A Bridal Tradition

The old Victorian English tradition of "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" may be familiar for brides on their wedding day. It is also an apt summary of the events at Sunday's Canadian Grand Prix.

On the 30th anniversary of its addition to the Formula One calendar to replace the hilly Mosport track as host for the Canadian Grand Prix, Montreal's Circuit Gilles Villeneuve surely qualifies as "something old".

Unfortunately, with the circuit hosting only two major races all year and subject to brutal temperature swings in both summer and winter, problems with the track surface are now also old hat to the teams and drivers.

This year was, if anything, even worse than previous races. By late Saturday afternoon, Red Bull's Mark Webber was among the first to announce what most of the drivers were surely thinking - that the surface was unfit for Formula One racing.

Fortunately, overnight repairs restored the worst-affected sections (turn 7 and the notorious hairpin at Turn 10) to relatively serviceable status for the race itself. However, it is not a problem that Montreal can afford to keep experiencing, year after year.

BMW driver Robert Kubica's suggested solution, that "Maybe they should find some other people from somewhere else to fix the circuit" seems based on the common assumption that a 'specialist' is anybody from out of town.

Preparing a stable racing surface may be beyond the capabilities of road engineers in the smallest and most impoverished developing nations. It is not an unreasonable expectation for a country that has hosted Grands Prix for the past 41 years.

Another established tradition at Montreal is the interruption of the safety car and, more recently, the spate of pitlane penalties that invariably accompany it. Juan Pablo Montoya fell foul of the pitlane red light in 2005. Last year, it was the turn of Ferrari's Felipe Massa to leave Canada empty-handed after disregarding one of the most important signals in the sport.

On Sunday, championship leader Lewis Hamilton was the surprise culprit. All weekend and all race long, Hamilton had looked a class apart from his rivals, dominating qualifying by a margin (more than six tenths of a second) not seen since Massa's pole on home soil at Brazil 2006.

Hamilton's amateurish mistake of clattering into the back of Kimi Raikkonen's stationary Ferrari at the end of the pitlane deprived the McLaren star of what had seemed like certain victory. The ensuing ten-place grid penalty for the next GP in France will only add salt to the wound.

Hamilton's statements since the incident have been uncharacteristically awkward and pointlessly defiant. He may feel that the rule is "silly" and ask "...how can you see a red light at the end of the pitlane?" The simple answer is that both Raikkonen and Robert Kubica saw the light and obeyed the regulation to stop.

The knee-jerk assumption is that a Formula One car should be able to stop on a dime at the pitlane speed limit of just 80km/h. The long streaks left on the pitlane by Hamilton's locked wheels shows just how ineffective the cars can be when taken out of the high-heat, high-performance envelope for which they are designed.

Hamilton's mistake ushered in the "something new" of the bridal tradition, via Robert Kubica's maiden GP victory. However, unlike previous first-time winner Jenson Button at Hungary 2006, Kubica's win was not unexpected.

It's an old racing truism that, if a driver can be on the dance floor often enough over the closing laps, circumstances must play to his favour sooner or later. Kubica was full value for his win, and has been all season long.

With a pole position, three front row starts and four podium finishes prior to Sunday, in a car that is only third best on the grid, Kubica is clearly a star in the making. It may have taken him 29 Grands Prix to register his first win - a long time compared to just six races for Lewis Hamilton - but there is little doubt that Canada will be the first win of many for the Pole.

However, if Kubica's first Formula One victory reflected the "something new" in Canada, then surely his championship lead fits the bill for "something borrowed". Hamilton, Raikkonen and Massa will all have the odd off day or suffer an occasional mechanical retirement. When the totals are added up at the end of the season, those days will be the rare exception.

Between them, the Ferrari and McLaren drivers had taken all 24 victories between Japan 2006 (Fernando Alonso's last win for Renault) and Canada. It would take a brave man to bet against them resuming the trend for the remaining eleven races of the 2008 season.

Something new: Robert Kubica wins the Canadian GP © XPB

Nevertheless, Kubica leads for the moment on consistency if not on outright speed, and will be there to snap up any gifts offered by the two front-running teams. If he can finish ahead of just one of the McLaren-Ferrari quartet in the final championship table, his reputation and future are secured.

That leaves only "something blue" from the bridal tradition. In this regard, it's a toss-up between Kubica's BMW teammate Nick Heidfeld and Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen as to which driver left Canada feeling most disgruntled by the weekend's events.

Ostensibly, as a major championship contender, Raikkonen suffered most from Hamilton's mistake. After a low-key start to the race from third on the grid, the Ferrari had come good after the initial tyre graining phase had passed. One safety car period and a rapid pitstop later, Raikkonen was ready to race Kubica out of pitlane for the race lead when disaster struck from behind.

Raikkonen had every reason to be livid at Hamilton, and the Finn's gesticulation towards the pitlane lights array spoke volumes about his frustration. Still, Raikkonen will also recall his own mistake of two weeks ago, and how he had ruined Adrian Sutil's superb Monaco race effort.

Fittingly, it was Sutil's Force India stopping out on the circuit that brought out the safety car which precipitated the Hamilton-Raikkonen incident. It must leave the reigning champion wondering whether karma isn't a factor in Formula One, just as prevalent as downforce and horsepower.

Raikkonen has endured similar misfortunes before, and has always shown the focus and resolve to recover quickly. If Raikkonen's slumps are temporary, the same cannot be said for Nick Heidfeld's 2008 season.

It might be incongruous to picture the deadpan Robert Kubica as a blushing bride, but it's no exaggeration to portray Heidfeld as Formula One's eternal bridesmaid.

In a career spanning 139 starts, Heidfeld has finished on the second step of the podium no less than five times. Judging by his demeanour in the post-race press conference, Sunday's second-place finish was clearly the most disappointing of them all for Heidfeld.

It's not just that he had seen the honour of taking BMW's first win snatched away by his younger and far less experienced teammate, it was that Heidfeld must have thought (for much of the race) that he had done enough.

With Honda's Rubens Barrichello holding up the faster cars behind him, and with Kubica stuck way down the field in slower traffic, Heidfeld had built a commanding lead and looked the odds-on favourite for a long overdue win.

Ultimately, the gamble of fuelling heavy and running for more than half the race distance on one set of softer compound tyres worked against the German. In a different time and situation, Heidfeld may have been able to shrug off the loss. But 2008 has been disastrous for the veteran, and the turmoil of Canada represented his best chance to re-establish himself as the team leader.

Instead, Kubica has distinguished himself as the team's standout performer, first in the wet at Monaco two weeks ago, and then on the crumbling and treacherous surface in Canada.

There is little for Heidfeld to do except, like Kubica and Jenson Button before him, to keep putting himself on the dance floor and hope for his luck to change. Although, after eight winless years in the sport, he surely isn't holding his breath for it to happen.

Usually, the two-week gap between races provides welcome respite for the championship contenders to rest up and prepare for the next race weekend. For Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen, the next GP in France cannot arrive quickly enough. Both have a point to prove and demons to bury, and will set about the weekend with fierce determination.

Robert Kubica, by contrast, will savour every moment of the two-week break. His championship lead might be short-lived, but to have led the championhship at all - let alone after almost half the season - is just reward for BMW's and Kubica's efforts.