I now have a hat trick of Grand Prix topics started.
Belgium very much favoured Ferrari last year, but how will everyone else do this year?
Practice looks about as unpromising for Kimi Raikkonen as the previous races have. And a collision with a wall this afternoon could have dampened his spirits a little.
It's a 4th and a 3rd in the Friday practice for Heikki, but its been a Ferrari and a Renault topping the time sheets so far.

I like Belgium, its exciting. But to be honest, I'm looking forward to Monza next week a lot more.

Spa-Francorchamps is one of the best tracks; and you can explain that fact saying that the track contains almost all kind of bends/curves possible, and some of them are really special and famous.

But it's almost everything, it's one track with an 'unknown' factor which makes it one of the best (If not the best) actual F1 tracks; although it's one of the oldest ones.

Räikkönen has always raced there in a great way, I think he's the favourite... even though McLaren-Mercedes cars have fixed this track pretty good lately and Massa is in the best moment of the year.

GP of Belgium could be extremely important to know the winners of both championships. Let's see if luck is not against the team and we can achieve a good result.
(I would like to see the 3rd podium for Heikki this season).

I'm not going to write anything else about the race other than my fury at the FIA.
It's a conspiracy I tell you.
The FIA favour Ferrari.
I don't know about any other countries, but ITV covered the topic in the build up and they asked Ross Brawn and he said that they didn't as well as some people from Ferrari. But it's all lies. No wonder I'm not a Ferrari fan.
Felipe Massa can get away with an unsafe release from the pits. Kimi Raikkonen goes unpenalised for smashing into the back of Sutil.
Sebastien Vettel (although not Ferrari, its a Ferrari engine and a similar case to Lewis Hamilton's today) gets off with straight lining chicanes (I think in France, correct me if it was somewhere else) to avoid being taken by the McLaren of Heikki Kovalainen for the final points paying position.
Yet in recent races McLaren have been given grid drops and drive through penalties and now a time penalty costing a driver a win for things that any other driver would have gotten away with, and they're Ferrari's biggest competitors.
FIA = 'FERRARI International Association' (thank you to Ash for this!)

its like the fia want italians to win everything, ferrari in f1 and pantano in gp2. when i heard about this i was pretty p*ssed. i mean massa gets a fine and a slap on the wrist for his pit lane incident but lewis gets a deserved win stolen from him? i hope the appeal ends with the decision being overturned but the way the fia leans towards ferrari makes me very doubtful indeed. theres like a hundred topics about this on the itv forums with everybody yelling, lol.

the fia really seems to be determined to turn this sport into a farce.

I'm going to do my college project on it.
I could easily rack up 100 hours looking for examples of when the FIA have favoured Ferrari.

Anyway, back to today's race.
Lewis should not have been stripped of his win and I hope its overturned.
Heikki got a very bad start, bad luck for him.
I actually feel sorry for Kimi crashing two laps from the end, and it doesn't help McLaren out really, Kimi should have been taking points out of Felipe.

On a slightly off topic note, my best friend (who is very anti-F1) started talking to me about the race today. 'Somebody who sounds like philip won '. I love her.

If anyone knows the McLaren appeal date, or gets to know it before I do, will they let me know please
I'm also not happy with the two people who voted yes on the poll above lol.

I left this bit out before... I don't know why:
Fair enough, Lewis gained and advantage, but he did give it back, he was going slower than Kimi over the Start/Finish line, he crossed the Start/Finish line after him and he did clearly pull his car behind him to show that he had given the place back. Yeah he had more momentum or whatever it is that the FIA are claiming to try and justify their decision, but what difference does it make to Kimi's race anyway, he crashed!
If the FIA are fair (which a lot of people are convinced that they're not) Lewis should have been fined at the most. He lifted, he gave the place back and even if he did gain an advantage, Raikkonen crashed out anyway!

maybe having this as a setback will make lewis and the rest of the team more determined to win, maybe we will see some under-dog spirit and grit coming through at the end of the season.

We were lucky, as we could see the best race of the season (Belgium is always a nice race).

Of course the race is going to be remembered by the punishment Hamilton has recieved. Nobody is commenting that Massa has won a GP, and that's an obvious fact. The penalization has been (And it's going to be) commented pretty much.

