Watching the British Grand Prix this morning, I was trying to imagine what it would be like to spend nearly an hour and a half at an average speed of 135 MPH, at the limits of adhesion, with no opportunity to relax. Even pit stops don't offer a break - witness the way that Fisichella threw away points in both the French and British Grands Prix by stalling in the pits. Anyway, Montoya executed flawlessly today to beat Alonso; Raikkonen was third, but only because he was moved 10 places down the grid because of an engine change. Without that, it would have been a McLaren 1-2.
As David Hobbs just reminded us, the British Grand Prix is perpetually under threat from the Formula One organizers. This makes no sense: for most teams it's the "home race" (even the Renault team is based in England), and the event always attracts a huge, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic crowd.
And Michael Schumacher, who completely dominated the 2004 season? The only time the camera picked him out was to show how he was holding up Raikkonen's progress towards the front. Other than that, he was curiously irrelevant, finishing 6th.
Posted by geoff2 at July 10, 2005 09:42 AMHi Geoff,
I am also an avid follower of F1, this year things are a bit more interesting than passed years :), Michael Schumacher/Ferrari performance has really slipped, I would really like to know the specific causes for this loss of competitive advantage. I remember seeing a F1 documentary about a legendary Williams car the FW 14b (with a Renault engine, that blow away the competition) because it was technically the most advanced car ever to race on the F1, but with so many restrictions from FIA I wonder how they did it?!
I started paying attention to F1 around the 1990’s so I am a Big Williams fan; also the personal story of Frank Williams is an impressive one, I wonder how they will solve the engine supplier problem for next year…
FIA stopped coming to my country (Estoril-Portugal) for the past years and I live about 20Km from the track in Portugal, that truly sucked, I only see it from TV these days.
Are you for or against the new restriction for the next rules revision (2008 I think)? (There are talks of going back to even more basic stuff like foot clutches and stuff like that).
http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns15044.html