The anticipation leading up to this season has been bigger than ever, and understandably so: never before have so many questions been thrown up by off-season developments, in particular Jenson's decision to ditch his championship team in favour of challenging his fellow British champ Hamilton in his own team, and of course the return of arguably the greatest of all time - Herr Schumacher himself. But, put simply, the opening race of this most-hyped of seasons turned out to be even more processional than the purest of purists would like to have seen.
Qualifying made 3 things clear - 1. Red Bull and Ferrari seemed to be the cars to beat, 2. The new teams, and in particular Hispania, were hopelessly off the pace, although this was probably to be expected, and 3. The extended piece of track was utterly pointless, with the bumps rendering Button's McLaren a space hopper through turn 6. Going back to the new teams, I did feel in particular for Karun Chandhok, who endured a real baptism of fire in his debut grand prix weekend - he didn't so much as drive a small handful of laps all weekend through absolutely no fault of his own. At least teammate Bruno Senna (who looked eeriely like Ayrton through his visor) completed 18 laps of the race, but you can't help but feel its going to be a long year ahead for all the new boys. Hats off to Lotus (or should I say 1Malaysia Racing) for getting (almost) both cars to the finish line, which is more than can be said for Branson's boys, although the all-CFD design did prove itself as quick as, if more fragile than the green and yellow cars.
After a heated first qualifying session of the season with grid order being Vettel, Massa, Alonso, Hamilton, Rosberg, Webber, Schumacher & Button, I was looking forward to the first non-refuelling race since the year I was born. When the lights went out, Vettel stormed away from the line, with Alonso cleverly outwitting his Brazilian teammate to lead the assault on Vettel. Hamilton made a minor error which saw him spend his entire first stint stuck behind the slower Rosberg, while, Webber's Red Bull let go a huge ploom of smoke which precipitated the first piece of contact of the season, between fifth-row starters Kubica & Sutil. Webber dropped behind Schumacher, and the order would remain Vettel, Alonso, Massa, Rosberg, Hamilton, Schumacher, Webber, Button for the entire first stint.
At the stops, Webber came acropper of the '55m' rule to fall behind Button which is where he would stay the entire race, unable to make a pass on the reigning champion. His teammate on the other hand, appeared dominant until 'Luscious Liz' developed an apparent exhaust problem which saw him lose top speed, and consequently 1st, 2nd and 3rd places. Alonso then simply strolled home 16 seconds clear of Massa to take an emphatic first win of the season, with Hamilton a distant third place. Vettel hung onto 4th ahead of the Mercedes cars of Rosberg and Schumacher (who endured a rather low-key return), Button and Webber. The point-scorers were completed by Force India's Liuzzi, who drove to an excellent 9th place, and veteran Rubens Barrichello who had a fairly steady run to claim the final point in his first outing for Williams. Behind them, it was Kubica & Sutil after recovering from their antics on lap 1, from Alguersauri, new-boy Hulkenberg (who had also suffered a spin early on) and the only new-team driver to finish - Kovalainen. Buemi and Trulli both suffered failures with 3 laps to go, joining Both Hispanias, Virgins, Saubers and Russian rookie Vitaly Petrov on the retirement list.
In 2 weeks time we head to Melbourne, which usually provides a cracking race. Let's hope at least that it's a tad more exciting than todays.
No comments:
Post a Comment