'The balance of power has shifted'

Going into round 10 of the World Championship at the Nurburgring, the talking point's not just about Lewis Hamilton any more but also about the controversy surrounding the alleged theft of data from Ferrari by McLaren. Personally, I think it's a storm in a teacup but it has had the effect of making the sport more interesting to the casual observer, as if Lewis has not done enough of that already! I really can't see McLaren or Lewis being docked points because of this. Every part of one car is reliant on another part of the same machine so unless you copied the car completely, it's not going to make a difference. Slapping a Ferrari nose on a McLaren is not going to make it quicker, it's going to make it slower because everything on an F1 car is inter-related. Let's leave it at that for now but perhaps we haven't seen the last of this.

On track, this season's getting better and better. Lewis got pole position in Silverstone when he really didn't deserve to get pole position. Ok, so it was a clean lap but he had a lot less fuel on than Kimi. For me, pole position should be something really special and now it's devalued. The way they do it is interesting and it's good coverage for the smaller teams as they get knocked out early in qualifying. So that's quite good and it frees the track up later on but it's just the carrying of fuel for the last ten I'm not a fan of.

The balance of power has shifted

Ferrari are definitely back strong now and it's true Lewis wouldn't have made it on the podium had Felipe not messed up at the start but he still made no mistakes apart from the lollipop incident. Kimi walked the race really and if you allow for the fuel he got pole with, the balance of power seems to have shifted in Ferrari's favour.

Next up it's the Nurburgring - another Mickey Mouse circuit in my opinion. The old Nurburgring was a great circuit, one of the best in the world but it's not a Formula 1 circuit in my opinion. It's swung back and forwards so much and this one's really difficult to call. It's at altitude, it's normally quite cold but it can be quite warm and I really don't know this time how to call it! I was right with Kimi winning last time and he really seems to have got on top of Massa the last few races. His confidence is up now and he's settled in better.

My money's on the spoiled brat

I don't understand how Alonso can be so stupid with what he's saying. He's shown that he's annoyed and acting like a complete spoiled brat who's getting his arse kicked and he's just making himself look like an idiot, to be honest by saying that Lewis gets all the best treatment and would be favoured at Silverstone. When he didn’t turn up at the Renault factory when there were thousands of employees there to celebrate, as he wanted to go on holiday with his girlfriend – he lost a lot of respect in my opinion.

Despite what I've just said, my Nurburgring predictions are for Alonso, Raikkonen then Hamilton and that's just a complete wild guess as I've got nothing to base that on! As I said before, it's now getting really hard to call!

Eddie Irvine.

Eddie has just returned to the US from Europe, where in between business commitments, he has been filming in Ireland for a TV documentary coming to British screens very soon and discussing a number of other TV projects for filming in the future.

Ask Eddie a question

20th July, 2007