renault in great shape

[spain]

while bridgestone cars suffer understeer, the michelin of renault performed brilliantly. the qualifying times were very impressive, with the renault taking the front row followed by the ferrari sealing the top four. extremely close battle.

fisichella did brilliantly, and most importantly qualify in front of michael schumacher. alonso will be banking on fisichella to play the role of a 'road block', while he storms off to a unsurmountable lead. unless michael can do a renault-rocket-start and leapfrog fisichella, the race could well be decided right after the first corner.


ferrari might have tremendous straight-line speed (although under suspicison from other teams), but this track is another difficult one to overtake; therefore it would most probably all come down to pit strategy, again. if fisichella were to slow down his driving, the ferrari might think about changing their strategy - possibly pitting early and pumping in more fuel for a longer first stint. they ought to go for the win, not just the podium, else the championship cannot be won.

mentionable qualifying effort from barichello, beating his teammate for the second time. as barichello gets more comfortable with the car, his performance improves. now he needs to beat button convincingly in the race. if his performance level continues to improve, you can probably even bet on barichello winning honda's first race. imagine how the british media would react to that?

splitting the honda is the impressive toyota. they are the second fastest bridgestone team, and they out-qualify a honda, two mclarens, the williams and bmws. the management should be quite happy with that. just like the honda, they need to translate great qualifying to great racing.

finally, i thought sato did a pretty good job. he was able to drive the old super aguri within a second of the slowest midland. when the new car comes out, i think super aguri can get themselves out of last place and compete with midland.

so, can alonso finally win his first spain gp? or will ferrari pull some tactical magic out of the hat? personally, i hope the championship will get closer. it would be great to get mclaren or toyota into the mix a little. if alonso wins this race, then i'm pessimistic of an exciting finale for the season.

here's my prediction for the podium, in no particular order: alonso, fisichella, michael schumacher. no renault 1-2 this time though.



previous posts:
nurburgring: ferrari back in the hunt
nurburgring: nurburgring a real test
imola: renault lost imola
melbourne: renault completes hat-trick
melbourne: jenson grabs pole down under
sepang: sepang revealed more problems
sepang: engine changes dominate qualifying
bahrain: thrilling bahrain
bahrain: an exciting start to 2006


[tagged: renault, spain, rubens barichello, formula 1]