Week in Review. What a race last weekend. Felipe going over on the first corner. Daniel and Lewis’ strong drives from the back of the grid. The destruction of the Torro Rosso. Jensen not backing down. The Ferrari’s banging wheels. Another podium for Williams… Regardless of the sound and the look of the current cars, the racing (except for China) has been sensational this year. Lewis Hamilton has admitted he feared the Hockenheim marshals might get hit by an oncoming car as they attended to Adrian Sutil’s stranded Sauber in the closing stages of last weekend’s German GP. Both Hamilton and his race-winning Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg expressed surprise after the race that the Safety Car hadn’t been deployed to recover the stricken Sauber after Sutil spun and stalled in the middle of Hockenheim’s pitstraight. Instead, Race Control decided to control the situation with yellow flags and, after a short delay, three marshals ran across the circuit in a brief window when the final corner was clear of cars to attend to the Sauber and push it down the inside of the straight and into an opening in the pitwall. Timo Glock spun to the inside of the circuit in 2008 at the very point the marshals were dispatched to on Sunday, highlighting the potential danger they were in given how torque sensitive the 2014 cars are. Hamilton, who was the first driver on the scene once the marshals had entered the track, revealed afterwards his concern for the mens safety. “I was really concerned for the marshals. It was really concerning,” the Mercedes driver told reporters. “When you come round that corner at serious speed and then there are marshals standing not far away from where you’re driving past, for me that’s the closest it’s been for a long, long time.” Hamilton revealed that he had flashbacks to memories of watching the harrowing footage from the 1977 South African GP when Welshman Tom Pryce hit a marshal who was crossing the track with a fire extinguisher. Both men were killed in the incident. “It would have been a gamble to stay out just in case there was a Safety Car,” Hamilton told Sky Sports News. “In fact, there should have been a Safety Car. How on earth a car can be sitting in the middle of the road for a couple of laps and not come out…but I think you know why.” Perhaps wisely given the scrutiny his post-race comments have attracted this season, Hamilton declined to clarify what he meant by that final cryptic remark. Enough of the conspiracy theory Lewis. Daniel Ricciardo says his late battle with Ferraris Fernando Alonso for fifth position at Hockenheim is one of the highlights of his F1 career so far. Ricciardo was playing catch up from the first lap after running wide to avoid Felipe Massas somersaulting Williams at Turn 1, which left him having to fight through the field. He had recovered to fifth on his final soft compound stint but soon came under attack from Alonso, who was on super-softs, but he made it difficult for the former double world champion to get by. Alonso - battling a Red Bull for fifth in entertaining circumstances for the second race in a row - eventually made the superior tyre work to his advantage but Ricciardo had twice reclaimed the position through Turn 8 during their battle. These are the moments and battles that I personally thrive off and enjoy, Ricciardo said. Fernando is known to be a tough racer and I thought who better to have a good fight with. I was on the primes and he was on fresher options and I gave it the best fight I could and, yeah … nearly! Ricciardo also feels the battle made up for his slice of bad luck at the opening corner. That was awesome fun, one of my most enjoyable races Ive had. I mean, not on the first lap, obviously, that was just the wrong place at the wrong time. I wasnt as worse off as Massa and hopefully he is okay. I was on the outside and obviously that collision happened, I had to avoid it and went pretty far down the field, I dont know exactly how far back. From then on I just got on to the radio and said lets make an amazing recovery and make ourselves proud today and I think we did that. We fought hard and we didnt leave anything on the table. Fernando Alonso is concerned Ferrari is going backwards this year after slipping behind Williams in the constructors championship last weekend in Germany. Ferrari is now on 116 points to Williams 121, while the Italian team has not been on the podium since the Chinese Grand Prix in April. Alonso said neither he nor team-mate Kimi Raikkonen are happy with the car. At the moment we are not super happy with the performance and we try to keep improving to score more points because, especially with the constructors championship, we are going backwards a little bit. We need to put both cars in the points as many times as possible. However, with just a week since the German Grand Prix, Alonso is not overly confident Ferrari will be any more competitive in Hungary this weekend. Not really, obviously the car is identical with only four days between races and the circuit layout is not particularly good with a traction demanding circuit, he said. On the other hand every race has been a little bit a surprise and at some circuits we thought wed be more competitive and we were less and vice-a-versa. We need to go into the weekend with some positive mood and see what is the final result, but the picture should not change compared to the last couple of races. Probably Red Bull will be more competitive with less engine demand here and we see Williams at a circuit that requires good traction and aerodynamics and we will see if they keep their form. It will be more or less similar. Valtteri Bottas reckons that Williams can overtake Red Bull and snatch second place in the constructors’ standings if they maintain their current form. Consecutive podiums for Bottas, first in Austria and then his second-place finishes at Silverstone and Hockenheim, have already allowed Williams to move past Ferrari. Yet with team-mate Felipe Massa a first-lap retirement in both the British and German GPs, the Finn thinks they can also close down the defending World Champions, even though Red Bull are currently 67 points ahead. “As a team, we definitely need to make sure we keep pulling a gap to the teams behind, now that we’re in a good position, from Ferrari in the constructors’ and we should not write-off trying to catch Red Bull also,” Bottas said on Thursday. “It’s still a long season and if we score points with both cars, it could still at this point be possible.” Although Bottas admitted that Mercedes’ dominance makes the final step up the podium difficult, he thinks he and Williams can keep up their run this weekend. The team’s FW36 has proved quickest of all in a straight line this season but although both drivers have pinpointed a lack of rear downforce as the car’s Achilles’ heel, Bottas said that - unlike last year – the aerodynamic upgrades Williams are bringing have all worked. “We’re always aiming for [victory],” he said. “This season it’s really, really difficult because of Mercedes being really strong: you know all the tracks but you never know what’s going to happen in the race”. FP1 starts at 18:00 ( for those that can access Sky’s coverage).
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 05:10:20 +0000
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