F1 race report: Massa wins at Valencia

OK so Felipe Massa won the European Grand Prix from pole. That is not surprsing in itself because Felipe has been pretty damn good recently, easily much better than teammate Kimi Raikkonen, the bad news for Felipe is that his main championship rival Lewis Hamilton finished second, reducing the impact Massa's win has on the drivers championship.

Everyone seemed really excited that this new and beautiful street circuit would produce an incident filled and thrilling race, with lots of passing, but unfortunately that was not the case and we were stuck watching a boring processional race. Had it not been for Ferrari's rather poor job at pitstops there would not have been much really to talk about. The fans on television were let down by the show, and the fans in the stands who came to see Fernando Alonso were let down by Kaz Nakajima on lap 1 really turning what had promised so much into yet another boring F1 race. Felipe Massa dominated from pole and never looked like being caught while Lewis Hamilton settled down in second and stayed there all afternoon while Robert Kubica did the same thing in third place, scoring a much needed confidence booster for the Hinwil-Munich men. One thing this race did do was confirm that this year, barring a miraculous turnaround, the world championship will be contested between Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa, not Kimi Raikkonen. The Finn was off Massa's pace all weekend, and had a far too ordinary race until his second pit stop. He was jumped at the start by Heikki Kovalainen and just sort of trundled around in fifth and ended up battling with Jarno Trulli's Toyota when his calamities happened. Kimi's troubles revolved around the Ferrari Mechanics, who had an uncharacteristically mistake-full race. Their first big problem came on Felipe Massa's second stop when someone in the Ferrari crew were not paying attention and released Felipe right into the path of Adrian Sutil. Felipe nearly collided with the Force India car and had to cede the place, only to pass him again on the track immediately. The Ferrari crew had no reason to force the issue with Sutil and Massa should have been paying attention himself. This was very nearly a spectacularly embarrassing way to throw away a victory and in cases where you are leading comfortably you don't need to do things like this. The stewards agreed and slapped Felipe with a $10,000 fine for his brain-fade. If this little incident was the end of it for Ferrari's pit crew then I would have no need to continue talking about it but no, the events continued, this time with a more serious incident. When Raikkonen came in for his second stop everything started well, but he was a little to over excited and tried to go when his fuel hose was still in the car and a mechanic was still holding on to the hose. The result was that the poor mechanic (Pietro Timpini) was run over by Kimi's rear wheel. This led to much scrambling and Kimi was sent on his way only for his engine to blow up a few laps later. The incident looked bad as Timpini was wheeled away on a stretcher but we hear now that he is not seriously hurt. Being off the pace and running over mechanics is not something we normally see from Raikkonen and if he wants to have any shot at the world title he will need to be much better in the final six races. He had a spectacular end to last year so it is still possible, but he will need to start performing immediately.

If Ferrari had an inconsistent day, it was BMW and McLaren who had a normal type race, McLaren saw Lewis Hamilton finish second, unable to compete with Massa and Kovalainen finish fourth, a very normal result for Heikki. The Finn has found some consistency, unfortunately he has been consistently slower than Hamilton and although he is staying at McLaren, one suspects that Ron Dennis is grooming him to be the next incarnation of Rubens Barichello. Robert Kubica finished a fine third and in what has become far too common, teammate Nick Heidfeld finished ninth and out of the points. After a great start to the season, the beemers have tailed off badly and it looks as though Kubica is overdriving the car while Heidfeld in underdriving it, something that may not be great for Quick Nick's job security. Toyota put together another solid performance to consolidate their fourth place in the drivers championship with a fifth place for Jarno Trulli and a seventh place for Timo Glock. Six valuable points for the men from Cologne will go a long way because both Renault and Red Bull had absolutely woeful days, suffering from the ills of Renault's weak engine. Sixth place went to the impressive Sebastien Vettel who was great all weekend in the Toro Rosso, obviously benefiting from the Horsepower advantage that the Ferrari has. Teammate Seb Bourdais was equally good with a solid tenth place finish and considering that Red Bull racing finished a terrible 12th and 17th, this will boost morale at Faenza. Nico Rosberg earned a much needed point for Williams who have both Honda and Toro Rosso breathing down their necks. Nico drove quickly and managed to avoid trouble (quite the accomplishment for Nico this year) and got his point while teammate Kaz Nakajima will be public enemy number one in Spain tonight as it was he who rammed the back of hometown hero Fernando Alonso's Renault and taking him out. Kaz limped back to the pits with the telltale sign of guilt on his front wing (or what was left of it) and had to get repairs. He reemerged and trundled around the back until he finished in 15th place, not a red letter day in his career that's for sure. Renault's day was pretty dismal with Alonso being the victim of Nakajima's Takuma Sato impression and Nelson Piquet being unspectacular to finish 11th. The Renault engine has a rather pronounced lack of horsepower and with Spa and Monza next on the calendar it could be a long couple of races for them. Red Bull and Honda were really awful in the race. Red Bull were nowhere near the pace and Mark Webber did decently to finish 12th while David Coulthard had another bad race, colliding with Adrian Sutil early while attempting a daft overtaking manouvre and needing repairs. DC finished 17th and last with the rumour mill churning that he may be canned before the end of the season. Honda were as bad as it gets really being nowhere near the pace and staying off the radar. There was no real reason to explain their lousiness, they were just slow and a 13th and 16th place finish is what they deserved. Force India were slightly less crappy than usual with Giancarlo Fisichella scoring a solid 14th place (he beat another team for a change) while Adrian Sutil was on television for all the wrong reasons (again), first for his close call with Massa and secondly with a lazy accident after locking the wheels, not exactly great driving.

Overall this race promised much and delivered little. At least our next race is Spa which has a habit of producing great races. Ferrari and Massa appear to have some momentum, but if Lewis continues to drive smartly he will be tough to overtake in the standings. The close title chase is exciting, too bad the on-track racing isn't.