You wait all summer for a race, and two come along at once. This week sees the teams race at one of the sport's remaining classic tracks at Spa, which guarantees that nobody complains even when the action is as dull as Valencia was.
Talking Points
- Bulls to the fore
After their most useless outing of the season by far, which must have brought horrible memories of the toil of the last few seasons in the minds of team staff and fans alike, Red Bull still head to Belgium as the favourites for the victory. The quick, sweeping layout is very much ”their" sort of track, and the probability of much cooler conditions will mean the Brawn are likely to spend the weekend fighting against their own tyre issues more than anything else.
The floating voters in the piece are McLaren and Ferrari. To really make inroads into Jenson Button's championship lead, the RBRs will need to be quicker than them as well as the Brawns, and whether or not they can manage that is anybody's guess. One thing is for certain for one of their ilk though, Sebastian Vettel cannot afford another engine problem, after his double-breakage in Valencia left him with two of his allocated units to last the rest of the season. Renault really have forgotten how to win championships, haven't they.
- Spa Treatment
After the diabolical shambles of the Valencia street circuit last weekend, we thankfully have a back-to-back event at one of the greatest tracks remaining on F1's calendar to cheer us up. The Spa-Francorchamps track may have been sanitised ever so gradually through the years (the new Bus Stop complex is an absolute travesty, for example), but it remains one of the very few F1 tracks that can legitimately use the "we've got history" excuse to defend it's place on the grid against the onslaught from more modern, less good tracks.
Fair enough, any track held in such high regard can't help but be a tad overrated. Eau Rouge is little more than a flat-out shimmy uphill these days, and the racing tends to be as spread-out as at any Tilke-drome unless the Ardennes weather intervenes, but still, looks-wise if nothing else, it will be approximately a billion times better to watch than last week's race around a concrete wasteland in the industrial district of Valencia.
- Not much of a Luca
Everyone expected him to be a bit slow to get going, given the fact that Friday in Valencia was the first time he had sat in an F1 car during a race weekend since 1999, but did anyone think he'd really be that bad? For Luca Badoer, Ferrari stand-in, butt of just about every joke about last weekend (see Patty's most recent Fifth Column if you don't believe that), and public enemy number 1 in the eyes of every rabid Ferrari fan angered to see him "wasting the car" in their hugely thrilling and not-at-all irrelevant battle for 3rd place in the constructors championship, had the epitome of a stinker at the European GP. He stank the place up bad, man.
But, in his defence, if there is a defence to be made, he was driving a 2009 car for the first time ever (save for his 200km of corporate bumbling the week before), at a track he had never been to before, and was probably hugely mindful that in today's environment where there are no spare cars and penalties aplenty for breaking anything, the most important thing was that he got through the three practice sessions, qualifying and the race with the maximum amount of mileage possible. Which (save for being lapped, which means he only did 56 of the race laps) he did. Yes, there were mistakes (though he blamed his early spin at least on a tap from Romain Grosjean's Renault), but by and large he kept his F60 on track and got through a weekend he was simply treating as a test session just over two minutes behind the race leaders. Which I bet is a damn sight better than the rest of you could do. You pigs.
But, in Spa, his excuses will be running out. He has raced at Spa plenty of times before, he knows the car and the team now, and with Ferrari bosses backtracking on their promise to keep him in the seat until Massa returns by saying that should Luca serve up another string of last places and pit lane bungles in Belgium, he'll be out of that seat quicker than Michael Schumacher with a neck spasm, he needs to perform to some extent at Spa. Getting out of Q1 would be a start, a top ten finish would be better, and finishing anywhere near Kimi Raikkonen would be untold bliss. Whatever he manages, be it good or bad, it's likely to keep us entertained even if the racing doesn't.
- Time is Running Out
While some have their eyes on the title, others will be looking for a race win, or even some useful points, plenty of drivers head for Spa needing to start driving for their F1 careers, with their current teams, at least. Heikki Kovalainen was fairly well crushed by Hamilton last week, but then he didn't have access to McLaren's fancy new short wheelbase MP4-24, which offered a distinct advantage over the older model, so he can explain away that particular mishap. Nevertheless, he'll be looking to show off his skills around Spa, what with his team busily sniffing around the feet of Nico Rosberg and preparing to hump his leg until he signs a silver-embossed contract.
Elsewhere, Robert Kubica is likely to have his pick of race seats in 2010, as and when he departs from the sinking ship that is BMW Sauber. But Nick Heidfeld looks more likely to go down with his ship given the general malaise that has been his 2009 season. Kubica's point in Valencia shows that the endless updates the team are throwing at their useless F1.09 are finally having something of an effect, so Heidfeld will be looking to add to his meagre tally for the season, and hopefully impress a couple of team bosses along the way.
