According to the public opinion we were supposed to see a dull race with only a very few overtaking moves. Against all odds we got to see a whole different race with epic on-track action! Intense wheel-to-wheel battle was seen throughout the race and there were some dramatic turns as well...!
Sebastian on pole had the most perfect start and kept his lead. Hamilton followed right after him. Kimi in his Lotus took an impressive start as well but he was blocked by Maldonado at the first right-hander so he lost a position to Kobayashi. Who said overtaking is almost impossible at Valencia? Kimi showed us some excellent overtaking on the opening laps by passing Maldonado in his Williams for example. Kimi´s first pit stop was good but not perfect. The Iceman managed to get past Kobayashi in the pits but he lost a position to Alonso. Sebastian´s pace seemed to be in a league of his own! He managed to pull an enormous gap to his rivals and the flying German rejoined the track in the lead after his first pit stop. Everything looked soooo good, I was confident that this was going to be a sweeping victory for Seb under the Spanish sun...
But if something looks too good to be true, it usually is... Lap 28 was a crucial turning point in the race. Toro Rosso´s Vergne tried to overtake Kovalainen in his Caterham but somehow ended up crashing to the Finn´s car which lead to both drivers getting a puncture and Vergne had to retire the race. At that stage Vettel had increased his lead up to over 30 seconds but due to the crash debris on the track the stewards decided to take the safety car on the track! Right after the restart on lap 35 Vettel faced a fatal car failure and had to retire the race! What a horrific turn in the race! What looked like to be a sweeping victory for the Red Bull driver was converted into a bittersweet DNF and a massive loss of points! Why does Vettel always lose his lead in such a dramatic way? I mean this isn´t certainly the first time when something like this happens! I was sooo gutted, things were not supposed to go this way, not at all!!
Sebastian, however, wasn´t the only unlucky driver today. After the second pit stops Alonso was leading the race and Grosjean in his Lotus was right behind him. Grosjean shared the same fate as Vettel some laps later as he faced a similar kind of car failure on lap 41! After Grosjean´s retirement Hamilton was second and Kimi third. On the closing laps it was Hamilton whose tyres were in the worst shape so on the third last lap Kimi managed to overtake Hamilton! Kimi´s driving was phenomenal, it brought me some comfort after Vettel´s dramatic retirement...
Maldonado was right on tail of Hamilton who was struggling massively with his tyres. The Venezuelan tried aggressively to overtake the Briton and they crashed. In my opinion it was Hamilton at fault because he didn´t leave enough room for Maldonado so the Williams driver couldn´t have avoided crashing to Hamilton... Due to the collision Hamilton was out of the race and Maldonado lost his front wing but managed to finish the race 10th. So very unexpectedly Schumacher managed to make his way on the podium today! Alonso clinched his second win of the season in front of his home crowd. The Spaniard is now leading the championship with 111 points. It was heart-warming to see Kimi on the podium again, a fantastic drive from him today :) It was very touching to see Schumacher at the post-race press conference so carried away with his unexpected success that he started speaking English when he was supposed to give comments in German...
What an epic and eventful race! Who would have thought that Alonso could win the race from P11 on the grid? It´s easy to think that without the technical failure Sebastian would have won easily and absolutely dominantly but in motor racing you can´t win if your car fails! Maybe Sebastian´s retirement today will quiet down the talks about the legality of his car that started yesterday after the superior qualifying performance. It takes a while to get over this bittersweet disappointment but luckily there´re still 12 more rounds to go! And I´m sure Sebastian will bounce back at Silverstone in two weeks! :)
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