Patronise F1

If the title race is to go to the wire, and despite the closeness of the current standings, that is still far from guaranteed, it is likely to come down, as it did last year, to the driver that manages to minimise their mistakes and maximise their luck over the course of the season. On the evidence of France then, Felipe Massa must be a shoe-in for the championship that he now leads. While incumbent points leader Robert Kubica suffered a pace-less weekend for BMW, Lewis Hamilton suffered a weekend filled with penalties and Kimi Raikkonen suffered a return of his formerly legendary car reliability issue, Massa had a serene afternoon as he lucked into the race lead, and then simply counted down the laps to the checkered flag.

Even before the race had begun, anyone betting on anything other than a Ferrari 1-2 on the form of the weekend to date was either deluded or simply a bad gambler. But as the race began and Raikkonen held the lead off the line, Massa seemed set for a day of happy Boobens-ing, adopting the subservient role that in recent times has been the default setting for any Brazilian driver at Ferrari. Either way, the two red machines quickly built up a towering lead over Jarno Trulli, who recovered from a poor start, when Kubica leapt ahead of Trulli and a slow-starting Fernando Alonso, to pass the BMW into the Adelaide hairpin on lap one, and thereafter control the scrap for best of the rest that essentially was the on-track race this afternoon.

As Ferrari seemed serene, so McLaren were in turmoil. An overnight five place penalty handed out to Heikki Kovalainen for the slightly dubious crime of blocking a car that qualified from that section of qualifying with ease anyway meant that the team had their cars lining up 10th and 13th at the start. The strictness of the penalty for impeding Mark Webber during Q1 was made all the more amusing/frustrating given that the guy who probably did more to ruin the Red Bull drivers eventual grid position, Jarno Trulli, who spun early on in the final section of the session and ruined Webber's opening flying run, got off scot-free for simply cocking up rather than mistakenly taking his eyes off the mirrors for a few seconds. Either way, McLaren faced an uphill task to get any points, and while Kovalainen finally had a trouble-free race, putting in a neat recovery drive to grab a 4th place finish, so nearly making the podium but for the intrinsic aerodynamic issues with these modern machines, Hamilton's race was a disaster.

As at Bahrain earlier in the season, Hamilton reacted to his penalty-induced lowly grid placing and need to make up places by driving like a fool in the early stages. His pass on Sebastian Vettel's Toro Rosso on lap 1 should have been straightforward, but instead, he steamed past the German only to put himself at the mercy of the other driver on turn-in to the fast chicane. Rather than risk the crash, he short-cut across the concrete and rejoined still ahead of Vettel, but the failure to acknowledge that he had held onto the place by his straight-lining, and subsequent failure to let the Toro Rosso back past momentarily, secured his second penalty of the weekend, and the drive through he served, coupled with his already-risky strategy, consigned him to a second point-less outing in a row, and leaves him floundering behind his three title rivals. To add insult to his opening lap issues, he ran into the back of Kovalainen later on, not hard enough to cause any damage to either car, but still very silly stuff from a man who so famously adopted the moral high ground last year when Alonso started pushing the limit for on-track battles between team mates. When he qualifies in the top half dozen, he is as supreme a driver as anyone, but take him out of that comfort zone, and he tends to muck races up with alarming regularity.

In essence, this whole recovery drive thing seems to be a glaring issue for Hamilton. Although he was famed for it in GP2, indeed his recovery drive during the race at Istanbul in 2006 remains one of the all-time great motorsport drives, he seems to have issues with it in F1. Whether here, Bahrain earlier in the year when he drove over the top of Alonso's Renault, or even last years faltering recoveries at the Nurburgring or Interlagos, he seems unable to control his aggression early on in the race, nor pick his moments to pass in the later stages. Here, he was still in with a change of scraping a point with ten laps to go, but he became mired behind David Coulthard's slower Red Bull and his chance evaporated as his laptimes suffered.

Either way, with Hamilton struggling, the impressive drive of the day was Kovalainens, who fought up to 4th, and then could, and maybe should have forced his way past Trulli as the rain began to fall in the closing stages. The Finn had one attempt on the final lap, but Trulli naughtily squeezed his car onto the grass on the run down to the chicane, in a piece of defensive driving that, frankly, had a German in a Ferrari done it, you wouldn't be able to move for the moral outrage being splattered across opinion columns and bloggy-type stuff. But seeing as it was a chirpy Italian on his way to a rare podium finish for a team mourning the loss of their former team leader, he sort of got away with it.

