I came home from a burlesque class yesterday evening and sat down on the coach to enjoy the Formula 1 entertainment. My expectations were very high in terms of the race. There turned out to be some magic happening on the Texan soil but in some regard the race could have been more eventful.
No surprises at the start really: Sebastian maintained his lead whilst his team-mate Webber got another poor start -again! I don´t know if the problem is related to the clutch of his RB9 or the man himself but poor starts have been extremely typical of Webber this season. Grosjean at the wheel of his E21 took immediately advantage of Webber´s lousy start and stormed to 2nd. Also Hamilton starting from P4 managed to overtake the Australian. Bottas in his FW35 had a very good start and managed to get past his fellow countryman Heikki Kovalainen, who lost two positions right away.
Adrian Sutil in his Force India crashed to the barrier on the opening lap, which caused the safety car to come out. By that time Heikki had already dropped back to P12. The Finn had problems both with KERS and his front wing. After the safety car had come in Sebastian started doing what he´s best at: building a gap to his rivals tenth by tenth and second by second. At this stage there seemed to be evolving a slightly boring race.
The top drivers pitted only once so there were actually no different strategies to spice up the race. After the pit stops the situation was unchanged: Sebastian had the lead firmly in his skillful hands, Grosjean was still 2nd, Webber 3rd and Hamilton 4th. On lap 33 Heikki had to pit for a new front wing, which cost him dearly and he dropped far back to P17! It was very frustrating to watch as it meant no points for Heikki at Austin no matter how desperately Lotus needed all the points they could possibly get!
On lap 35 we saw the absolutely most staggering overtaking move of the entire race when Bottas overtook Sauber´s Gutierrez and made his way up to 8th. Bottas was clearly on fire yesterday: the Finn was determined to show the whole F1 world what he was capable of! Lap by lap it became more obvious that Bottas was going to score his first championship points on the US soil!
On the closing laps there was a tight battle between Grosjean and Webber for the second place but no matter how close to the Frenchman Webber managed to get, there was never a real possibility for an overtaking move. Sebastian won the race with a 10-second gap over Grosjean. This was 8th win in a row for Sebastian Vettel and the 12th win of the season! The statistics are crushing. It´s extremely touching to see how utterly happy winning still makes Sebastian. It seems the German really appreciates his achievements and doesn´t take them for granted in spite of the incredible success! Sebastian has put up a new tradition of making doughnuts after winning and it was such a pleasure to see him doing that at Austin as well. Sebastian clearly cherishes every moment of this unbelievable fairy tale which he´s experiencing with his team this season. I´ve always loved the fact about Sebastian that he has his feet firmly on the ground: he knows this success story will come to an end sooner or later. It doesn´t go on forever and he really enjoys the momentum and is extremely thankful for all the hard work that Red Bull Racing have done to make this success possible. Sebastian´s message on the team radio was so touching :´)
I got so carried away with these emotions caused by Sebastian´s victory that I forgot to tell the final results of the United States GP. Hamilton finished 4th, Alonso 5th, Hulkenberg 6th, Perez 7th, BOTTAS 8th, Rosberg 9th and Button 10th. I was so happy for Valtteri Bottas! It finally seems that Williams have been able to make a leap forward and Bottas was definitely getting the maximum out of his car. Can´t wait for Interlagos, which will be the final race of the season! I´m already feeling so so bittersweet that the F1 season is coming to an end... But luckily there´s still one more race to enjoy! :D
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