Sloppy decision-making is costing McLaren, says former Jordan chief engineer Gary Anderson after Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen dominated the French Grand Prix from start to finish for a Ferrari 1-2 at Magny Cours.
It was clear that the red cars would be too hot to handle in France. Lewis Hamilton, carrying a ten-place grid penalty for his Montreal crash, could only really hope for a couple of points at best – and that was before the 'Make it happen' moment of the race. Hamilton got a drive-through penalty for cutting the chicane while passing Sebastian Vettel and then even a points finish went out of the window.
Some people said the penalty was harsh, but the rules of the game are clear: if you pass someone, you have to stay on that black bit of the circuit. If you gain a place by cutting a corner, then you have to immediately give it back again, in which case you're no worse off than you were in the first place. But Hamilton cut the corner and kept the place. Either McLaren aren't clear about what the rules are, or they didn't think quickly enough at the time.
McLaren's other driver, Heikki Kovalainen, also picked up a five-place grid penalty in qualifying for blocking Mark Webber. That was more of a fine line but, ultimately, in any sport, you have a referee who makes his best judgment and that's the end of it. All the teams have GPS systems which tell them exactly where all the cars are at any time, so these things shouldn't happen.
As for Williams, they just didn't have a quick enough car at Magny Cours. Simple as that. It's happened too many times this year. I don't know whether it's because they don't understand the car well enough, so they can't find the window of performance at each race; or maybe the window just isn't big enough.
By contrast, Ferrari were awesome in France. Anywhere with high-speed, long-load corners suits the weight balance and aerodynamics of their car. They're not as good at those types of circuits as they were last year, but they're still easily good enough. They've made a clever strategic decision there. If you can make your car 80 per cent better in low-speed corners and only 10 per cent worse in high-speed ones, you've made the overall package better.