The main scrap in the top eight was for 5th place, between Kubica, Alonso, Webber, and somewhat astonishingly, Nelson Piquet Jr, who after seven races of barely-possible awfulness had finally decided to show something of the ability he doubtless has locked up inside him somewhere. Alonso seemed on course for a decent finish, but his risky qualifying move of racing to 3rd on the grid without much fuel backfired when he got a sluggish start, and then pitted early to emerge mired in the traffic of the midfield. All this allowed Kubica, after passing Webber's Red Bull, to recover a slight bit of dignity with 5th place. The team that finished 1-2 in the last event looked very ordinary all weekend, and Nick Heidfeld, on a pointlessly long first stint of a strategy, ended 13th. It is this kind of weekend which probably shows why nobody in the BMW Sauber team really reckons they have a chance of either title this year and, to be honest, it is hard to argue with that.

Webber hung on to a happy 6th place, getting back amongst the points after his Montreal debacle. He held off both Renaults over the last few laps, even as it began spitting with rain, and Alonso ended up frustrated to the point that he overshot the Adelaide hairpin in the closing laps and allowed Piquet through to 7th, and his first ever Alonso-beating result. Whether or not this sudden, and unexpected, challenge to the Renault status quo affects Alonso in quite the same way that Hamilton's Nando-beating drives did last year probably hinge on Piquet not returning to his usual lap 4 crashes in the next race. Either way, Piquet secured his first points, meaning that after only 8 events, every driver on the grid, save the Force India duo, have managed at least one points finish.

Behind Piquet, the DC/Hamilton scrap never really came to much, while Timo Glock ended 12th for Toyota, despite running as high as 5th early on. The rest of the field toiled behind, with Jenson Button being the only retirement from the grand prix after sustaining damage when he ran into Sebastien Bourdais in the early laps. Honda had a dreadful time of it, with Barrichello's 14th place finish unlikely to inspire much cheer in the factory. Williams were awful too, seemingly slipping behind the development of the other midfield runners as the season progresses, and their early hopes of 4th in the constructors championship now seem laughable, as Toyota, Red Bull and Renault all pull away. Nico Rosberg started from the back after his own penalty, but his one-stop strategy never looked like working, especially in a race with such low attrition. He ended a disconsolate 16th, behind even team mate Nakajima, and ahead of the probably-damaged Bourdais and the Force India pair, who will be hoping that the "radical" new testing parts their team has promised will work to somehow elevate them up to allow them to fight with someone.

Returning to the front though, it was easy to forget about the Ferrari twins, frolicking in the muggy French conditions. That was until mid-distance, when Kimi began to slow, his right exhaust assembly having developed some sort of problem, as the assembly began to fall to bits and his car began to melt. Massa soon caught and passed the Finn, giving him the race lead that he was never to lose, and although Kimi began to slip back towards the pack for a few more laps, his times normalised and the serene final pit stop showed that Ferrari were not overly concerned. Bad luck indeed, and his fans will tell you Kimi has a lot of that, but whatever rabbits foot or black cat he has adopted since his McLaren days seems to be paying off to an extent. A few years ago, this problem would have forced his retirement, but here he lost a mere two points and cruised home in second, not even getting the dreaded black flag from the seemingly penalty-happy stewards even when honking great bits of his exhaust began to drop off the car. So bad luck, but a smidge of good luck too.

In the end, as Massa took the checkered flag, it was easy to forget the last two races, with McLaren and BMW wins, had ever happened. The early season was dominated by the Italian machines, and now the madness of Monaco and unpredictability of Montreal is behind us, that status quo seems to have been re-established. We head to what is usually another processional, form-following mid-season event next at the beleaguered Silverstone, where Hamiltonistas will expect a win for their struggling hero, but may well have to look away as Ferrari sweep the board again.

Drivers Championship Standings -
1 Massa 48pts, 2 Kubica 46pts, 3 Raikkonen 43pts, 4 Hamilton 38pts, 5 Heidfeld 28pts, 6 Kovalainen 20pts, 7 Trulli, Webber 18pts, 9 Alonso 10pts, 10 Rosberg 8pts, 11 Nakajima 7pts, 12 Coulthard 6pts, 13 Glock, Vettel, Barrichello 5pts, 16 Button 3pts, 17 Bourdais, Piquet Jr 2pts.

Constructors Championship Standings -
1 Ferrari 91pts, 2 BMW 74pts, 3 McLaren 58pts, 4 Red Bull 24pts, 5 Toyota 23pts, 6 Williams 15pts, 7 Renault 12pts, 8 Honda 8pts, 9 Toro Rosso 7pts.