It was terrific to see a McLaren driver back on the podium after China last year. Lewis Hamilton drove a near perfect race after gaining lead when Fernando went to the pits for fuel. Mind you, he didn't set the fastest lap nor did he speed away from the rest of the pack, he controlled the race from the front without giving any heartache to his crew in the paddock. It was evident from Germany last weekend that McLaren's upgrades were starting to deliver the performance they so badly needed. However it's yet to be seen if it's the nature of these slow corner ciruits that is masking the inefficiency of the aerodynamics on the McLaren's care which would be obvious in high speed corners where the Brawn and RBR cars simply fly through.
This year the FOTA teams are following a compulsory 2 week closure of their factories to allow their staff take a break in the middle of the season. In Valencia we should see some more performance enhancements done on the McLaren. When everyone was losing their patience with KERS McLaren and Ferrari didn't trash their KERS programme and the result was amply evident for everyone to see. McLaren get's the distinction for being the first ever KERS equipped F1 car to win a race, having trashed KERS it's high time BMW looked into the whole package and see how they could use it to better their vehicle's performance.
In 2007 McLaren was at the center of a storm in Hungary which was later termed as 'pitlane-gate' by some journalists. Fernando caused a problem impeding Lewis' pitstop by staying put after refuelling thus causing a delay in refuelling Lewis' car. This season it was Felipe's turn albeit a ghastly one at that. A damper spring which fell off Rubens' car floated in the air and hit Felipe, who was about 4 seconds behind Rubens, on the left eyebrow causing him to ram into a tyre wall. It was scary to see the driver motionless in the car till the medics carried him out of it into an ambulance.
Fans of F1 are so used to see drivers get into worse accidents and walk out of the incident unscathed due to the extreme levels of stress on safety that this incident brought back the fact that in racing human's were involved. Timo Glock's crash in Aus 2008 was terrifying and when Timo walked out of the wreck without any injury it was a testimony to the high levels of safety that are enforced in F1. Felipe's accident could start off a debate about having a canopy to shield the driver, I hope better sense prevails when making a decision on this aspect.
I hope Felipe gets well soon and is racing fit without any delay and turns out terrific performances in the GPs he gets to participate this year. I hope Martin Whitmarsh, having tasted his first ever race win as team prinicipal goes on to lead the team into more successes this year and put in a superior development effort into next year's car. I hope Formula1 remains this pinnacle of automobile engineering and continues to break new grounds through innovation and persistence. Am I hoping for too much?
