Dodgy Business

There was plenty for Ferrari to worry about after last weekend's European Grand Prix in Valencia. The second successive engine failure leading to Raikkonen's retirement, the mistake in the pits and the injured crew member, and Lewis Hamilton's words afterwords.

I almost had to pinch myself. Was this really Lewis Hamilton talking about being happy with second place and playing the long game? I had Lewis down as a Gilles Villeneuve type. The kind of guy who wants to win every race, and if they all add up to the world championship as well, then great.

He's as instinctive a driver as you will see. The speed and the flair, the ability to pass people where other drivers wouldn't even think about it, the natural feel for grip that makes him so formidable in the wet. When you marry all that to a front-running car and tremendous self belief it all adds up to a driver who expects to win.

Lewis Hamilton © LAT

Perhaps it was just talk. The Ferrari seemed to have the legs of the McLaren in Valencia - just - and probably there was nothing more that Lewis could have done about it. He was also having to cope with neck spasms that had required pain-killing injections.

You never quite know about these things.

"I have had a few problems health-wise but we pulled through," Lewis said. "I had the 'flu when I arrived, pretty hard fevers pretty much every day, and low energy. And quite a big problem with the spasms in my neck, which kind of nearly led to me not racing this weekend."

Yeah, right. There was about as much chance of Hamilton pulling a sicky in Valencia as Ronaldo signing for Tranmere Rovers. The guy's desire is such that he'd step into a cockpit if his head really was falling off.

Spare a thought for poor Heikki Kovalainen at this stage. In a spot of bother with his tyres in the first two stints admittedly, Heikki, who ran in clean air most of the afternoon, finished the race half a minute adrift of his team mate...

I'm not suggesting Lewis was exaggerating, but maybe just ramping up the psychological ratchet on Massa a little.

The Fleet St contingent didn't want to let it drop.

"Lewis, just going back to your neck again..."

Hamilton: "No more questions on that, really..."

"But when you were driving was it giving you any bother?"

A smiling Massa joined in, to show he wasn't biting. "He lost half a second," Felipe smiled.

Felipe Massa © LAT

But, with six races to go and Lewis extending his championship lead despite finishing second, probably the last thing Ferrari needs at the moment is a driver of Hamilton's class driving with one eye on points and the championship. Despite his instincts it's probably none too surprising. Lewis has admitted the importance of winning the championship and the end of last season will have hurt. A lot. An intelligent man doesn't make the same mistake twice. The blips in Canada and France seem well behind Lewis. He's driving with his head.

The Ferrari position is intriguing. You can't help but feel that psychologically, emotionally, Massa is more fragile than Raikkonen and yet it looks like being Felipe who will fight to the wire as the Scuderia's main championship contender. Having said that, with the pressure mounting, Massa's last two drives, in Hungary and Valencia, have been flawless. He got it so right at Hungaroring that the engine blow-up three laps from home was the cruelest blow imaginable. To respond as he did in Valencia was first class.

And then there's Kimi. There's something wrong and it's hard to know what it is. To extract maximum performance everything has to be right - the car, its set-up and the head. Drivers like Raikkonen don't just lose it, but the world champion does have his problems. At the beginning of last season there were those writing Kimi off and it's happening again now. He hit back then but it could be more difficult this time.

For some reason he has been unable to get one-lap pace out of the car, which has led to him qualifying on the second or third row. In normal circumstances in modern day F1 you can forget about winning a race from there.

At the start of last season there was a lot of talk about the more aggressive drivers being unable to use the new control Bridgestone tyres, which were not giving them the front-end bite they needed. Raikkonen, Alonso and Kubica were the ones mentioned most often. One team principal even suggested that Formula One was about the ultimate and it was wrong that drivers were being restricted by control equipment that was effectively dumbing F1 down.

Predictably perhaps, there was a robust response from Bridgestone's Kees van der Grint, who opined that it was up to drivers to adapt to suit the rubber. Good ones always do, he said.

Raikkonen hates understeer and it is noticeable that he seems to struggle more when Bridgestone's compound choice is more on the conservative side. The Toyotas are similar to the Ferraris in that they seem to perform more strongly when the softer tyres are used.

"In Hockenheim, where the tyres were quite conservative, we struggled a little for grip with Timo (Glock) in the race, but not with Jarno (Trulli)," Toyota's Pascal Vasselon, a former Michelin tyre guru, explained.

Glock also hates understeer, whereas Trulli's style is more suited to coping with it. When the tyres are more conservative Glock, like Raikkonen, sometimes doesn't generate as much heat in the tyre as he would like and struggles more than Trulli to make Q3.

Kimi Raikkonen © LAT

The bad news for Kimi is that, according to Vasselon, the tyre choice for Spa is also quite conservative.

Then there's Kimi's head. He's generally regarded as bomb proof. So laid-back that he doesn't even recognise pressure. But don't be too sure. He's not in too comfortable a position right now. He's paid squillions by Ferrari. The kind of money you pay a Senna or a Schumacher. And he's being blown off by a guy who is paid maybe one-fifth of squillions and who is contracted beyond him at Ferrari. There are those at Maranello none too impressed by that.

Don't believe any of the stories about Kimi wanting to retire. The 'R' word has never been uttered from his own mouth. But you can bet that Raikkonen would be less than interested in driving a car that would allow him to compete only in the midfield. In the background, meanwhile, sit Fernando Alonso and Robert Kubica, both determined to do no more than a single year deal with anyone.

The regulation changes of next year might shake up the pecking order, but don't bet on it. Teams with resources and finance are the ones that tend to get the job done. It's hard to envisage a Ferrari seat in 2010 being other than desirable. And if you were Kimi you wouldn't be human if you weren't feeling the heat a little. He won last year from 17 points down with two to go. I just get the impression that to do it this time, from 13 down with six to go, might just be the bigger ask.