An unrelenting Felippe Massa won the 2007 Spanish Grand Prix and wrecked the hopes of a million Spanish fans on the way after he dashed world champion Fernando Alonso’s hopes of a repeat win at his home race at the first corner itself. After this starting drama, the rest of the race was rather dull as the F1 circus resumes after a gap of four weeks.
While Massa started on pole, his teammate Kimi Raikkonen started 3rd as he is yet to come to terms with the handling of his Ferrari. The other two contenders for the driver’s championship, Mclaren’s rookie driver Hamilton started in the 2nd row alongside Kimi while Alonso was on the front row with Massa. With the top three lightly fueled and Hamilton talking of a good race strategy in Saturday’s press conference (obviously meaning he had more fuel onboard) it was going to be a dash to the first corner. As overtaking is usually impossible in Barcelona, it was going to be crucial as to who came out of the first turn ahead of the rest and more importantly unscathed.
Alonso managed to pull up side-by-side of the Ferrari by the time the cars reached the corner and then tried aggressively to push Massa off his line, but the Brazilian closed the door on the world champion and drove him off onto the gravel. Meanwhile Hamilton had out dragged the other Ferrari of Raikkonen ahead of him (yes, again) and only after the two cars passed by, was Alonso able to join back in 4th position. This loss of two positions in just one corner meant that Alonso was not going to win his home grand prix. Something he has been wanting the most since the start of the season.
Some more action in the middle of the pack as Alexander Wurz broke his front wing when he collided with Ralf Schumacher and Renault’s Giancarlo Fisichella clashed with his team mate Heiki Kovalanein and William’s Nico Rosberg. At the same time, Alonso didn’t waste any time in coming up to the race pace as he religiously followed Kimi meaning to overtake him and almost did before the Finn also upped his pace, thus creating a gap between him and the chasing Spaniard.
But then on lap 8, started a procession of cars retiring from the race for one or the other reason. First up was Red Bull’s Mark Webber whose car had been dealing with hydraulic problems all weekend, finally gave up and drove back to the pits. Jarno Trulli followed him in the next lap with fuel pump problems. It should be noted that the race had an extra installation lap because Trulli’s car failed to take off at the start of the race due to the same problem.
But on lap 10 came a shocker of a retirement, one which brought atleast some hint of a smile back on Alonso’s face. Raikkonen’s Ferrari had an electronics failure and lost all power as he slowly drove it back to the pits. This meant that there was a gap in the making in the constructor’s championship as there were now two Mclarens on track compared to one Ferrari. Kimi meanwhile slid down from the top of the drivers championship tie. In the next lap, Scott Speed’ s Torro Rosso had a spectacular tyre failure at a speed of 350 km/hr along the start-finish straight.
Massa remained unfazed however as he drove the race’s fastest lap on lap 14 at 1:22.680. On lap 19, he pitted and as he began moving, some fuel dripped off and his fuel pod caught fire. It was nothing big as he himself wasn’t aware of it till the end, but for one second, Jean Todt’s mind must have skipped a beat as the thought of no points from the race would have crossed his mind. Alonso pitted shortly and again made a mistake, by putting on the harder compound tyres, thinking the Mclaren would be quick on them like in Bahrain. But when Hamilton pitted on lap 23, and the two cars in front of him started to pull away, Alonso knew he would do well enough to finish on the podium in this race.
Meanwhile Button and Barrichello clashed to make matters worse for Honda as Button lost his front wing and blamed his team mate for it. Elsewhere in the pits, Nick Heidfeld’s run of good form for BMW came to an end as the mechanic handling his front right tyre forgot to nut it tightly. As the BMW left the pits, the nut flew off and Heidfeld crawled the rest of the lap before finally retiring. Another one of those bizarre retirements in F1 history.
Bernie Eccelstone’s remarks about David Coulthard during the Singapore Grand Prix launch ceremony must have egged on the Red Bull driver. Not only did he qualify in the top ten but also ran the race in a strong 5th place. In the end, he had some gear box problems while after his last pitstop, Nico Rosberg was catching him at over a second a lap, but some how he managed to hold on. At the end of their respective pitstops, Massa and Hamilton put on harder compounds while Alonso was on softer ones. Still the order remained the same as Fernando was unable to up his pace.
Finally, the chequered flag came. Massa won his second consecutive race and overtook Kimi in the driver’s points tally. And what it meant to him was visible in his celebrations. Alongwith him on the second pedestal was Gavin Hamilton, who now leads the world driver championship after only the fifth race of his career. On the third step, was lucky Alonso, truly disappointed and of course now increasingly worried about his crown.
For the record, the other point scorers were, Robert Kubica (BMW) in 4th, Coulthard (Red Bull) in 5th, Nico Rosberg (Williams) in 6th, Kovalainen in 7th for Renault and surprise, surprise, Takuma Sato for Super Aguri in the 8th, scoring the first ever point for the Japanese team.
And so the racing has resumed. But it was a disappointment as on-track overtaking was rare and this race would be remembered for all the bizarre incidents rather than some exciting racing. Next up is Monaco and the streets of Monte Carlo have always been more of a lottery than a race. Will Hamilton finally win there?
Images Via: BBC Sports
Via: Planet-F1
