2008 Bahrain Grand Prix [April 6th]

[darkfinal]

One day, I'm going to put darkfinal and <_Spike_> into a room, lock it, and let you both just fight it out.

Shush. Dark rooms tend to show my touchy-gropy side...

 

[mipuumal]

That incident was all Lewis' fault. He was in the slipstream of Alonso and just ran straight in to him, if there had been any lift from Alonso it would've shown clearly on the onboard video.

Also what was with him shaking his fist at everyone, maybe he's caught Massa's bug.

Good job Ferrari & BMW, Heikki pace in the last stint was a surprise, seems like McLaren should steer clear of those white stripes and just stick with the hard tyres.

 

[Bram Turismo]

This is just as expected. An all Ferrari dominating weekend. But BMW did surprise everyone, especially outpacing the McLarens! Even though Kubica didn't exactly get that win, but achieving 2 podiums in a row (and 3 for BMW) is a great achievement in itself. 👍 The battles pretty boring, only 1 or 2 that really stands out. 3 retirements doesn't really say a lot about an atrocious race. But this statement really says it all about the race.



I feel asleep when the race has 20 laps to go and woke up when the race was 5 laps to the finish. 👎 But again, is it me or whenever Ferrari dominates the weekend, the race is pretty dull...... I practically just stupefied by this.

What?

Did we really expect anything else to happen this weekend? I did not, BMW had a great pace, incredibly even, but never enough to challenge Ferrari for the win. However, I can see their consistency getting them a sweet spot in the constructors championship though 👍

Also, Heikki's pace in the last stint was incredible, if only he could've carried that throughout the entire race

Also, boring? I had a great time seeing those drivers controlling their cars out of those corners without any traction control, especially the oversteer when braking into the corners on the dusty pieces of track 👍

Not so easy to dodge when someone's arsing about in the middle of the track these days. Bet if it was vice versa it'd all be Hamilton's fault.

It was all Hamilton's fault. I'm not sure what happened at the start, but Hamilton drove far too close and aggresive behind Alonso. He knew his Mclaren is so much more faster, he should've waited for one of the straights to make a manouvre. Hamilton just blew his own race.


On the race then;

Great job by Massa, he has been dominating the entire weekend. It really seems Bahrein is his kind of thing. Let's hope Massa keeps up this kind of form for a perhaps nice battle between Mclaren and Ferrari in Barcelona?

BMW did a magnificent job as well. I knew Kubica was lighter then the Ferraris, but not so much lighter. He hold on the Kimi quite well though, but when it had to happen, Kimi blew the BMW's away.

Great job by Trulli, what a start! Too bad Glock couldn't score a point as well, Toyota keeps getting in better and better form now. I actually thought Trulli could challenge Heikki in the second stint, but I guess Heikki just fell asleep there Toyota has a habit if doing well in Barcelona, hopefully they can keep up their form, and claim that 4th place in the constructors 👍

Nice job by the Red Bull team, or rather Webber. Coulthard had a busy time playing with Button there

Williams was rather dissapointing today methinks...like, where's that winter testing form gone to?

 

[Muzaffar]

What?

Did we really expect anything else to happen this weekend? I did not, BMW had a great pace, incredibly even, but never enough to challenge Ferrari for the win. However, I can see their consistency getting them a sweet spot in the constructors championship though 👍

Also, Heikki's pace in the last stint was incredible, if only he could've carried that throughout the entire race

Also, boring? I had a great time seeing those drivers controlling their cars out of those corners without any traction control, especially the oversteer when braking into the corners on the dusty pieces of track 👍

Hmm..... I think we are not in agreement here. I find it boring when Ferrari dominates the weekend. I know that the midfield as well as the backmarkers have some battles as well, but the lead should be where the fight is. That means either a McLaren/Ferrari battle for 1st/3rd with BMW in the mix. Sure Kimi did dominate the race in Sepang, but the battle between Trulli and Hamilton (as well as DC and Alonso) did make up for it. 👍

The race in Bahrain on the other hand..... well lets just say a little bit "off" if you know what I mean. The start was fantastic (no doubt) and the middle part of the race was fun to watch, but throughout the end, it just gets boring.... I mean seeing Hamilton took 3 laps to overtake Fisi isn't what I call "exciting" and the fact that he showed no respect to the other drivers just makes me mad. However, McLaren did find some pace at the end of the race, but I guess even that doesn't help save them from their poor result.

