Turkish Grand Prix Review

It is to state the bleeding obvious to say that this is one of Massa's favoured tracks. He just seems to get himself and his car dialled in to the Istanbul layout better than anyone else. Apart from Malaysia, every race this year has been won by someone controlling the race from the front, and so once Massa got away cleanly from pole, and once it was clear that Hamilton was three-stopping, Felipe did what he needed to do, made sure he had enough gap to withstand the McLaren, and put himself right back into title reckoning.

Of course, the sceptics including ourselves will say that that's two of his three best-performed tracks gone already in Bahrain and Turkey, and only in the season-ending Brazilian GP can you already put your money on him. But the point is that Massa has maximised his haul in those events, and if he proves that he is able to lift his game at other circuits where he doesn't seem to have a natural advantage, and consistently mix it with Raikkonen and Hamilton, then he is very much still in the hunt.

If Kimi was into mind games, he would have wanted to make a double effort to beat Massa in Istanbul. But all weekend he seemed content to play second fiddle. Call it Iceman coolness and unflappability if you like; some will say it shows a lack of killer instinct. Two laps' more fuel in Q3 did not account for the gap to Massa, and once he had touched Heikki Kovalainen at the first turn and damaged his front wing, he retreated into cruise and collect mode. More Prost than Senna or Schumacher, if you like.

It was one of those have-to-be-on-it-all-race drives, a bit like Schumacher at Hungary in 1998. That in fact Bridgestone advised McLaren to put Lewis on a three-stopper to avoid a repeat of last year's puncture took away some of the psychological effect of the performance - it wasn't a bold strategic call after all - but the drive was still a big statement that he and McLaren are able to pressure Ferrari all the way. Ferrari won't be feeling as comfortable leaving Istanbul as they were leaving Barcelona.

But could McLaren have matched Ferrari on a traditional two-stopper? We will never know because Kovalainen, who had qualified so brilliantly on the front row, made a poor start and got that puncture at the first corner courtesy of his compatriot Raikkonen. That meant he had to burn from the stern, passing Adrian Sutil, Sebastien Bourdais, Nelson Piquet Jnr, Timo Glock (twice), Jenson Button, David Coulthard and Nico Rosberg along the way.

His battle with Rosberg was particularly riveting, a criss-cross match-up throughout the last few corners and down the front straight. It was a combative recovery from Heikki, but in vain. Conventional wisdom says that you always fill up during an unscheduled stop, but when the Finn was topped up early on, all it did was put him out-of-sync with everyone else, needing a splash-and-dash at the end that dropped him out of the top 10. With only 14 points to Raikkonen's 35, is he out of title contention already?

In Q3, that's because he tends to run a significantly heavier fuel load than the Pole, but that just means he's not particularly competitive. In Malaysia he was only 7th quickest, and in the last two races Nick has started 9th. That puts him at a massive track position disadvantage during the first stint, and it has resulted in him not being able to get anywhere close to Kubica who has had the advantage of clearer running. Whilst Robert has lifted his game in 2008, Heidfeld has dropped the ball a bit.

Renault's super Spain effort was not replicated in Turkey. Instead, they went back to where they were before, which must be galling for Fernando Alonso. Especially when he again ran in Q3 with a low tank and still could not qualify higher than 7th. That put him at the mercy of Heidfeld at the first stop, and Renault's horsepower deficiency was also evident in the ease with which Raikkonen got past in the early laps. There's just no quantum leap in performance in sight.

Piquet's problems, though, are not just to do with average machinery. After getting into Q3 in Barcelona, he too was back to where he was before, that is, he was struggling. He missed the Q1 cut and made another mistake in the race, although he put a good pass on Button. He's proving to be the type who has the pace in testing and practice, but when the pressure's on he finds it difficult to deliver. It's one thing for Renault to have a driver who doesn't trouble Alonso, but they need someone who can at least contribute.

REJECT OF THE RACE
Giancarlo Fisichella
Third 1st-lap Turkey shunt in three years!

Webber has now matched his entire 2007 tally within five races, although his fourth-straight points finish might have been a touch disappointing having started 6th. His first stop and middle stint were both overly long. It meant that he couldn't stay ahead of Heidfeld nor get past Alonso at the first stops, and he fell off the pace so much in his 26-lap middle stint that he had no chance of challenging the BMW and Renault at the second stops despite pitting several laps later than both of them.

Williams scored 9 points in Australia, but only 4 since, and on the form they have shown in the last few races their season will continue to be a slow grind of picking up scraps here and there in the tight midfield war. Rosberg didn't make it into Q3 but a good start from the clean side of the track plus Kovalainen's puncture put him into 8th early, and that's pretty much where he stayed for the rest of the afternoon. With Red Bull's current form, and Alonso putting in 110%, it's hard to see Nico doing much better.

After his excellent effort in Spain, Kazuki Nakajima, now Japan's only hope on the driving front, couldn't repeat it in Turkey, missing the Q1 cut because Super Aguri's departure now meant that only the top 15 survived into Q2. Kazuki's roller coaster learning curve continued into his very brief race, the innocent victim of Giancarlo Fisichella's brain fade. Monaco will be an even greater challenge for this very unpolished diamond.

Glock had a troubled Q2 and never recovered in the race. He hasn't had an awful start to his full-time F1 career by any means, but he has also yet to show any particular spark. Is that a consequence of driving for a team like Toyota, or is it just that Toyota like signing faceless journeymen? The Cologne-based team started the season relatively brightly, but the worrying thing is that they seem to be falling back from race to race, and as another season starts meandering you wonder what's the point of it all.

There was no repeat of Honda's Barcelona heroics, and in fact the RA108s were positively off the pace in the race here, although that was largely because they were on a one-stop strategy. Rubens Barrichello simply couldn't keep up in his 257th race weekend (although, contrary to what Rubens would like to claim, he is not up to Riccardo Patrese's 256 race starts), while Button's efforts were undone when he was passed on Piquet and Kovalainen on track. The one-stop tactic was simply too stodgy.

At Toro Rosso, nothing seems to consistently go right. This time Sebastian Vettel out-qualified Bourdais, only to cop another early mishap, this time a puncture, and then a refuelling rig problem caused an extra unscheduled stop. At least he finished, even if last. It was Bourdais' turn instead to retire from a mechanical failure. In an encouraging sign for the Frenchman though, he blamed the Force India drivers for missing the Q1 cut. Seb expects to get through to Q2, and that confidence is good for him and the team.

More ridiculous still was his attempt to sheepishly attribute blame to someone else afterwards, and for all this we award him 'Reject of the Race' this time around. But with Super Aguri no longer present, and Toro Rosso likely to improve, one wonders what this will do to Force India's mentality as they now find themselves right at the back. Numerically they might find themselves in the same position, but now the perception is that they are 'coming last' rather than 'nipping at the midfield'.

Finally, a word on Super Aguri. By the time of their demise, in reality the team was no longer tenable without sponsors, without much support from Honda, and without financial backers, now that Magma had pulled out and the strength of the Weigl package was questionable. Honda's reluctance to keep the team afloat any further, with the future of Formula One being a customer car-free zone, was understandable in and of itself, but in the context of Super Aguri's history was a rather saddening indictment.

One recalls that Honda backed Super Aguri's creation to keep Takuma Sato in F1, but once Sato's star waned, and once customer cars went off the agenda, Super Aguri got dumped. It feels like the team had been taken for a ride, along with their fans, especially when the outfit and its devotees were amongst the most spirited. Of course, some will say that that enthusiasm smacked of naivety in the face of realities, but surely that kind of innocence was a welcome thing in this all-too-commercialised world.