What a dramatic British GP we saw today! Once again I was so overwhelmed with strong emotions that I really needed a zumba class right after the race ;) Dancing to entertaining music and moving my hips was a perfect way to calm down before sitting down and writing the blog post, hahaha ;)
The start under the sunny British sky was entertaining. Sebastian made his way past Rosberg immediately but Hamilton managed to maintain his lead. Kimi in P8 also took a stunning start and gained two positions making his way up to 6th. Grosjean collided with Webber (why I am not surprised by this at all... ;) ) which caused damage to Webber´s front wing and dropped the Australian down to P15.
First drama occurred on lap 8 when Hamilton in the lead suffered a left-rear puncture. It cost the Briton dearly as he dropped down to the last place after his pit stop. Only a couple of laps later Massa in his Ferrari shared Hamilton´s fate: the Brasilian also had a left-rear puncture! Luckily both of them managed to keep their cars on the track. Unfortunately this wasn´t the last left-rear puncture today: on lap 15 only a few laps after Massa´s incident Toro Rosso´s Vergne faced a similar puncture. The situation started to look pretty dangerous on the track. No one really knew what caused the punctures. Red Bull suspected that they were caused by hitting the kerbs. After Vergne´s puncture safety car was deployed as there were so much debris on the track. We heard on the team radio that also race leader Vettel had had some cuts in his left-rear tyre when the German had pitted for the first time.
The battle for the victory seemed to be between Sebastian and Mercedes´s Nico Rosberg. But Formula 1 is an unpredictable world: sometimes your victory can be taken away from you in a heart beat! That´s what happened to Sebastian today. On lap 41 when there were only 10 more laps to go a sudden gear box failure hit Sebastian´s RB9 and the Red Bull driver had to park his car on the start/finish straight. I was so gutted for Sebastian! I know he would have won the British GP! But this is motor racing: DNF´s happen for everyone at some point. Today it hit Sebastian. I couldn´t do anything but to scream "oh no" on my home couch! (Even my sons ran downstairs to see what had happened as I was so noisy, hahaha!) Luckily every cloud has a silver lining: Sebastian can afford losing a victory as he´s leading the championship with quite a remarkable gap over his rivals.
Due to Sebastian´s retirement on the start/finish straight safety car was deployed. Rosberg, Grosjean, Massa, Webber and Di Resta pitted to get a fresh set of tyres on. Rosberg leaded the race and the situation behind the Mercedes driver was this: Räikkönen, Sutil, Ricciardo, Webber, Perez, Button, Alonso, Hamilton ja Grosjean. Lotus decided not to take Kimi in for new tyres. That turned out to be a huge tactical mistake! Webber managed to pass both Ricciardo and Sutil in no time with the fresh tyres. During the closing laps Kimi lost 3 positions! The Iceman had absolutely no chance to fight against his rivals who had fresh tyres. The Finn was overtaken by Webber, Alonso and Hamilton! Rosberg took his second win of the season and Webber finished 2nd. Alonso competed the podium and Hamilton drove to the chequered flag in P4. Kimi finished 5th, Massa 6th, Sutil 7th, Ricciardo 8th, Di Resta 9th and Hülkenberg 10th. Without the tactical mistake Kimi would have been fighting for a podium finish! An unforgivable mistake from the team!
Sebastian is still topping the standings in terms of the championship but his lead has decreased to 21 points. Another DNF would mean the lead slipping away from the German Red Bull driver. One thing is for sure: there´ll be an awful lot of talk about the tyres next week! Also Perez in his McLaren had a left-rear puncture at the end of the race so this tyre issue clearly was a major safety issue. Obviously something needs to be done before somebody gets hurt! It is still unknown what caused the punctures today. The issue needs to be solved before the German GP next weekend!
So a hugely emotional race took place today. And although Kimi himself doesn´t care much about the statistics, the amazing Iceman broke Schumacher´s record of 24 consecutive points finishes by finishing in the points for 25th time in a row! We´ll wait and see what Kimi will decide about his future. Tactical decisions like the one today may make Red Bull seem like a tempting choice...
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