French F1 Grand Prix

Again the Italians have shown the French who's boss. Ferrari's Michael Schumacher romped to a convincing 8th record win at the French GP ahead of Fernando Alonso in second.

The Bridgestone-shod Ferrari showed its dominance yesterday in qualifying, where the Ferrari drivers locked the front row of the grid up with ease.

Ferrari seem to have had a step up in performance Bringing their 'new' car to the French GP seems to have paid off well for the team. The Ferrari has had some major additions and changes to it this race, although it is not a 'B' car apparently. Bridgestone has picked their game up as well, as seen by the uplift in performance of the Toyota cars, although the Toyota seems to have improved quite dramatically as well.

Renault seemed to struggle at their home race. Alonso did not seem to be in the same race as Michael.

The only time the Renault car showed any chance of getting ahead of the Ferrari was during the start, however even the fast starting Renault cars need a little space to work their magic. The Magny-Cours track however has a very short run to the first corner.

Massa played rear gunner for the first stint of the race, allowing Michael's tyres to go through their graining period, and for him to run off and hide with a 6 second gap between him and his teammate Massa in second.

Massa pitted first on lap 18, the Ferrari team put a new set of Bridgestone tyres onto the car. The first lap pace of the Bridgestone tyres allowed Massa to hold onto his track position ahead of the Renault of Alonso. Alonso pitted on lap 19, he then fell to 5 seconds back of Massa.

Rubens retired his Honda with what looked like engine issues on lap 19 as well. The Honda car's performance all weekend has been weak. A good quote from Rubens teammate Jenson Button

We (Honda) have a lack of overall speed, that comes from a lack of engine power and from a lack of down-force, that's all we are lacking at the moment, and also we are lacking in reliability.

So then Jenson, you're lacking a race car when you think about it.The Toyota cars of Ralf and Trulli showed that the qualifying pace they had was genuine, both cars running long on their first run. Ralf pitting on lap 22 had a problem with the left wheel and his stop ended up taking 17 seconds, dropping him to 7th.

Article Author: Ashleigh Charlesworth

Ashleigh currently writes for Naked Cleaner and F1 Blog. His interest lie in Technology (of all forms) and engineering. Day to day he does network security for living (yes I AM that nerdy).

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