Massa ended up finishing 13th in Singpore, out of the points, and he lost the championship by one point.

What Massa is forgetting is that there were seventeen other races that year. He won six of them, so there were eleven other opportunities to get that one point. Let’s take a look at some of those where he stood a good chance to get that point.

Might as well start with the first race of the season, Australia. Massa qualified fourth but in the first lap he spun off. On the 26th lap he collided with David Coulthard, and he eventually bowed out with engine failure. Hard to say how many points he would have received, given I can’t find what place he was in when he retired, but he probably wouldn’t have got any given his spin and accident would have put him well out of the points.

Malaysia looked promising as Massa qualified on pole. He got jumped by teammate Kimi Raikkonen in the pits, but was racing a strong second until he spun on lap 30 and retired. I would count this as eight points lost.

Must we go on? He’s already lost eight points, more than enough to have won the championship. And that’s only after the first two races of the season! Let’s go on anyhow.

In the Canadian Grand Prix Massa was having a pretty good race. In his words, he was “fighting for a place on the podium.” A refuelling problem on lap 19 meant he had to make one extra stop. He finished fifth. Fourth was probably his had he not had the refuelling problem, and third was also possible. Let’s just say he would have finished fourth and give him one extra point.

The British GP can be summed up by this sentence: “Felipe Massa had an awful weekend and spun no fewer than five times in the race and finished in 13th place.” It was a wet race, admittedly, but other top drivers didn’t spin five times.

How about the Hungarian Grand Prix? Massa was leading comfortably when his engine gave up on lap 68 of 70. Ten points lost because of mechanical failure.

In Japan Massa ran into Lewis Hamilton and received a drive-through penalty for his efforts. He finished seventh. Drive-through penalties typically add about 20 seconds to a driver’s time (maybe more, maybe less), and given Massa finished only seven seconds behind Sebastien Vettel, one could possibly assume that he could have finished sixth, gaining a point.

There you have it. Twenty possible points Massa could have picked up. Nine of those are solely because of driver error. If you’re looking for your missing points, Felipe, look at yourself instead of trying to blame Renault. Of course, there’s always someone else to blame, isn’t there? There’s mechanical unreliability, bumpy tracks, too many cars in the pitlane so you can’t see that the pitlane exit light is red… Like Keith Collantine said, Massa “should pay more attention to the deficiencies in his driving that caused him to throw points away.”

[tags]montreal, formula one, la presse, bernie ecclestone, montreal grand prix[/tags]

[tags]formula one, montreal[/tags]

[tags]formula one, renault, god save the queen, la marseillaise, music[/tags]

1. Kimi Raikkonen – opposite
2. Lewis Hamilton – future
3. Fernando Alonso – headstrong
4. Felipe Massa –
5. Nick Heidfeld – fourth
6. Robert Kubica – crash
7. Heikki Kovalainen – young
8. Giancarlo Fisichella – fragile
9. Nico Rosberg – younger
10. David Coulthard – chin
11. Alexander Wurz – tester
12. Mark Webber – unlucky
13. Jarno Trulli – muddled
14. Sebastien Vettel – upcoming
15. Jenson Button – yesterday
16. Ralf Schumacher – retire
17. Takuma Sato – prone
18. Vitantonio Liuzzi – bling
19. Adrian Sutil –
20. Rubens Barrichello – poor
21. Scott Speed – americanscottspeedfrommantecacalifornia
22. Kazuki Nakajima –
23. Anthony Davidson –
24. Sakon Yamamoto – slow
25. Christijan Albers –
26. Markus Winkelhock – records

A few explanations are in order, I think. Kimi is “opposite” because he seems to be the opposite of what everybody thinks of him. For some stupid reason his nickname is “Iceman” because he’s cool and collected, when he’s nothing of the sort! He’s a throwback to the playboy driver years of the 70s. He shoves course workers when he’s crashed. He always — always — takes a nice long swig out of the bottle of champagne when he’s on the podium. He’s about as far from an “iceman” as you could get.

Nick Heidfeld is “fourth” because he always seemed to place fourth this season.

Jenson Button is the British driver of “yesterday”, thanks to Lewis Hamilton.

Takuma Sato is accident-”prone”, crash-”prone”, and also excitement-”prone”, such as when he overtook Fernando Alonso in the closing laps of the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix.

