McLaren F1
Race: McLaren have a poor Bahrain Grand Prix.
By Sam Cooper
April 6 2008
The Vodafone McLaren Mercedes formula one team have had a poor Grand Prix at the Bahrain International circuit. Lewis Hamilton made a terrible start, while Heikki made a fantastic one, though, Renault’s Fernando Alonso slowed down during an acceleration zone, causing Hamilton to run into the back of him.
The weather remained dry and hot for this year’s Bahrain Grand Prix, temperatures inside the cockpit reached a staggering 60°c, over double the air temperature at the circuit. Humidity remained at a relatively low 19-25%, making the 57 lap Grand Prix slightly easier on the driver, compared to the Malaysian race.
Lewis’s race got off to a terrible start; he dropped from 3rd to 10th place by the time he got to the first corner. Meanwhile Heikki had a better start, he jumped up one place to 4th by the first corner, then he overtook Kimi Raikkonen for 3rd place, his race was looking good.
By the start of lap 2, Lewis was already on the back of Alonso’s Renault, he lined up Alonso going out of the second corner. Lewis's race then went bads to worse as he ran into the back of Alonso's car at turn 3. This damaged Lewis's and Fernando's cars. In addition, this has a knock on effect to Jenson Button’s and David Coulthard’s races.
Both Button and Coulthard both received punctures because of this, Button’s race in particular was ruined, as he was setting the fastest lap of the race and could have got a good haul of points, instead, he and Coulthard collided going into turn 7.
Hamilton then lost heaps of time while he was pitting for a new nose cone and for the rest of the race, he looked unable to challenge even the Williams, which is usually a good eight tenths of a second slower than the McLaren. Hamilton managed to finish in 13th place, which, with all things considered wasn’t a bad effort.
His laps were stuck in the 1.36’s and 1.35’s, meanwhile Heikki’s laps were in the low 1.34’s which even dipped into the 1.33’s towards the end of the race. My suspicion is that his car was better suited to the harder tyres towards the end of the race, though its hard to see why he couldn’t of put in those lap times earlier on in the race.
One thing was for certain though, Ferrari dominated the third round of this years season, with the team set to get even stronger in three weeks time, when they reveal their radical new front wing, early indications of this suggest it to add a couple of tenths or more per lap.
Onboard shots of Lewis’s McLaren suggest that he was having some trouble in the 1st gear corners, when he was changing up to second gear. The McLaren looked to be suffering from under steer, probably due to the collision with Alonso, nevertheless, Lewis’s McLaren looked hard to drive.
The two BMW’s surprised everyone at today’s event, with Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld getting the best out of the radical looking F1.08, so much so, the Ferraris had to up their pace, just to stop the two BMW’s getting two close.
To sum up the race, Felipe Massa got exactly what he needed, ten points, while Raikkonen seemed happy with second place, this has elevated him to world drivers championship leader. Due to their consistency over the first flyaway Grand Prix, BMW have now taken the lead in the constructor’s championship.
McLaren seem to have slipped to the third fastest team, which is even worse than we expected the team to be, if you take Heikki’s fastest lap out of account, Ferrari were a good second faster than us, the BMW’s were 0.5 seconds faster than we were. The team will have to bring some big developments to the car for Barcelona, otherwise, we’ll be racing for third in the constructors championship.
Results from the race are shown below.
| Pos. | Driver | Team | Time |
| 1 | F. Massa | Ferrari | 1:31:06.970 |
| 2 | K. Räikkönen | Ferrari | + 3.339 |
| 3 | R. Kubica | BMW | + 4.998 |
| 4 | N. Heidfeld | BMW | + 8.409 |
| 5 | H.Kovalainen | McLaren | + 26.789 |
| 6 | J. Trulli | Toyota | + 41.314 |
| 7 | M. Webber | Red Bull | + 45.473 |
| 8 | N. Rosberg | Williams | + 55.889 |
| 9 | T. Glock | Toyota | + 1:09.500 |
| 10 | F. Alonso | Renault | + 1:17.181 |
| 11 | R. Barrichello | Honda | + 1:17.862 |
| 12 | G. Fisichella | Force India F1 | + 1 laps |
| 13 | L. Hamilton | McLaren | + 1 laps |
| 14 | K. Nakajima | Williams | + 1 laps |
| 15 | S. Bourdais | Toro Rosso | + 1 laps |
| 16 | A. Davidson | Super Aguri | + 1 laps |
| 17 | T. Sato | Super Aguri | + 1 laps |
| 18 | D. Coulthard | Red Bull | + 1 laps |
| 19 | A. Sutil | Force India F1 | + 2 laps |
| 20 | N. Piquet jr. | Renault | Gearbox |
| 21 | J. Button | Honda | Accident |
| 22 | S. Vettel | Toro Rosso | Engine |
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Sorry to be so blunt but its just getting boring. Alonso was inocent. Have some class and move on.
kindly apologise for your biased and baseless article.
