It’s a 4 Way Battle Now…

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- Contributed by Debraj B

Just after a week of the Malaysian outing, we are here in the deserts of Sakhir for the 3^rd GP of this calendar. This GP is the end of the first leg of this season. As expected the weather was pretty hot, but a couple of showers during Friday practice, Saturday qualifier and then the race made things a little pleasant.

From the Friday practice itself, it was pretty evident that both the number 2 drivers of Ferrari and Mclaren were faster than their number 1 colleagues. Also BMW looked like breathing on the neck of both the teams in terms of pace. Honda was as usual disappointing, while Williams looks getting better by every race. The fact that they had the fastest straight-line speed of the weekend makes me believe that they are gonna be competitive in the near future.

On Saturday’s qualifier, Massa was the strongest as expected, followed closely by Hamilton. But the biggest disappointment was the reigning double world champion. He looked off pace from the word go and never recovered finishing at 5^th place. Kimi was equally disappointing finishing at third. I somehow felt that both were not strong enough in their intent. Nick finished at 4^th for BMW.

But when I aw the first few laps of the race, I thought I was wrong. Fernando showed all the intent to move up despite staring from the dirtier side of the track. He moved up 2 places overtaking Nick and Kimi in a slower and heavier Mclaren. For the next set of laps, till the first pit, the cat and mice game was on between Fernando and Kimi. But what disgusted me most was Fernando’s driving immediately after the first pit. He went to pits a lap ahead of Kimi and had a pit 0.1 second faster than Kimi. Now when he went to pits, he was 0.5 second ahead of Kimi. And I am still trying to figure out how badly he would have driven when Kimi was in the pits. It has to be very bad because Kimi was easily able to leapfrog Alonso coming out of the pits. On the top of the order there was another fight going on between Massa and Lewis. But the move of the day came from Nick when he humbled Alonso through the outside at turn 6. Well done Nick! At the end Lewis fell short by 3 seconds, some credit has to go to Christijan Albers for blocking Lewis. There were few more good drives in the race. The best came from a known but unexpected person, David Coulthard. After a long time he looked like the old David we all know. Kudos to the old Scot for making his way up till 7^th place when bad-luck struck him again and his engine let go.

Overall, nothing special as a race… Massa did what he can do, win from pole. Hamilton is the start of the season so far with Nick and he had a superb race again. As I said before Kimi and Alonso were the most disappointing. I can’t believe Kimi did not push the rookie for more than 3 laps. If the buzz has to be believed, Fernando went for a conservative race to preserve his engine for his home GP at Catalunya which is next on 13^th of May. But this can’t be an excuse from a champion for such painful driving.

Anyways, we are off for almost 4 week now. Mclaren is expected to cover the gap with Ferrari in terms of speed by then .So we can expect some better races after Catalunya. So we shall meet after almost a month as Imola is no more a part of the F1 fixture. I know it is boring but there is nothing we can do about it.

So, take care have a nice time. Till Catalunya, ADIOS!

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