Track Facts
Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps
Number of Laps: 44
Circuit Length: 7.004 km
Race Distance: 308.052 km
Lap Record: 1:45.108 (Kimi Raikkonen - 2004)
2008 pole: Lewis Hamilton (McLaren-Mercedes)
2008 winner: Felipe Massa (Ferrari)
Timetable
Friday 28th August
Free Practice 1 - 10:00 (Local Time) / 09.00 (BST)
Free Practice 2 - 14.00 (Local Time) / 13.00 (BST)
Saturday 29th August
Free Practice 3 - 11.00 (Local Time) / 10.00 (BST)
Qualifying - 14.00 (Local Time) / 13.00 (BST)
Sunday 30th August
Race - 14.00 (Local Time) / 13.00 (BST)
Race Revisited - 1998
If you wanted to get the 1998 Belgian Grand Prix a present for being so good, you'd be struggling for ideas, for what do you get the GP that has everything. The snapshot moments of that barmy (but certainly not balmy) afternoon at Spa are so well-known that it barely seems worth mentioning them, but for the sake of eating up some space in this preview's word count, let's do it anyway. We had the 13-car pile-up at the first start, Hakkinen's clumsy retirement at the start of the second, Schumacher giving a typically virtuoso performance in the wet until he ran into the back of David Coulthard's McLaren when trying to lap the soporific Scot, leading to the hilarious scenes of Schumie stalking into the McLaren garage and trying to lamp DC on the considerable jaw for "trying to kill" him, then a tangle between Giancarlo Fisichella and Shinji Nakano's Minardi that ended up being more spectacular than the Schumie/DC incident, but with less amusing fisticuffs.
And at the end of all the carnage, the two garish yellow Jordans of Damon Hill and Ralf Schumacher came through the spray to take an improbable 12 finish, kicking off Jordan Grand Prix's 18 month purple patch in the process. Jean Alesi finished third for Sauber, and the attrition rate was so high that both Coulthard and Nakano were sent back out after lengthy repair jobs to their knackered cars to try and pick up a point. Though neither succeeded.
Watch a neat and tidy compilation of the maddest bits of Spa 1998 here. Note the lovely use of team orders, after Damon decides he probably doesn't want to be stuck in the rain with a kamikaze Ralf Schumacher messing around right behind him. Note as well Ralf's fantastically petulant reaction to the whole situation.
One Year Ago
A year ago, the entire internet threatened to eat itself over the outcome of the Belgian Grand Prix, because when fans get mad, they flame. As the chequered flag fell, it seemed as though Lewis Hamilton had grabbed victory of a race he had almost thrown away by spinning on the second lap, gifting the lead to Kimi Raikkonen. Although the Finn put in one of his only vintage performances of last season to lead for most of the way, Hamilton reeled him in as the rain began to fall in the closing stages, and came out on top after a fantastic tussle over the last couple of tours of the track. Not quite Dijon '79, given that all it boiled down to was a couple of corners of side-by-side action and then some formation spinning on the last lap, but dramatic nonetheless. Alas, Hamilton had kicked off the scrap by shortcutting the second half of the Bus Stop, and the stewards penalised the McLaren man, dropping him down to third place, and giving the win to Felipe Massa, a man who had been nowhere near the front at any point in the race, but had inherited second when Raikkonen crashed out. Cue accusations of "FIArarri" bias, cue angry rants a-plenty, cue internet meltdown.
Get irate about it all over it again by reading Patty's race review here.
Best Race Odds
Sebastian Vettel - 10/3 (BlueSq)
Mark Webber - 7/2 (SkyBet)
Lewis Hamilton - 4/1 (Stan James)
Jenson Button - 9/1 (Bet365)
Kimi Raikkonen - 11/1 (Stan James)
Patty's Tip - With the win market largely favouring the Red Bull drivers, and the massive likelihood that one of them will actually win the race, there's not much to choose from for this race. So why not go a bit crazy, and take Jenson Button's promise that he'll be driving more aggressively from now on that he'll mess up La Source on the opening lap. 25/1 are the odds on the Brawn man being the first retirement. Go on, put your mortgage on it! Live in poverty for the rest of your life!
On Patronise
Once again, Patronise F1 will be going that extra mile for all three of our readers this weekend in Belgium, with our "unrivalled" live textual commentaries running for every moment of on-track action, from Friday's fun-filled practice sessions, through to Saturday's warmup and the qualifying hour, and then the whole 44 laps of the race on Sunday. With reviews, news, opinion and Fifth Column all included in the package, you'd have to be literally mad not to join us. Well, unless you have something better to do. Which you probably do.
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