Hamilton to Mercedes: inspired or idiotic?

Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re aware of the huge news that Lewis Hamilton, after six seasons at McLaren, is taking the gamble of leaving Woking and joining Mercedes GP in place of Michael Schumacher.

At first glance, this may seem like something of a foolhardy decision. After all, McLaren has a rich history of producing competitive cars on a regular basis, whilst ‘Team Brackley’ has had, at best, an erratic record since it joined the grid as BAR in 1999 – besides the 2009 season, during which Brawn GP defied all expectations by taking Jenson Button to the title, the team has just two race wins to its name (Hungary 2006 and China 2012).

It seems that the popular viewpoint is that the decision was one largely motivated by money, but in the end Mercedes didn’t offer Hamilton significantly more money than McLaren, who were forced to up their initial bid. While the Stuttgart marque did offer greater commercial freedom, which no doubt would have appealed to Hamilton’s management team, XIX Entertainment, that in itself would have provided insufficient allure to lead to such a momentous decision.

The 27-year-old is no longer the fresh-faced youngster who burst on to the Formula One scene with so much verve in 2007. Barring a miraculous end to this season, Hamilton will have just one title to show for his partnership with McLaren: many would argue, Lewis himself included, that this isn’t an accurate representation of his talent. Such a statement isn’t an attack on McLaren for failing to provide Hamilton with the tools to do the job, but it has been clear since the middle of last year that the Hamilton-McLaren partnership was beginning to run out of steam.

All Twittergate at Spa did was bring to the surface underlying tensions between team and driver that had been building for some time. As Edd Straw of Autosport points out, the fact that McLaren had been responsible for Hamilton’s rise through the ranks and ultimately his F1 debut had lead to a paternalistic relationship, one that was stifling Hamilton’s ‘development’ (for lack of a better word) as a driver.

Some have suggested that Hamilton’s decision to leave is a betrayal to the team that gave him his big chance, but what else does Hamilton owe his team? After six years of loyal service, in which time Lewis has delivered 20 wins and the team’s only drivers’ title of the past decade, the answer to that is nothing; how realistic would it have been for the Brit to remain bound to McLaren for his entire career? Hamilton, as with all racing drivers, has to ensure he capitalises on his talent as best he can without concerning himself with the welfare of McLaren or any other team.

A switch to Mercedes could prove the making of Hamilton. After three seasons of having to share equal number one status with Jenson Button, Hamilton now has the opportunity to mould the team around himself. Michael Schumacher did much the same thing when he moved from Benetton to Ferrari, also with the help of Ross Brawn, thus laying the foundations for half-a-decade of dominance by the German driver.

The new-for-2014 regulations, which will see the current generation of 2.4 litre normally-aspirated V8 engines give way to a new breed of turbocharged 1.6 litre V6 units, give Mercedes a golden opportunity to become the team to beat in F1. Such a prospect will certainly have appealed to Hamilton, and the challenge of stepping into unfamiliar territory with a chance of meteoric success will have provided the perfect pretext for Hamilton to fly the McLaren nest.

Even if the Hamilton-Mercedes partnership, as many seem to already be predicting, doesn’t bear the fruit that both parties hope for, then at least Hamilton will emerge from the experience as a far more complete driver than he would ever have been by just staying at McLaren. Either way, the move all but guarantees Mercedes’ commitment to F1 for the medium term, which had been in doubt amid the wranglings of drafting a new Concorde Agreement. And that can’t be bad for the sport.

What's more, F1 fans will finally have their questions about just how good Nico Rosberg really is answered. Hamilton will provide a high benchmark against which the German will be able to measure himself, something he's lacked with Schumacher and previous teammates such as Alex Wurz and Kazuki Nakajima. In turn, that may give us our clearest idea yet of how Schumacher Mk II had been performing during his three-year stint with the Silver Arrows. 

So, what implications does this move have for the rest of the grid? McLaren’s assertions that they had no ‘Plan B’ in place should Hamilton leave were clearly deceptive, as Sergio Perez was announced as Button’s new teammate for 2013 as soon as confirmation that Hamilton was leaving surfaced.

