Le Grand Prix du France

Race

It was an eventful French Grand Prix partly because of the penalties suffered by the McLaren team (again). Kovalainen drove superbly to finish fourth while Lewis languished out of the points. Up front Massa and Raikkonen dominated for a convincing one-two.

Ferrari in fine fettle

This race was always going to go the way of the Tifosi. The red car has dominated here for the best part of the last decade and with McLaren being penalised and BMW off the pace the race was no contest.

Until halfway through it looked as though Kimi was cruising to his third win of the season. Instead a broken exhaust reduced his engine power by 50-70bhp and meant less traction out of the corners. That allowed Massa to pass and Raikkonen had to nurse his car home in second.

As has been constantly repeated all weekend, this was a Ferrari track. Actually McLaren weren't too far off the pace — it was the tight chicane in sector 3 where the Scuderia really drew an advantage. In the first couple of sectors the McLaren was an even match.

The team goes to Silverstone with their heads up. That is also a medium/high downforce track in a similar mould to Magny-Cours. Expect Kimi and Felipe to start as favourites in Northamptonshire.

McLaren and Penalties

It is now beyond a joke — the Woking-based outfit managed to pick up three penalties in a single race. If someone in silver overalls does anything as much as breathe he'll be penalised.

Hamilton's penalty in Montreal was probably fair, although open to debate. Kovalainen's five place demotion for blocking Webber in qualifying was unwarranted. No harm was done.

As for Hamilton's pass on Vettel that was a very marginal penalty at best. The Briton was comfortably past the German when he went on to the marbles and had to correct by cutting a sliver off the chicane. McLaren haters will say he cut the corner (and he did to some extent) but to levy the penalty the stewards have to be convinced he did because of excess speed, rather than getting on to marbles — from the on board footage I'm not sure it is possible to say.

Of course the stewards have different footage. This is another gripe I have with F1 and FOM — why not make that footage available to the public so we can all make our minds up and not point accusing fingers at the stewards.

Either way some blame lies at the feet of the McLaren team. As Martin Brundle pointed out Ron should have been on the phone to race director, Charlie Whiting, to ask whether Hamilton should cede the place. According to reports no call was made.

One gets the feeling it won't be the last McLaren penalty of the season.

Toyota up, BMW down

BMW have got to be a little worried at this point. They were woeful this weekend. Despite Kovalainen being held up for most of his first stint he was able to pass Kubica at the second set of pit stops.

Not only that but Toyota and Jarno Trulli were comfortably the third fastest team on the day. Kubica has mentioned he thinks that Toyota and Renault are catching up with BMW. Ron Dennis' prophesy that BMW wouldn't be able to keep up with the required development pace is looking more and more prescient.

Of course it could just be a one-off — Silverstone will tell.

Kudos to Toyota and Trulli for delivering a competitive car and drive. The result was amplified by the McLaren misdemeanours but it was still an excellent drive. Trulli may be considered slightly fortunate not to incur a penalty himself for forcing Heikki very wide on the penultimate lap. The Finn looked to have the pace to overtake the Italian but was expertly (some may say illegally) blocked.

Piquet scores some points

Perhaps the story of the day was Nelson Piquet who managed to score two World Championship points. Even more surprisingly he took advantage of a rare Alonso error on the second to last lap to leapfrog the team leader.

Despite Piquet's good fortune the Renault was the disappointment of the day. After Alonso qualified fourth many expected a competitive race but he came in four laps before anyone else.

BMW will breathe a sigh of relief — the French manufacturer won't be challenging them any time soon.

The stewards decisions

The stewards decisions become more blatantly biased by the minute it seems. Since Max appointed Allan Donnelly to 'assist' the stewards in coming to quicker decisions at the start of the season it seems the decision making process has been reduced to questioning the colour of the cars.

I cannot imagine that Lewis Hamilton wold have been alllowed to drive round for lap after lap with an exhaust pipe hanging off the car.

Lewis got a penalty for keeping a position by cutting a chicane. Jarno kept a position by pushing Heikki off the track albeit only by a foot or two. How can it be considered more serious to miss a chicane than to nudge a car off the track? Imagine that was Hamilton in Trulli's postion and Raikkonen in Kovalainen's. I think we would have had a different decision.

We managed for decades without a drive through penalty so it is ludicrous that they are now being handed out like Smarties.

