spanish grand prix

Spanish Grand Prix this last weekend.

Usually Spain is a bit boring.  A big part of this is because it's where they do the winter testing and it's also where they used to do some of the in-season testing back before they cut it out to help reduce costs.

In the past that has meant the teams and many of the drivers know the track intimately, but it also means they know each other's performance at the track very well too.  Obviously if you keep using the same track over and over then the final result come race day is likely to reflect what you saw when you were practicing too.

However, thanks to Pirelli even tracks like Spain have been given a new lease of life in terms of the quality of the races and this last weekend was no exception.  The race was a good one with lots of on (and off) track action.

Of particular note was obviously that Williams has managed to win a race for the first time in something like 10 years.  They've been going through quite a rough patch recently Williams and haven't really even been in contention for being a mid-field team for a while.  Last year was there worst ever season, but this year their fortunes seem to have turned through the full 180 degrees.

Also Sauber and Lotus both seem to have made some serious steps and are very much contention.  Indeed, it's such an open season that we've had five separate winners in each of the five races this year.

Another clear example is that Alonso is currently sitting at the top of the table, despite having not won any of the races and everyone saying the Ferrari car this year is terrible.

There were a couple of sour notes.  Having had the victory and celebrating Frank Williams's 70th Birthday there was a fire in their pits after the race and four people got injured.  Fire has always been one of the riskiest elements in Grand Prix and it's claimed more than a few lives over the years.

The other sour note was Lewis Hamilton who, having done a stunner of a lap in the final stages of qualifying was then told to turn off his car while out on the circuit as he was low on fuel.  The cars are required to give a sample of fuel from the tank following qualifying to make sure they're not adding in anything to improve performance.

This is actually quite a lot (1 litre) and if they can't give this then there are quite serious penalties.  It came about because of a similar incident involving Lewis a while back where he ran out of fuel on his in lap.  This time the team told him to stop so they would be able to give the sample.

Now I believe there is also a regulation that says you can't do this either - knowingly under fill your car (more fuel = more weight and makes you slower) and stop.  However, McLaren indicated it was an error, but the stewards didn't accept this and demoted him right to the back of the grid.

This seemed un-necessarily harsh, given that the weight reduction would only have given him 2 or 3 tenths (he was half a second quicker) and he'd already set a quick time that would have put him 6th.

And this after the last race in Bahrain where Rosberg tried to run Hamilton and Alonso off the road and Hamilton overtook off the track and yet nobody received any punishment at all.

One of the things that did amuse me about it was when Hamilton pulled up the booing of the crowd was epic.  Lewis isn't the most popular fellow in Spain given how fanatically they love Alonso and the year they spent as team mates at McLaren.