12/05/2008 08:33

Natalie Le Clue

"I own this track", the words emphatically proclaimed by Felipe Massa on Friday morning.

Massa is often criticised for his impatience behind the wheel of an F1 car. However, as soon as he steps foot on Turkish soil, all that criticism appears unfounded and far-fetched. For two years running Felipe Massa was untouchable on this track, and on Sunday he made it three wins in a row; and three pole positions at the Istanbul Speed Park can be added to that incredible rate of success as well.

In stark contrast to Ferrari, BMW found themselves suddenly on the backfoot and quizzically, fighting to stay in touch with the two front-running teams a very disappointing outing for the BMW team, who failed to even ripple the otherwise calm demeanour of the main title rivals.

The weekend looked as if it would follow much the same pattern as the previous races with the victory being a toss up between the faithful Ferrari and an improved McLaren team. The F1 fraternity usually pays a visit to Turkey much later in the season with all the previous races at the Istanbul Speed Park being held in late August. Instead this season the race was moved much earlier in the calendar, bringing the teams to the circuit when the temperature was much lower than previously experienced; making the 'tyre issue' even more critical.

Not surprisingly then that tyres would prove to be the deciding factor in the race for victory. The McLaren is a car that wears its tyres down much quicker than the Ferrari during race conditions, but crucially they are able to get their tyres up to the optimum operating temperature quicker than Ferrari - albeit only over one flying lap - hence the reason why McLaren are stronger in qualifying than Ferrari.

Even with this advantage of tyre performance in qualifying, Massa was still the class of the field on Saturday, storming to yet another pole position. Lewis Hamilton made the wrong decision when he chose to qualify with the harder of the two tyres and as a result ended up behind his teammate, but crucially in front of Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen.

In the race Hamilton made his way up to second place and was running strongly when McLaren's gambling ways made their inevitable appearance. For some unexplainable reason it was decided to switch Hamilton to a three-stop fuel strategy, leaving the Brit with a truck-load of work to do and all he had was a 605kg racing car.

First off he had to pass Massa, which he did with the help of his ever decreasing fuel load, next he had to create a gap of around 26 seconds which he wasn't able to generate. While Hamilton was quite excitingly driving the wheels of the McLaren, all Massa had to do was maintain the gap of around seven seconds, wait for the McLaren to pit, retake the lead and head home yet another victory for the Scuderia. Except for a brief stint in the lead of the race, Hamilton's strategy left him without an answer for Massa.

The reason given for the use of the peculiar strategy was because of excessive tyre wear experienced by McLaren, but that statement was contradicted by the fact that Heikki Kovalainen ran much longer stints than Hamilton without any major problem making them self known. The reason for Hamilton's strategy is quite easily figured out. His driving style, without the use of traction control, is too aggressive for the Bridgestone tyres. Sitting on board with Hamilton and witnessing the number of times he has the back sliding out was remarkable, hence the fact of the accelerated tyre wear on Lewis's car. Although his lap times are still effective, it's later in the race, when the tyres are wearing thin, where Hamilton has his biggest problems. Nevertheless, Lewis will be mightily relieved with his second place and delighted to finish ahead of Raikkonen.

Raikkonen, having lost a lot of running time on Friday due to a gearbox problem was more impressive than he appeared in the race. Going into the first corner his front-wing made contact with the rear wheel of Kovalainen. Heikki dropped to the back of the field after a forced pitstop and Raikkonen continued on. Unbeknownst to everyone his front-wing was damaged, disturbing the air distribution over the front of the car. The team and Raikkonen decided not too replace the broken wing as it would rob him of crucial seconds in the race. Raikkonen, carrying the broken wing, set the fastest lap of the race, leapfrogging Kubica whilst completing a solid run into third.

The faultless Massa claimed yet another victory in Turkey making it three in a row and for all intent and purposes, he does own this track.