intrigue were in abundance as was the lack of ontrack action. The
weekend started with the shadow of the espionage scandal hanging over
like a thick cloud and ended with the atmosphere in the Mclaren team
totally breaking down. It all happened in Q3, Hamilton went out followed
by Kimi and Alonso. Apparently, he was supposed to let Alonso through,
but that would have meant letting Kimi through too. So, he didn't and
Alonso had to slow down to get a clean run. With around 1:30 to go,
Alonso was in for his last tyre stop and Lewis was right behind. Though
Alonso was given the all-clear, he refused to leave staying on for a few
more seconds. This meant that Lewis wasn't able to complete his out-lap
before the flag came down. Alonso just made it through and promptly set
pole. This didn't go well with Lewis who exchanged a lot of swear words
with Ron Dennis over the radio. Later, we found out that the stewards
had taken a dim view of the incident and docked Fernando 5 places, which
effectively finished his chances for the race.
The person who benefited most was Kimi, who moved from 3rd to 2nd. More
importantly, he moved to the clean side of the track and was able to get
past Quick Nick at the start. From then on, the race was from
snoresville. The interesting thing was that people predicted that
Mclaren would run away, but instead it looked like the Ferrari was the
faster car and Kimi would have easily won had he started ahead of Lewis.
I also feel that Ferrari should have tried something different, maybe
converted it to a 3 stop, put Kimi out on hard tyres in the second stop
and told him to go for it a la Schumi. Chances are that he would have
still finished second, but atleast he could have tried. Maybe, with all
the retirements, they preferred to have a safe second instead of a
potentially risky strategy.
The championship now looks like Hamilton's to lose. The next few tracks
(Turkey, Monza, Spa, Suzuka, Shanghai and Brazil) should heavily favour
Ferrari. Even assuming that they score 1-2 everywhere and Kimi wins the
next five, Hammy would only need to finish 3rd to keep up Kimi and take
it to the final round at Brazil. Massa is one further point back and
since Kimi now seems to have the upper hand in the team, it's hard to
see Ferrari swinging his way. Alonso is the closest just 7 points back.
But, Hamilton seems to be just as fast as him everywhere and since I
expect Mclaren to fight for 3rd and 4th everywhere, even if he beats him
in every single race, he will still not be able to catch him. A
retirement for any of the top four could change everything though. Any
way it goes, it promises to be a fitting end to what has been an
enthralling season. And we haven't heard the last of the spy scandal
yet...
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