James Calado goes into this coming weekend’s German round of the GP2 series with a ten-place grid penalty for the Feature Race after being found guilty of causing a collision with Max Chilton at the last round in Great Britain.
In the Sprint Race at Silverstone, Calado and Chilton spent the race moving towards each other from opposite ends of the starting grid.While running tenth on the penultimate lap, Calado had a much better run than Chilton out of Copse corner and drew partly alongside on the way into Maggotts. On the exit of the corner, the cars touched, causing both to spin out of the race.
It was an ambitious move from Calado, which almost succeeded due to the awareness of Chilton, who allowed Calado just enough room make it through the corner on track. The contact was unfortunate, but was it really enough to earn a grid penalty for Calado?
GP2 is the primary feeder series for Formula One, which means that these drivers could find themselves at the pinnacle of motorsport a year or two from now. With that in mind, it seems logical that they should be encouraged to race each other to the limit, in order to provide the most entertaining and competitive racing possible. In this case, the move was unlikely to succeed, but it displayed opportunism and good aggression. Those are desirable qualities in a racing driver. Calado would have done better to stay as close as possible to Chilton through Chapel corner and attempt a pass into Stowe, but it is easy to come to that conclusion with the benefit of hindsight. In the race, he saw an opportunity and went for it, and it didn’t work out.
If anyone is to blame, it is Calado, simply because of how little chance he had of making the move work, but a ten-place grid penalty seems rather harsh for what is really just a racing incident.
Mark Webber has become the second driver to win twice in 2012, by taking victory at a surprisingly dry Silverstone.
After a weekend of torrential rain, the sun shone brightly at Silverstone, which mean the teams went into the race not knowing how their dry tyres would last. Most of the top ten started the race on the softer option tyres, and found that they fell off quite quickly. Fernando Alonso had started from pole on the harder prime tyres, and it proved to be a good decision as the Spaniard easily maintained the lead before pitting later than most of his rivals.
For most of the race, it looked like Alonso was in complete control, but Mark Webber was always not too far behind in second. After the last round of pitstops, Webber made his move, reeling in the championship leader before passing with the aid of DRS. From that point on, there was no challenging the Australian as he calmly went on to take his second British Grand Prix win in three years.
Sebastian Vettel finished third for Red Bull after making a poor start from fourth on the grid. The World Champion found himself fighting with Ferrari’s Felipe Massa for much of the early part of the race, but eventually found his way past in the final round of pitstops. Massa had his strongest race since 2010, finishing fourth after his best drive of the year.
Raikkonen and Grosjean finished fifth and sixth respectively for Lotus, continuing their reasonably competitive season. Onboard footage from Raikkonen’s car showed lots of suspension travel on the Lotus, presumably as part of a wet weather setup that ultimately proved unnecessary and possibly prevented better finishing position.
Mercedes had a disappointing day, with Schumacher finishing seventh from third on the grid and Rosberg 15th from 11th at the start. There were no particular incidents that put the Mercedes drivers out of contention. It seemed that the car was just not on the pace. It is possible that it was simply a matter of driving in the dry with a wet weather setup, but if not there may be some head scratching at Brackley.
McLaren seemed similarly slow, with Hamilton not managing to improve on his eighth place grid position. Button started the race 16th, and improved to tenth, but never seemed to have the pace to challenge for more points.
The major on-track incident of the race occurred when Sergio Perez attempted to pass Pastor Maldonado round the outside of Brooklands corner at the end of the DRS zone. Maldonado lost the back end of his Williams and slid into the side of the Sauber, causing the two cars to engage in some synchronised spinning and ending Perez’s race. When interviewed by Lee McKenzie in the pitlane following the incident, the Mexican was very outspoken in his criticism of Maldonado, placing blame squarely at the feet of the Venezuelan and calling on the stewards to take harsh action against the Williams driver.
The results of this race showed the superiority of the Red Bull and Ferrari teams. The rest of the field had no answer to the pace of the front-runners, and will now have to play catch-up through the middle of the season. Two races – in Germany and Hungary – remain before the summer break, and Ferrari and Red Bull will each want to go into that break with a clear advantage.
Formula One returns home this weekend with the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, scene of the very first World Championship Grand Prix in 1950. It is the home race of eight out of twelve teams, as most Formula One factories are based in England.
Although this is a big weekend for Formula One, this week’s racing news has been dominated not by the British Grand Prix, but by Maria De Villota’s horrific accident that occurred during testing of the Marussia MR-01 on Tuesday. As a result of the crash, she has lost an eye and remains in critical condition in hospital. The thoughts of the racing community are with Maria, her family and the Marussia F1 team at this difficult time.
Who can challenge Alonso?
Fernando Alonso is obviously the form driver thus far this season. He has not had the quickest car, but is the only driver to win two races this season, and consequently leads the Drivers’ Championship.
Based on their form in the early part of the season, Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel are Alonso’s major title challengers, and they will be looking to take as many points away from the Spaniard as possible this weekend.
Pirelli are bringing their hard and soft compounds to Silverstone. The large gap between tyre compounds (the medium compound separates them) should result in a substantial performance gain on the softer rubber, perhaps as much as a second per lap. The setup challenge will be to generate enough energy to heat up the hard tyres but not so much that the soft tyres overheat.
With rain predicted, dry setup could become irrelevant, and the teams may choose to focus on wet weather setup instead.
Pirelli are bringing an experimental hard tyre for the teams to test during Friday practice. This allows the tyre manufacturer to evaluate the performance of the tyres on current cars. The rest of Pirelli’s track testing takes place on a car that is two years old, and therefore not current in terms of technical regulations.
The Silverstone track is likely to play to the strengths of McLaren and Red Bull – the teams with the strongest aero packages – due to the large number of high speed corners on the layout. However, Fernando Alonso is bullish ahead of the weekend, suggesting that the Ferrari F2012 could be in contention.
It looks likely that the race will take place in the rain, which throws the contest wide open. The teams are already so closely matched that rain can only disrupt the order. It does bear remembering that Fernando Alonso and Sergio Perez were strong in rain-hit Malaysia, suggesting that Ferrari and Sauber could be strong this weekend.
Fernando Alonso has been a step ahead of the field in the early part of the season, which makes him the favourite for victory.
Circuit Length: 5.891 km
Race laps: 52
Race length: 306.198 km
Lap Record: 1:30.874 – Fernando Alonso / Ferrari (2010)
Race winner: Fernando Alonso / Ferrari
Pole position: Mark Webber / Red Bull – 1:30.399
Fastest lap: Fernando Alonso / Ferrari – 1:34.908
- Local hero Jim Clark won the British Grand Prix five times from only eight attempts between 1960 and 1967.
- The last driver to win back-to-back British Grands Prix was David Coulthard in 1999-2000.
- Only three of the last ten British Grands Prix have been won from pole position.
In true Silverstone fashion, rain is predicted for the entire weekend. Running is therefore likely to be limited in practice on Friday, unless there is a break in the weather that allows for some serious setup work.