Hamilton was in control on Saturday as he took his McLaren
team’s 150th pole position, setting not one but two times that were
good enough to be the fastest in the final qualifying session. His closest
challenger was Grosjean, who was four tenths behind, with Sebastian Vettel for
Red Bull and the second McLaren of Jenson Button making up row two. Raikkonen
started fifth, sharing the third row with championship leader Fernando Alonso.
As the lights went out, Hamilton made a textbook getaway to
lead the pack, with Grosjean resisting the advances of Vettel at the first
corner to maintain second position. Button was then able to take advantage of
Vettel’s failure to pass Grosjean as he positioned his McLaren to the outside
of the Red Bull at the second corner to snatch third place. Alonso meanwhile
replicated the move on Raikkonen to take fifth, with Mark Webber making an
excellent start from eleventh to complete the opening lap behind the Finn in
seventh.
Hamilton initially wasted no time in pressing home his
advantage at the head of the field, but Grosjean was soon able to peg the gap
to the McLaren at around two seconds. As the first stint wore on, it became
clear that Button was unable to keep pace with the two leaders, and he soon had
to switch his attentions to fending off Vettel. Alonso likewise was choosing to
conserve his tyres early on, costing Raikkonen and Webber time to the leaders.
Button was evidently struggling with tyre wear, and
therefore the first of the leading group to a make a pit-stop – he came into
the pits for a switch from soft to medium compound tyres on lap 15. He resumed
ahead of Vettel, who made his first stop two laps later but chose to fit
another set of softs rather than the mediums. Raikkonen on the other hand ran
three laps later in the opening stint than Alonso, allowing him to move ahead of
the Spaniard into fifth place with superior pace once the Lotus had a clear
track ahead.
Hamilton switched to medium tyres on lap 18, and was able to
re-take the lead of the race when Grosjean pitted for softs a lap later. It was
this decision to run the softs that allowed Grosjean to close to within a
second of his adversary, albeit not quite close enough to attempt a serious
overtaking manoeuvre.
Button was also coming under intense pressure in the battle
for third against the soft tyre-shod Vettel. The McLaren’s tyre wear problems
lead to a change to a three-stop strategy, the team equipping Button with a
fresh set of medium tyres for their driver on lap 34. Unfortunately for the Briton
however, he re-joined the track behind Bruno Senna’s Williams, and lost crucial
time to Vettel in the four laps before the German stopped. Predictably, the
reigning champion resumed comfortably clear of Senna and Button after his stop
on lap 38.
Grosjean, still unable to find a way past Hamilton at the
head of the race, came in for a second and final stop on lap 39 for medium
tyres. Hamilton headed for the pit-lane a lap later for mediums, and was able
to hang on to his advantage. However, it would turn out that the biggest threat
to a Hamilton victory would not be Grosjean, who proved unable to keep pace
with Hamilton as he lost time stuck behind the slower, yet-to-stop Alonso, but
the sister Lotus of Raikkonen.
The 2007 World Champion had managed to maintain excellent
pace throughout his long second stint on soft tyres, which ended when Raikkonen
headed to the pits at the end of lap 45. He emerged from the pits side-by-side
with teammate Grosjean, who was forced to give best to his more illustrious
teammate as he was eased wide by the Finn on the exit of the first corner.
The gap between Hamilton and Raikkonen was around 4.5
seconds at this stage, but the gap quickly began to shrink. By lap 50, it was
less than two seconds, and three laps later Raikkonen was within a second of
Hamilton. There were times when Raikkonen was able to close, but in the
turbulent wake of the McLaren it was never quite enough to bring Hamilton into
striking distance. With a handful of laps to go, Hamilton began to open up the
advantage once again, and went on to take a well-deserved nineteenth career
victory.
Grosjean held on from Vettel, who made a late third stop on
lap 58 in an ultimately fruitless attempt to overhaul the Frenchman, to take a
third podium of the season. Behind the pair finished Alonso, who was able to
frustrate Button for the remainder of the race despite the McLaren being
quicker than the Ferrari on this occasion. In his best drive for some time,
Bruno Senna took a fine seventh place finish (which could prove decisive when
it comes to contract renewal time), with Webber’s three-stop strategy failing
to pay dividends as he spent much of the final stint stuck behind the Brazilian
en route to eighth place.
Rounding out the points finishers were Felipe Massa, who had
a fairly anonymous run to ninth place, and Nico Rosberg who squeezed one point
out of the highly recalcitrant Mercedes to take tenth. Behind finished the two
Force Indias of Nico Hulkenberg and Paul di Resta, who at one stage found
himself subject to a somewhat ambitious move by Pastor Maldonado at turn 12.
Having qualified eighth, it was a disappointing weekend for the Venezuelan who
earnt a drive-through penalty for making contact with di Resta’s car on the way
to a subdued thirteenth place finish.
It was a disappointing race for Sauber all round, as the
high race day temperatures prevented Sergio Perez from making any real progress
during the race – he finished a lowly fourteenth. Things didn’t go much better
for Kamui Kobayashi either, who sustained damage at the first corner which
ultimately resulted in an eighteenth place finish behind the Toro Rossos of
Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne as well as the lead Caterham of Heikki
Kovalainen, who celebrated his 100th race start this weekend.
Vitaly Petrov was next in nineteenth position ahead of the
two Marussia cars, Charles Pic again out-qualifying and out-racing his more
experienced teammate Timo Glock whose efforts weren’t helped by an early spin.
Last of the finishers was the HRT of Pedro de la Rosa, with the sister car of
Narain Karthikeyan failing to finish due to
a late front-left suspension failure that pitched the car into the
barriers at turn 4.
The only driver who hasn’t been mentioned yet is Michael
Schumacher, who suffered what will probably rank amongst the worst weekends of
his 21-year F1 career. Having struggled for pace all weekend, the seven-time
champion lined up in seventeenth place on the grid, only to park his Mercedes out of position on the grid. The start was subsequently aborted, prompting Schumacher to switch off his
engine. As the rest of the field
commenced an additional formation lap, Schumacher was forced to start from the
pit-lane.
The Mercedes then inexplicably picked up a puncture on lap 1 despite
the absence of any obvious debris on the circuit, necessitating a return to the
pits at the end of the lap. Just when it seemed things couldn’t get any
worse for Schumacher, he was called back to the pits to serve a drive-through
penalty for pit-lane speeding. Now languishing last, Schumacher was able to
recover only a few places before the team decided to call it a day to prevent
unnecessary damage to the engine.
A win prior to the four-week long summer break was precisely
what Hamilton needed, and Raikkonen’s second position means both are now in
with a realistic title chance, particularly as the Ferrari seems to have
slipped behind the McLaren, Lotus and Red Bull as far as sheer pace is
concerned. However, the fact that Alonso was still able to stretch his championship lead to forty points is a
testament to the dogged consistency that will make him an extremely difficult
man to overcome over the course of these remaining nine races.
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