THE 2011 European Grand Prix in Valencia was some-what of a bore-fest as we saw Sebastian Vettel grab yet another pole-to-flag victory. Vettel is seemingly trotting away in the Driver’s championship table as the fight for the second spot in the championship intensifies between Mark Webber and Jenson Button.
The European GP created history of sorts as we saw a 100% start-finish ratio as all cars completed the race. Narain Karthikeyan created history by becoming the 1st ever driver in history to finish 24th in a Grand Prix. His performance in Valencia can be termed as lackluster since 24th would mean that Narain finished last, the positives include that the HRT has a solid reliable machine and that the team only needs to work on making it go faster.
Valencia is a circuit Narain has never driven before and hence it was going to be a weekend of learning for him. He did pick up pace as compared to his team-mate Tonio Liuzzi and while he was an average 1.5 seconds off the pace in the practice sessions, the difference in their qualifying laptime was down to 8 tenths.
In the race, Narain managed to finish yet another race, however, in Valencia, his pace was considerably slower than Tonio’s. Narain finished the race a massive 95.7 seconds after his team-mate. His fastest lap of the race however was 1.47.708, 3 tenths slower than Tonio.
As expected, Narain’s performance has been consistent in the race. However, he needs to up his qualifying pace and hopefully out-qualify his team-mate in the coming races. If HRT does develop their car further, the Virgin Racing cars are not more than 6 to 7 tenths ahead. Immediate concerns for the HRT car are to manage their tyre wear and extract more aerodynamic downforce from their car.
Force India on the other hand had a fairly strong weekend and from competing with the Saubers and Williams in the past few races, this weekend, we saw the team competing with the Lotus Renault team. The team’s start to Friday Free Practice 1 wasn’t the best after reserve and Friday driver Nico Hulkenberg crashed into the barriers while on an evaluation program. The resultant effect of the crash meant that rookie Paul di Resta lost considerable track time in the second practice session.
Qualifying saw Paul di Resta manage only 12th on the grid, but it was time for team-mate Adrian Sutil to provide the fireworks this weekend. In the dying moments of the Q2 session, Adrian managed to out-qualify Lotus Renault’s Vitaly Petrov to 10th and ensure his first ever Q3 performance of the 2011 season. The Force India duo have been one of the closest team-mate battles fought this season with Adrian getting the better of Paul this weekend.
The Force India team’s strategy meant that Adrian chose to not set a laptime in Q3 and save a set of soft tyres for the race. Come Race Day, the German driver did use the tyres to his advantage. The VJM04 showed consistent pace yet again in the race with Adrian Sutil setting the 10th fastest lap of the race and scoring 2 points for the team by finishing 9th, only 4 tenths behind the Toro Rosso driver Jaime Alguersuari.
The three stopping Force India cars were engaged in a constant battle with the Williams, Sauber, Lotus Renault and Toro Rosso. The gutsy performance now sees Force India lie 8th in the Constructor’s Championship with 12 points, 4 points behind Scuderia Toro Rosso. Adrian Sutil is currently 12th in the Driver’s Championship table with 10 points, 15 points behind 11th placed Kamui Kobayashi. The team was unable to test their new front wing due to Hulkenberg’s crash in practice on Friday. However, come Silverstone, we should see the team make some much needed progress in the mid-field. The team’s home race could well see them battle with the Mercedes GP should their updates work.
