F1 Europe

Finally watched the European GP. Barrichello deserved that victory. He drove a faultless race and the team made absolutely no mistakes. Did Hamilton lose the lead because of McLaren's pit stop error or was it a lack of race pace? I think it was the latter. Barrichello definitely had the faster car but he chose to use it only when the McLaren's pitted. Both times he managed some stunning laps which allowed him to use the classic "pass 'em in the pits" strategy. Perhaps as result of that, the race was not very exciting. The saving grace was that nobody had the ability to dominate the race, which would be even more boring.

Button isn't driving like a world champion otherwise he would have tried harder to recover from the miserable start. Compared to the beginning of the season, he does not look like the same driver. I still have a suspicion that something has changed at the team, like maybe Barrichello isn't sharing as much information about car setup as before. I just can't accept that he has lost that much pace compared to Barrichello for no reason whatsoever.

There is no doubt that McLaren are back in game, as are Ferrari. It was to be expected of course given the huge budget's these teams have, but it took McLaren much longer than I anticipated. Thankfully, Brawn GP have also improved but is it enough? Their lead in the constructor's standing isn't all that comfortable. Now it is Redbull's turn to struggle. They didn't score any points for only the second time this season. More troubling is that Vettel has only two unused engines for the remainder of the season and there is a stiff ten place grid penalty if they use a ninth engine.