What a start to the season! Lewis Hamilton! This young rookie just never ceases to amaze me. His first F1 weekend, qualifies 4th. Ends up 3rd after turn 1, ahead of his teammate, back to back World Champion Fernando Alonso, in the same car. Leading the race for several laps during the pit stop shuffle. Oh did I talk about that first corner pass? Lewis was being held off by Heidfeld, and proceeded to go on the outside, and pass teammate Alonso for 3rd, almost into 2nd place. Amazing for a rookie at this level of competition. Even Alonso was impressed, and thought he was lucky to beat Lewis. He passed Lewis in the 2nd round of pitstops, when Lewis was held up by Sato’s Super Aguri heading into the pits.
While one rookie stunned the world, the other rookie that everyone was talking about before the first race, Renault future superstar Heikki Kovalainen, well, baffled. He spun off the track. He understeered off the track. Short of ramming the car into the wall into retirement, he made every mistake possible. Even Sato had a more uneventful race, which is saying a lot. I guess I wasn’t the only one with the same feelings, Flavio Briatore was PISSED. “Heikki’s performance? I think everybody was watching on TV. I don’t need to protect anybody. It was rubbish”. Poor Renault, so slow, lack of pace. I guess Alonso was a bigger contributor to the back to back championship than Briatore thought.
Hilarious point in the race, Spyker driver Christijan Albers crashing out of the race. The reason? His headphones came loose, and while trying to adjust it, forgot to brake, and flew off the track. I wonder how pissed the sponsors are about that one?
Ferrari performed as expected… I was hoping they would have reliability issues with Kimi behind the wheel, but he drove a solid controlled race. As I watched lap time after lap time, it was evident that Kimi was fucking with everyone. The Ferrari is a LOT faster than what we saw. Kimi was about 0.5s faster than everyone, then out of nowhere, pulled a 1:25.232s lap, almost a second and a half faster than anyone else at that point in the race. It was ridiculous… that’s when I knew that there’s no chance that Alonso or Lewis would catch Kimi after the pitstops. McLaren has a LOT of work to do to catch up to Ferrari.
BMW chased the reliability issues away (to a point) and finished a very respectable 4th place with Heidfeld behind the wheel. Kubica wasn’t as lucky, gearbox problems left him stuck in 5th gear, eventually forcing him out of the race. For Honda, there was a bit of light at the end of the tunnel (however dim it is), as they beat last year’s car by Barichello finishing 11th, one spot ahead of Sato in the Super Aguri Honda.
Overall, an uneventful but exciting race (if you’re cheering for Ferrari or McLaren). McLaren really needs to bridge the gap next race, or we’ll see Ferrari run away from the field like at the beginning of the decade. Bring on the next round!