After a series of highly impressive performances for Sauber this season, the young Mexican was widely tipped as the prime contender to replace the underperforming Felipe Massa considering his status as a member of Ferrari’s Young Driver Academy. However, Ferrari President Luca di Montezemelo’s claim that Perez was too inexperienced to join the Scuderia at this stage of his career will have forced Sergio to explore other avenues.

McLaren’s Martin Whitmarsh confessed the team had been monitoring the 22-year-old’s progress, and decided that he would be the best long-term prospect of the available options. Considering those options included Paul Di Resta and Nico Hulkenberg, that’s high praise indeed. Di Resta had been earmarked as the most likely driver to take Hamilton’s place at McLaren should the Mercedes switch go ahead, but the fact that Perez has largely outperformed his teammate Kamui Kobayashi gave him the rightful edge.

On the other hand, neither Di Resta nor Hulkenberg have been able to establish clear superiority over the other, and as a result both look likely to stay put at Force India for the time being. Massa meanwhile will almost certainly remain at Ferrari next season, Maranello’s failure to sign Perez being perhaps the clearest sign yet that Sebastian Vettel is destined to don red overalls in 2014.

Hamilton’s move to Mercedes furthermore leaves Schumacher in the cold. Most would probably advise the German to take the hint and bow out of the sport at the end of the season, but the fact that the German’s manager has been in talks with Sauber suggests that the sport’s most successful ever driver isn't quite ready to hang up his helmet just yet. Pirelli tester and former Toro Rosso driver Jaime Alguersauri is also in the frame to replace the McLaren-bound Perez, as is Marussia’s Charles Pic whose seat is likely to go the way of GP2 driver Max Chilton next year.

Singapore Grand Prix 2012 - Round-up

Sebastian Vettel took full advantage of a gearbox failure for Lewis Hamilton to take an overdue second victory of the season season in Singapore. Starting from pole position, Hamilton drove a near-flawless race and looked set to be able to keep Vettel at bay until his McLaren gave up the ghost just shy of half-distance. This handed Vettel the initiative, the German taking the win fairly comfortably from Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso, who sees his championship lead marginally reduced.

Hamilton, who had secured pole position on Saturday by half a second from an on-form Pastor Maldonado, made a fine getaway at the start of the race, leading the pack through the first sequence of bends from Vettel, Button, Maldonado (who dropped two places) and Alonso. It was immediately apparent that Hamilton and Vettel were the quickest cars, and the pair quickly built up a buffer against Button in the first dozen or so laps.

Although Button began to claw back some time towards the end of the first stint, during which the majority of the field were using super-soft tyres, Hamilton and Vettel were able to press home their advantage after switching to soft tyres on laps 12 and 10 respectively. The German’s earlier stop had cost him some time as he negotiated his way through traffic, but he was quickly able to get back on terms with Hamilton and from that point onwards the race looked to be a straight duel between the McLaren and Red Bull.

That was until Hamilton’s unfortunate gearbox failure struck at the start of lap 22, which saw his McLaren coast to a halt and the Brit’s title aspirations recieve a severe dent.

Vettel now had the lead of the race, and although two safety car periods served to nullify his advantage over Button, the reigning champion never looked like relinquishing his 23rd career victory which came after just 59 of the 61 scheduled laps as the two-hour mark was reached at that point. Vettel is now very much back in the hunt for this year’s championship, sitting just 29 points behind Alonso with 150 still up for grabs.

On a day where he seemingly lacked the pace to rival either Hamilton or Vettel, second place was a fair return for Button – with only 23 points now separating the two McLarens in the points standings, the prospect of team orders to assist Hamilton’s title bid now seem as remote as ever.

The two safety car periods played straight into the hands of Alonso. The first, caused by Narain Karthikeyan coming to blows with the barriers at turn 18 on lap 32, saw Alonso move ahead of Maldonado with whom he had been battling prior to the deployment of the safety car. Both Alonso and Maldonado had pitted on lap 29, but the Williams driver made an additional stop to switch from super-softs to softs while the safety car was out. Alonso, who had instead opted for softs, thus took third place, although Maldonado was forced to retire with hydraulic issues shortly afterwards anyway.

