World Cup II Played out at Magny-Cours
World Cup: Italy wins over France.
Magny-Cours F1 “World Cup:” Italy wins over France… again.
It wasn’t supposed to be that way. After all it was the French Grand Prix. Home of Renault. Home of Michellin.
But there was a home invasion by the Prancing Horses of Maranello as Michael Schumacher romped to his 4th win of the season, 88th in his career and set a record as the first driver to win the same GP eight times.
It wasn’t what the Francophiles had wished for on the 100th anniversary of Renault’s first victory in the French GP at Le Mans in 1906. And it wasn’t close to Alonzo’s dominating win in last years version. The added indignity of Ferrari’s team boss, Jean Todt, being of French heritage can’t be sitting very well either.
As it was Alonzo only lost 2 points of his lead after passing Ferrari’s Massa late to gain second behind Schumacher with Massa hanging on for the third step.
Toyota’s Ralf Schumacher was fourth, ahead of Kimi Raikkonen, and Giancarlo Fisichella was sixth in the second Renault, with Pedro de la Rosa seventh and back on the F1 score sheet as Juan Pablo Montoya’s replacement. Nick Heidfeld took the final point for BMW Sauber.
Conspicuous by their absence in finishing order are the Hondas. After a dreadful qualifying performance with Jenson plagued with traffic and Rubins failing to make the Q2 cut, both Barrichello and Button suffered engine failures of one sort or another. The only “bright spot” is they both go into Germany with fresh powerplants.
Just a thought, but… wonder if Honda is thinking about dropping their support of the proposed €40-million-euro ($50.7m) golden parachute for independent teams to help defray engine costs? At the rate the team is going they may need to be a recipient vice contributor to the fund.
Renault engineering director Pat Symonds has promised his team will fight back with an “aggressive update” to the Renault at the next Grand Prix in Germany. However, Symonds warned that the rest of the season would still come down to which tire manufacturer brings the best tire to each round.
Something that illustrious and omni-present Peter would agree with.
The next stop for the F1 Circus is 30 July at Schumacher’s second home event of the year, the first being N
Germany, Italy, France, World Cup? Reminds me of that classic John Clease episode of Faulty Towers “Don’t mention the war!”
Unlike other manufacturers, when Renault says they are going to introduce a new spec engine or aero revision & predict a lift in performance, they usually deliver. Ironically, as Williams will attest, the French Grand Prix was always the traditional mid season launch of anything new in the engine programme, I’ll laugh my head off if they throw it back in Michaels face on home turf at the next race. The joker in this equation, IMO, is the tyre manufacturers, it seems that if your rubber supplier gets it right the race belongs to you for the weekend, Had Massa not blocked FA last night would he have caught & passed MS? Hard to say, maybe pass him in the pit stops, but I’m not convinced.
As your subtle dig at Honda wanting to pull out of the “fighting fund”, to be fair they are supporting a independent with engines so maybe they do deserve a break, god knows the factory team is going nowhere. LOL
BTW, where do you get off calling me illustrious and omni-present, I will look them big fancy words up & get back to you.:-)
Hey, I had to look those words up myself.
So where’s the problem?
Relative to Honda, I only half jokingly mentioned that Super Aguri may have a car finish higher than Honda once their new chassis debuts. And why not, they have a Honda engine, if they have someone with half a brain in their aero department (unlike Honda) they may just top them in one race before the year is out.
I hope to see that just to read what level of whinning Jenson will stoop to, he may even quit the team and the sport outright and go race in NASCAR too. Oh Juan, the possibilities you’ve created!!!
Don’t even joke about Jense in NASCAR George.
They already have Robbie “Crash” Gordon there and he does enough cryin’ for the entire field of 43.