An unlikely fan of Formula One is the Radio One DJ Chris Moyles, yet on Friday last week he was extolling the virtues of the sport on his morning show and encouraging anyone who hadn’t watched it to tune in this weekend for the first race of the year. If anyone did, I’m afraid it’s unlikely they will bother again.
After all the build-up, after all the hype, after all the driver changes and new teams and regulations, we were left with the dullest race I have witnessed in years.
It resulted in a one-two for Ferrari, with Fernando Alonso comfortably beating his team-mate Felipe Massa, but that only occurred because the race-long pace-setter, Sebastian Vettel was let down by his Red Bull-Renault, which suffered a spark plug failure, dropping him to fourth at the end.
In fact, Vettel’s problems produced the only excitement of the race as we watched a procession of cars circulate, their drivers mindful of the need to preserve tyres and, in the case of McLaren, overheating brakes as well.
The biggest story of the weekend was probably the lack of pace of Michael Schumacher compared to his new team-mate, Nico Rosberg. True, Schuey hasn’t raced for three years and is in a brand new team, but Rosberg is also new to Mercedes and has adapted far better than his illustrious team-mate. No one expected the seven-times world champion to be right at the front immediately, but no one expected him to be consistently around 0.4 seconds slower than Rosberg, who eventually finished fifth, one place ahead of Schumacher.
The Red Bulls showed the most promise over the weekend and Vettel looked as if he was running away and hiding for the majority of the race. His team-mate, Mark Webber threw out a massive smokescreen from an overfill of oil at the start, which caught out Adrian Sutil (Force India) and Robert Kubica (Renault) who spun and dropped to the back. I’m surprised that neither Webber nor his team are penalised in any way for this. After, all it seems like a good tactic to me to produce a blinding cloud of smoke, James Bond-like, out of the back of your car on the way to the first corner, thus preventing anyone behind from overtaking. Just a thought…
Even the all-conquering Ferraris were suffering from overheating issues prior to Vettel’s problems and had settled for second and third, so no one looked truly impressive this weekend and all the cars were way off their qualifying pace in the race itself.
Having said that, all four of the top teams – McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes – got all their cars home to the finish, and in the points as well. Lotus won the battle of the new boys, getting both its cars home in 15th and 17th positions, although the Virgins were fractionally faster if unreliable.
The most inane comment of the weekend has to go to former world champion Jacques Villeneuve, who had joined the Radio Five Live team for the race, talking about Vettel’s problems: “That is why you shouldn’t ever think you have won the race before you have crossed the line. A lot can happen.” I bet they paid him a lot of money for incisive comments like that.
