French Grand Prix Circuit de Nevers Mangy Cours 1 July 2007

Race weekend report , Q1. Q2 . Q3 and race times click here

The Race
Kimi Raikkonen needed it - Kimi got it. OK the Ferraris had the upper hand this weekend, Massa making a faultless start with Kimi slipping past Lewis to hold second position until the second pit stop when he managed to leap frog his team mate Felipe Massa who had been held up in traffic during the second stage. McLaren were resounding thrashed this afternoon by Ferrari with Lewis Hamilton a distant third, his team mate providing most of the excitement with his duel with Nick Heidfeld. Fernando had made a number of failed attempts in to the Adelaide hairpin, but frustrated by this, tried something different to catch the German by surprise. No one could have expected he would finally pass Nick at the entry to the super fast Nurburgring corner, with a run on Heidfeld, Alonso pushed his MP4-22 up inside of the BMW giving Nick two options - a big crash or drive straight over the chicane. He was to loose all this hard work in the second pit stop and try as he may he just could not catch the German for a second time. He had hoped that by electing to go for soft tyres in the first stage that he could possibly have overtaken more cars than he did, his overtaking of Heidfeld probably when the tyres were off their best, which made the maneuver even more thrilling and audacious!
Giancarlo Fisichella held off Alonso's late advances to finish sixth, the double World Champion having to settle for seventh. Jenson Button proving his pre race prediction, that the car was better in race form than in qualifying, took the final point to give Honda their first point of the season in the upgraded RA107. Robert Kubica made a convincing return to the cockpit after the horrendous Montreal accident by taking a mightily impressive fourth, having qualified fourth, ahead of team-mate Nick Heidfeld and could have been nominated "Driver of the Day".

Incidents were in the first lap of the race when Anthony Davidson misjudged the turn one concertina affect and sliding into the back of Tonio Liuzzi’s Toro Rosso, collecting the spinning Italian and causing substantial damage both cars. He later admitted his error. At the Adelaide hairpin on lap 1 with the pack streaming through Jarno Trulli left his braking too late on the inside of corner, clipped the back of Heikki Kovalainen´s Renault causing the car to spin in front of the pack, forcing the Toyota driver to retirement, Fernando Alonso having to take avoiding action having made up two places by Adelaide. Kovalainen went to the back of the field and then into the pits. Albers Spyker had to be wheeled of the start line as it would not start and his team mate Sutil had an incident in the pits when he drove off with the fuel line still attached to the Spyker!

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Second Friday Practice
Ferrari dominated once more as Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen set the pace in session two, but Scuderia Toro Rosso's Scott Speed was the star with third fastest time.......click here

First Friday Practice
Kimi Raikkonen top as Ferrari dominates. the Finn proved uncatchable at Magny-Cours on Friday morning despite the very best efforts of his team-mate Felipe Massa.
Fernando Alonso had a quieter session, ending up third, some 0.772s slower than Raikkonen's. Lewis Hamilton's engine protection system on his McLaren-Mercedes switched off automatically, stranding him out at the entry to the Adelaide Hairpin on only his third lap but still managed to set the sixth fastest time. Nico Rosberg's fourth fastest time indicates that the new aero tweaks Williams has brought to France are working well.

Felipe Massa - “Our car was very well balanced and we immediately found a good level of grip, along with a consistent performance,” the Brazilian told a media conference at Magny-Cours.commenting on the new aerodynamic package at the Silverstone test, where he topped the timesheets on the final day.

Fernando Alonso admitted in the Thursday press conference at Magny-Cours that switching to Bridgestone tyres has required a big change in his approach to the first seven races of the season. "For me, it has been the tyres, how different they are to drive on,"

Giancarlo Fisichella reckons that Renault now has the measure of BMW. "Obviously for this weekend [the objective] is again to get to the end of the race and to score points. We would like to fight for the podium because it is a very important grand prix for us, but I think McLaren and Ferrari are maybe a step forward, maybe two steps forward..., But I think we are quicker than BMW. Or I hope. And for the rest of the season it is just to make progress as we have so far. I think for Budapest we will have a new front wing which is a good step forward. So, we just make progress in each race and get closer to McLaren, Ferrari and BMW."

Heidfeld confident of BMW reliability asked about the cars reliability at the Silverstone testing last week after his Indy problem?
“No, at the test it was fine.
Actually we tried some new things to rectify the problems that we had at Indy, that I had at Indy. It all worked OK, and actually the parts that failed we had on for a very long time before, also during races. Sometimes you can do so much testing and you still don't know if something will fail just after however many kilometres. We tried to change it and I'm quite sure it's going to be OK now.”