Rubens Barrichello is “poor”, as in “poor Rubens crashed again” or “poor Rubens has a shitty car”.

The ones that are blank I couldn’t think up names to. My faithful readers can undoubtedly come up with some good one-word descriptions!

[tags]formula one[/tags]

In 2007 Ralf has scored a measly five championship points. His qualifying performance has been absymal, occasionally failing to make it out of the first qualifying round. This is unacceptable for a team the size of Toyota, which is rumoured to have the highest budget in all of Formula 1.

It didn’t start out this way for Ralf and Toyota, as in 2005 he finished sixth in the Drivers’ Championship and helped Toyota take fourth in the Constructors’, only 12 points behind Ferrari. 2006 was a disappointment. Ralf scored 20 points and finished tenth and the team finished sixth. And 2007 is worse yet: Ralf is in fourteenth place and Toyota is again in sixth, but would be in seventh had McLaren not been stripped of their points.

Clearly Toyota’s strategy of having two seasoned veterans in place for multiple years isn’t working. That’s not to say that the drivers are the sole reason behind Toyota’s failure to make it out of the midpack: the massive budget clearly doesn’t result in a car that can go fast. But drivers are often the easiest part of the package to replace, and bringing in a new driver can revitalize a team. It’s rumoured that Timo Glock, 2007 GP2 champion, will be brought in to replace Schumacher.

That could be a good fit, as Timo has raced in Formula One before. He’s contracted to BMW, but they’ve already confirmed Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica for 2008.

And where would Ralf go? F1Fanatic suggests Williams, Super Aguri, Spyker, or ProDrive. I like the fifth option: retirement.

I’ve never been a fan of Ralf Schumacher. I think he’s an average driver who never shows any passion for driving a Formula 1 car. He rarely displays any rationalization for his massive paycheque or Toyota’s devotion to him. I don’t think a young team (like Spyker or ProDrive) would be well-served by him coming on board — Toyota was helped briefly when he started with them but since then they’ve languished in the midfield. And Williams would be taking a huge step back in bringing Ralf back. No, I think the only option Ralf should take is retirement.

Ralf, you followed your brother into Formula 1, and as far as I’m concerned you can follow him right back out.

[tags]formula 1, ralf schumacher, toyota[/tags]

Alonso planned to lie down in front of Michael Schumacher’s car on the starting grid at last year’s Monaco Grand Prix if the stewards did not penalise the German for intentionally stopping his Ferrari at Rascasse during qualifying.

Now that’s the way to protest! None of this appealing to the FIA International Court of Appeals garbage. Settle your disputes on the racetrack, literally!

[tags]formula one, fernando alonso, michael schumacher, monaco[/tags]

Good. The “track” at IMS was without any charisma and pizazz. Oh boy, it’s got the hallowed yard of bricks. Whoopee. Forgive me for not getting excited.

Maybe now F1 can go to more exciting tracks like Laguna Seca. But Ecclestone seems to have a hard-on for Las Vegas (presumably so he can cozy up to a showgirl or three), so odds are good that we’ll have some boring street circuit to get bored by. Hurray. Look for Hermann Tilke‘s name to come up in the near future.

[tags]formula one, f1, indianapolis, bernie ecclestone, laguna seca, united states grand prix[/tags]

Without the video the impact (pardon the pun) wouldn’t be as great, and people wouldn’t be as amazed at the safety considerations that go into these cars.

Obviously Formula One Management (FOM) would want this sort of publicity, right? And imagine if you could see it for free, without FOM having to do anything?

It turns out that they don’t want the publicity, as FOM is forcing YouTube to remove videos from Kubica’s crash. If you load up my previous story and you can’t see the amazing crash, that’s why.

Clearly protecting your copyright is more important than getting out the word that safety is a good thing.

[tags]formula one, robert kubica, canadian grand prix, montreal, crash, copyright, youtube[/tags]

His injuries?

A slight concussion and a sprained ankle for which he had to stay overnight in the hospital for observation.

A true testament to safety in Formula One.

Edit: If you can’t see the video, this is why.

[tags]formula one, robert kubica, jarno trulli, montreal, canadian grand prix, safety, motorsport[/tags]