Race day on Sunday was forecasted to be cooler – I had concern for the Michelin tired cars which proved to be a founded concern as both Ferraris rocketed off to a sizeable lead just after a couple of laps. The ambient temperature was about 66F and track 80F. The start was an uneventful one despite some smoke from locked brakes going into turn 1. Luckily, everyone got through Turn 1 unscathed although Montoya lost out in a tussle with a couple of the front runners by running wide and putting a couple of wheels off. Takuma made a good start and leapt up a couple of positions at the start but touched the Renault of Alonso. Jensen, however, was not as lucky – despite Montoya going wide and off track in Turn 1 and falling back about a dozen positions, he ended up behind Alonso's Renault. Alonso ran well and although was not up to the pace of the Ferraris, was able to distance himself from Jensen who ran 4th for large part of the race ahead of Ralf Schumacher. Takuma who was running ahead of the McLaren's for the first part of the race eventually got passed.

After the 1st round of stops, Jensen and Takuma maintained their 4th and 9th positions respectively. Jensen went down a position to 5th because Ralf who was originally behind him was running a 2 stop race and got in front of him. Later on, a hard charging Montoya passed Jensen on braking on Lap 38, relegating Jensen to 6th where he finished with 3 points for himself and BAR Honda. Takuma got ahead of Felipe Massa when Massa ran wide but was passed by Montoya climb back to join the frontrunners – keeping Takuma just out of the points in 9th.

I was armed to the brim with my photo equipment – a Canon 1D digital SLR with a 100-400 IS lens for track work and a 24-70mm lens for the indoor and people work. Unfortunately, the Foster's Corporate Skybox I was in had fences between me and the track, resulting in slightly less satisfactory photos – despite the equipment and photo techniques being able to get around some of the limitations. 1600+ photos later, here I am trying to whittle away the throwaways that showed too much fence or were blur because of the difficulty of manually focusing through the fence. I Hope you like the ones I ended up selecting for the gallery.

I'd expect that with warmer weather for the forthcoming races, the Michelin-tired cars will do better and hopefully get closer to Ferrari. The BAR Honda 006 has already proven itself to be competitive with the other top teams. For the next race in Malaysia in 2 weeks time, reliability will be a major concern for all the teams given the hot and humid weather that is typical for Kuala Lumpur. Unfortunately, my travel plans don't allow me the time or privilege of attending the Malaysian Grand Prix but TOV Asia's WongKN will be covering that event.

A note from the author: I would be happy to cover and photograph any of the remaining F1 events if any TOV fans out there can help me obtain a Photo/Press Pass or any corporate invitations.