Italian Grand Prix 2012 - Round-up

Lewis Hamilton continued his McLaren team’s winning streak with his third win of the season in the Italian Grand Prix. Starting from pole, the Brit was in control for much of the race, but had his lead rapidly eroded by Sauber’s Sergio Perez in the closing stages. The Mexican had to settle for second place, ahead of Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso who rebounded from a disappointing qualifying session to secure third place and extend his championship lead.

Having secured pole by just over a tenth of a second from teammate Jenson Button, Hamilton made a solid enough getaway as the lights went out to lead the pack into the first corner, with Felipe Massa making a great start from third and overhauling Button on the approach to Rettifilo. It didn’t take long for Button to re-take the place from Massa however, and the Woking-based outfit appeared to be on course for a straightforward one-two finish.

Such an outcome was however thwarted by a suspected fuel pressure problem just over half-distance that forced Button to park his McLaren, ending any realistic hopes of fighting for the title after his Spa victory a week earlier. That promoted Massa to second, with Alonso by now having fought his way from tenth on the grid (caused by an anti-roll bar problem in Q3) to what was now third place with a succession of on-track passes.

One of these was at the expense of Sebastian Vettel, who forced Alonso’s Ferrari off the circuit on the outside of Curva Grande as the pair battled for fourth place. This over-exuberant defending earned the German a drive-through penalty, before an alternator failure brought his Red Bull to a premature halt with a handful of laps to go. To compound a miserable weekend for Red Bull, Mark Webber spun out of sixth place on worn tyres and into retirement.

Massa predictably allowed his more illustrious teammate through into second, but threatening to de-rail a double Ferrari podium was Perez. From his grid slot of twelfth, the Mexican was one of the only competitors to start on hard compound tyres, and briefly led the way before making a very late first and only pit-stop. With his Sauber excelling on medium tyres, Perez proceeded to catch the cars ahead of him at over a second per lap.

This meant that both Massa and then Alonso would quickly fall prey to Perez, who then began to whittle away Hamilton’s 12-second cushion at a veritable rate of knots. Nonetheless, insufficient laps remained for Perez to catch the leader, leaving Hamilton to take a milestone 20^th Grand Prix victory, drawing him level with the last driver before himself to secure the drivers’ title for McLaren – Mika Hakkinen.

Perez’s third podium of the season puts him firmly back in the frame for a 2013 Ferrari seat, with Alonso delighted to take third in front of the adoring tifosi and extend his championship lead to a healthy 37 points with seven races to go. Massa no doubt helped his case for remaining at Maranello next year with a fourth place finish, but as of the time of writing his Ferrari career still hangs in the balance.

Kimi Raikkonen did well to finish fifth on a one-stop strategy on a day where the Lotus did not look terribly competitive, and, sitting just one point behind Hamilton, remains very much a prime contender for the championship. Coming home just behind the Finn were the two Mercedes of Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg, who both elected to use two-stop strategies.

Paul Di Resta was the sole Force India finisher in eighth place; teammate Nico Hulkenberg retired with a brake issue late on in the race having started from the back of the grid due to a gearbox problem prior to Q1 on Saturday. Ninth place went to Kamui Kobayashi, who was unable to extract the same pace from his Sauber as Perez.

Daniel Ricciardo was on course to claim the final point for Toro Rosso before he was denied by a fuel pick-up issue at the very last corner of the race. The Australian thus instead coasted across the line twelfth behind Bruno Senna and his Williams teammate Pastor Maldonado who had an uncharacteristically uneventful race after his Spa misadventures. The sister Toro Rosso of Jean-Eric Vergne retired early on in dramatic fashion with suspension failure.

Romain Grosjean's one-off replacement, Jerome D’Ambrosio, was always going to be up against it; this weekend would be the first time he had driven the Lotus E20 since the in-season test at Mugello back in May. Hobbled further by a KERS failure several laps after the start, the Belgian did well to finish thirteenth all things considered.