KUBICA, BMW HIT THE JACKPOT!
Apparantly it's OK to act like an arrogant git and threaten to throw a team out of the world championship just because of the actions of one employee but not to take part in certain types of roleplay! Thus began the anti-Max Mosley witch-hunt. No I'm not the biggest fan of the guy but booting him from his position because certain fantasies turn him on seems to be fair game. Yeah right. In the mean time the real show arrived at the Circuit Giles Villenerve for the Canadian Grand Prix. Lewis won the first race of his career here last year and coming in as championship leader, looked to do similar this time around. The odds were certainly in his favour, this being another of his strong circuits in theory.
Well Jenson hit gearbox trouble early in Q1 and the time that he did set was only good enough to get him P19. DC survived Q1 well enough but put in a weak Q2 performance and could only come up with P13. By the end of Q2 though, the drivers were starting to complain about the track breaking up - it helps if you use the right kind of tarmac guys! What it meant was that we had marshal sweeping the track ahead of Q3, making me wonder if I would be seeing one of F1's greatest disasters on raceday! As for Q3 itself well Lewis got the early edge, continuing his domination of qualifying so far only for Kubica to beat him in the dying seconds, however, Lewis wasn't done yet and shattered the Polish driver's time to take his second pole of the season!
Well in the race Lewis pulled away very smoothly with every intention of making sure history repeat itself. So far so good untill the first major retirement. Cue safety car which effectively wiped out the world championship leader's lead but it did provide a good window to go into the pits. Slight problem. There was a red light at the pitlane exit and Lewis was unable to see it. What he did see though was Raikonen's stationary car getting closer and closer. Wham! What can I say, it has to be the craziest crash I've seen in F1 for ages. Race over for two big names. How it happened I'm not sure but it certainly wasn't something Lewis needed. It looks like this race will be this year's "one that got away".
Jenson wound up having to start from the pitlane after changing gearboxes and spent the opening laps cruising around the back of the field. The safety car period shook things up a bit though and he found himself up in 11th not long afterwards. He didn't exactly get any headlines during the race but did benefit from a few more field shuffles and looked as though he might grab a few points as he was running in 7th for good chunks of the latter part of the race which would definately have been making lemons from lemonade from a UK point of view. However he wound up having to take a penalty for pitting when the pitlane was closed and so settled for 11th.
In the early stages, it looked to be a quiet race for DC. Cruising around the midfield avoiding the limelight. After the post safety car shakeup he found himself in the points though which with Lewis out was definately not something I was going to complain about. 6th would do me nicely. And what happened in the next round of pitstops was even better and the Scot went on to lead a Grand Prix for the first time in ages! He came out again in 5th though, his first points finish of the season looking secure. Again, I liked that. However, then Alonso spun, the only real victim of the dodgy track. Nakajima then ran over his own front wing. And so despite problems of his own that meant DC could barely get his car accross the chequered flag, he not only claimed his first points of the season but with 3rd and best of the rest, his first podium since Monaco '06!
The best on this occasion turned out to be driving BMWs. Heidfeld was the early leader but after his pitstops he found himself in midfield, just ahead of Kubica. The team allowed the Polish driver past as Heidfeld was hgeavier and as the pair made their way back to the front of the field, that turned out to be the move that sealed the race! I was there for Kubica first ever pole position in Bahrain earlier this season and right now I have to wonder how much of "I was there" moment that will prove to be! Kubica has not only picked up his first win in an F1 career that started at the '06 Hungarian Grand Prix but this result means that Poland's first ever F1 driver is now a Grand Prix winner! And Nick Heidfeld's second place has given BMW(a team that started out as Sauber back in '93) it's first ever 1-2.
Well Kubica surges into the lead of the championship from absolutely nowhere with 42 points. Hamilton drops down to 2nd with 38 points(very long story short he holds the position due to more race finishes, on everything else he's in a dead heat with Massa). Further down, DC enters the picture in 12th place with 6 points while even further down Jenson drops down to 16th with 3 points.
If you'd have told me ten years ago that a Polish driver would one day win a Grand Prix and lead the world championship, I'd have told you "find me a Polish racing driver". You'd have had a problem, Robert Kubica was only karting in Italy in 1998! Now though, we have a four-way title fight involving three teams. Interesting.
Comments go here
Click here to return to sports homepage
Click here to return to Matt G's homepage