Schumacher snatches an unlikely victory from Alonso’s grasp

Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso are all level on 116 points with only races in Japan and Brazil remaining this season. A little over a month ago Alonso held a 25 point lead, but over that time period Michael Schumacher and Ferrari have been on a roll.

In the race over the weekend, Fernando Alonso had built up a substantial lead in the rain-affected race before having his first pit stop. It was during this pit-stop where Alonso and his team made a crucial error in judgement. They changed his front intermediate weather tyres right before the track dried out and his performance suffered dramatically as a result. His lead diminished and both his teammate and Michael Schumacher overtook him. To cap it off, his second pit-stop was miserable, taking 19 seconds due to a faulty rear wheel nut. Although Alonso made up considerable time on Schumacher, it was too little too late and Schumacher took the victory.

A very impressive pass by Schumacher on Alonso

This leaves the championship with its most exciting finish in quite some time. Schumacher has all the momentum leading into these final races and should have the support of the majority of fans due to his retirement once the season is over. Alonso will do everything in his power to prevent Schumacher from winning his eighth championship.

A picture can say a thousand words

It seems Fernando Alonso is still upset at a penalty that he received after qualifying in this past weekend’s Grand Prix at Monza. The stewards believed that Alonso had blocked Ferrari’s Felipe Massa. Implying that Massa’s teammate, Michael Schumacher, was the reason that the stewards imposed the penalty (in order to benefit him in his quest for an 8th World Championship title), Alonso forgets that his engine blew and it wouldn’t have mattered if no penalty had been imposed because his engine wouldn’t have lasted the race anyway. Let’s not forget that Schumacher was penalised earlier in the year at the Monte Carlo grand prix, but Schumacher’s penalty was to be moved from pole position to the last position on the grid - Alonso was only penalised 5 grid positions, moving from 5th to 10th.

Alonso after his engine blew at the Monza Grand Prix

Once Schumacher retires at the end of this season, there will be an obvious replacement for the most arrogant driver in the championship and it will be Alonso.

In reference to Schumacher’s retirement, Alonso provided the media with this little gem: “Michael is the most unsporting driver with the largest number of sanctions in the history of Formula One.”

Nice.

After the safety car came out on the 14th lap (following Vitantonio Liuzzi’s spin out), a tactical error was committed by the Ferrari team, which saw both of their cars enter the pits at the same time in first and second position (Felipe Massa pitting first while Micahel Schumacher waited by idely). This left Schumacher leaving the pits in third position on the tail of points leader Fernando Alonso.

Massa went on to win the race with Alonso in second, half a second clear of Schumacher in third place. Congratulations go to Massa, who won his first formula one race, but with Schumacher in such a tight race with Alonso for the championship wouldn’t you think that they would have done everything in their power to guarantee Schumacher the best result possible? The team should have requested that Massa do another lap before pitting so Schumacher would have been allowed to pit and get out before Alonso and in all probability win the race and close the gap in the championship even further. As it stands, Alonso has stretched the lead back out to 12 points with 4 races left in the season. If Schumacher fails in his quest for an 8th World Championship title, today’s race will be looked on as the turning point in the closing stages of the season.

Alonso holds off Schumi in the final stages of the Turkish Grand Prix

Mark Webber will drive for the Red Bull team next year after signing a contract. This moves comes as a bit of a surprise to me considering that a seat at Renault was potentially available. It had been rumoured that Webber had a deal in the works with a team after it was revealed earlier this week that Williams would not be picking up the option on Webber’s contract.

Webber will join the experienced David Coulthard at Red Bull, but it seems to me that this decision won’t advance Webber’s career that much. Red Bull are more consistent than Williams, but that is hardly saying much. Although one of the best car designers in the world, Adrian Newey (who led Williams and McLaren to championships in the 90’s), will be designing the car for Red Bull next year (which will be a big improvement over the current car), only time will tell if Webber’s decision to sign with Red Bull instead of Renault was a sound one.

