Why do people have to lie?

Why can’t people hold their hands up and admit they made a mistake?

That’s just two questions I asked myself when I heard Ralf Schumacher being interviewed by Louise Goodman in ITV after his very early exit from the race at Indy on Sunday.  His answer as to why he had crashed out went like this :

Things do happen at the start. The grip was not perfect, and the tyres locked a little bit. It was pretty messy up there. I just got in the way of David or he in my way, one of the two. It’s just unfortunate.

After the Monaco Grand Prix just a couple of weeks ago, there was an uproar in the British media over McLaren’s apparent bias towards Fernando Alonso by telling their other driver Lewis Hamilton to back off and not race him.

This seemed like common sense to most people, why should McLaren allow their two drivers to race and potentially force one or other (or both) into a mistake which in the end costs them millions of pounds and dents their chances of winning a World Championship or two?

Well I asked and hoped for a points scoring finish from David Coulthard and that’s exactly what he provided! It was a bit touch and go however in a very action-packed Grand Prix in Barcelona.

The attention at the first corner was focussed mainly on Fernando Alonso’s failed attempt at overtaking Felipe Massa around the outside, a move which resulted in a trip through the gravel trap for the Spaniard at his home Grand Prix, and he was actually very lucky not to collect either Lewis Hamilton or Kimi Raikkonen as he rejoined the track.

The week prior to today’s Spanish Grand Prix, David Coulthard and Red Bull in general had a relatively productive test session at the Barcelona circuit which culminated in DC being fastest on the final day, and indeed fastest overall, setting a new lap record into the bargain.

We’ve seen before, however, that it can prove difficult to transfer testing pace into qualifying and then race pace, so it was a pleasant surprise that DC managed to get through to the final session of qualifying yesterday and make the top ten on the grid for the first time this season.