Spy Games

Okay – Can someone answer this for me. McLaren are deemed guilty of being in possession of documents that belonged to Ferrari, but do not get any sort of penalty. McLaren claim that they did not know about the documents and they didn’t have any of the pieces on the car but, think about it this way – if you trespass in someone’s house but don’t actually steal anything, you still get charged with trespassing and get done for it.

So why did McLaren get away with it?

This is what baffles me. It really does. They would not have been called up on it if there wasn’t enough evidence. The whole thing was a waste of time with not charging them. What is the point with a ‘we know you are guilty but if we find anything else that incriminates you further, then maybe we will give you penalties.’ It’s hard to believe McLaren’s ‘we know nothing stance’ especially since they were allegedly told to appeal certain elements of the Ferrari car earlier in the season. Hard to try to pick and choose what they want to have fed to them. Was it by chance that McLaren's car advantage seemed to all but disappear when the whole 'Spy-gate' scandal broke around the French grand prix. I've joked in company that the reason for Ferrari making up the distance was down to McLaren removing any Ferrari inspired pieces off their car but hey! Maybe it did happen like that. Food for thought.

Ferrari have appealed, well – to be more precise the Italian motorsport body have and in this appeal Ferrari will be able to lay their case out in more detail than was allowed in the first meeting. This could shed more light on things and at the very least, help bring an end to this whole spy scandal. While I would hate to see the championship affected by it, rules are there for a reason. If you break them one must be prepared to feel the pain for it.

It's raining, it's pouring...

...but the old man is certainly not snoring! When Mother Nature intervenes it really provides for a great race and the Nurburgring was no different. In a matter of minutes a dry track became a lake, which sparked memories of the constantly changing conditions we have seen in the past at Spa.

The weekend was an eventful one for Hamilton. The car smashed up in qualifying after a mechanical problem, he took full advantage of the wide first corner to make up ground before been caught by the BMW’s. When the rain fell he joined a plethora of drivers in the first corner parking lot. It was a great presence of mind for him to keep the motor running but I’m of the opinion he shouldn’t have been carried back onto the track. In any other race he would have been out. There was no way he could have gotten out of the kitty litter. He was extremely fortunate to be carried out and allowed to keep running again.

Once back out on track and receiving the ‘Lucky Dog’ (for those of you unfamiliar with the term, this is where the lapped car is allowed to pass the safety car line and rejoin at the end of the lead lap) they blow it – I say ‘they’ because it has remained unclear if it was a team, driver or a combination which made the call – to bring him in and put him on slicks. Gutsy? Maybe. Perhaps he believed his own hype of his greatness and felt he could thread on water like Schumacher or Senna could. He was wrong.

So for the first time he is off the podium. A new experience for him. All credit to him that he comes out and says he has learned allot from the race. Hamilton will learn more from the bad days than the good ones.

Now he has to deal with the incoming threat of Alonso on Massa who both capitalized on his misfortune. Harsh words between the pair after the race was interesting to see, of course it would have been nice to actually hear what they were saying! Alonso firstly accused Massa of trying to take him off deliberately. It didn’t look nothing like that and reckon it was heat of the moment. Like I said in previously Alonso needs to learn to take it as much as he gives it.

Would The Real Kimi Raikkonen Please Stand Up?!

“Paging Kimi Raikkonen. Would the real Kimi Raikkonen please step forward and show your talent.”

Something along those lines must of been the call the Finn got as he boarded the plane home from North America. Since his return from a lacklustre pair of races – or to be more precise a lacklustre season so far, the Iceman seems to have finally found his feet in Ferrari.

At France and then in England we bore witness to the Kimi of old. The racer, the fighter, the Iceman. It begs to question where the real Kimi Raikkonen has been all season. After a dominant victory in the season opening Australian grand prix at Melbourne Kimi has been a ghost stuck in the shadows of Felipe Massa. Questions were rightly asked of his commitment and his drive, especially when he chose to storm out of the Ferrari garage when things went awry at Spain and then at Monaco. This was the man charged with replacing Michael Schumacher.

Now with the return to Europe we finally see the Kimi Raikkonen that drove balls to the walls in a McLaren for victory, even if it resulted in the car breaking down. This was the man that Ferrari coveted to replace Schumacher. This was what we expected from the Finn.

Why has it taken so long for him to become settled? I expected him to struggle at first to find his feet at Ferrari given that Massa was already snug in the team. But the depth of his struggles has been surprising. His rise in form coincides with the re-emergence of Kubica and Alonso to the performance levels expected. The paddock talk has been that the three of them have struggled to adapt to the new Bridgestone compound. After half a season they seem to have finally gotten to grips with how to use them allowing them to challenge their team-mates on a more consistent basis. Raikkonen more so still has a long way to go in adapting his style to turn his raw speed into consistent results. Looking at the reliability of the McLaren’s compared to the Ferrari this year against last year it would appear that Raikkonen’s ‘bad luck’ with reliability has carried over.

Perhaps it is more than ‘bad luck’. McLaren’s Martin Whitmarsh commented that he felt Raikkonen drove too aggressively which led to the high amount of reliability issues. His run of reliability woes in the Ferrari lends credence to these comments. Raikkonen will need to learn to adapt if he is finally unlock the potential we all know is there.