Felipe Massa Wins 2007 Turkish GP

Felipe Massa won today’s Turkish Grand Prix from the pole and restored the balance to this year’s Drivers’ Championship–after 12 events each of the four main contenders have won three races apiece.

A blown front tyre dropped Lewis Hamilton from a fairly certain third place but, despite a damaged front wing and a strong challenge from Heikki Kovalainen, he managed to hold on to fifth and salvaged a few points to bolster his sagging lead in the championship.

Complete GP of Turkey results.

Posted: Sunday, August 26th, 2007

Lewis Hamilton Wins 2007 Hungarian GP

Lewis Hamilton won today’s Hungarian Grand Prix from the pole, leading every boring lap on his way to his third victory this year. However all of the excitement this weekend happened yesterday…

In the closing minutes of Saturday’s final qualifying Fernando Alonso appeared to stay in the McLaren pit for 10 -12 seconds after the lollipop was raised to send him on his way. This backed up his teammate Lewis Hamilton behind him and Hamilton was a few seconds too late to start his final hot lap when the qualifying period ended.

With no challenge from his teammate, Alonso completed the fastest lap and secured the pole for the race. Team boss Ron Dennis looked pissed and Hamilton was snarky and pouty during the post-qualification press conference.

At this point speculation was running rife that Alonso had blocked Hamilton on purpose to gain the pole and that the team and/or his mechanics were involved.

Later in the evening Ron Dennis held a press conference where he attempted to quell the rumours and clarify the matter by saying that in fact it was Hamilton who was at fault. Apparently Hamilton had disobeyed team orders and taken the lead at the start of the final qualifying period when it had been Alonso’s turn to do this and benefit from an extra lap of fuel burn-off before his hot lap. Hamilton later admitted that this was true.

Quite why Alonso sat in the pits after he had been released was still not made clear but Dennis appeared to consider this a moot point in that; if Hamilton had been where he should have been he would not have been pitting after Alonso and so it wouldn’t have mattered how long Alonso stayed in the pit.

Later in the evening the stewards decided to drop Alonso five places to sixth on the grid and to deny McLaren any Constructors’ points which they might score in the race. McLaren will, of course, appeal this ruling as it moves Ferrari 15 points closer to them in the championship. Giancarlo Fisichella was also moved back five places for an alleged blocking move during qualification.

In other news, BMW’s former substitute driver Sebastian Vettel replaced Scott Speed at Scuderia Toro Rosso and Sakon Yamamoto returns to Formula One on the Spyker team. Yamamoto replaces Markus Winkelhock who had replaced Christijan Albers only one race before.

Complete GP of Hungary results.

Posted: Sunday, August 5th, 2007