In race terms, winning would have been great. Hamilton was almost perfect; but Kovalainen had a very bad day. Bad start and bad end with the gearbox problem. The middle of the race was very good for Heikki, unfortunately he crashed against Webber so top-5 options dissapeared.

The punishment is morally unfair. I mean, Hamilton was racing, was looking a way to overtake Kimi. Overtaking is not easy in actual F1, and when someone tries it, problems appear.

Technically, if Stewards decide to penalize Hamilton, the only possible penalization is that one. +25 seg.

I don't have data to say if it's right or wrong, but I have pretty clear that FIA always favours Ferrari. And this hasn't been an excepction. If there hadn't been punishment, nobody would have complained. We won't remember this race because of racing, unluckily, when we have a lot of reasons to do it on that way.

As McLaren supporter, there is nothing I can do. It hurts, but the real fact is the real fact, so we have to continue and wait for good results in the future.

McLaren can complain about this (I don't think FIA will change its mind), but the best way to solve it, it's winning in Monza. Theorically, Massa is the favourite, but everything can happen.

By the way, a Finnish driver has never won in Italy in F1.

it was the worst GP for Heikki in this season I guess. In one word it was a CATASTROPHY.

and...sometimes it seems like FIA favours Ferrari, but I agree that Hamilton wasnt fair in the last chicane. Of course its Kimi´s fault that he spun and lost all the race in a few seconds, but Hamilton deserves the penalty. His overtaking actions are pretty agressive and sometimes over the edge. And this was the exaple.

I think the start was the worst of the season (Well, Turkey was awful too, but more or less unlucky) and the end was the worst of the season.

But from my point of view, the worst race for Heikki was Canada.

In Spain he had the accident, but those things... much better if you forget them.

MiniMarshmallow wrote:

But if I mention for a second that Lewis had a similar incident when he didn't get off the start as fast as he should have there's a million and one excuses for him, but Heikki is apparently just crap and McLaren should get rid of him. I hate my family.

Well, you have to take into account that you are English, so possibly your relatives support Hamilton. You just have another point of view, you don't have to hate them... I am Spanish and all my family and most of my friends support Alonso and they hate McLaren and Hamilton (And they don't consider Kovalainen as a good driver at all), so sometimes is very difficult to reach an agreement. But it makes you stronger at the end.

It hurts when I read bad things about Kovalainen, but you can't pass on the reality. Heikki is not giving reasons to make the media say: 'Oh, what a superb driver!!'. Despite this, I feel Heikki doesn't care about those things, he knows he has to continue working to improve.

Spaniard is right. Think yourself that you don´t care about what your relatives say......because you can do nothing to persuade them that Heikki is a good driver. They will find it out one day, believe me

and yes, you´re right, the GP of Spain was much worse because of the crash, but I thought that the Belgian GP was really bad in a "lost hopes" point of view. And it doesnt mean that I´m starting to criticise him no way

Right, back to the Lewis situation.
I recapped my reasons why he shouldn't have been penalised today with the girls in college, till Beth got sick of me and started talking about something else .
1. The McLaren would have had more grip in the wet than the Ferrari anyway, because of the way it heats up the tires, so it would make sense that Lewis would have been able to do that.
2. McLaren we're given the opinion of the race director twice, which was that he had surrendered the advantage.
3. This penalty doesn't make any difference to Kimi Raikkonen's race anyway! And it was Kimi who he supposedly had the advantage over.

Does anyone know what was up with Heikki's gearbox?

1. Yeah he could've easily overtaken later but the point is that the position he was in when he did overtake was not where he would have been had he not cut the chicane.
2. But the race director is not the race stewards, and they have the final say.
3. The rules arent in place to protect the individual who gets hard-done-by, they are there to be followed by all drivers. the fact that kimi dnf doesnt change that lewis broke the rules in the view of the race stewards.

MiniMarshmallow wrote:

Does anyone know what was up with Heikki's gearbox?

Heikki Kovalainen wrote:

A few laps from the end I started to lose gears. I lost third gear first, and then going into the last lap I only had fourth gear working, and half way through the last lap even that jumped away and went to neutral, and I had no drive in my car. So unfortunately I had to stop on the track. Sometimes it’s quite difficult, but you need just to keep the head up and move onto the next weekend.

how many races had that gearbox done? i hope mclaren get their act 110% together for heikkis sake, he needs some good luck on track.