Paul di Resta, who initially held his grid position of sixth, had now moved up to fourth behind Alonso thanks to Hamilton and Maldonado falling by the wayside. The safety car periods (the second of which was caused by Michael Schumacher violently rear-ending Jean-Eric Vergne’s car whilst dicing for position shortly after the restart on lap 39) brought the Force India in contention for a podium, but Alonso was able to hang on to secure a second consecutive third-place finish. Di Resta nonetheless took his best ever F1 finish with fourth place, matching teammate Nico Hulkenberg’s position from Spa.

Fifth place went to Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg, who took his best finish since Monaco, narrowly ahead of Kimi Raikkonen whose Lotus showed, as ever, greater race pace than in qualifying after the Finn qualified a lowly 12^th place. His teammate Romain Grosjean, back after his one-race ban, drove a sensible race to seventh place, dutifully allowing his faster teammate past late in the race. Felipe Massa had a decidely more eventful afternoon, dropping to last after suffering a first-lap puncture before making good use of the safety cars to claw his way back up to eighth place – spectacularly overtaking compatriot Bruno Senna whilst sideways en route to doing so.

The final points fell to Daniel Ricciardo, the sole Toro Rosso driver to make the finish, in ninth, and Mark Webber who suffered a dismal afternoon with just one point to show for his efforts. The Aussie driver qualified seventh and was stuck behind Di Resta during the first stint, opting to make a very early first stop for that reason. He recovered the lost ground after losing time in traffic, but having to make his third stop under the safety car cost him valuable positions that he had trouble regaining. He cleared Kamui Kobayashi’s Sauber and Senna’s Williams, but failed to pass his countryman Ricciardo and was forced to settle for tenth.

Senna was on course for eleventh before having to retire in the closing stages, handing the place to Perez, for whom a two-stop strategy failed to pay dividends because of the safety cars. The Mexican had made light contact with fellow two-stopper Hulkenberg after the final restart, but it was a collision with the other Sauber of Kobayashi the following lap that gave the Force India a puncture and ended any hopes of points for the German. Kobayashi also headed to the pits for a fresh front wing, promoting Timo Glock’s Marussia to twelfth; that position catapults Marussia ahead of rivals Caterham in the battle for tenth place in the constructors championship and the all-important prize money that comes with it.

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.

Italian Grand Prix 2012 - Preview

This weekend’s Italian Grand Prix, held at the legendary Monza circuit, marks the final round of the European season before the Formula One circus embarks on a helter-skelter ride of seven flyaway rounds in ten weekends that will decide the destiny of this year’s title.

Monza may be another high-speed circuit like Spa, but there is one crucial difference between the two – where the Belgian track’s flat-out sections are punctuated by fast and medium-speed corners, Monza’s straights are largely broken up by slower chicanes. That places a premium not only on a high top speed, but also strong traction in order to maximise the car’s competitiveness.

Ultra-low downforce settings will be the order of the day, and the hard and medium compound Pirelli tyres could mean we see more drivers attempting the one-stop strategy that paid dividends so well at Spa. Overtaking will be aided by not just one but two DRS zones: one along the start/finish straight on the approach to the Rettifilo chicane, and the other on the back straight prior to the Ascari chicane.

The talk of the paddock coming into this weekend has been for which team Lewis Hamilton will drive next season. The Brit’s publication of potentially sensitive telemetry data on Twitter on the eve of last weekend’s race will hardly have helped relations between driver and team which are already likely to have been strained this season due to various blunders on the part of McLaren.

This is Hamilton’s sixth season with the team, and a change of scenery could be the very thing to revitalise a career that hasn’t so much stalled as plateaued. Still, a switch to Mercedes in place of an allegedly soon-to-retire Michael Schumacher (the only realistic option for Hamilton among the top teams) would represent a huge gamble.

The Brackley outfit has yet to establish itself as a consistent front-runner since its championship season under its Brawn GP guise, and a move there would, in all likelihood, effectively rule Hamilton out of a title tilt in 2013. However, with the new engine regulations scheduled to come into force for 2014, positioning himself with a works team – one headed by Ross Brawn, no less – could potentially turn out to be a shrewd long-term move.