A frequent experience for Mark Webber during his time with Williams

After 113 races, Jensen Button finally broke through for his first race victory at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Button enjoys the bubbly following his victory

In this rain-affected race, Button was assisted by the retirements of the big three drivers - Alonso (wheelnut failure), Schumacher (handling problems), and Raikkonen (accident). Schumacher started from 11th on the grid and Alonso started from 15th, but this seemed to have little effect on them as they were both in the top 6 after the first lap.

Michael Schumacher is considered to be a master at driving in wet conditions, but it was easy to see that his Bridgestone tyres were not in the same league as the Michelins. Alonso was on a tear and made overtaking Schumacher look easy, showing the superiority of the Michelin tyres by overtaking Schumacher on the outside line.

Alonso closes in on Schumacher

It seemed as though Alonso was headed for an unlikely victory, but after his second pit stop, he failed to complete a lap - the first retirement for Alonso this season. This left a great opportunity for Schumacher to reduce Alonso’s lead in the championship, but three laps from the finish, Schumacher was forced to retire after his intermediate (between wet weather and dry weather) tyres got so bare that they caused the car to develop handling problems. Why Schumacher didn’t change to slick tyres once a dry line formed on the circuit I don’t know, but he will be regretting his decision, as he potentially could have closed the gap to 5 or 6 points. As it stands now, though, Alonso’s lead is down to 10 points with 5 races remaining in the season. It’s going to be a great finish to the championship.

Mark Webber had his future determined for him after Williams decided to not pick up the option on his contract for next season. In an earlier entry, I wrote about the great opportunity that Webber could be faced with at the end of the season, but now that Williams has decided to go in another direction, I believe Webber will end up driving for Renault.

Reliability issues have put a damper on Webber’s time with Williams

Whether or not Webber ends up with Renault next year will hinge on what Michael Schumacher and Kimi Raikkonen decide to do with their futures. If Schumacher retires, Raikkonen will most likely take his place at Ferrari and Webber will be used at Renault. If Schumacher stays at Ferrari for another season, Raikkonen could end up at Renault by effectively switching positions with Fernando Alonso (who has already signed with McLaren for next season). If this were to happen, it could definitely complicate things for Webber’s prospects. There is a slight possibility that Raikkonen will either end up at Ferrari as the second driver, even if Schumacher doesn’t retire (this seems unlikely though), or that he will stay at McLaren and team up with Alonso.

Webber has the talent to be a top Formula 1 driver, but so far he has been involved with teams that were sub-standard or just provided unreliable and slow cars. If he was given a shot with any of the big 3 teams (Ferrari, Renault, and McLaren), he would be a consistent podium threat. Time will tell where Webber ends up next year, but I’m sure he will be hoping to get a chance to prove just how good he can be.

Another impressive outing for Michael Schumacher and Ferrari this past weekend, winning the French Grand Prix.

Schumacher crosses the line - beating championship leader, Fernando Alonso who finished in 2nd

In what has turned out to be a season determined by who has the tyres on the given weekend, it was Ferrari’s Bridgestone tyres that dominated the weekend over Renault’s Michelin tyres. Ferrari was able to utilise a 3-pitstop strategy, thanks to the soft compound tyres that allowed the Ferrari to build up enough of a lead, so even though Alonso only pitted twice, Schumacher was able to win the race by a comfortable margin.

There are 7 races left in the season, and it’s shaping up to be a very close finish. Schumacher could potentially win the remaining seven races and still lose to Alonso, who currently has a 17 point advantage over Schumacher. Given the reliability of Alonso’s Renault, it’s going to be hard to go against him repeating as champion. However, with Schumacher you never know what is going to happen - maybe he will get in teammate Felipe Massa’s ears and convince him to take Alonso out in a couple of the races - you couldn’t put such a tactic beyong Schumacher, who has a history of dirty tactics. It will certainly be an exciting end to the season.

What a big weekend for sport! World Cup Soccer, French Open Finals, the British Formula One race, and the NBA Finals.

So far in the World Cup there have been a few exciting games, but there were far more games that were lacking excitement. The team that has really stood out so far for me is Argentina. Riquelme looked dangerous every time he touched the ball against the Ivory Coast, and I believe that without him in the lineup, the Ivory Coast probably would have won that game. What I haven’t liked so far is the form of the English team. I thought Beckham had a good game, but apart from him, the team looked very flat and they will need to turn things around if they want any chance of competing for the championship. Apart from the first ten minutes of their match, Portugal looked very average also.

