French Grand Prix Review

Magny-Cours was where Ferrari's championship challenge really kicked into gear in 2007, and once again the Nevers circuit proved to be a Maranello playground. Like in Spain earlier this year, the question was always going to be which Ferrari won. And, as was the case in Barcelona, the answer would have been Raikkonen. The Finn did the job in qualifying - he was fuelled two laps lighter than Massa - but more importantly, he was doing the job in the race, building a gap that would negate Felipe's strategic advantage.

And so it would have been a cruise to the flag, cutting the points gap to Massa and Robert Kubica, but instead it came undone as his exhaust pipe did likewise. That he only dropped to second and managed to finish the race without further drama was something of a miracle. Kimi will gain confidence out of his edge over Massa when things have been going smoothly, but he will also be acutely aware of all his lost points over the last three races, and he will be nervous that misfortune will continue to strike.

The trouble for Kimi is that Massa will also be riding high on momentum at the moment. He is the one who has been scoring while Raikkonen hasn't, erasing his two DNFs at the start of the year. He is the one who pinched this win, and the increasing steadiness, consistency and reliability of his driving reflects an inner growing confidence. No driver likes to lead from the front as much as the Brazilian, and he now leads the championship. The odds on a Massa title victory are rightfully shortening with every race.

Felipe now leads Kubica by 48 points to 46, with Raikkonen on 43, and Hamilton still on 38 where he was after Monaco. This race marked the first time Lewis has had two straight non-scores in his short F1 career. Points were always going to be hard to come by after his deserved grid penalty for is Canadian indiscretion, and his life was made even harder by his early drive-through. McLaren switched him from three stops to two, but it was a strategic neverland; it simply decreased his disadvantage.

More telling is Lewis' behaviour before and during the Magny-Cours weekend. On one hand, with every adversity the more defiant his press statements become, almost as if he has to proclaim his self-confidence all the more loudly. But on track, he was ragged in qualifying and even more ragged when caught up behind Nelson Piquet Jnr and others. It betrays a nervous and boggled mind that knows the Ferrari is superior and that he is now ten points behind. No amount of PR chutzpah can hide that.

And McLaren must be wondering whether there is one set of rules to favour Ferrari, one set to burden them as much as possible, and one set for everyone else. Whereas Kimi's flailing exhaust was not met with a black and orange flag, Heikki Kovalainen got docked five grid places himself for blocking Mark Webber in Q1, when Webber safely made it through to Q2 (i.e. the block made no difference) and when it had simply been a case of too many cars converging on the same piece of track at the same time.

Kovalainen showed his worth in the race though, proving that his run of one point from the previous four races had not been indicative of his speed. He caught Piquet napping when they came out from their first stops together, smartly passed Webber on track, leapfrogged Kubica at the second stops, and ran down and almost accounted for Jarno Trulli which would have made it a memorable podium finish had he overtaken the Toyota. But 4th place from 10th on the grid was nonetheless a fine effort.

Kubica and BMW must be hoping that France proves to be an aberration. Here we were, praising BMW for their ability to maintain the front-running pace, and all of a sudden they show up with turn-in understeer and power-down oversteer. The question they will be asking is whether this was a major set-up blunder, or whether it reflects the F1.08's response to tracks like Magny-Cours - the likes of which there will be more as the European season progresses. Kubica's title aspirations depends on the answer.

REJECT OF THE RACE
Jenson Button
Only DNF in the entire field

It is easy to suggest that McLaren and BMW's struggles handed Trulli his podium, his first since Spain 2005, but that is to deny Toyota the credit they deserve. They arrested the slide they were getting into at Istanbul and Monaco with a great double-points finish in Canada and now this, Jarno starting 4th and finishing 3rd completely on merit, and Timo Glock just lacking a bit of race pace here as well. Trulli has now overtaken Webber on count-back for best-of-the-rest status outside the top six drivers in the points.

It was a fantastic and fitting tribute to the late Ove Andersson, but to bring things back to reality, it also remains to be seen whether Toyota can keep this form up. Trulli's pace in the second half of the race was not particularly special, and in the past the team has shown these occasional competitive spurts for one or two races before they retreat into the midfield. If they can maintain this improvement, then they will add to the battle with Red Bull and Renault on the edge of the points, and that will make for good viewing.

Red Bull continue to rack up the points with Webber 6th, and David Coulthard building on his Montreal podium to record a most solid weekend, finishing 9th after starting 7th. We predicted before the season began that the Australian could score up to 25 points if things went well, and he is already on 18 with no sign that Red Bull's pace or reliability is about to wane. Add in Coulthard's six points from Canada, and the team itself is already up to 24, although under some threat from Toyota for 4th in the constructors' title.

That is not to say that there isn't room for improvement though. Webber in particular did the hard yards in and around his pit stops, utilising his strategy to leapfrog Fernando Alonso twice. But both he and DC got off the line poorly, and Mark's pace on full tanks left something to be desired. What he gained over Alonso the first time around he promptly lost thanks to that lurid slide coming out of the last corner, and he also lost track position to Kovalainen early in that second stint as well.

Admittedly, neither did Alonso, but whereas in Piquet's case you put that down to ability, in Fernando's case you put that down to the desperation of a champion trying to make up for the deficiencies of his machine and of his strategy. Renault persist with putting him on a low-fuel strategy in Q3 that gets him grid glory, but you don't need to be a rocket scientist to know that it's going to hurt him in the race. Every Sunday afternoon at the moment feels like a rage against the dying of the light for Fernando.

By contrast, Toro Rosso continue to put Vettel on the heaviest possible fuel load for the first stint, but such was the tightness of the entire field here, it did not pay dividends as it has elsewhere. Sebastian was a chance of making it into Q3 after some startling free practice times, but his failure to do so left him stuck in the midfield. Despite coming close to Vettel in qualifying, Sebastien Bourdais never recovered from an early hit by Jenson Button, and his afternoon simply petered out from there.

But that was nothing compared to the meek weekends endured by both Honda and Williams. Neither have a particularly gleaming record at Magny-Cours; in fact Honda took out 'Reject of the Race' here in 2006, and Williams in 2005. Both were equally undistinguished here. Neither Honda made the Q1 cut, Rubens Barrichello's weekend got worse with a gearbox change, and for being the only DNF in the race after hitting Bourdais, Button walks away with 'Reject of the Race' for his troubles.

Nico Rosberg's ten place grid penalty for his part in the Canadian pit lane fracas made no difference. He was slowest in Q2 anyway, whereas Kazuki Nakajima didn't even get that far, and on race pace the FW30s were nowhere. In this year when they threatened pre-season to challenge the top two or three teams, reality has shown them to be inconsistent from race to race, but on a downward slope overall. It wouldn't surprise to see them and Honda keeping company with Force India at the back more often.

Having said that, Force India are sadly in a league of their own at the tail end, now that Toro Rosso have their Red Bull RB4-clone STR3. Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil were over half a second slower than anyone else in qualifying, and that said it all. The what-might-have-been Monaco sob-story must now be a distant memory. They can only hope that upgrades which they have been testing at Silverstone, including their own engine cover tail fin, might just close the gap to the rest of the field.