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BMW Step Up To The Challenge
By Emma Aitken April 10 2008
It was a hazy, sandy day in Sakhir, when the balance of power seemed to shift and another Formula 1 team finally looked like they were going to give McLaren and Ferrari and run for their money. Kubica had stormed out in the final moments of Q3 and put in a blistering lap to knock Massa off the top of time sheets, where he had comfortably been sitting all weekend.

It was a hazy, sandy day in Sakhir, when the balance of power seemed to shift and another Formula 1 team finally looked like they were going to give McLaren and Ferrari and run for their money.

  

Kubica had stormed out in the final moments of Q3 and put in a blistering lap to knock Massa off the top of time sheets, where he had comfortably been sitting all weekend. It was to be the first time since 2006; 26 race ago, since neither a McLaren or a Ferrari had held the pole postion.

      

Before the racing commenced though Martin Brundle went on his grid walk and I did find the actions of one Bernie Ecclestone fairly amusing. There stood a man who certainly did not want to be drawn in to any difficult conversations about a certain Max Moseley as the tiny tyrant gladly thrust royalty and jockeys into the path of Brundle’s microphone in order to stop any questions being thrown in his direction.

       

On with the racing though and was the Pole on pole going to take his first race win? Personally, I never did think it was going to happen. Massa’s dominance since arriving in Bahrain wasn’t simply going to go away just because he didn’t have pole position.  He also had far too much to prove.

       

The feisty little Brazilian desperately needed to pick up some points and nothing was going to get in his way, not even his team mate. It was hugely refreshing to see the two Ferrari’s actually fighting each other for the win today, after years of watching Mr Schumacher take precedence at the Scuderia. And fight they did. Raikkonen kept on coming throughout the race. He was always on Massa’s case, always pushing to try and take that win off his team mate.

    

Someone who didn’t appear to have any fight in him though was McLaren’s Heikki Kovalainen. He had a tremendous start. It almost looked like the Finn had prior knowledge that his team mate, Hamilton, was going nowhere when the lights went green, judging by the immediate way Heikki threw his car to the left to go right past him. 

      

From there he briefly snatched third from Raikkonen but his fellow countryman deftly took this back and then, two laps on, Heidfeld took fourth off him and fifth is where McLaren’s newest driver remained until the chequered flag.

      

Yet again Heikki had a lonely, uneventful race. He stayed at the front of the mid-field pack, but never looked like he was trying, or capable of taking the fight to the front runners. It causes great concern though as that front pack not only included the two Ferrari’s, but the two BMW’s as well.

     

As for Hamilton, his start was dreadful and worrying so. After the race he actually did hold his hands up for once and take all responsibility. He said he didn’t hit the switch early enough which resulted in him not engaging the correct engine setting causing the anti stall to kick in.

     

A mistake we all firmly hope he is going to learn by. With the BMW’s looking so strong now, silly little slip ups like that are going to prove even more costly as his competition for points are a lot stronger now. There are more cars out on the track that will prove difficult to get back in front of should he have any little slip ups.

I am immensely pleased that he has played down the Alonso incident too.

           

Last season was a mess for McLaren as far as negative press was concerned. The whole Spygate thing was obviously regrettable for them but I also felt that the issue between Lewis and Fernando was not managed well by the team, especially where Lewis was concerned.

       

I might not make any friends when I sat this but Lewis always seemed to come out sounding like a petulant child when interviewed about Fernando while the Spaniard was always slightly more magnanimous. I distinctly remember the pair being interviewed in Turkey, after the infamous impeding incident in Hungary where Fernando claimed that their relationship was as it should be.

          

They were drivers at the end of the day and were there to race.

Lewis, on the other hand, claimed that Fernando had ignored him earlier on that day and he wouldn’t speak to Alonso until Alonso spoke to him. At the time I felt that Lewis needed to reign his actually feelings in a bit more and marvelled at McLaren not coaching this new driver to their team in the skills of diplomacy when it came to being interviewed.

        

It would have been a nightmare if Lewis came out today demanding an inquiry in to his incident with Alonso. James Allen said during the race that Ron Dennis would probably just draw a line under it after all that went on last season and it would seem that, for once, he might have been right!

          

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