Hamilton has publicly admitted that he’s yet to make up his mind, so how he and the team fare this weekend could prove pivotal to that decision. He was discontented to say the least after qualifying at Spa, believing that the higher-downforce set-up he was using was the sole reason for the deficit between himself and teammate Jenson Button. The first-lap carnage deprived us of the chance to se how well he could bounce back in the race.

On the other hand, we established that Button, when he is at one with the car as he was at Spa, is almost unbeatable. Whether he can recapture that form here at Monza remains to be seen; nothing can be taken for granted in this roller-coaster ride of a season. Still, the McLaren will probably again prove to be the fastest car, a state of affairs upon which both Button and Hamilton need to capitalise if they are to erode Fernando Alonso’s points lead.

Felipe Massa demonstrated last time out that the Ferrari has solid race pace, and a podium thus could well have been on the cards for Alonso before a certain Lotus E20 came perilously close to landing on his head at La Source. The tifosi will no doubt be hoping for a repeat of the heroics that saw Alonso start fourth on the grid last year and emerge from Rettifilo in the lead, but a steady run to a solid haul of points is all the Spaniard needs to keep himself sitting pretty atop the standings.

Massa put in one of his better performances of the year to claim fifth place at Spa, but Nico Hulkenberg’s stellar run to fourth has predictably intensified rumours that he could be off to Maranello next season in place of the Brazilian. Massa needs to use this weekend to show that he is still worthy of a drive with a team that has taken no fewer than 18 Italian Grand Prix wins over the years.

Lotus were perhaps not as significant a threat to Button hegemony as many expected at Spa, but the cool conditions didn’t play to the car’s strengths. With warmer temperatures on the cards this weekend, expect Raikkonen to be in with a shout of that illusive first win of the season. With Romain Grosjean on an enforced one-race leave for causing the first-corner mayhem last weekend, replacement driver Jerome D’Ambrosio has a golden opportunity to score his first career points.

Sebastian Vettel may have fond memories of securing his maiden F1 win at Monza for Toro Rosso, but this weekend could prove testing for the Red Bull team. The Milton Keynes-built cars are consistently some of the slowest through the speed traps, and this year they don’t have the exhaust-blown diffuser to make up for it. Solid points will probably suffice for Vettel this weekend, whilst Mark Webber needs to get back on terms with his teammate after three races of relative mediocrity.

Schumacher’s Mercedes conversely proved extremely tough to overtake, even with the help of DRS, at Spa, meaning he and Rosberg could be in for their best race in some time. The Belgian circuit’s fast corners prevented the team from exploiting their car’s straight-line advantage, but Monza’s layout should be somewhat more Silver Arrow-friendly. Schumacher is no stranger to success here, having thrilled Ferrari fans with Italian GP wins on five separate occasions.

Off the back of a stunning qualifying performance, Sauber could well be in a position to upset the usual front-runners once more – assuming, of course, that both drivers are able to navigate the first chicane without being blindsided. Kamui Kobayashi has seemingly upped his game in recent races, as evidenced by his front row grid slot at Spa, meaning Sergio Perez will have to soon re-establish superiority over his teammate to keep his chances of a Ferrari seat for next year alive.

Force India could also be in a position to grab a couple more points after perhaps their best race of the year, which would consolidate seventh place in the constructors’ standings over Williams. Pastor Maldonado has a ten-place grid penalty for jumping the start at Spa, meaning he’ll have to be extra-cautious to avoid making contact with any of his rivals at Rettifilo to avoid the race ban that befell Grosjean last time out.