Either way, we don't really need to agree on anything here. Its just that we all have preferences and have our own opinion about the race. So thats basically my point of view of the race.

 

[Sureboss]

That incident was all Lewis' fault. He was in the slipstream of Alonso and just ran straight in to him, if there had been any lift from Alonso it would've shown clearly on the onboard video.

Also what was with him shaking his fist at everyone, maybe he's caught Massa's bug.

Good job Ferrari & BMW, Heikki pace in the last stint was a surprise, seems like McLaren should steer clear of those white stripes and just stick with the hard tyres.

You won't get slipstream like that only doing 100+. Lewis was accelerating more, I don't think Alonso was full throttle.

Crap race. F1 needs to get out of being monotonous, it's got a predictable pattern of how pit stops work and what happens between them. The only interesting bit is the first 15 laps. After that, you pretty much know what's going to happen.

 

[nitro_2005]

I found today's race rather boring. It turned into one of those long processions of cars you see sometimes. Lewis ruined his race on lap 2, the Ferraris ran away with it, only 3 people retired, and there was virtually no passing. I got so bored, I ended up reading a magazine near the end because I wanted to look at something more interesting.

Can we please have something a little less tedious in Barcelona?

 

[Motominded]

Great race on a great track.

Hamilton Sad to see him not fighting for the front. I think him vs Massa would have been something to see. But then again, he has only himself to blame for the shunt with Alonzo.

Kimi ~ proved again that his careful driving got him this far so good for him on talking the championship lead.

Massa ~ he did mess up in the second race but let us not forget it was an engine failure that lost him Australia.

Alonzo ~ once again proved his skill with a 2nd rate car that had a ruined wing. The thoughts of him taking Massa"s job at Ferrari are not to be thought of lightly. I wonder how he would get along with Kimi though.

Kubica ~ Very good drive to 3rd. I was pulling for him to win but the BMW is not yet ready.

Catalunya is so far away. Oh well atleast WSBK is today.

 

[Patrik]

congrats to massa and ferrari, hope Kimi to win the championship and it looks pretty bright huh?

 

[mipuumal]

You won't get slipstream like that only doing 100+. Lewis was accelerating more, I don't think Alonso was full throttle.

Crap race. F1 needs to get out of being monotonous, it's got a predictable pattern of how pit stops work and what happens between them. The only interesting bit is the first 15 laps. After that, you pretty much know what's going to happen.

Sorry but it was all Hamsterton's fault, Alonso ran too wide on the exit of turn 2 and lost momentum, Hamilton for some reason wanted more slipstream instead of going for the pass and ran in to the back of him.

I have no doubt in my mind that Alonso did anything wrong there.

 

[Sureboss]

I find it hard to believe that Lewis just went into the back of Alonso like that. There are mistakes, but that was too big a 'mistake' for any decent F1 driver for my view of it.

 

[Muzaffar]

I find it hard to believe that Lewis just went into the back of Alonso like that. There are mistakes, but that was too big a 'mistake' for any decent F1 driver for my view of it.

He is only in his second year in Formula 1. He is still considered "inexperience" even though he was 2nd in the WDC last year. Lets not forget how he "ditched" his car in Shanghai and how he lost the WDC in Brazil. He is just a rookie in my eyes and as good as he maybe, is bound to make a mistake somewhere......

 

[Sureboss]

It wasn't his fault in Brazil, that was a weird mechanical fault. The team strategy left him out on the canvas, you try driving a car on canvas rather than rubber and see where you go.

There's inexperience and there's stupidity. Lewis has been racing in general for probably 10 years, the incident looked ridiculous and I just don't think that he would do something that idiotic. The pace at which he caught Alonso was bigger than any potential acceleration difference between their cars.

 

[darkfinal]

It wasn't his fault in Brazil, that was a weird mechanical fault. The team strategy left him out on the canvas, you try driving a car on canvas rather than rubber and see where you go.

There's inexperience and there's stupidity. Lewis has been racing in general for probably 10 years, the incident looked ridiculous and I just don't think that he would do something that idiotic. The pace at which he caught Alonso was bigger than any potential acceleration difference between their cars.

