Discussion thread for the '08 British Grand Prix.


KOVALAINEN ON POLE! WEBBER IN 2ND!


Man, and they were saying 2007 was an awesome year for the championship! Two amazing years in a row?! Michael, that bum, should have retired a long time ago!

A bit of rain, that should shake things up today! The Porsche Super Cup looked 'eventful'.

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man i cant believe that Barichello came 3rd...after a looong time. excellent race...rain, fun, overtakes, strategy. also, Lewis..what a race, especially on home ground.

Brilliant race. All podium finishers did a top job. Hamilton just for leaving everyone far behind, Heidfeld for having overtaken two cars in one sweep - twice! - and Rubens for getting this Honda shitbox on the podium.

Please, please let us have rain races until the end of the season.

Great race. I've never been a big Hamilton fan, but what an amazing job he did today. Not a great race for Ferrari. Massa had his worst race ever, but good job Raikkonen for pulling a 4th out of that mess. Also Why the hell didn't anyone switch to full wets when Barachello was flying? The big winner of this race is Ross Brawn and Rubens Barrichello. And a big epic fail to every other strategist on the grid, especially Ferrari. With Massa so far behind he should have made the switch and tried to make up ground.

ITV didn't show much of Hamilton, but I was under the impression that his commanding lead had a lot to do with Ferrari being dumb and putting Kimi out without changing his tires.

Makes me wonder what Alonso would have done had they changed his tires as well.

And thank God for that.... otherwise, we'd end up watching a car all by itself out front for 1 1/2 hours.

What a great race to watch. I was disappointed with Ferrari's performance, but man is it fun to watch those cars slipping and sliding and spinning around the track. Makes one realize how talented these drivers are when they can compete in a race in such horrible conditions and be relatively successful, even when they send their cars in a 180 or two. I'm still astounded and baffled why more teams weren't running extreme wet tires though, seems like it would have made them far more stable/quick. Brilliant driving by those who finished and an excellent race and win at home for Hamilton. Amazing that there are now 3 drivers tied for #1 in the drivers standings! Looking forward to German in a couple weeks time.

I think a lot of teams thought that switching to full wets was too much of a gamble (especially with dry lines forming and a quickly drying tack) , and by the time they saw that it had paid off for Rubens they may have thought it was too late to garner any significant advantage.

The impression I got from the coverage was that the rain in the second part of the race was expected to be very light, and everyone was surprised by the amount that fell.

Surely the drivers would express a desire to switch though the way they were sliding around out there. As one of the commentators put it, it was like a GP on an ice rink. Sure, the teams might have been surprised by the rain that fell, but the way Rubens was blowing everyone out of the water (literally), I'm just surprised more teams didn't opt to swap.

Barrichello switched to heavy wets 25 laps before the end, Hamilton and Heidfeld made their pitstop 22 laps before the end. Heidfeld suggested heavy wets over the radio but they told him the rain would stop (and it indeed had stopped raining when he was in the pits). I think it was a tough decision because with the strong wind and the sun soon coming out the track would dry very quickly. But I think you are right - Heidfeld probably would have won if BMW had gambled and served him with the heavy wets.

^had I been Heidfelds engineer I think I would have made the same decision. I think a lot of indicators were pointing toward the rain going away and the track clearing up, Barrichello got lucky.

Sure, if you are Hamilton in that situation, why risk it. But if you are out of the points or doing poorly, give it a whirl.

On a clearly very wet and slick track, why not go to full wets with less than 20 laps down, even if there is no rain in the near-future forecast? Silverstone is not the most well known track for drainage and anything can happen in England during the summer. Sure, Rubens got lucky...but only for the first couple of laps on his full wets. After he started blasting everyone elses (excluding Hamilton) lap times, I don't get why the teams didn't make the switch to (vastly) improve their lap times. Oh well.

Because Rubens had the tactical chance to switch over during his pit stop. If everyone stated coming in to the pits to switch over then they'd all lose huge, huge, huge chunks of time and position. It was in the closing laps of the grand prix so it wouldn't have been tactically sound unless there were extreme safety reasons to do so....


Kind of like how Marcus Winkelhock ending up leading a grand prix in a Spyker last year.

Yeah I understand what you mean, but other teams clearly had the opportunity during their 'tactical' pit stops during the final stages of the race too. I'm not saying teams should have pitted to swap that didn't need to pit otherwise, but several teams/cars that did pit could have changed and didn't. Even the commentators were baffled why some switches during necessary pits weren't made.

I think the philosophy was that worn inters are better on a drying track than fresh inters...the teams that didn't change were gambling that the track would dry out sooner, and that they would be at an advantage if they didn't switch.

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