Turkey lurky

Turkish Grand Prix

Beautiful track makes you want to have a go. Everyone says it; turn 8 is a corker. Qualifying was great fun to watch. When Schumacher M. spun at turn 8 and the crowd cheered, James Allen (the ITV commentator) chastised the Turkish spectators for their inexperience. Bollocks, don’t take things so seriously Mr ITV.

In the olden days, the drivers were free to make more mistakes. I think we were deprived of a more interesting race because of one lap qualifying which adds to the overall corporateness of the sport and the pressure on the drivers not to make any errors.

The points system worked for forty odd years before, in an effort to assuage the dominant Schumacher, they started awarding 8 points for second place a couple of years ago. This is another thing that deprives us of a more interesting championship as it places less importance on the win as we head towards the end of the season. (Also Mr Raikkonen would be marginally closer to Snr Alonso in the standings at the moment otherwise).

Kimi Raikkonen

The Man. Nice move on opening lap to take the lead, capitalising on Fisichella’s mistake and fending off Alonso.

Alonso

Made the best of what was available, second was a great result for him; his car was not the second fastest there (or maybe even the third or fourth). Funny rules apparently allow an instruction from his pit telling him to overtake his team-mate because “you are faster than him” at which point his team-mate moves over.

Montoya

Consistently inconsistent. Blamed Monteiro for running into the back of him after passing him and cutting him up. Happened to him before in Brazil and if you are cynical you could say similar to the Monaco problem this year. Shame he didn’t keep Alonso behind him. Managed the fastest lap.

Fisichella

Flavio continues to engineer a safe distance between his number two driver and Alonso. This week it was a fuel rig problem. Some may argue that he deserved to be told to pull over having thrown the lead away on the opening lap.

Button

He looked like he had good fun and a good result to make fifth from 13th on the grid. Didn’t look that ballsy behind Trulli though. Would have been interesting to see what he would have made of a drive from the first or second row of the grid where he certainly could have been. We haven’t seen him playing hard ball with any of the main protagonists yet.

Schumacher M.

Seemed to take out his team’s dip in form on Mr Webber by characteristically driving into the side of him, before stopping for a cup of tea and rejoining the race to improve his qualifying slot at Monza. The ignominy.

Schumacher R.

Another quiet million in the bank.

Webber

I know they all love him, and I know his car hasn’t been great this year, but I remain to be convinced. In his favour, I like the way he drove nose first into his garage having experienced his third rear left tyre blow out of the weekend, would have been daft and dangerous to continue. I suspect that he was not acting on orders.