Well, we all saw him screw up at the start, run into Alonso and let his nerves push him out of the track afterwards. And the interviewer from TVC (Catalonia TV) said Hamilton just stepped out the car, pushed a photographer aside and walked off, showing his bad temper in situations like this.

He just had a bad day. Now tell me of a driver who never has, if there's any.

 

[Sureboss]

I didn't say he didn't make mistakes. Just to me the collision with Alonso didn't look right, it looked even too simple for any F1 driver to make.

 

[Lee]

'Nando is innocent..

"Autosport.com has seen the telemetry data of Alonso's exit from the first corner, and it shows that the Spaniard was flat on the throttle from the exit, did not touch the brake and gained speed in a totally predictable manner."

 

[darkfinal]

I didn't say he didn't make mistakes. Just to me the collision with Alonso didn't look right, it looked even too simple for any F1 driver to make.

Just like... Doornbos? Or was it Albers? Hitting Schumacher's backside. Or was it the other way around?

And what about that Red Bull also crashing against the back of a BMW, and flying dangerously close to the white's helmet? Perhaps those two happened when entering a turn, but still, I recall seeing lots of frontwings flying for little silly impacts.

 

[Diego440]

Or like when Ralf blasted off Barrichello's Ferrari in 2003-ish?

Hamilton did a Sato

 

[Lee]

Looking back, it seems like Hamilton just caught the slipstream and forgot to turn out of it..

From 38s on..

 

[Roo]

Can we please have something a little less tedious in Barcelona?

Hello? An exiting race in Barcelona?

The race was better than Malaysia, but still not exactly wonderful. Good to see Kubica on the podium again, and BMW first in the Constructor's championship!

Whilst the race was dull, hopefully Ferrari won't run off with the championship this year - after 3 races, we've got 6 drivers within 10 points of the top of the table. Fingers crossed this state of affairs continues.

Major British facepalm today.

 

[Alex.]

From the Hamilton incident, there was no sudden slowing of Alonso, Hamilton was gradually catching him and simply did not move out of the way.

 

[Diego440]

I've found that most tracks that are also grounds for testing turn out the most boring races... Monza, Bahrain, Barcelona. Inevitably, these and the other tracks where overtaking is hard will make for boring GPs, whenever there's not much crashing

 

[Bram Turismo]

Or like when Ralf blasted off Barrichello's Ferrari in 2003-ish?

That was 2002

Remember when Sato went straight at Austria that year, and crashed into one of the Saubers? Now that looked pretty bad

 

[Appie]

That was 2002

Remember when Sato went straight at Austria that year, and crashed into one of the Saubers? Now that looked pretty bad

That was Heidfeld he crashed into and it was the other way around, Hedfeld crashed into Sato.

 

[Bram Turismo]

That was Heidfeld he crashed into and it was the other way around, Hedfeld crashed into Sato.

Sorry my bad 👍

 

[Sureboss]

'Nando is innocent..

"Autosport.com has seen the telemetry data of Alonso's exit from the first corner, and it shows that the Spaniard was flat on the throttle from the exit, did not touch the brake and gained speed in a totally predictable manner."

That's what I was looking for, thanks Bee 👍

 

[Dazzla]

Sad to see Hamilton get a bad finish once again, I was hoping for him to win the race. As soon as the race started and Hamilton had that sluggish start, I knew that was the end of his run. When he hit Alonso from behind that only made things worse...

Good race from Ferrari, although did anyone see the interviews? Raikkonnen looked very upset considering he finished "a good 2nd place"..

 

[Diego440]

Good race from Ferrari, although did anyone see the interviews? Raikkonnen looked very upset considering he finished "a good 2nd place"..

Kimi shows no emotion... he looks exactly the same when he wins as when he DNFs, except he shoves track officials a bit more

 

[Appie]

Sorry my bad 👍

NP

 

[kjb]

Nice race by Massa. Hopefully the press will get off his back for awhile. BMW had a good race also. I think Hamilton was a little over eager in running into the back of Alonso. It will be interesting to see how he will respond at Barcelona.

 

[Rocket Punch]

Looking back, it seems like Hamilton just caught the slipstream and forgot to turn out of it..

From 38s on..

Yeah, its not Alonso's fault! Like Martin said, he "failed to accelerate".

The fact that Renault had such a slow car causes the incident.....So blame Renault