Qualifying Predictions

1. Hamilton, 2. Button, 3. Alonso, 4. Schumacher, 5. Raikkonen, 6. Rosberg, 7. Perez, 8. Vettel, 9.  Massa, 10. Di Resta

Race Predictions

1. Hamiton, 2. Alonso, 3. Button, 4. Raikkonen, 5. Vettel, 6. Schumacher, 7. Perez, 8. Kobayashi, 9. Hulkenberg, 10. D’Ambrosio

With McLaren looking like the fastest car once again, Hamilton will put the lows of Spa behind him and take a commanding victory from Alonso, whose car will be quicker in the race than in qualifying. Button will defend the final podium place from a dogged Raikkonen, with Vettel a distant fifth place. Schumacher will qualify on the front two rows but will fade in the race, with Rosberg falling outside the points as he struggles to get the car dialled in à la Spa. Sauber will get both cars in the points with one-stop strategies, with Hulkenberg getting the better of Di Resta once again to score more precious points for Force India. Despite an unspectacular qualifying session, D’Ambrosio will stealthily make his way up the order to claim his first career point in tenth place.

Belgian Grand Prix 2012 - Report

Jenson Button put in a dominant display at the Belgian Grand Prix, taking a lights-to-flag victory in impressive style. Following an emphatic pole position on Saturday, Button drove every lap around the Spa-Francorchamps circuit to perfection, Sebastian Vettel salvaging a second place finish from a lowly starting position. Kimi Raikkonen had a solid run to third as two of the other title protagonists – Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton – were eliminated in a terrifying pile-up at the very first corner of the race.

Button was quite simply the class of the field on Saturday during qualifying, taking his first pole position in over three years and his first for McLaren by a margin of three tenths. Lining up alongside would be Kamui Kobayashi; the Sauber’s prodigious pace was underlined by Sergio Perez qualifying fifth fastest. The Mexican would in fact start from fourth place behind Raikkonen’s Lotus as Pastor Maldonado, who set the third fastest time for Williams, was demoted to sixth behind Alonso’s Ferrari for blocking during qualifying.

As the lights went out, Button made a clean start to lead the pack towards La Source; little was the Brit aware that all hell was about to break loose behind. As Maldonado jumped the start, Romain Grosjean made a good getaway from eighth on the grid and moved across on Hamilton, who was disgruntled with his grid position of seventh using a different rear wing to teammate Button. Hamilton stood his ground and the two collided, leading to Grosjean’s Lotus being violently launched into the air and into the cars of Perez and Alonso. All four drivers were clearly out of the race but fortunately unhurt, with the voluminous amount of debris spewed over the circuit necessitating an appearance from the Safety Car. Also caught out in the mêlée, albeit not eliminated, were Maldonado and, sadly for Sauber, Kobayashi.

All of the chaos meant that Button was now leading from Raikkonen, the two Force Indias of Nico Hulkenberg (from P11 on the grid) and Paul Di Resta (from P9), Michael Schumacher (from P13), and the two Toro Rossos of Daniel Ricciardo (from P16) and Jean-Eric Vergne (from P15). Mark Webber, who qualified seventh but started from twelfth courtesy of a gearbox change penalty, was now in eighth, with the sister Red Bull of Vettel in twelfth having been forced to take major avoiding action at La Source.

With all the wreckage cleared, the race got underway in earnest on lap 5. Button wasted no time in stretching his advantage from Hulkenberg, who was quick to pounce on Raikkonen and seize second place with the Lotus struggling initially on the softer medium tyres. The following lap, Schumacher dispatched Di Resta to claim fourth, which became third as he passed the ailing Raikkonen at Les Combes on lap 11. The Finn would take the opportunity to pit at the end of the lap to switch to the hard tyres, with Webber doing likewise as he struggled for pace and began to lose positions.

As Button continued to stretch his lead, Hulkenberg pitted for mediums on lap 13 having begun the race on softs, but was to resume behind Raikkonen whose Lotus was far more at home on the hard tyres. In the meantime, Vettel was beginning to make progress, benefitting from a series of overtakes and a flurry of early stops to lie a close third behind Schumacher by lap 19. Third became second as the Mercedes driver stopped that lap, cutting across the bows of his countryman as he dived for the pit lane.

Button made his stop for hard tyres on lap 20, with his lead in tact as he re-joined the circuit; Raikkonen had moved up into second place from Hulkenberg, Webber, Massa, who stopped on lap 12, and Vettel, who was the last to stop on lap 21. It was clear at this stage that Button and Vettel had stopped sufficiently late to attempt a one-stop strategy, whilst Raikkonen, Hulkenberg, Webber and Massa would all have to stop again. The latter three all came in together on lap 27, with Webber finding himself under investigation for a potentially unsafe release, whilst Raikkonen pitted on lap 28.

