F1 Fanatic

I have to admit when I saw those two cars on slicks at the start I thought it would never work out for them, never mind finish first and third. Those early laps with Cecotto slicing through the field and passing eight cars in half a lap were quite incredible as well.

Melker also had a great first lap defending from Valsecchi at the start and then taking the lead from Giedo van der Garde at the T6 hairpin.

@prisoner-monkeys, I haven’t kept a close eye on Cecotto’s this year, but his up-and down performances do raise questions. He’s had two feature-race victories this year, and deserved ones too (as yesterday he was very quick even when everyone else had pitted for slicks), but he’s also spent a lot of time anonymously in the midfield. Is he a really fast driver who, for reasons unclear to the outside, struggles to get the best out of the car, or is he an average driver, who has lucked into the car’s (and tyres’!) sweet spot on a few occasions?

With regard to the race itself, it seemed to me that the majority of the field was struggling with tyre wear from about halfway through the race (I didn’t see the lap times for final 10 or so laps because the live timing went ‘dead’). I think early in the race (around lap 10 out of 38), many drivers were dipping into the 1m27s, but by the end of the race they were doing 1m30s (can anyone confirm?). With a light car and new tyres, you would expect them to drive around 1m26s by that stage, and time lost in the pits would soon be regained on track. Don’t they have enough tyres to pit for fresh tyres, or do pit stops take too long in GP2? It’s all very well to have degrading tyres, but if you don’t have enough rubber to get through the races, then things get a little silly.

I read an interview with Nigel Melker in Dutch, that claims that his performances earlier this year had more to do with Ocean Racing than with Melker. In Nigel’s words: ‘in stead of working on the car, the engineers much rather took an extra coffee break.’ I really hope that he will be racing with a better team next year, so we will see his full potential.

And maybe we’ll see some of the more-competitive GP3 drivers in the category as well. I’m thinking of Evans, Vainio, Laine, Ellinas, Stockinger, Ceccon, Visiou, Niederhauser, Brundle, Buller, da Costa (but he’ll probably stay in Formula Renault) and Pal Kiss. Plus Nasr, Leimer, Palmer, Calado, Gutierrez (if he doesn’t get promoted to Formula 1), Dillmann, Razia, Melker, Chilton, Haryanto, van der Garde, Valsecchi and Cecotto, and the series might just get some credibility back.

But they need to change the calendar, too. Drop the Bahrain rounds, and go to Montreal and New Jersey.

@bag0 – Bullers drive in the second race at Silverstone was phenomenal.

Good to see Calado get a win in the sprint race, he’s had some miserable luck recently. Without things like his car failure in Silverstone and his botched strategy in Valencia he’d be right in the thick of the championship hunt.

Perhaps he’ll end up back in it anyway as championship leaders Luiz Razia and Davide Valsecchi scored just eight points between them at the Hockenheimring.

Both spun at the Spitzkehre during the race, Valsecchi doing so after being tapped by Jolyon Palmer. Palmer and Stefano Coletti received post-race penalties for overtaking Josef Kral under yellow flags which promoted Valsecchi to seventh. Without that he would have failed to score for the fifth time in seven races.

The yellow flags were out due to Giancarlo Serenelli’s second big crash of the weekend, also at turn 12, where he went off during practice:

By way of contrast Valsecchi’s rookie team mate Felipe Nasr extended his run of top six finishes with his fourth in a row, finishing third behind Giedo van der Garde.

So Hockenheim was a pot-boiler as far as the championship is concerned. GP2′s points system is a bit complicated (points for pole and fastest lap are A Bad Thing) but suffice it to say that with 192 points remaining to be won over the remaining eight races it is, quite literally, anyone’s title to win:

1. Luiz Razia – 171
2. Davide Valsecchi – 161
3. Esteban Gutierrez – 129
4. Giedo van der Garde – 119
5. James Calado – 116
6. Fabio Leimer – 95