Apologies

Okay. Not the best of starts to this blog. Two outrageously wrong predictions (see below): (1) that Hamilton was lighter than Alonso; and (2) that Massa might spring a surprise.

I must admit that I was surprised to see Alonso peel off into the pit lane before his rookie team-mate. Given Hamilton’s qualifying pace I genuinely thought he was running the more aggressive strategy and had simply failed to hook it up in Q3. As someone who is a huge fan of Hamilton, there is a plus side to my bodge up. That he was indeed the heavier of the two Mclarens is testimony to his sheer pace. If it is true that he could have gone half a second quicker then his qualifying laps were simply sensational. He would have been around three tenths of a second ahead of Alonso despite the added weight penalty. In terms of raw pace, I still think Hamilton has the edge on Alonso.

Was a slightly dejected looking Hamilton attributable to, as this mornings papers have been suggesting, team-orders preventing him from attacking his teammate? I suspect it was more a case of Hamilton ruing a missed opportunity. The young Britain had the pace to win, and he knew it. In my view, he lost the race on Saturday afternoon

As for Massa, he did the best he could under the circumstances. You can’t help but feel Michael Schumacher would have been able to find something extra and put the Mclarens under some pressure. That said, he keeps himself in the championship hunt which is more than can be said for Raikkonen.