So far, this is the goal of the tournament

In the French Open Finals, Justine Henin-Hardenne won her third French Open title in straight sets, 6-4 6-4. Good thing she wasn’t trailing early in the second set, otherwise she may have gotten ’stomach cramps’ again. On the men’s side, Rafael Nadal defeated Roger Federer in 4 sets, 1-6 6-1 6-4 7-6. Federer came out on fire in the first set, and things really looked good for him. I really can’t explain what happened in the second set, but he totally lost his game and confidence. The third and fourth sets could have gone either way; unfortunately for Federer they didn’t go his way, and he’ll have to wait another year for the elusive French Open title he desperately wants.

Fernando Alonso won his third straight race at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. It’s looking like the championship is all but decided - especially considering he hasn’t finished any worse than second this year. It was another disappointing day for Australia’s Mark Webber, who didn’t even finish a lap after he was taken out by Ralf Schumacher, who lost control after Scott Speed nudged him while taking a corner. Speed called it a ‘racing incident’ and that he was in front of Schumacher going through the corner. I call BS on that. Speed was nowhere near in front of Schumacher going in to that corner and as a result of his ill-adviced move, he took 3 competitors out of the race.

Dallas has taken a surprising 2-0 lead over the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals. What is even more surprising is the fact that Shaq has been a non-factor in the series. Shaq is normally bad from the free-throw line, but 2-16 is bad even by his standards. Add that to his 22 points COMBINED in both games and that spells trouble for Miami. It will be interesting to see if they can turn it around now that the series is moving to Miami for the next two games.

Australia’s first World Cup match in 32 years is 7 hours away. I’ll be up early and late to work so I can cheer the boys on - I hope all you other Aussies will be cheering too!

Controversy again surrounds Michael Schumacher after today’s qualifying session in Monaco. After posting the fastest time in the final round of qualifying, Schumacher ‘locked up’ his front wheels and ‘lost control’ of his car in one of the final corners on the course. This loss of control made other cars that were attempting to post a fast qualifying time to slow down when they arrived to Schumacher’s ‘immobile’ car.

You can judge for yourself

In my opinion, if it was a driver other than Michael Schumacher, you could probably believe that they did lose control of the car, but he has a history of using dirty tactics in the past. This makes it difficult to believe that he lost control of the car at that point in the session - to me, it looks like he purposefully guided the car into the spot while attempting to make it look like an accident.

8 hours after the qualifying session had ended, the stewards came to the same conclusion and relegated Schumacher to the back of the grid for the race tomorrow. Although I believe he crashed on purpose, Schumacher made it almost believable that it was an accident. Unfortunately, the race which was shaping up to be extremely close may now be anti-climactic with Fernando Alonso moving up to pole position and being heavily favoured to win the race. The good news for Australians is that because of Schumachers relegation, Mark Webber has moved up in to position 2, and if he makes it in to the first corner in first position, he may have a good chance of winning his first race.

Australia hasn’t had a World Champion Formula 1 driver since 1980 when Alan Jones won the championship driving for Williams. Mark Webber is Australia’s only driver in Formula 1 these days, and although there has been a lot of hype about his abilities, his best finish has been third in the 2005 Monaco Grand Prix. It hasn’t helped that he has been a driver on teams like Jordan, Minardi, and Williams. It was promising when he signed a contract with Williams because they were an established team with a great history; unfortunately, the car has not been the strongest and he hasn’t had the expected results.

Now there are reports that Webber is on the shortlist of candidates to replace Fernando Alonso once Alonso vacates his seat with Renault to drive for McLaren next year. Webber needs to make a choice - stay loyal to the team that gave him his first legitimate opportunity or jump ship to the most reliable team with an even better chance of winning. If anything has been proven over the past two seasons, it’s that Renault is the standard that all other teams are trying to emulate.

Webber has come out and said that he wants to stay at Williams through the end of his contract, provided Williams picks up the option on his contract. I say he jumps ship now and give himself the best chance to win a championship. That chance exists with Renault; it doesn’t exist at the moment, with Williams.