I have counted slowly from 1 to 10. VERY SLOWLY. I´ve got something to eat. I guess I´ve calmed down enough and I´m ready to write this blog post. This was definitely a race with some extremely strong emotions!
Let´s begin with the start. Hamilton maintained his lead but Massa managed to pass Button and the Brazilian was second. No collisions on the first corner this time! The first laps were tight and there were some nice overtaking moves. Vettel made his way to 4th by overtaking his fellow countryman Schumacher and everything looked so promising... It seemed that Sebastian could easily reach a podium finish. Kimi on the other hand wasn´t as fast as I had hoped him to be and he was in trouble with Perez for example who made an awesome pass on him.
The majority of the drivers had a one-stop strategy. All the top drivers had started the race on the option tyres except Perez who started from P12 with the prime tyres. The Mexican had a perfect strategy as he was able to stay out longer than the others and gained many positions due to his excellent strategy. Vettel in P5 and Alonso in P6 had a breathtaking wheel-to-wheel battle going on for many laps! It was extremely close that the Spaniard would have overtaken the German in the pits but Vettel managed only just to maintain his position. But then on lap 26 there was a crucial turn in terms of the outcome of the race... At Curva Grande Alonso made a move on Vettel. I don´t know what happened exactly but Alonso went wide on to the grass and Vettel kept his 5th place. Alonso managed to overtake the Red Bull driver three laps later but the Ferrari driver had whined on the team radio about Vettel´s manouvre. Shortly after that the stewards gave Vettel a drive-through penalty which lead to Vettel dropping back to 11th place!
I can´t help writing a few lines on this! I´m not a steward or an expert on the rules but I consider this penalty totally unfair! Vettel didn´t deserve to get a drive-through penalty for his action! In my opinion he defended his position but didn´t FORCE Alonso OFF the track! It seemed to me that Alonso deliberately drove on to the grass trying to overtake Vettel and then whined about it on the radio to get a penalty for Vettel. I´m sorry but Alonso´s action hasn´t always been completely fair or sportsmanlike so this wouldn´t surprise me at all. I have never been a fan of Alonso but this made me feel absolutely no respect for the Spaniard! Last year Alonso made a similar move on Vettel and no penalties were given! This is my opinion only but for me it seems that the FIA is playing for Alonso´s favour... To me it looks that the FIA is helping Alonso to win the third championship. And I´m utterly gutted about it!
Back to the race then! After the pit stops the McLaren duo was in the lead followed by the Ferrari duo. Massa held the third place for quite some time but it was just a matter of time when Alonso MOVED ahead of the Brazilian. Alonso didn´t need to actually overtake. This time the team order was told to Massa on the team radio like this:" You need to think about saving your tyres. Fernando is behind you." This is one of the reasons why I dislike Ferrari so much. Fair play isn´t the word to desbribe their actions on the track! Makes me feel sick.
More dramatic turns were about to emerge. Button in the second place had to retire the race on lap 34 due to a technical failure. And Vettel had another alternator failure and had to retire only 4 laps before the chequered flag! So in that sense it doesn´t really matter if his penalty was justified or not because he had to retire the race once again... Very very disappointing indeed! :( Red Bull had a catastrophic race as also Webber had to retire the race at the end. I´m starting to get a flashback of the 2010 season with all these technical failures... To be honest, it doesn´t look too good for the championship at the moment!
Hamilton cruised to the victory but the Mexican Sauber driver Sergio Perez had made a staggering recovery from his 12th position and claimed the second place! After the pit stops he was significantly faster than the other top drivers and had no difficulties at all to overtake both Ferrari drivers with fresh option tyres! An absolutely great and well-deserved 2nd place for him. Alonso finished 3rd, Massa 4th, Kimi 5th and Schumi 6th. Kimi´s 5th place made him 3rd in the WDC standings so it´s looking quite good for the Iceman. Alonso extended his lead and has now a 37-point gap over his closest rival Hamilton. All three drivers, Hamilton, Räikkönen and Vettel have only one point separating them in the standings. So it was the last race in Europe this season. Hopefully it was also the last DNF for Sebastian this season! Red Bull can´t afford having any more car failures!
As a huge fan of the Iceman I have to write a few lines on him as well. I was impressed yesterday when I read an interview of him on the official Formula 1 website. The Finn was asked something like what has been the best thing about being back to Formula 1. The Iceman answered that definitely not talking to the media and how he doesn´t like all the bullshit questions asked by the media. After that Kimi was asked that what kind of a question he would be happy to answer. Kimi stated that such a question doesn´t exist! I was utterly amused by his answers! He stands out of the crowd in such a personal way! Who else of all the F1 drivers would give an answer like him! NO ONE! He´s such a legend! :)
What an emotional day it has been! It´s amazing how Formula 1 can cause such strong emotions (hahaha) ;) On Facebook I even asked my English speaking F1 friends if they knew some appropriate swearing words that I could use when writing about the incident between Sebastian and Alonso but I ended up writing quite a "mature" and "civilised" blog post. Sorry guys if I let you down, hahahaha! But that´s what makes the sport so great and loveable! Go Sebastian! Go Kimi!
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