Looking back at San Marino

By Matt Jones
April 25 2006

Regular RealHondaF1.com reader Matt Jones again gives us his view of the race weekend just gone. Not impressed by Honda's performance in San Marino, Matt lets us know exactly how he feels...

The start of the European season in Formula One, and the first stop is Imola. With Honda struggling with cool track temperatures at Australia, I was hoping for an abnormally warm Grand Prix weekend and, thankfully for us, we got that. With high track temperatures, any worries of the cold tyre problems that haunted us at Melbourne should prove minimal.

Qualifying came with the news that Nico Rosberg would be using the T-car after crashing out in Saturday practice, leaving him no time to set the car up for qualifying. The rookie had heavily compromised his race weekend before it was started and ended up not making the final session for the shootout for pole.

Another more surprising result was that Giancarlo Fisichella would also miss out on the shootout for pole. After posting a fairly competitive lap in session two of qualifying, he returned to his garage thinking he had done enough. Unfortunately Giancarlo was caught out by the unpredictable new qualifying format - a number of cars put in faster laps, quickly knocking Giancarlo down out of the top ten. It happened so quickly that Giancarlo had no time to react and get on track, resulting in him starting from P11.

Onto the final session, and Honda suddenly found some great pace with both drivers putting in some very competitive times, leaving us P2 and P3 for the race - a very strong position.

In the final session everyone sets their flying lap at around the same time. This is very exciting, as you get a constant change of position and a sense of mayhem but, due to the fact everything is happening at once, we usually see only one full flying lap before the director cuts to the car behind who only has a handful of seconds left of his flying lap.

On race day the cold tyre issue seemed to be behind us. Whether this was down to changes on the car or the warm track temperatures remains to be seen. Whilst Button started well Rubens by contrast slipped back into the back, losing a couple of places off the start - a disappointment for the Brazilian who promised so much after qualifying. Unfortunately Rubens’ weekend did not get any better. A fuel rig issue on his first stop along with a complete lack of pace saw him drop out of the points paying positions.

The first lap shunt between Yuji Ide and Christijan Albers ensured that Honda got to test their tyres properly under a restart from the safety car and they excelled, working every bit as good as the competitions on the restart. Unfortunately for Yuji Ide, he has not excelled and pressure is mounting on him to start performing. The tangle being deemed his fault by the race stewards will not have helped his cause.

We seemed to go from one weekend with bad luck with the safety cars to another with bad luck with pit stops. Button’s first stop was hampered, causing him to lose three seconds in the pits. Rubens’ first stop came with fuel rig problems, and Button’s second stop saw him drive off with the fuel rig still attached! Thankfully no one was injured and the fuel that was sprayed everywhere did not set alight. Unfortunately any chance of strong points finish was lost in these moments, such is the margin for error in Formula One.

We managed to show the same sort of pace as the front runners in the first stint, but we were a lot lighter on fuel so, obviously, we’re a lot further behind Renault than we were at Sepang a few weeks ago. Ferrari were employing a few team tactics in the first stint. Seeing Alonso as a threat, Massa started to circulate a good second a lap slower, backing Alonso up and halting his charge to Michael Schumacher in P1.

However, one got a sense of karma when, suddenly, both Ferrari’s started lapping 1.5 seconds a lap slower than Alonso, giving the race the same look as last year only this time it was Alonso’s chance to play cat to Schumacher’s mouse. It seemed inevitable that, with Alonso’s superior pace and with him being so close still with one stop to make, that he would indeed pass Michael in the only place feasible - the pit stops. Renault for some reason pitted Alonso earlier than expected, which handed Michael track position for the remainder of the race. Whilst Alonso hustled, it was obvious that Schumacher was not going to be passed.

Honda has made a step backwards since our fantastic display in Sepang, where we were just nine seconds off the Renault over the course of the race. Suddenly we find ourselves struggling to keep pace with them, despite carrying 10 laps less fuel onboard. That’s a massive contrast in pace which really needs to be solved before we can hope of challenging for any wins. Rubens, after finally promising a strong weekend in qualifying, again served us with a lacklustre race. After his first stop he was never really in contention for points.

McLaren quietly got the job done, opting again for a fairly heavy first stint. They too are not anywhere near the pace of the front runners, and are going to need to find a big leap in performance if they are serious about retaining the services of Kimi Raikkonen. Juan Pablo Montoya outperformed his teammate for the first time this season, getting his first podium of the year.

Ferrari showed excellent pace in the first stint, but this cannot be said for the rest of the race. Crucially, they held on to track position despite their obvious struggle for pace, and it was a fantastic drive from Michael to keep the charging Alonso at bay for half of the race. Massa did a solid job of holding up Alonso in the first stint and drove a solid race to bring his car back home fourth, despite suffering from the same lack of pace as his team leader.

Jarno Trulli’s first corner accident gives the Toyota driver another retirement and leaves him with no championship points this season. The team showed reasonable pace, with Ralf on a three stop strategy. However, for a three stopper to work you need clear air to pull off fast lap times, something that Ralf could not do for large parts of the race.

BMW-Sauber were quietly running in the midfield and did nothing to threaten the points positions. They will be disappointed with this result after a very solid start to the season, which elevated them up the constructors’ championship with a good haul of points.

Mark Webber quietly got the job done in his Williams. Nothing spectacular, but he brought the points home, giving the Australian his first finish since the opening race of the season in Bahrain. Nico Rosberg lacked any sort of pace and was obviously struggling, making it a race weekend to forget for the rookie.

Renault have two extremes. One is the fantastic display of Alonso week in and week out, constantly challenging for wins, with the Spaniard giving another absolutely brilliant display of driving here at Imola. The other extreme is Giancarlo Fisichella who, once again, was struggling in the midfield after a disappointing qualifying session. His race was barely any stronger and one has to admit that his race seat is at risk if he doesn’t pick up the pace.

Red Bull Racing again showed absolutely no pace or reliability, and the season is starting to look more and more desperate for the team. This season points are going to be hard to come by and I suspect a lot in the team are already looking forward to next year when, given the personnel they have signed, they should have a superb package.

Onto the Nurburgring, and it will be interesting to see if we can bridge the performance gap after another disappointing display. The rest of the field seem to be catching up in terms of performance and I think that we are in danger of slipping behind the top four teams. Hopefully we can find some pace, but I am still very concerned of what level of performance loss we might suffer in the cool temperatures of the European season that awaits us. Thankfully we didn’t seem to lose much more time than the others when we had a safety car period, so it does indicate that perhaps we have sorted out the problems with the tyres. Either way we are still lacking pace and, with flawless reliability issues from the top teams at Imola, I don’t think we can rely on other teams dropping us points from above.