A relatively mundane Sunday race got fired up
when the Ferrari team decided to start determining the outcome of the race. Felipe Massa was issued what could only be interpreted as a coded message when he was told by Chief Race Engineer Rob Smedley that “Alonso is faster than you, Can you confirm you understand?" At the time, Massa was out in-front and if it had been me in that car I would have just laughed it off, no-one is faster than me, don’t be so silly. What Massa did, however, with this information proved that it was not just a statistical fact but instructions to let him pass by, and that is exactly what happened. Massa made use of an opportunity that was presented to him early on in the race to take the lead, but considering he trailed his Ferrari team-mate by a considerable 31 points in the Drivers’ Championship it only made sense to make sure Alonso got the maximum points to have a shot of giving Ferrari a Driver Champion. Ferrari has been given a maximum penalty of $100,000 by the stewards for a breach of rule 39:1 "Team orders which interfere with a race result are prohibited.” Elsewhere in the race, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button struggle to cope with some slightly imbalanced cars but finish in fourth and fifth respectively to keep themselves afloat in the standings. Hamilton has called for McLaren to improve the cars to make them faster as he was being simply outpaced by the Red Bulls and Ferraris. Five men are now in the running for taking the Drivers’ Championship and the points leader Lewis Hamilton is being forever chased down by Button, Webber, Vettel and Alonso. The Hungarian Grand Prix is only a few days away now, so there’s little time for the teams and drivers to analyse their performances and must now concentrate on winning instead.