It was Vettel who appeared the man to beat on Saturday,
taking his Red Bull to pole position by a margin of three tenths from Hamilton
and Alonso’s Ferrari. Mark Webber lined up in fourth position in the second Red
Bull, ahead of Nico Rosberg whose Mercedes wasn’t quite as fast as many (including
myself) had predicted, and the second Ferrari of Felipe Massa.
The start saw all of the leading runners making
evenly-matched starts, and the top six held their grid positions as Paul di
Resta was able to pass Romain Grosjean at the first corner to take seventh
position. This soon became sixth position as Rosberg immediately began to
struggle for pace, the German falling behind Massa and the Scot at the final
chicane during the second and third laps respectively. Sixth soon became fifth
for Di Resta as Massa plummeted down the order after spinning at the first
corner on lap six.
In the meantime, Vettel initially pressed home his advantage,
but Hamilton was able to catch up to the reigning champion somewhat as the
first round of pit-stops loomed. Vettel dived for the pit-lane at the end of
lap 16 for a fresh set of the harder soft compound tyre, Hamilton doing
likewise a lap later and leapfrogging his adversary with a faster in-lap.
Alonso however stayed out for an additional two laps with a strong pace and
retained the lead ahead of Hamilton and Vettel as he re-joined the track.
Hamilton was in no mood to sit in Alonso’s wake, and at the
end of the lap surged past with the help of DRS to take the lead of the race.
The Brit proceeded to get away from the Ferrari at first, but Alonso was able
to peg the gap at around three seconds once his tyres got up to temperature.
Vettel was beginning to lose ground in third position, Kimi Raikkonen and
Sergio Perez having moved up into fourth and fifth places ahead of Webber by
half-distance having not yet made a pit-stop.
The jury was still out at this stage as to whether the
leading trio were going to make additional pit-stops, or try to eke out their
soft tyres until the chequered flag. In anticipation of his rivals doing
likewise, Hamilton made a second stop on lap 55, putting him around twelve seconds
in arrears of Alonso. Five laps went by and neither Alonso nor Vettel had come
into the pits – it was clear that they were hoping to keep the much faster
Hamilton at bay for the remaining laps.
Closing the gap at a second per lap, it became increasingly
apparent as the laps ticked down that this would be an impossible task. Having
halved the gap to Alonso by lap 60, Hamilton made short work of Vettel in the
DRS zone on lap 62, with Alonso at this stage just over two seconds further up
the road. Sure enough, the Woking-built machine zeroed in on its target, and by
the start of lap 64 was swarming all over the back of Alonso’s ailing Ferrari.
Hamilton wisely bided his time, waiting until the DRS zone to re-take a lead he
would comfortably maintain all the way to the chequered flag.
It was clear by now that Alonso’s tyres were rapidly deteriorating,
and the Spaniard was soon coming under pressure from Grosjean’s Lotus who had
been nursing his soft tyres since his sole pit-stop on lap 21 to gradually
ascend his way up to fourth position, which became third after Vettel made a
late switch to super-softs on lap 63. Sure enough, the Franco-Swiss driver easily
swept by Alonso in the DRS zone to move into second position and claim the
second podium finish of his fledgling F1 career.
Also nabbing an unlikely spot on the podium for Sauber was
Perez, whose one-stop strategy played out beautifully – after a long first
stint on the soft tyre starting from fifteenth on the grid, The Mexican made
his stop at the end of lap 41 to slot between Rosberg and Raikkonen, who had
fallen behind the faster Perez having made his only stop a lap earlier. Perez
took advantage of Rosberg illegally passing the out-of-sequence Massa by
cutting the final chicane at the end of lap 57 to move past both drivers at the
first corner on the following lap, and from there set a scintillating pace to
ultimately move ahead of Alonso in the DRS zone with two laps remaining and
book his place on the podium.
Vettel set the fastest lap of the race after his late second
pit-stop en route to passing Alonso at the hairpin on the penultimate lap,
sealing fourth position. Alonso was able to narrowly hang on to fifth position,
ahead of the two-stopping cars of Rosberg and Webber. Raikkonen wasn’t able to
capitalise on his long first stint quite as spectacularly as Perez, taking
eighth position having started from twelfth on the grid. Kamui Kobayashi banked
two points for Sauber with a similar strategy to Grosjean, ahead of Massa who
recovered from his earlier spin to claim the final point of the day with a
two-stop strategy.
Di Resta’s two stop-strategy cost him dear as he fell behind
a number of one-stopping drivers to finish eleventh, albeit not his Force India
teammate Nico Hulkenberg who simply lacked the pace to make his one-stop strategy
work, the German crossing the line in twelfth. Pastor Maldonado put in a solid
effort for Williams to climb from a lowly grid position of 22nd, a
result of a spin during qualifying and a gearbox change, to an eventual thirteenth.
Toro Rosso were once again underwhelming, Daniel Ricciardo spinning late in the
race on the way to fourteenth, Jean-Eric Vergne falling behind his teammate
having passed him at the start thanks to a drive-through penalty for pit-lane
speeding.
Whilst Lewis Hamilton powered to victory, his teammate
Jenson Button was once again at sea all weekend. The beleaguered Brit qualified
tenth on worn soft tyres, and suffered badly from tyre degradation throughout
the race; three pit-stops later and Button trundled across the finish line in a
despondent sixteenth place. Michael Schumacher was running immediately
ahead of Button during the opening stages, but was denied the chance of points
when his DRS mysteriously became stuck open, incredibly warranting a fifth
retirement in seven races.
Bruno Senna had
a torrid afternoon for Williams during which he glanced the wall and could do
no more than seventeenth after spending much of the first stint behind Heikki
Kovalainen, who finished in eighteenth ahead of Caterham teammate Vitaly Petrov
and the Marussia of Charles Pic. Timo Glock along with both HRT drivers was forced
to retire due to brake problems.
Following his eighteenth career victory, moving him level
with Raikkonen, Hamilton now has a slender two-point advantage over Alonso with
Vettel a further point behind. This could be the stage of the season where the
trio, regarded by many as the cream of the current F1 crop, begin to pull away
from the rest of the field to commence in earnest a three-way title scrap of
epic proportions. If that’s the case, whoever comes out on top come November
will have surely earned their place in F1 history.
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