[Round 8] Magny-Cours

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Well, I can't make too enthusiastic comments about this race, although there were a couple of interesting scenes. Ferrari was in a comforting situation with both of the McLarens behind because of their respective penalties and BMW with some difficulties getting the car to work on this track. They were fortunate that Räikkönen could secure second place even though he had major problems as seen -- surely, if one or probably both McLarens had been in the position behind them and able to push, things could have turned out differently here.

I think it was pretty obvious in a couple of other scenes that it was really hard to overtake on this track, at least with the current cars. As it seems, Formula 1 could be back in Magny-Cours again next year, because the short-term alternatives don't seem to shape up quickly enough and apparently, there still is a contract (until 2011 even, I read earlier). So I hope the aerodynamical modifications that are supposed to happen for 2009 can positively influence some things here. I don't know if I'm biased here, but for me, this wasn't a very interesting race...

Nice to see Trulli on the podium again, though. And Piquet jr. was lucky to be able to overtake Alonso with just a couple of laps to go...

(And no German commentator excitement today whatsoever, after none of the German drivers scored any points. So naturally, the first comment was, "Well, now the Nationalmannschaft with 'Poldi' and 'Schweini' have to make up for this..." )

[nilisinho]

I had turned on my TV at lap 20, and I wondered why Hamilton and Rosberg were fighting for P17. Later it became clear Hamilton got a drive through, and the Williams well just sucked that day.

Does anybody know why Raikkonens exhaust became external? He didn't smack into any wall or so?

[Thomperson]

If Raikkonen wouldn't had that problem with his Ferrari's rear, Massa never would win this race.

[MaxX]

I had no time to watch the race, but it seems that I don`t have missed anything

Trulli on the podium, it had been quite time for that

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Does anybody know why Raikkonens exhaust became external? He didn't smack into any wall or so?

Stefano Dominicali, quoted from this article:

Unfortunately no. Unfortunately it was not possible to understand it and also the other difficulty is that we had almost half of the race with all the breaking parts falling apart so it will also be difficult to have the pieces in our hands because they're somewhere around the track and we will try to do the analysis after this weekend but at the moment there's no other info.

It doesn't say much, of course, other than they they don't exactly know. But I thought I'd mention it.