Hamilton’s fairytale start to his Grand Prix career continued this weekend as he took pole position in Saturday’s qualifying and led from the start to score his first win in motor racing’s premier series.
“The next dream is obviously to win a Formula One world championship,” said Hamilton.
Others had more of a nightmare weekend. Robert Kubica had a scary moment at the hairpin following contact with the back of Jarno Trulli’s Toyota. The BMW-Sauber bounced off a wall, wiping off all the wings and suspension bits, before coming to rest on the outside of the hairpin. The driver’s tub protecting the driver, as the car rolled and slid across the track. The BMW-Sauber team said their driver had come through without serious injury.
Felipe Massa and Giancarlo Fisichella had a different nightmare; they were disqualified for running a red light at the exit of pit lane during a safety car period.
Massa said there are so many lights on pit row that he did not look for the lights, while Fisichella said, “I was concentrating on Kubica who was alongside me, and so focused on beating him that I didn’t see the red light”.
Fernando Alonso, the reigning World Champion, tried a move around the outside of Hamilton going into the first turn at the start of the race, and spun, the first of four spins at that corner.
This week the McLaren team got the pit stop strategy very wrong. Perhaps mindful of the media fuss from Monaco, chose not to call Alonso in early during a stint and then safety car period closed the pits. To avoid running out of fuel on the track Alonso had to pit, and he copped a 10 second stop and go penalty. At Monte Carlo, the media criticised McLaren for their conservative pit stop strategy as the team boss explained, “because of the different strategies we needed to follow to cope with a potential deployment of the Safety Car”, said Ron Dennis.
Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is another track where safety cars are common due to the problems of removing stranded cars. Maybe McLaren should have ignored the media and followed their successful Monaca strategy. Alonso suffered further, when he lost a position, and a vital world championship point, to a Super Aguri driven by Takuma Sato.
“During the last few laps I had a great feeling because I was able to race with the front runners and I was able to confidently overtake,” said their driver, Takuma Sato.
Meanwhile Hamilton put on anther display of McLaren-Mercedes superiority.
“I had no problems during the race at all, a few safety cars which sort of made it a little bit boring at some point but as soon as we got going, it was exciting again,” said Hamilton.
Hamilton’s mature approach showed in his post race comments.
“At the moment we have to be realistic again. It’s always good to bear in mind that I’m still a rookie and this is my first season. There are going to be some hard times. I hope that there aren’t but it’s just bound to happen, it’s just the way it goes in this business and there’ll be good days and bad days,” said Hamilton.
The win puts him in the lead of the championship, eight points clear of Alonso.
The BMW-Sauber team continues to improve and even though they lost Kubica in that big shunt, Nick Heidfeld brought the other car home for the team’s best ever finish, in second place.
 |
 |
 |
 |
