Hope everyone had a great holiday. I was blessed to have my kids home for the holidays and our parents.
So I talked about F1 Forward and qualifying at Nurburgring last post.
Nick was slotted 7th and with his great pit crew a 2 stop strategy was a no brainer. He and Joel Evers his race engineer decided on an aggressive start with banging wheels. Jacques started 11th and was hoping the rain would hold off so he and his team decided on saving tires.
Gentlemen, start your engines!
Lap1 Fisichella uses his chip to pass Raikkonen to take the lead! Nick passes Montoya to move into 6th.
Lap 4 Raikkonen takes the lead back. Nick still in 6th. Alonso in 7th now.
Lap 7 Raikkonen extends lead. Ferrari and Alonso start to pass BMW [ look at shell curve] as I run out of decent cards.Montoya and Button breathing down Nick's neck.
Lap 10 Contest at Shell curve! Nick's agressive driving is tested...
Nick gets the lane and passes Alonso. Montoya tries to follow but is not quick enough. He bends Alonso's wing. Alonso decides with impending rain to hold off on a stop to repair. He pushes ...
and can't hold it at Bit Kurve. This puts him back in traffic. Meanwhile Massa is again running a great race and has moved into second behind Raikkonen. Nick stays in 8th. Jacques is in 11th.
Lap 18 Raikkonen pits and Fisicherella takes lead.
Lap 27 Starts to rain lightly just as most cars need to pit including BMWs. Everyone comes in except Schumacher who is running a 1 stop strategy. He needs to pit in 4 turns. This puts him in first. Nick changes to intermediate tires and changes to balance strategy. Partially due to his pit crew he comes back out and immediately moves up to 5th. [ He has pitting skill.]
Lap 31 Schumacher on mediums looses ground in the rain. Massa takes the lead with Fisichella behind him. Nick is behind Raikkonen. You can just see Alonso hopelessly stuck in traffic in the back of the shot.
Alonso's frustrations continue as he keeps trying to break through traffic. Here he runs wide on turn 2.
Lap 34 Everyone stuck on traffic. Weber in the white car is not in the lead. He is trying to avoid being lapped by Massa.
Lap 42 All out racing on the ITT Bogen. Raikkonen moves into first and Nick moves into second! A first for BMW. Schumacher, despite his late pit is in 5th and he will soon move into 4th. Jacques is penalized 5 seconds for a pit lane violation. Pierre Haas, his engineer, is emphatic it is bogus and we should protest.
Lap 50 big contest at coca cola corner...
Nick takes first place!
Alas glory is short lived. All cars on the 2 stop strategy have to pit by lap 56 which they do since the weather never changes from intermittent rain. Schumacher doesn't and easily takes the lead. Out of the pits Nick moves into second with a lucky strategy since cards have been a problem.
I would like to say that Nick was gaining on Schumacher but Nick didn't have soft tires. Instead the problem was Nick holding onto 2nd place.
Lap 64 Nick skillfully kept his rivals behind him for almost 10 laps. Then at Shell Kurve Raikkonen and Fisichella made their moves..
He did it! That boy ran quite a race!
Final results-- Schumacher wins easily with his 1 stop strategy given the weather stayed much more stable than anticipated. I come in second for my personal best. Raikkonen third with Fishichella fourth and Massa fifth. Button, Coulthard and Montoya finish the points with Rosberg is a slow car just missing 8th. Alonso finishes 10, very rough day.
This tightens up the standings even more. Raikkonen now has sole posesion of first place with 29 points. Schumacher and Massa are tied for second with 25. Here are the standings after 4 races:
Raikkonen 29
Schumacher 25
Massa 25
Alonso 23
Fisichella 21
Heildfeld 18
Ferrari takes the lead in the constructors with 50
Ferrari 50
Renault 44
McLaren 36
BMW 19
Honda 5
Red Bull 3
Alonso scoring 0 points really upset the apple cart.
Now on to the team...
Banner day for BMW. Our first podium of the year. Our 2 mandatory events are press conference and drivers check.
Our press conference goes okay which for us I consider a win. Nick says nothing wrong [ except failing to mention his great pit crew. more on that later] and Jacques is able to defend his penalty, whew. Maybe my mentoring Franz Glick is paying off.
The second event is a drivers' check. Nothing happens here.
For our 2 BMW team checks we get Nick's interaction with his pit crew and a team 1 chemistry check. Turns out that the pit crew noticed Nick's snub of their efforts at the news conference. They are not happy. This could have had dire consequences during the team 1 chemistry check but so far everyone continues to pull together well. Fortunately I noticed the snub [ using AKOT for those of you familiar with that, I set it at unlikely.] and talk to Leo about it. We will need to formulate a plan to ensure the pit crew continues to feel valued as they certainly are key.
So F1 Forward rolls along as does BMW racing with our first podium. Next up the Belgium Grand Prix. Can we get a second podium? Will Nick's pit crew continue with gusto?
We will find out, stay tuned.
Enjoy
Joe
No comments:
Post a Comment