Mark Webber is proving to be Mr Consistent, by racking up his fourth consecutive points finish, coming home seventh at the end of the 58 laps of Istanbul Park.
Finishing one place lower than you started is really frustrating, especially when it was so close in terms of getting the jump on Fernando Alonso’s Renault at the pit stop.
As for David, at least his joke about checking the car for damage shows he’s not getting downhearted in what is proving to be a difficult season. As for the race itself, we had what now seems like the obligatory first lap incident and yet another Safety Car, but none of this bothered Felipe Massa, who now has anamazing hat trick of Turkish GP wins to his name.
But the Brazilian, who now moves up to second in the Drivers’ championship behind Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen, was made to fight for it by Lewis Hamilton who led for much of the race. Where had the Englishman’s pace come from all of a sudden? Well, the answer could be found by stopwatch watchersBecause if you had timed his two refuelling stops, calculated how much fuel had gone in and counted the number of laps, knowing the fuel consumption per lap, you could have easily (ha, ha!) worked out he was on an unusual three-stop strategy, while most of the field was only planning on visiting pit lane twice. It was a brave gamble from McLaren and it did work to a certain extent, as it did get him onto the podium in second place, ahead of Raikkonen.
Fourth and fifth places went to the BMW duo of Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld, with Fernando Alonso sixth and NicoRosberg in the Williams following our Mark home.
And as for the all important Constructors’ championship, Red Bull Racing moves up the order yet again as we are now fifth, just three points behind Williams and one point ahead of Toyota. Now we head for Monaco, which is something of a home race for DC, so he’ll be hoping to finally get some points on the board, while Mark will be hoping to keep the momentum going as we enter the second quarter of this long eighteen race season.
