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Articles by Darren Galpin
| The US GP – Points To Ponder - Sun 02nd Jul 2006 |
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This race raised a few points to ponder. Consider for instance the performance of Ferrari. Something clicked this weekend, and they were the class of the field, comfortably annexing the front row in qualifying, and comfortably winning the race, so comfortably that they turned down the amount of revs they were using and were still faster than the rest of the field. Was it a one off, a freak event caused by the nature of the Indianapolis track, or was it down to the tyres? It didn’t appear to be the tyres, as Williams, the other main Bridgestone team, didn’t appear to noticeably benefit. Was it the track? Well, Ferrari weren’t that far off in Montreal, and that is a similar track, in that it has high speed sections and a couple of fiddly bits. Perhaps the main reason was that Renault were strangely off the pace.
And it wasn’t just Renault as a whole which was off the pace, it was Alonso in particular. Fisichella was on the pace, and not that far off the Ferrari’s, but was compromised by being held up by Alonso at the start of the race (and those are words I didn’t think that I would be writing this year). Once he had passed, he set a fastest lap (soon broken by Ferrari though), and attempted to chase them down. Not that he ever really had a chance, as Ferrari had too much in reserve. But still, it was Fisichella rather than Alonso who did the chasing.
What went wrong?
According to the commentators, the problem was car set-up – Alonso simply couldn’t get the car working as he liked it. Fisichella could though, and they can share car set-up data within the team. However, the driving styles of the two drivers are very different. Fisichella is a much more smooth driver, taking classical lines around the corners. Alonso likes a much more pointy front end, and is a touch more violent in his turn in. This mitigates against sharing with his team-mate. Even so, it was a very strange performance.
And one I can’t recall from Michael Schumacher like that. There have been races recently, such as last year, when he seemed to be off the pace, but he was never quite so comprehensively beaten by his team-mate as Alonso appeared to be. Perhaps we have finally seen a chink in his armour – he can’t drive around major problems with his car. If it is there or thereabouts you will get a championship level result, but if it is very off from perfect, then he can’t sort it, and if it is too off from base, he can’t drive around it either. Perhaps it was a one-off aberration, something not to be seen again. Even if it was, it will have been noted by the rest of the field, something which can perhaps be exploited to their advantage.
The race itself went off with a bang in the first two corners. Montoya braked too late into turn 2 as Räikkönen braked harder than usual, and he tagged the back of Räikkönen’s car. Heidfeld squeezed Button slightly into the left hander (he tagged one of his tyres), but as Räikkönen spun around, Montoya hit Button, who then hit Heidfeld, who then barrel-rolled out – Montoya then collected Scott Speed as well. All were out bar Button, as was the safety car – three more had eliminated themselves at the first corner as well – they were Webber, Klien and Montagny. Button managed to continue, but was smoking heavily – he headed pitwards never to be seen trackwards again. He’s still dreaming that impossible dream…..
Then we had a restart, and lost another one. This time Sato tried an optimistic overtaking manoeuvre on Monteiro into turn 1. The Super-Aguri ravaged the side of the Midland, ripping apart the floor. The Midland tried to continue for a couple of laps, but it was shedding too many pieces to be safe, and retired.
And so the race wound down. A one stopping Jarno Trulli, who started from the pit-lane, pulled a blinder of a race and finished fourth, beating his team-mate at the point that Ralf retired. This was one of those performances that you wish Trulli would put in more often, as it reminds you of what he is capable of. Mindful of this, Toyota have signed him up to a three year contract which has renewal options at the end of each year – all the more incentive for him to keep putting in those performances.
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