I think we need to be grateful to Hamilton and McLaren for making a fight of the Turkish GP. This was supposed to be yet another Ferrari walkover and so it would have been, had not there been more guile to the McLaren effort than anyone expected. Heikki Kovalainen can suggest that he could have won, if only he had not picked up the slow puncture, but the fact is the Ferraris still had a considerable advantage on this track and it was only the skill of Hamilton and race strategy by McLaren that prevented another crushing whitewash by the red team.
Much has been said about Hamilton's choice of tires and whether Bridgestone should or should not have catered for his known rough usage of them. I say that McLaren's strategy in the circumstances was perfect, that the three-stop plan was the only way for them to stay with the Ferraris and it had nothing to do with tires.
Consider what would have happened had Hamilton been on a two-stop strategy (and ignore, for the moment, safety car periods - we are talking pre-race plans here). Lewis had to be light on fuel in practice to give himself the best start possible; that would have forced an early pit stop and a passport to a battle with the BMWs. Add to that a longer final stint on the option tire that the McLaren hated and Lewis might have lost even that battle. If Hamilton were to make a fight of it, he had to be on a three-stopper and all the talk after the race was just smokescreen. Baldiserri knows - hence his frustration at being outwitted by McLaren.
As for Heikki, I think it is easy to talk after the event. He did a reasonable job of making his way back through the field but it is anyone's guess as to whether he would have been able to hang on to the Ferraris. Given his problems passing Piquet and Glock, plus a fastest lap a second slower than Hamilton's, I doubt it.
Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, I see that Fisichella is not accepting blame for his spectacular flight over Nakajima at the first corner. I have to give the Italian kudos for sheer gall; he was going for a space that never existed and he knows it. Poor Kazuki did not even know what had hit him and no wonder - at no point would the approaching Force India missile have been visible to him. Perhaps Fizzy figures that we will always believe that an accident must have been caused by the Japanese driver involved...
Turning recent form around, Sebastian Vettel managed to finish this time while Bourdais found himself in the gravel. STR boss Tost admitted that it was a mechanical failure that caused the retirement and puts his faith in the forthcoming debut of their new car; but I wonder how long his dubious temper will allow him to accept the team's continuing poor reliability record. New cars tend to have more problems in that area than old, after all. Watch your backs, Seb and Seb!
Finally, a word about the team that were conspicuous by their absence: Super Aguri. I feel the same sadness at their demise as most do but am coming round to Sidepocast's more realistic view of them. Honda have enough problems, as demonstrated so effectively by their lack of straight line speed in Turkey, without having to feed constant blood transfusions to a 'B' team that should never have been set up. We can quibble about Honda's pickiness over sponsors for SA but, given that they had already made a bad judgement in the selection of one that disappeared before the money arrived, their reluctance is understandable. It would have been kinder to have put an end to their misery over the winter, perhaps, and I suspect that Ross Brawn stands behind the final decision to turn off the life support systems.
Overall, Turkey supplied the best race of the season so far, with plenty of action and close racing. Once again, it is shown that not all the blame for boring modern circuits should be loaded upon Herman Tilke's shoulders; given a flat piece of land and the FIA's restrictive circuit design guidelines, one has to wonder whether anyone could do better.