By Matt Jones
July 13 2006

Regular RealHondaF1.com reader Matt Jones gives us his views on the two North American races, starting off in Montreal for the Canadian Grand Prix. A couple of weeks ago we were in Montreal, the first of the back-to-back races at the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, both extremely tough on engines and brakes. The circuit is where Honda started to show decent points scoring form last season so, fingers crossed, I am hopeful that history will repeat itself.

Qualifying was fairly uneventful. The first session gave us few surprises, though Mark Webber qualified again outside of the top 16 as a result of being held up by team mate Nico Rosberg. Webber was left extremely unhappy, commenting, “I have a good memory,” indicating perhaps that he’ll be looking for revenge in the future. Another driver unimpressed with Nico’s antics was Rubens Barrichello who was also blocked. All in all a very incident filled qualifying for Rosberg, who also clipped the wall in turn nine.

Despite his battles, Nico Rosberg managed to carry on his good form into the final qualifying session and placed his Williams in a very solid sixth place for the team.

Session two found both Honda Racing F1 cars struggling to seal a place in the final shootout for pole. Thankfully both drivers were able to make it – in the end. Ralf Schumacher was obviously struggling for pace after opting for the harder Bridgestone tyre which would see him fail to make the cut for the final shootout for pole, disappointing the German who has been struggling since the introduction of the B spec Toyota.

Both BMW-Sauber drivers failed to make the final shootout for pole after very competitive practice times. Most thought they would be challenging for some very strong points at Montreal, but the pace did not carry over to qualifying and they were left to fight out in the middle field.

Fernando Alonso took his fifth consecutive pole position in the final shootout for pole an absolutely awesome run from the world champion as he continues his dominance on route to his second consecutive title.

The introduction of the team radio feature of recent years to the TV broadcasts has been very welcome. What was not so welcome was hearing Andrew Shovlin on the radio saying to Jenson Button “Ok anything from here is a bonus just do your best.” It seems Honda have resigned themselves to the fact that things just are not good enough. It’s disappointing to hear that anything better than P10 on the grid is considered a bonus.

Canada usually gives us one of the more eventful races of the year, and Nico Rosberg proved it. In the thick of the action in the opening laps, he left Juan Pablo Montoya no room into turn three, resulting in contact between the two drivers and Nico being thrown into the wall. Montoya managed to come away with a broken front wing, which he crawled to the pit to fix. Once again Nico’s inexperience is hurting the Williams team despite the great pace he showed in qualifying. It was perhaps a racing incident but, looking at the footage, it seemed that Nico perhaps was the one who should have yielded.

In the early stages Kimi Raikkonen was showing some fantastic pace, and for much of the stint looked like Alonso was holding him up. It’s looking more and more likely that the Finn is going to grab a win at some stages this season, and we may even see McLaren going even more aggressive on strategy in order to gain track position.

Ferrari perhaps need to go aggressive on strategy as well, with Michael Schumacher running an extremely heavy first stint, stuck behind Jarno Trulli for a long time and losing an incredible amount of time.

As the race went on an incredible amount of ‘marbles’ were thrown to the side of the racing line, making things extremely slippery if any of the drivers strayed wide. Ralf Schumacher spent most of the race cruising around at very slow speeds, often ending up in these marbles, blaming his performance and his many trivial spins on the wrong tyre choice. Unfortunately such an excuse doesn’t really convince me as Ferrari was also on the harder tyres.

Ralf Schumacher eventually retired after he played a part in Jacques Villeneuve’s crash into the wall. Obviously any car crawling around with so many marbles being present on the race circuit is extremely dangerous and it’s a bit disappointing that Toyota waited until Ralf caused an accident to retire him.

Another disappointment was Rubens Barrichello retiring from his first race this season, leaving Jenson Button to do any scoring for the team. Unfortunately Button couldn’t score, despite an incident filled race. A disappointing showing from the team, giving two race weekends in a row where we have failed to score and things don’t look like they are going to improve anytime soon. With the appointment of the new technical director it’s obviously going to take a while for him to settle down and get to grips with the job.

Renault were dominant, despite Giancarlo Fisichella being penalised for a jump-start. The team still went on to score the win with Fernando Alonso, while Fisichella was able to bring some strong points back to increase the gap to Ferrari in the constructor’s championship. Once again Alonso was supreme whilst Fisichella was solid without being particularly fast.

Ferrari were quick but the strategy they choose lost them a lot of time in the first stint and put them out of contention for the race win. They are slowly running out of time to catch Renault and, with Renault’s seemingly flawless reliability and driver, it’s looking very unlikely that Michael Schumacher will be adding another title to his seven. Felipe Massa, very much like Fisichella, was solid without being particularly fast.

McLaren looked very quick with Kimi. A race win must happen at some point, but everything is falling perfectly for Renault so far. Montoya was racing hard back in the lower points positions which saw him run Michael Schumacher off the road, and which also saw his incident with Nico Rosberg. Later in the first stint Montoya put his car into the wall of champions, ending his very eventful but short race.

Red Bull saw a fantastic effort from David Coulthard from the back of the grid to hand them a point. Christian Klien, however, was very disappointing. Starting from 12th on the grid, despite others dropping out in front of him he still couldn’t manage to finish in the top 10. Whilst Red Bull have hinted David Coulthard is likely to be retained next season, they have also hinted that Klien’s seat is under threat and rumours are starting to circulate that Montoya might be the man to fill Klien’s boots.

Toro Rosso were very quiet in the midfield. Scott Speed had a very good race to finish 10th, ahead of his team-mate whom out qualified him, and ahead of the Red Bull car of Christian Klien. They are still looking very unlikely to threaten the point’s positions though, without some sort of strange circumstances in a race.

Midland again saw their drivers tangle out on track, leading to Christijan Albers retirement. The team will be very unimpressed with the drivers, who also had an incident at Monaco between them.

Super Aguri’s Frank Montagny saw his Honda engine blow just a couple of laps into the race. Takuma Sato almost made it to the end before having an accident that ensured he would not complete the race, although he was still classified.

After yet another incident filled Canadian Grand Prix we are onto Indy, where hopefully everything will run like clockwork and we will actually get a race between a healthy number of cars.

As for Honda, we had an absolutely fantastic car there in 2004 - probably the best on the grid - and could have won the race had it not been for bad decision making on the pit wall. We go there with no real expectations of a good result after two very disappointing showings from the team, both in terms of reliability and pace. Last season we turned up looking like we were going to be competitive, with Button putting his car P3 on the grid. This was before, of course, all the Michelin runners decided to withdraw from the race on safety grounds - an event we do not wish to see again.

One thing is for certain; Indy is very much an incident filled race, with only eight finishers in 2004, which saw Zsolt Baumgartner score Minardi’s only point of the season. Perhaps it’s not too much to expect something from the race from Honda? With the race being back to back with Canada it will only be a short time before we find out.

Surely things can only get better?