Sunday, May 10, 2009 Y 10:31 PM
♫ Alonso - My driver of the day ♫
A huge chunk of biasness aside, Alonso is my driver of the Spanish Grand Prix.
I was pretty disappointed to know that Alonso was the lightest of the top 10 after qualify. It was probably yet another attempt to score a good position with a light-fuel strategy to give his Spanish fans something to cheer about. Yet with that, he only managed P8 in the final rounds of qualifying. Renault have improved as compared to the first race of the season, but not much, and definitely not enough.
This just goes to show the poor performance of the car.
Just when it seemed like what will be a tough race for him, he actually managed a 5th (with a little bit of luck), right behind the dominating Brawn GP and Red Bull contender.
For a mundane racetrack (the Catalunya circuit is tough on over-taking), Alonso actually managed to inject some life and action to it.
He took the opportunity after the safety car went out, and battled Mark Webber for 5th position, though eventually losing out to the latter. Then it was greeting his old time teammate-cum-rival, Lewis Hamilton, with what almost seemed like a nudge, just as he exited the pit lane. With a bit of luck (and bad luck to Massa), he charged up to Massa till the final lap with a 16s gap and went outside of him, taking 5th place in style.
My hero aside, Mark Webber come up with a quiet and surprise 3rd. It totally caught me off-guard, and the next thing I know, he was up on 3rd. Good call on the early first pit, and running a longer second stint I must say.
What can Massa and Kimi do? It must be really frustrating to finally have a car with good pace, and yet face ridiculous problems. Wrong call (again) in qualifying, the car breaking down just after a few laps and not enough fuel to run till the end of the race? After what seemed like a promising start, Ferrari have left the fans in yet another disappointing week.
Although Massa did well in the race to grab that 3rd spot from Vettel at the start of the race, hanging on throughout the race, and not giving up till the last minute of the race.
Great strategy call from Button too. It was exciting to watch the Brawn playing strategy games for their drivers for top position.
Side note: I got pretty annoyed with some of the post-race reports. Then again, I should have been all too familiar that not every reports are 100% accurate. The Renaults did not have KERS on their car, and will probably not for the next few races. Those reports need to get their facts right and stop saying that Alonso attempted on Webber using KERS.
Tssk. Media nowadays. We should know better.
All in all, this race had been one of the more exciting race yet.
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