After Spain, it is now becoming clear that the championship will go down as a fight between three drivers: Vettel, Raikkonen and Alonso.
Sebastian Vettel has a slight edge over Kimi Raikkonen, with the Finn trailing the defending world champion by a mere 4 points. Alonso is slightly behind with 72 points to his name, 17 points behind Vettel. With Ferrari's recent resurgence, that difference is also minimal.
Having dominated the Australian and the Bahrain Grand Prixs, Raikkonen and Vettel were left scratching their heads after Alonso sprinted away from the pack in Spain to take a comfortable win. It was the Spaniard's second victory after triumphing in China as well.
Vettel and Alonso have two victories so far, while Raikkonen has only won the opening race. But the Finn is the most consistent out of these three, with 1 win, 3 second place finishes and a 7th place in Malaysia. He is two races away from beating Schumacher's record of most points finishes in a row. It should come as no surprise after Raikkonen's solid comeback year.
Red Bull are currently struggling to understand the tyres, which are relatively the car's Achilles heal. It has downforce and speed but is unable to manage the tyre degradation as well as the Ferrari and the Lotus. It's, however, only a matter of time before Adrian Newey comes up with a solution.
The Ferrari on the other hand has decent tyre management and is as fast as the Red Bull. A good news for Alonso, who was able to fight for the championship already last year with a worse car. Reliability seems to be a slight hiccup, with DRS failures here and there.
The Lotus is a mystery to most. The car has excellent tyre management, with Raikkonen always being able to do one stop less than the above two in every race. The speed is also there, albeit there is work to be done to improve qualifying position. With a relatively tighter budget than Ferrari and Red Bull and having recently lost their technical director, time will tell whether the dark horses will be able to keep up with the development.
No comments:
Post a Comment