I have to confess that I strongly dislike the Valencia Street Circuit, I find it hopelessly boring. The town is beautiful and well worth a trip, however the track is dull and as we saw in 2010, overtaking is almost impossible. As we all know by now Lotus Renault GP had a hard time with Nick being the only of both drivers to finish in the points. Valencia is such a special circuit that I do not find it that worrying. The McLarens also had a bad day, while the Ferraris were pretty fast, the very hot weather concealing their problems in bringing their tyres to the right temperature…
As a Motor Sport enthousiast, I just cannot accept that France, the home of Renault, Matra and Peugeot, the fatherland of Alain Prost, Jacques Laffite or René Arnoux has no national Grand Prix. I find hard to remember that the “Circuit Paul Ricard” has long been unused for Formula 1 (even Magny Cours was better than Valencia) and see the European Grand Prix take place where it currently does. It does not make any sense at all, I am glad that Mr.Fillon, the French Prime Minister has appointed a task force to bring back to France its national Grand Prix (remember that Grand Prix are French words). Bonne chance!
Seb Vettel did another faultless exhibition of his enormous talent, various tyre problems prevented Lewis Hamilton from bringing out his Senna-like traits, so we were left with a whole country celebrating the remarkable race of Fernando Alonso. The Ferrari driver’s performance was noticeable even if he was lucky at the start as Felipe Massa was quicker than him, however Mark Webber‘s move enabled Alonso to overtake the Brazilian in the first lap of the Grand Prix.
On the other hand, for me as a Lotus and in this case, a Motor Racing fan, last Sunday was the day when Jaime Alguersuari broke the jinx he had on him since the beginning of the current season. He lost a tyre at the Chinese GP, was caught in the final crash in Monaco, and despite achieving convincing lap times during the races, his troubles coming to terms with the current tyres (a very understandable problem), as well as his bad luck were making his life difficult at Toro Rosso.
You see, the Anglo-Saxon value of “lending a hand to the underdog”, is hardly to be found in Spain. Leaving aside an extremely small group of journalists, most of the focus on Formula 1 is on the performance of Fernando Alonso. The driver from Oviedo made the sport popular in a country where hardly anybody gave a damn about it. A few thousands of new enthousiasts evolved and became interested in Formula 1 itself, and learned to appreciate the talent of Schumacher, Kubica, Hamilton or Seb, and even shifted their support to them or different drivers. However for the majority of the newcomers, Formula 1 is Alonso, period. That is not necessarily a bad thing, even though a noticeable fraction of those have turned into fanatical football-like hooligans. Renault, McLaren or Ferrari, they could not care less.
So when the “Senna, the movie”, was screened in Madrid, I witnessed how a week after the opening, there were only 4 rows of spectators on a Saturday evening. Very sad. I do not want to think that for those described at the end of the previous paragraph, Senna is only the name of an excellent player of Brazilian ascent that was member of our National Football Team…
That is precisely why Jaime Alguersuari‘s performance was phenomenal, under pressure from a media that was only asking him about the rumours of his eviction from Toro Rosso, after an engine problem that left him almost without laps on Friday, and starting at the 18th place, the youngster from Barcelona delivered a brilliant drive. He finished 8th in a race without retirements, only changed his tyres twice and soaked the pressure from Sutil‘s Force India in the last laps.
A fantastic drive by a man who overcame all odds!
Congratulations Jaime, we wish you to reach that place at Red Bull which you dream about!
Current F1 tracks together with tyres rules and all those gadgets in the cars will need a whole blog themself. The new policy of having races on countries such as India, Bahrain, etc, is only loading the bank accounts of Mr Tilke, local authorities and of course that of the patron saint of all this circus, while tracks as Spa are being considered to have races every other year, hope someone brings some good sense into this new F1, no wonder on your last post you were wondering where was all this going.
As for the race, my expectations laid low, Valencia track is as boring as it can be but some of the new rules made it a bit more exciting than usual, just a bit more, no fireworks yet, please. Vettel is like one of those German appliances, never fails and looks like will last forever, not a single crack, you know I think that he did not deserved the championship last year, but this year he is the fair champion, congratulations, and as for Fernando Alonso, I’m glad to have back the Alonso that grabbed the titles from Shumacher and not the one that got for granted that will get them simply because he was the best in the grid, he is a talented driver as Hamilton and Vettel but he did a really difficult thing; managed to make F1 popular in a country that only cared for Football an F1 was reduce on TV to the Monaco Grand Prix. All non hooligan like fans should be grateful as now F1 is all over the press, even if you despise him as a person. He’s made possible a couple of races in Spain a Team and new drivers such as Alguersuari, ten years ago will you have bet a single penny for the possibility of having a Spanish driver in Ferrari? I just hope Alguersuari makes it to Red Bull, only bad luck is preventing him from getting the reward he deserves.
Now Silverstone, another Red Bull win for sure and there we’ll see if the Ferraris are improving or is just an illusion. Let’s see.
Thank you very much for your acute insight of the current F1 situation. I fully agree that Alonso-mania made Formula 1 much more easy to be followed in Spain.
As for Silverstone, it doesn’t seem the current tyre provider is going to supply the ones that suit best the Ferraris.
We’ll see.