There was mention of Alonso losing some part of his car. If that were so, he too would have been affected
I'm not going to keep on writing about how Fernando does this like some people might but I certainly won't be retracting my comments.
That's a shame. You could at least have exercised some degree of patience until the facts were established. You and the rest of the Alonso haters can't believe he is not responsible for every bad thing that happens to your Golden boy.
You can dispense with the apology. Max has not apologised either.
Lewis was on the throttle much earlier than alonso and simply understeered in to the back of him.
Alonso did say he was nudged from behind at the start.
Watch the clip again sam.
im sure kova should be feeling himself very confident in mclaren now.
Sam!. We are waiting albeit not holding our breath.
Quote:.Redness
so 3 races in a row, hamilton used the better qualification strategy and tried to start races in front of kova.
im sure kova should be feeling himself very confident in mclaren now
Hope it ain't so.
But Alonso in NO WAY made that incident happen. Your account is inacurate.
Its your site publish what you want.
Your comments were not only wrong but biased. You have greatly diminished yourself IMO and can be categozied in the same sentence with the likes of Brundle and Blundel. (Drivers without distinguished carreers).
Quote:nightwolf2k5
someone got their panties in a bunch and went ahead and blamed alonso for something he din do...
As usual it was the British commentators who got their panties in a twist.
As for Heikki, this is what Martin Whitmarsh had to say: "In all he has been with us for 11 weeks and he’s just getting stronger and stronger. The feeling within the team is that we still haven’t seen the best of him."
Once, when a stubborn disputer seemed unconvinced, Abraham Lincoln said, “Well, let’s see how many legs does a cow have?”
“Four of course,” was the disgusted reply.
“That’s right,” agreed Lincoln. “Now suppose you call the cow’s tail a leg; how many legs would the cow have?”
“Why, five, of course,” was the confident reply.
“Now, that’s where you’re wrong. Calling a cow’s tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”
So it seems that SamC is not going to rectify. What a shame... Doing that, SamC, you're intentionally publicing a false information, despite you know it's false. Such practice can change your board in a tabloid, and very deep damage your credibility. In fact, you publiced this before there was any evidence, instead of waiting to see the reactions to the incident, but that once you know Alonso is not guilty at all in this incident, that you go on with the same terms, is quite disgraceful.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008:04:09:12:32:17 by rogen.
I publicised that as my own opinion, I was very careful to do that, its only the same as someone posting that on the forum. "I wouldn't be surprised" is an example of that.
Though due to the amount of comments that you've all put together, I have changed the story, though, the fact of the matter is, I still believe what I put in that story in the first place.
If you don't like the article, try writing your own...we'll all turn up and give you helpfull comments afterwards...
Lewis cawked up, pure and simple. Get used to it. It's what rookies do under pressure. He will improve, but for now its what you have.
Unfortunately Sam still fails to see exactly where he went wrong.
Quote:Hammerthief
Forums are a place to express opinions....Sam should be allowed to express his, the same as anyone else. I still think there was something dodgy in the way Lewis caught FA it was just too fast...and yes i've watched it back a lot of times.
If you don't like the article, try writing your own...we'll all turn up and give you helpfull comments afterwards...
Well, "Opinions" are like a$$holes, everybody has one. especially when given to excuse a blatant error by a driver who is believed to be infallible.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008:04:11:12:52:55 by rogen.
Write what you want its your site. If someone doesn't like your opinion thats up to them. Do these people write into ITV after every Grand prix and complain, each and every newspaper that expresses an opinion? I doubt it.
I don't see them writing any articles or making constructive comments. All i see is destructive and critical.
Everyone else,
If you don't like it what was written, have a go yourselves, you have an open invitation now. Bet none of you do, because you can't bear the chance that you might be critised. Always easy to have a pop at someone, never easy to take it!
You have swallowed some pride here and stood up quite maturely and edited your post. I guess it isn't easy when you get so many attackers.
I have no doubt you were emotional when it happened, and took some time to accept what actually happened. This I can understand, but in those situations, simply stating the facts as they happen is the safest way.
Respect.
I believe Sam has done a good job since taking over the mod's job on this site and I am sure that he will learn and become better as a result of this incident.
Quote:.Hammerthief
Sam,
Write what you want its your site. If someone doesn't like your opinion thats up to them. Do these people write into ITV after every Grand prix and complain, each and every newspaper that expresses an opinion? I doubt it.
Now, that's a dumbass remark
Does anyone have any info....
Mclaren forever
My favorite points:
1) Alonso "brake checked" Hammy. Except that the telemetry says he didn't.
2) Because the upper element of Hammy's front wing was broken it caused him to accelerate out of the corner at such a high rate of speed that he could not keep from running into Nando. Now everybody is going to want a broken front wing.
3) Nando "tricked" Hammy into running into him. Even if Nando were that clever, is Hammy really that STUPID.
How about a little dose of reality...don't blow the start, drop half a dozen places and then don't over drive trying to move up.
Be a man...admit the errors and get over it!
