Hispania Racing's Karun Chandhok gives the Korean Grand Prix venue the thumbs-up after being the first F1 driver to drive...
Champodcast 308 - Iowa and Silverstone review
Written by Jeff, on 24-06-2009 01:43
Iowa and Silverstone are up for review on this weeks Champodcast. Sebastian Vettel has a dominate day for Red Bull at the British Grand Prix, well Jensen Button has his worst performance of the year with a 6th. We also look in at Iowa, which saw a small field of 20 start the race, but plenty of accidents to follow. A tough day for a lot, but a great day for Dario Franchitti, and Ryan Briscoe comes up short yet again. We also discuss the recent news in Formula 1 about the potential split of the series and the Teams, and our thoughts on what might happen. You can contact us at
This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
images from http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/ and http://www.indycar.com
Was this the day that the tide began to turn away from Brawn? As we’ve seen in the past, the team that appears unbeatable in the first few races can suddenly find their kryptonite heading into the summer, allowing another outfit to close in on them. Obviously, it will take many more weekends like this one (plus some serious issues for Jenson Button and Brawn GP) for the gap to the close further, but Red Bull isn’t going to lay over for them. They came out guns-a-blazing in Silverstone, with a near-complete makeover of the RB5, and got a 1-2 to show for it.
Sebastian Vettel: He did everything he needed to do to, potentially, mount a title charge on Button. He snatched pole on Saturday, held serve on the start, and romped away from everyone to score his second win of the season. A dominating victory indeed, no one was ever close to Vettel after the start, as he atoned for his miscue in Turkey. With Button’s struggles this weekend, he managed to chop six points off his lead, making the margin between the two a slightly less daunting 25 points. He’ll to continue his winning ways, and hope Button’s struggles aren’t a fluke, but it looks like the RB5 may have all its teething problems worked out. Neither Vettel nor Mark Webber seemed to be under much pressure from anyone else this weekend, and it looked to be an easy day for the energy drink’s team.
Aren’t the short ovals fun? We got to see two of biggest names in the series just about wreck each other in the opening laps, and all those early yellows allowed some new faces to get up near the front for some time. Plus, with the way strategy fell, a few of the managed to stay up near front. But, once the race got going and we saw some long, green-flag runs, the leaders lapped through the quickly thinning out field with relative ease, leaving four cars on the lead lap at race’s end. Still, the opening piece of the race was made interesting by the differing strategies, and helped a few small guys shoot up the grid.
Dario Franchitti: His second win of the season moved him into second place in the standings, three points behind Ryan Briscoe. The Scotsman may truly have a slight edge on Scott Dixon this year, as he has managed to avoid trouble, while Dixon has seen three of races ruined by errors (either of his own, or of another driver’s). While in no way does this mean Dixon is out of the picture, he may be fourth on the list of favorites, while Franchitt has himself on equal footing with the likes of Briscoe and Helio Castroneves. Dario and Ganassi fought back in Iowa after getting outclassed in Texas. Now, they’ll have to do the same next Saturday night in Richmond for Dario to snag the point lead.
