Vettel was lucky to come out just ahead of Kamui Kobyashi at the pit stops and then had clear road with which to push, be calm and ease up to the long running Jenson Button. Once Button has pitted his team nervously told him to keep it on the road but not telling him why thanks to the appalling torture of not telling him that a race win would mean the World Championship due to the awful performances of Webber and Alonso (more on this later). The genuine emotion the world felt when Vettel heard he was World Champion was genuinely nice and what was even nicer was Hamilton and Button being on the podium with him, as if it was like the previous 2 world champions passing the torch onto their young successor.
Speaking of the previous two world champions Team Britannia (Mclaren) had a good weekend, gained 2nd the in Constructors and an excellent double podium even if it wasn't what they came into the weekend looking for:
Hamilton once again showed great pace in the desert almost matching Vettel if he were not caught behind a stunning Robert Kubica drive. His pass on Kobayashi was vital to coming second but his tense fight with Kubica was perhaps the sign that he came into the race having to do too much and rely on a stupid amount of luck to become World Champion. He can nonetheless look back on the season largely happy with his dangerous overtaking ability earning him many points and in Australia, Canada and Spa the 3 best drives of his career to date.
Button had the relatively pressure-less job of just driving a good race and earning as many points as possible. He did just that all weekend and earned 3rd place with a good lap to put him alongside Alonso in qualifying and then jumping him at the start and being largely on the pace all race plus an ambitious strategy put him out of touch with the safety car stoppers (more on them later) but still in touch with his team mate for good podium to round off a good first season with Mclaren which would include his best victory to date in Australia.
On a quick aside note both Mclaren drivers have been moaning a lot during the races about their car. It could be to do with the fact that Hamilton's and Button's radios were shown more than anyone else's at level of 6-1 for the most part but they were always unhappy about something on the car despite at times having awesome pace. Maybe everyone else is like this with their team but all we can hear are Mclaren so maybe Hamilton and Button could just need to chill a bit before they begin to be seen in the same light as Alonso (I will go on to explain this later)
This championship result could not have been possible had it not been for the accident involving the ever improving (and in this case very magnanimous) 7 times world champion Michael Schumacher and the, hopefully, outgoing Tonio Liuzzi. It was a nasty accident after Schumacher got caught on the outside of turn 6 and got a Force India almost in his face. This accident gave us 5 laps of safety car which then created the opportunity for 3 people to get into the title fight and ruin it for the two favourites:
Nico Rosberg, Jaime Algersuari and most crucially I feel Vitaly Petrov all made their mandatory stops on lap 2 under the safety car which at the time put them at the back of the field and seemed a little bit daft. But then after dispatching of the new teams and the lacklustre Buemi, on lap 15 Mark Webber and Massa came into the pits and came out behind Algersuari (before what looked like a radio message consisting of the words 'Who pays your bills little Spanish Man' made Jaime move over for Webber). Alonso then responded after Webber had started to light up the timing screens by pitting and coming back out ahead of Mark Webber and crucially behind Renault's Vitaly Petrov. For the rest of the race Alonso and Webber put endless pressure on one of the most crash prone drivers this season and in the process both ran off the track many times trying to pass him but Petrov held his nerve, gaining his second best finish of the season with his best drive. Alonso and Webber were not aggressive enough in their attack of the Russian and in my opinion bottled it when it mattered the most.
It wasn't just Petrov that ruined the championship for them. Had one or both of them gotten ahead of the Russian they would have had to overtake Robert Kubica who was driving one of the races of his life ahead of Hamilton and eventually just ahead of Petrov, which to be fair to Petrov who put in the race of his life, would have been an even more fruitless task. Furthermore even if they had cleared the yellow cars they would had to have dealt with Nico Rosberg's Mercedes, which it turned out on race day was illogically fast in a straight line to get within a place of Vettel and the Mclaren.
It was a race weekend both Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber will never want to remember as quite frankly they did not drive like the championship contenders that they looked like earlier in the season. With an overly conservative tyre strategy, not much relative pace throughout the weekend and not being able to pass a car that is realistically about half a second to a second a lap slower than both of them.
But worse was to come from the Spanish Double World Champion. Coming out of turn one on the parade lap, while just under a mile in front was the genuine emotion and overall dignity from Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso pulled alongside Petrov and had a go at him for being overly aggressive and not moving out of his way like an understudy and costing him the championship. To which Petrov should have replied with a 'F*** you Alonso I have my own race to run and I do not have to bow down to you just because you are Fernando Alonso' but calmly and maturely gave post race interview just talking about his strategy and how he was happy to hold Alonso behind him for so long.