I cannot fathom how Heikki could be accused of blocking Mark Webber. He did everything he could to get out of the way but the incident happend in Q2 and both Mark and himself made it to Q3 so it did not affect qualifying positions at all.

The only decision the stewards have had to make in the past two races where the decision was absolutely crystal clear was to show the black and orange flag to Raikkonen. No matter how you look at it that decision could only possibly go one way if there was a fair decision making process and it was decidedly not the way it went on Sunday. How can the FIA possibly justify not even telling Ferrari to remove the offending piece during their routine pitstop?

Sorry guys but Lewis was out

Sorry guys but Lewis was out of order on that pass via cutting the corner... if Macca hadn't suffered other penalties no-one would have blinked an eye... and Heikki just let Trulli retake when he "did a Lewis" later on in the race.... he knew he'd gained an unfair advantage by braking so late that he had to cut the corner... why couldn't Lewis do the same... it was pretty obvious...

Heikki was unfortunate but is the rule that if you get in someone's way but it has no effect you get off a penalty?... or that if you get in someone's way everyone knows what happens...

Kimi got his drive through in Monaco... how did it hurt anyone that Ferrari had a "nut" problem on the grid... no advantage to Ferrari... but rules is rules...

By the same token you can

By the same token you can also ask why is it always Mclaren that are disputing their penalties, why must it always be a controversy?

Lewis himself said that he would have crashed into Vettel had he not cutted the chicane, and Vettel thought the penalty was fair, what about his opinion doesn't it count for anything? The problem is the pass wouldn't have sticked if he didn't cut the the chicane. Heikki's penalty was a bit unfortunate. Lewis and properly Mclaren should take a leave out of Heikki's book he didn't complain or questioned the penalty, he accepted it. (And he a reasonable job during the race)

All drivers sometimes receive penalties that at times seems unfair, a good example is Kubica last year in Japan. You can also ask why are Mclaren always putting themselves in position to receive penalties?

Kimi received a drive through penalty in Monaco for not having his tyres fitted in advance. Ferrari only missed the cut off time by 2 seconds. Ferrari could have stated afterwards that the penalty was unfair. They could have said something along the lines off that it was only 2 seconds, technically 2 seconds isn't really over the time 1 minute can be seen as over the time. They could also have said that if it wasn't for the penalty, Kimi could have scored more points and he wouldn't have been stuck behind Sutil. But they didn't, all of them accepted it without saying a word afterwards. In every situation you can say many things, but it doesn't really change anything.

At the moment Mclaren seems to be concentrating on the wrong things. After every race it seems like they are trying to convince everyone that they did noting wrong, and they could have won if only....

It seems like the PR agenda is stipulated to always show everyone that they are always right and that they never make mistakes. Somewhere along the line they should admit their mistakes review them, learn from them, and move on. At this moment it seems like they are always concentrating on all the wrongs done against them and what could have been, instead of just quietly moving on to the next race. Even some of the die hard Mclaren fans are starting to doubt their approach.

The differsnce with the

The differsnce with the Ferrari penalty is that three minutes is three minutes. It is a clear fact and can't be disputed. My argument is that Lewis had completed the pass before he screwed up and went off road. Many drivers miss chicanes and are not penalised and in this case there sould not have been a penalty.

All the penalty decisions over the weekend were debateable. You could argue reasonably that Lewis should have been penalised or equally you could argue that the pass was complete and he did not gain. You could argue that Heikki held up Webber or that he did everything he could to get out of his way and since they both made it through to Q3 it made no difference to anything.

Equally you could argue that Trulli pushed Heikki off the road when Heikki tried to overtake him or that it was just a racing incident. It is not unreasonable to argue either side of any of these incidents but it seems odd that the stewards as they often do ruled against McLaren in every single one of them.

The only incident that was absolutely not questionable is that Raikkonen should have been shown the black and orange flag. Like his penalty at Monaco it is a matter of fact. There was a lump of metal flailing around and as such he should have been flagged but the stewards decided that an exhaust pipe flailing around was not hazardous. That is very questionable interpretation of the facts.

McLaren got penalised in every debatable decision but Ferrari don't get penalised on a matter of fact. Blatant corruption is the only explanation.

That is exactly the problem,

That is exactly the problem, why are Mclaren always debating everything, often about things that are clear cut. Sometimes it just better to admit when you are wrong and move on.

Anon

Anonymous -- actually I don't think McLaren are debating anything - they've taken it on the chin (apart from a heat of the moment comment by Ron). It is everyone else and the net who is debating it