Lewis Does It, As Poor Old Jenson’s Title Hopes Remain Firmly in His Dreams

So there you go; the final race of this mad, exciting, controversial, and most importantly great 2008 season. I can’t remember a more exiting final section of a race. Granted the bloke I was backing to win lost out thanks to a gift from Glock, but I was screaming and jumping around for ages. Excitement at the front then, still no luck for the two Hondas.

At his home GP Rubens managed (again) to push the Honda to its limits and got himself into Qualifying round two. He seemed particularly pleased with the team’s performance in Q1 and managed to pull out what he called a perfect lap, in which his option tyres and set up worked well for him

Unfortunately for Q2, the RA108’s season long troubles re-surfaced in the familiar form of understeer and lack of grip. Rubens later said that without those issues he thought the car was good for P14 or P13. I would argue though Rubens, that this is the story of Honda’s season! Was this the last time we’ll see Rubens Qualifying in F1?
 
Unfortunately for Jenson, his car wasn’t able to cope with the limits and stopped out on track after his last run. Though he felt the car had improved since the mornings set-up a self confessed mistake on his second lap meant that ‘Team Jenson’ were on the back foot from the beginning. Consistently slower than his team mate in the first round, Jens finished a quarter of a second slower than the Brazilian. He still managed P17, beating both Force Indias (phew) and even a Williams. The final qualifying scores for the season were Jenson Button: 8 better Saturday results; Rubens Barrachello: 10.     

The start of the race was as exciting as the end, with a massive downpour postponing the start by 12 minutes. All the teams switched to wets and gingerly made their way around the first few laps until a crash involving Piquet, Nakajima and poor old David Coulthard bought out the safety car.

In the early commotion both Hondas capitalised on good starts with Jensen up to 14th and Rubens 11th. Heidfeld battled his way up the grid from a poor starting position, he fought with Rubens for a bit before the superior BMW breezed past the RA108 on the pit straight.

After the switch back to slicks and a fire extinguisher leak in the Honda pits! the RA108’s were 13th (Rubens) and 14th (Jenson). A rather harsh manoeuvre from Trulli pushed Bourdais off on lap 20 and gifted Rubens P12, Jenson, however, slipped down the pack to 15th. 

After their second stops the Hondas were again behind each other in 12th and 13th (Rubens first). It stayed this way really until the end of the race. At one point Jenson overtook his team mate to gain 11th on lap 44, but neither driver managed higher than that.

The eventual result saw Rubens claim P11 and Jenson P14. Not, a great race, but not a bad one either. Both Hondas were involved in races and both seemed committed and didn’t drop off the boil. I don’t think the cars had it in them to get beyond 11th without Toyotas giving way to them on the last lap.

To conclude; 2008 was a joy to watch from a F1 fan’s perspective. From a Honda fan’s point of view….not so great! Fingers crossed for next year!

Well done Lewis*, hard luck Felipe, DC we’ll miss you. Hopefully next year will be just as exciting, if not, more! 

A full season review of Honda’s 2008 campaign will follow in weeks to come. You’ll have to bear with me though as I have two essays due in the next couple of weeks. It’s all a bit mad at the moment so I’ll apologise now if you read that Jenson fought in the battle of Agincourt or that Rubens was at Fort Sumpter!!

*Congratulations too to Nick and Chloe even though you made me miss the Qually!