Now there wasn't just the championship runners and Petrov who attracted a lot of attention in this race there were two other drivers who made me very happy to watch their progress:
- As I said earlier it was a stunning race for Robert Kubica. I have always been a big fan, since his fantastic points scoring (although eventually DQ'd) finish in his first race in Budapest 06, his great first podium in Monza in the same year and his first win in Montreal two years later. He had a bad qualifying for some reason, then had a bad start which dropped him to 14th at turn 1 but thanks to 2 great overtakes on Sutil and Kobayashi, a great drive holding off Hamilton and a moment of luck not slipping into the barriers in the pit exit turned a potentially disappointing end to the season into an indicator of what I have always known and the world is slowly catching onto: He is a man that can challenge for and (in my view) take World Championships given a Ferrari and a Red Bull (which could very easily happen one day).
- Jaime Algersuari for me has been one of the major characters on the grid this season. In his first full season he started off very non-descript in Bahrain but has since had a season where has been in many battles with good drivers, including a major scrap in Australia with Michael Schumacher and his first championship points in a great fight with Nico Hulkenberg in Malaysia. His pit stop may not have won him many plaudits for keeping behind championship challengers but for 40 laps he held Fillepe Massa's Ferrari, a car with a good F-Duct and the same engine which should really have creamed him in the second sector of thee track but after a calm and assured drive he kept the Ferrari driver behind him to earn 2 more drivers points and assured his F1 career at least for the next 2 years where hopefully he can move to a better team which can give him better cars.
- Adjustable Rear Wings
- The return of KERS
- The removal of the F-Duct
- Pirelli replacing Bridgestone as the tire supplier
- Bahrain changing back to it's original Layout after the bore-fest that was the Endurance Layout.
- The Indian Grand Prix (which looks set to have the second highest average speed on the calender behind Monza
- Now 5 (6 if a certain rubbish rally driver decides he wants to come back and have a shower) World Champions lining up on the grid.
- Lotus heading into the midfield with Red Bull transmission and Renault power.
- The (probable) arrival of the two top men in GP2 with Maldonado looking likely to go to Williams and Perez already signed to join Sauber with Kobayashi.
With all that to look forward to and winter testing the question now remains: Who is actually going to be on the grid for next World Championship? I have my own views on who should be so what is coming up is a list mixing secured drives with drivers who i'd like to see in the sport after the unfair, financially influenced, dismissal of Hulkenberg from Williams all with new accurate matching up car numbers:
Red Bull Renault: 1. Sebastian Vettel 2. Robert Kubica
Mclaren Mercedes: 3. Lewis Hamilton 4. Jenson Button
Ferrari: 5. Fernando Alonso 6. Filiepe Massa
Mercedes: 7. Nico Rosberg 8. Michael Schumacher
Renault: 9. Vitaly Petrov 10. Nico Hulkenberg
Williams Cosworth: 11. Rubens Barrichello 12. Pastor Maldonado (GP2 champion)
Force India Mercedes: 14. Adrian Sutil 15. Paul Di Resta (British DTM star)
Sauber Ferrari: 16. Kamui Kobayashi 17. Sergio Perez (GP2 runner up)
Toro Rosso Ferrari: 18. Sebastian Buemi 19 Jaime Algersuari
Lotus Renault: 20. Hekki Kovalinen 21. Karun Chandok
Virgin Cosworth: 22. Timo Glock 23. Lucas Di Grassi
Hispania 24. Bruno Senna 25. Christian Klien
This list loses a few of drivers that have impressed me the least including the rather accident prone Tonio Liuzzi and the utterly hopeless Sakon Yamamoto but it also loses some good drivers and recognisable faces in the sport, in particular Pedro Dela Rosa, Nick Heidfeld, Jarno Trulli.
You'll also notice that I left out Mark Webber in that list. While it has all but been confirmed he will not be leaving the team I don't think overall, despite a few crushing drives leading from the front this year that he is actually good to challenge for what he so desperately wants: To be World Champion like his team-mate before him. He is 35, having been in the sport for 8 years, with only 2 at all competitive cars to his name, his career has basically become a catalogue of bad team choice and team-mates either soundly beating him or generally making his life more difficult. On top of that while Red Bull may not have treated him quite as 'equally' as they treated Vettel sometimes he did not need to put a lot of media pressure on team right when A) It's trying to repair the image of a team that treats it's drivers equally and B) In this situation more importantly trying to fight for both drivers to have a chance at the drivers championship and for the team to secure the constructors championship. This season for Mark Webber has effectively been sullied as a smear campaign against Sebastian Vettel and the rest of team and that, more than his crash in Korea and his stupid driving in Australia, has cost him any chance in his career to be the World Drivers Champion. At his age he could find a drive somewhere else but I am beginning to think that he should just retire, savour the fact that he came good in the end and challenged the best in the world in his efforts to become World Champion.
After this endless entry it is time for me to leave all you Grand Prix fans and thank all of you that have kept track of this blog as irregular as it has been over the course of the year. I shall be back after the final Winter practise session with my thoughts as to how the season ahead might pan out.
Goodbye and sorry for wasting your time.
Nick