That left Button and Vettel comfortably occupying the top two positions, with Schumacher back up to third ahead of Raikkonen. A great battle ensued between the two former Ferrari champions, as Raikkonen passed Schumacher at the Bus Stop chicane on lap 31 before the latter retorted by getting back past the Lotus at Les Combes several corners later. The tussle was finally settled in Raikkonen’s favour on lap 34 at the exit of La Source, with Schumacher once more beginning to struggle with tyre wear before he abandoned his one-stop strategy and headed back to the pits on lap 35.

Button continued to run untroubled at the head of the field, and would ultimately cruise to his fourteenth career victory and his first since the season-opener at Melbourne almost six months ago. Vettel claimed second, trimming Alonso’s points lead from 40 to 24 in the process, with Raikkonen keeping himself in contention for title honours with third. Hulkenberg successfully repelled the late advances of Webber to take a career-best fourth place, with the Aussie falling victim to Massa during the closing stages at Les Combes. The Brazilian thus took fifth place, with Webber having to make do with sixth. Schumacher emerged from his second stop seventh and would finish there on his 300^th Grand Prix weekend.

Next up were the Toro Rosso pair of Vergne and Ricciardo, who, at least initially, was absolutely flying on the medium tyres and was comfortably running inside the top six until around half-distance. His pace nonetheless faded once he switched to hard tyres however, and Vergne ultimately got the better of him in order to take eighth place. With Ricciardo ninth, the Faenza-based squad secured their first haul of points since Malaysia, with di Resta unable to maintain his lofty position from early in the race as a result of his Force India's KERS unit failing – the dejected Scot was left with a single point for tenth for his valiant efforts.

Nico Rosberg endured a nightmare weekend. His Mercedes conked out early in Saturday practice – the only dry running of the weekend prior to qualifying – and the German as a result qualified well down in eighteenth place before being dropped to P23 for a change of gearbox. Like Schumacher, he tried to make a one-stop strategy work, albeit starting the race on the hard tyre, but was little more than a mobile chicane for much of the race and was eventually forced to pit again en route to eleventh.

Things weren't much better for Bruno Senna, who, after a dismal qualifying session that saw the Williams line up in P17, had managed to claw his way up to eighth with a one-stop strategy towards the end of the race before he began to give away chunks of time with severely worn rubber - he was swallowed up by both Toro Rossos, Di Resta and Rosberg before limping across the line in twelfth. Kobayashi eventually came home in thirteenth place in spite of having a gaping hole in his sidepod as a result of the first corner antics, his Sauber team left to ponder what might have been following a sparkling Saturday performance.

Vitaly Petrov crossed the line in fourteenth ahead of Timo Glock, who bested teammate Charles Pic in an exciting if ultimately insignificant on-track scrap for position. Heikki Kovalainen came home seventeenth despite running as high as tenth behind the Safety Car before costing himself time with two spins and a pit-lane altercation with Narain Karthikeyan. The Indian driver’s race would end in the barriers at Stavelot, ostensibly due to a loose wheel, whilst the second HRT of Pedro de la Rosa was the final finisher in eighteenth. After being caught out in the first-corner carnage, Maldonado’s race would end shortly after at Les Combes following contact with Glock at the restart, which Marussia claim cost them any chance of taking the fight to their Caterham rivals.

Despite putting in perhaps the most convincing performance of the year so far, Button still languishes a hefty 63 points behind Alonso in the championship. He is however now only 16 in arrears of Hamilton, which could give McLaren a headache as the season reaches its climax. The Woking oufit may have the quickest car at the moment, but one of their drivers is going to have seize the initiative as the European season draws to a close next weekend at Monza to be able to truly challenge Alonso. With the race pace of the Red Bull and Lotus perhaps looking somewhat suspect notwithstanding podium finishes for Vettel and Raikkonen, Alonso still holds all the aces as his Ferrari team look to thrill the home fans next time out at another classic circuit.