Five talking points of the Spanish Grand Prix 2013

The Spanish Grand Prix was an action packed race filled with all the elements that a movie would need to be a box office hit. There was resilience and tenacity from Massa, betrayal from Mercedes, drama from Pirelli and the good guy starring in the end when Alonso won his home Grand Prix.

Here are the five most important talking points from the Spanish GP 2013

Alonso scores a home run for Ferrari

Fernando Alonso drove a brilliant race for Ferrari to win at this home race. From the time he took the lead after the first round of pit-stops, there was little doubt who was going to win. When most of the other drivers were simply trying to survive by conserving their tires, Alonso took the bull by the horns to eke out a commanding win. He had his share of luck when Pirelli revealed after the race that his first set of tires had a puncture and wouldn’t have survived another lap. But considering the amount of bad luck he has had recently, that was long overdue. Felipe Massa, on the other hand, is like a classic bottle of Dom Pérignon. After the lows of last year, he has well and truly proved that he still has it. While most of the cars were going backwards, he drove a blinder of race and scythed through the field to finish on the podium after starting way down in 9th place. Now unless there are any more changes to the script courtesy Pirelli, it looks like Ferrari are going for the championship this year.

Tired tires

Pirelli are slowly turning F1 into an endurance racing championship from their legendary position as the pinnacle of motorsport. There were a total of 77 pit-stops during the race with most drivers opting for 4 pitstops. Pirelli Motorsport Director Paul Hembrey acknowledged that there were too many pit-stops during the race. “Our aim is to have between two and three stops at every race, so it’s clear that four is too many,” he said. He also added, “We’ll be looking to make some changes, in time for Silverstone, to make sure that we maintain our target and solve any issues rapidly.” That being said, sooner or later someone is going to accuse Pirelli of favouritism. This is Pirelli’s last contracted year to provide tires to the F1 teams. Although rumours of a new deal were whispered during the Bahrain GP weekend, nothing has been confirmed. The current tire scenario would also put additional pressure on Pirelli during their contract negotiations.

Too many cooks spoiling the broth for Mercedes?

Mercedes have four proven technical heavyweights on their side to head up their technical team. So it comes as a bit of a surprise that the team has still not been able to get to the bottom of their tire woes. All the Mercedes cars from the W01 to the W04 have had tire degradation problems. But after a bedding period of one year and countless number of promises, questions are being asked. Toto Wolff, the Executive Director of Mercedes, has publicly stated that there will be no problems as long as the team is at the head of the field. But what happens if the team slips back to the mid field like last year? Guess we will have to wait and see.

No McLaren resurgence

McLaren are one of the teams that are famous for out-developing their rivals through the course of an F1 season. So it was a bit of a surprise to see that their updates were not that massive as compared to many of the big teams. Under fire team principal Martin Whitmarsh has admitted that they are having correlation problems with their simulator not giving them accurate data. F1 fans may remember that correlation problems were also the cause of disastrous seasons for both Lotus and Ferrari. These problems need time to be rectified and time is what Whitmarsh doesn’t have. It will be interesting to know their plans for the year, about how long they plan to try and update their car before moving focus to next year’s crucial car.

Kimi Räikkönen’s new nickname

Who isn’t a fan of Kimi “The Iceman” Räikkönen? He’s fast, experienced, outspoken and wants to be left alone every now and then during the race because he knows what he’s doing. But lately, he’s also being called as ‘gloomy face’ due to his reactions on winning the race or even being on the podium. Yes Kimi, we all know that standing on the podium is not the same as standing on the top step of the podium. But he seriously needs a personal tutor to help him smile. His golden words on being on the podium in Barcelona? “Unfortunately it’s second place again so it’s not time to celebrate too much”.