MASSA POWERS FORWARD
(Image taken from BBC)
It's slap bang in the middle of nowhere and Bernie would rather race in Paris. It's Magny Cours, home of the French Grand Prix. The big story pre-race was Lewis's accident in Canada which led to the man who had been Britain's greatest rookie of all time getting smashed by the tabloids and he wasn't happy about it. In the meantime Robert Kubica came in looking to retain his title lead but it was the Ferrari's that were hoping to run the show, though it was Lewis that needed to play catchup. Michael Schumacher did actually win one of his titles in France but that's a rarity. Still, coming up to the midway point of a season, it is meant to give a good inidication of who has it and who doesn't.
Well in Q1, Jenson was again unable to make the cut for Q1 and would start P17! The two remaining Brits survived Q2 though pretty smoothly and it was Heidfeld that was the main man not to make the cut - so far so good for Lewis and DC. Glock was the first man out but Massa was the first serious contender to take the lead. Raikonen beat him and the reigning world champion went on to secure his second pole position of the season. Massa stayed P2 to secure the third all-Ferrari front row of the season. Lewis grabbed P3 at the last second which made for an OK qualifying performance while DC grabbed P9 whichwas a pretty good effort for him.
Only problem was, Lewis faced a ten place grid penalty in this race as a result of his accident in Canada. That shunted him down to P13 which was not the ideal place for a title contender to start a race from, and forced McLaren to send him out heavy with fuel in Q3. Kovalainen was then dropped back from P6 to P10 due to a blocking offense which meant that McLaren came out starting the race on the back foot, Ron Dennis would have his work cut out. One of the beneficaries of these two demotions was Coulthard though, the Scot moving up from P9 to P7 on the starting grid, his best grid position of the season so far, seemingly continuing his good run from Canada.
Well Jenson's race wasn't exactly ideal. For starters he got caught in an early back of the grid clash and that forced him into the pits, do that from the back of the field and your race is over already. However the Honda driver had taken more damage than that and 18 laps in was forced into the pits for a second unscheduled stop and this time round it was game over! A second bad race for Jenson who could do with some better luck later in the season. So far the Ross Brawn era has proved hit and miss for the one-time Grand Prix winner though he is prepared to wait things out a while longer. Still, he'll be looking for something half decent at Silverstone if his season is to get back on track.
Lewis had a good enough start to make his way up to 10th initially but cut a corner when overtaking Vettel and that forced him into the pits for a drive through. That left him back down in 13 and soon he was chasing Alonso of all people! He got past the arrogant Spaniard...only to pit again and come out in 17th! It was a long way up from there but Rosberg was dispatched and he got far enough up the field to have to deal with Alonso for a second time but again he wasn't an issue but Tewis wasn't able to make it into the points on this occasion and instead had to settle for 10th, the world championship contender falling victim to a vicious circle.
DC had a bad start due to clutch trouble and had slid down to 9th by the end of turn 1 which became 10th before the end of lap one. After that though, it was a pretty quiet race for him. He spent some time in the point in the middle of pit stop windows but even he admits that the cars in front of him were too good for him to be able to overtake. Still he, like the other British drivers, came up empty that day in what became a frustrating race for a British fan. DC finished in 9th which overall isn't his worst finish of the season by a long shot but not being able to overtake anyone in the points positions still means that Red Bull isn't cutting it at some level. That seems to happen semi regularly.
Up front, it turned into a Ferrari show. Raikonen kept the lead early on and surged into the distance while Massa was under no real threat in 2nd but when he ran into backmarkers it seemed as if the race was over already. Raikonen ran into trouble though when his exhaust started hanging loose and that forced him to allow his Brazilian teammate through. From there Massa had no real issues and went on to pick up his third win of the season. Raikonen just about survived to complete the third Ferrari 1-2 of the season. Further down, credit goes to Trulli for finishing in third for his first podium since the '05 Spanish Grand Prix and Piquet finishing 7th for the first points of his career!
So, the title race looks like this. Felipe Massa surges to the top of the table on 48 points. Kubica down to 2nd on 46. Raikonen up to 3rd on 43 and Lewis down to 4th on 38. Further down, DC remainins in 12th on 6 points and Jenson remains in 16th on 3 points.
Lewis has a lot of work to do at Silverstone.
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