I had thought that jbroomy or bc525 would have been all over this one but I suppose I'll do the honours instead.
Last weekend saw two major milestones reached in motorsport; not only did NASCAR finally decide to hold a race in the rain (and yes, I am peeved that they'll refuse to do it for the Cup series if Chad Knaus' report on 'TWIN' had a shred of truth to it), but we also had the 100th different winner in F1 history.
Heikki Kovalainen, aka 'Kovy', was the lucky driver in more ways than one.
He put in a great qualifying lap to start second behind his teammate, and Championship leader, Lewis Hamilton but at the Hungaroring, that means the dirty side of the track. Indeed, Felipe Massa's Ferrari got the jump on both McLarens and took the lead going into turn one with Kovy settling into third...and a rather lonely race for the Finn had begun.
Kovalainen became the 100th different driver to reach the top step of the podium.
Now, some drivers have no winning luck at certain tracks; Dale Earnhardt at the Daytona 500, Michael Schumacher at the Australian GP, Glenn Seton at Bathurst, Rubens Barrichello at Interlagos and Kimi Raikkonen at Hockenheim just to name a few (dare I add Marcos Ambrose at Montreal to that list?). However, Felipe Massa tends to have more than his fair share of bad luck than most (although, some of his retirements are down to brainfades mind you...not good if he wants to win the title one day) and around Hungary, that 'luck factor' is even worse as he hadn't had a good points race there in his entire career.
That was set to change on Sunday as not only did he manage to get the jump on Lewis at the start, but he was able to slowly build his lead over the next 40 odd laps before he could cruise when Hamilton got a puncture on his left front tyre (either from flat spotting or debris, I'm not sure) with 29 laps to go (70 lap race by the way). At that time, Felipe's lead over Kovy was around 23 seconds and it looked a forgone conclusion that Massa was about to retake the Championship lead as Lewis had to work his way through the field for the second straight race. However, the racing Gods had something else in mind and as Felipe came down the front straight to start lap 68, his Ferrari V8 engine let go in a huge cloud of smoke and his race was over.
And so, that left Kovy to pick up the pieces and secure his first grand prix victory. The Finn, in just his second season finally broke through and repaid the faith Ron Dennis showed by replacing Fernando Alonso, the man who had won the 2005 and 2006 titles, with him. Now, I pretty much expected Kovy to struggle against Lewis this season since Lewis had all of 2007 to get used to 'the McLaren way', but now that he has that first win, his confidence at a title shot in 2009 would have been significanlty boosted.
As for the luckless Massa...well, he can take heart in the fact that his teammate came from further back this time last year to win the Championship so all is not lost yet.
Yep. Quite interesting to read about the F1 drivers.
Now lets get the Cup cars some rain tires and lets go racing in the rain. Of course we have to do a better job with giving the drivers squeeges to clean the wind shields.
Tez - I havent been following the F1 series as closely this year as in years past. But I am glad you posted a blog on this significant milestone in F1 series. I would believe that Cup racing in the rain is still not likely to happen at this time.
The Hungarian GP was an interesting race for sure, with Hamilton blowing a tire and Massa's engine grenading at the end. Did you see the faces of the Ferrari mechanics? They were in the midst of cheering as Kimi was suddenly chasing down the Toyota of Timo Glock, and then OMG! Massa just blew up! Somehow Raikkonen ended up on the podium after all of his struggles.
Congrats to Heikki! Sure, he was a bit lucky but he had qualified well and raced strong to be in that position.
This is shaping up to be another wild finish in F1 and I'm loving it!
Tez is a rare creature; an Australian who was living in New Zealand before moving to Canada. He's also a Civil Engineer who is hoping to spend his Monday to Friday sitting in front of a computer surfing the inter...uh, working hard for an Engineering Consultant or Contractor when he finds a job. His heart is torn between his two loves; F1 and NASCAR.
Due to his high interest in those, his blogs will likely focus on them with the occasional foray into sports that don't get much (if any) mention on this website. All blogs and/or comments will more than likely have his usual dollop of sarcasm and general Aussie spin on them.
Amazingly, he also managed to score 2 MiB nominations on consecutive days (August 5 & 6, 2007) after announcing he had been keeping track of them...he's considering hiding under his bed as a result.
