Nigel Roebuck מסכם את העונה שחלפה

[דובי מילר]

את הסיכום שלי בוודאי כבר קראתם, על עונת 2007 בפורמולה-1 וכעת אני מצרף את חוות דעת המומחה, תהנו -

 

On the face of it, the 2007 season was the closest, most competitive, in recent F1 history.

 

A few years ago, when Ferrari were winning everything, I remarked to Bernie Ecclestone that the sport had become boring, that when you set off to a race, you knew - even before you got to the airport - who was going to win.

 

Bernie didn't disagree, and acknowledged that he didn't like it. "On the other hand," he said, "you can't blame Ferrari for being the only people to do the job properly, can you?" And I couldn't disagree with that.

 

This season past, though, McLaren were also doing the job properly (as did Renault in 2005 and '06), challenging Ferrari, and very often having a clear performance advantage over them.

 

Look at the season's results: 17 Grands Prix, with nine victories to Ferrari, and eight to McLaren. Kimi Raikkonen's late surge took him to six wins, with Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso winning four apiece, and Felipe Massa three. Pretty even stuff, you'd have to say. And each one of the four drivers had days when he was flat unbeatable.

 

Close as the championship was on paper, though, the same could not be said of the racing itself. We all remember Hamilton's memorable pass of Raikkonen at Monza, but in reality, once the opening dash to the first corner was done with, there wasn't a whole lot of wheel-to-wheel racing between Ferrari and McLaren.

 

More often than not, one or the other had a clear advantage at a given circuit - the Ferraris superior at circuits in abounding in long, fast, corners, the McLarens better in slow corners, and over bumps and kerbs.

 

Raikkonen - at the last gasp - won the World Championship, but, although he won season opener in Melbourne, the first half of his season was largely a great disappointment. After years spent driving a McLaren on Michelins, he plainly struggled to come to terms with a Ferrari on Bridgestones.

 

His drive at Monaco - where he had previously excelled - was particularly dismal, and invariably Massa was the team's pacesetter. Kimi, the highest-paid driver in the history of the sport, was not delivering.

 

It was during this period that his legendary insouciance paid dividends, for in that situation many another star would have become neurotic about his failure to produce, but Raikkonen simply doesn't care about all that stuff. The 'Ice Man' tag is well-earned.

 

It was at Indianapolis, where he finally found a set-up suited to his driving style, that Kimi finally began to turn his season around. When F1 returned to Europe, he won two races in seven days, at Magny-Cours, and thereafter was always a factor, even if his uncertain qualifying performances sometimes compromised his races.

 

His drive at Fuji, where he drove through the field in appalling conditions and finished third, was as great as he has ever produced, I think, and in the end you would have to say he is a worthy World Champion. I never get upset when the man with the most wins takes the title.

 

That said, I have no doubts that the best driver overall, in terms of competitiveness throughout the 17 races, was Hamilton. Rookie or not, Hamilton was in contention from the very start, overawed by no-one, as his getaway in Melbourne consummately demonstrated.

 

Often he snatched pole position at the very last second, and sometimes - as at Montreal, scene of his first victory - he was just plain quicker than anyone else. Quite remarkable for a young driver in his first season of F1.

 

There were occasions - Sepang, Monza - when Alonso was utterly imperious, and there's no doubt that, however much some of us may have revised our opinions of Alonso the man this year, he remains a very great racing driver.

 

But if Hamilton's performances have shaken us this season, there's no doubt that they rocked Alonso, and thus, I think, we have seen fallibilities in the double world champion which might otherwise never have seen the light. And did that surprise me? Yes, it did.

 

Towards the end of the season, Massa slipped out of the battle for the championship, but still he had an extremely strong season, with three victories superbly taken, and he was unlucky to suffer several times from reliability problems one would not expected from Ferrari. Like the other three, on his day Felipe can beat anyone.

[דובי מילר]

והחלק השני -

 

 

Moving on from the top four, I was agreeably surprised by Nick Heidfeld's performances this season, because although the experienced German has always been a very good, no-nonsense, racing driver (rated extremely highly by Patrick Head, which always registers with me), I'd anticipated that his younger, more naturally-talented team-mate, Robert Kubica, would have quite a comfortable edge, and such did not prove to be the case.

 

To a surprising degree, Kubica struggled to adapt his style to the requirements of the new-generation Bridgestone tyres, although, that said, once he had managed he was often a touch quicker than Heidfeld.

 

Next, Nico Rosberg, whom I thought clearly the most improved driver of the season. In 2006, his first year in F1, Rosberg showed great fundamental ability, and there were flashes of huge speed, but this year he was much more consistent, and frequently qualified the Williams much higher than might have been expected.

 

Not surprisingly, the team values him extremely highly, appreciating not only his hard work and dedication, but also his refusal to become discouraged when things go wrong.

 

Heikki Kovalainen was a great disappointment in the first half of the year, and that, given his credentials, was a great surprise. Let's face it, a highly-touted rookie, with a full year of testing behind him, should not have been blown away by Giancarlo Fisichella, but that is what happened.

 

As with Raikkonen and Kubica though, Heikki eventually got to terms with the Bridgestones, and once in a car he felt comfortable with, began to reveal some of that latent promise. His drive to second at Fuji, holding off Raikkonen in the late lap, was exceptional, I thought.

 

Tonio Liuzzi turned in several impressive performances in the second half of the year, particularly after the very promising Sebastian Vettel arrived at Toro Rosso in place of Scott Speed.

 

Disappointments? Well, the showing of Honda, for a start. It was awful to see Jenson Button (and Rubens Barrichello) consigned to the role of also-rans, but I thought Jenson drove exceptionally well all season long - how he kept his motivation going I can't imagine.

 

Fisichella, who took over number one status at Renault when Alonso left, was a disappointment - although, in saying that, perhaps I'm getting it wrong, because I fact he produced more or less the season I expected from him.

 

A great driver, in terms of natural ability and style, Giancarlo is simply not enough of a racer, and never has been.

 

Undoubtedly, though, the great let-down of 2007 was he of the famous name. For many years, Ralf Schumacher has been among the very highest-paid of the F1 drivers, and his fundamental talent has never been in question - remember those back-to-back wins for Williams at the Nurburgring and Magny-Cours in 2003?

 

Since arriving at Toyota in 2005, though, Ralf has given the impression of one collecting his pension, and it hardly a surprise that the team has dropped him. Rarely in F1 has more money been spent on less.