able to fight and beat the top dogs. Way to go Trinidad and Tobago! There wasn’t the slightest likelihood of this happening in this race, and once the first lap argy-bargy had worked its way out of the collective system, with Scott Speed spooning Ralf Schumacher off the track, who in turn collected Mark Webber, it settled down to an exhibition of which car was technically superior and which driver was stronger than the other within a given team. Hence Renault was better than a Ferrari and Ferrari is better than a McLaren, and Alonso is better than Fisichella and Michael Schumacher is better than Felipe Massa. So the top five finishing positions were Alonso, M.Schumacher, Räikkönen, Fisichella, Massa. It’s not like you couldn’t have predicted this out the outset.
Once the first couple of laps were over, I took the opportunity to go through a book sent to me to review by Veloce Publishing. Called “Alpine Trials and Rallies 1910 to 1973” by Martin Pfundner, it covers the Alpine Trials which were in particular popularised in the 1950s, when Stirling Moss used to compete in them for Sunbeam, climbing the famous passes such as the Stelvio Pass. It proved to be a particularly interesting way of speeding the afternoon along, to the extent that I almost missed the finish of the race – it was that uneventful that even James Allen seemed subdued, and barely raised his voice as the race was ended. The one interesting point was how fast the track had become. In the 1980s, Keke Rosberg managed to lap the track at 168 mph in qualifying, and there was only about one braking point on the entire circuit – the other areas only merited lifts off the throttle. Extra corners were added, including the Luffield Complex, and still they can lap at 143 mph. The latest V8’s have a lower top end speed, but better cornering, and despite a safety car period for a couple of laps, the race pace was only 25s slower than the previous year, and this was with Alonso backing off over the final few laps to protect his engine. I’d love to know how fast a modern F1 car could have lapped the 1980s version of the circuit.
And so the F1 circuits moves on to the Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal, another circuit with very long straights which is likely to provide a very similar result to that of the British Grand Prix. However, it was the site of a major Alonso foul up last year, when he misjudged a corner and sideswiped a wall. So he will feel that he has something to prove there, so might be even less inclined to take things easy, all the better to banish those demons and prove that he is becoming the complete driver. The prospect of watching a re-run of the British Grand Prix doesn’t exactly fill me with huge amounts of joy – if there is another publisher out there who could send me a book to review for then, then I would be very grateful. In the meantime, there are plenty more world cup football matches to watch…..
There was one unintentional point of hilarity during the race, and that was the juxtaposition of the adverts and Jenson Button’s engine going bang and dropping its oil having gained five positions in the first couple of laps. James Allen did his usual cutaway piece, we got the usual ITV graphics of some shaded tart waving a flag in amongst flames and a passing F1 car, shortly followed a male voice singing “Dream the impossible dream….” Yes, it was that Honda advert again. I bet that Jenson Button has an impossible dream every day – winning a race in his Honda. In fact, the impossible dream would simply be finishing a race at the moment, or qualifying ahead of Barrichello. Perhaps Button should take the Honda RA272 or the Honda NSX featured in the advert – they would be more reliable.
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