Valencia. It's so dull, isn't it? Nothing ever happens. *sigh* oh well. Might as well watch then, you never know, this year it might be different...
Qualifying made a bit of a mockery of 2 weeks of press speculation about how fab some team's new blown rear diffuser was or how much extra time had been found with an F-duct etc. In the end, the only surprises were that Michael and Nico (the floppy haired one) both went out in Q2 in the clearly-less-than-brilliant Merc, whilst Williams drivers Rubens & Nico (the Hulk-y one) made it into the top ten. Vettel grabbed pole, Webber was 2nd, Hamilton 3rd and Alonso 4th. Button managed just 7th after a scruffy lap. His Sunday was set to improve, whilst Nando and Webbo's were about to get worse. In Mark's case, much worse...
Webber made a scruffy start to the race and wound up somewhere down the arse-end of the top ten, so a decision was taken to cut his losses and change tyres early. This put him back out right near the back of the field. Behind Crikey Heikki's Lotus in fact. Opinions here differ somewhat: Should the slow teams just get the hell out of the way of the faster drivers? Shouldn't they be allowed to race for position? Was Mark stupid to get so close knowing the Lotus would brake earlier for the corner? Did Kovaleinen deliberately block him? Whatever your opinion (to my mind, Heikki wasn't at fault) Mark ploughed into the back of the Lotus and was launched into the air. Hello sky! Hello DHL sign! Hello track... head first...
For the first time in a while I suddenly discovered myself stood up, having just said something quite rude. As the car landed the wrong way up, I wondered if it was going to roll. Luckily it didn't. Then Mark's car hit the tyre wall HARD. Amazingly, he was OK.
Righty-ho, this isn't a boring race anymore! The Safety Car came out and, unseen by us mortals, Lewis backed off, then sped up again, thus managing to just overtake the SC before it crossed the line painted on the track. The line that basically means "don't overtake the SC now". Woops. More entertainingly, this meant that Lewis could zip round at near full tilt and pop into the pits for a leisurely tyre change. Fernando (and I'm guessing his face was the colour of his car) was stuck behind a dawdling safety car, thus losing him a heap of time. Ever the gentleman, Nando immediately got on the radio to complain, and proceeded to do so for the rest of the race, after the race, today and quite probably for some considerable time to come. To further irritate the easily-irked Spaniard, the stewards took ages to apply a drive-through penalty, by which time Lewis had built up enough of a margin to pit and rejoin ahead of Kobayashi, who hadn't bothered to stop for a tyre change. Crazy guy!
As the race wore on though, Kamui's plan seemed to be working just fine. After 54 laps he was still on the same tyres and quick - and 3rd. Finally he pitted, rejoining in 9th whilst Hamilton tried to catch Vettel. He never made it, but Kamui on new tyres was flying. Last lap and he caught and passed Alonso (which I'm sure improved the grumpy one's mood no end) and then, at the final corner, nipped past Buemi for 7th. I remember why I picked him for my Fantasy Formula 1 team now.
Hulkenberg has entertainingly picked a fight with a tyre wall after his car conked out, and even though he gave it a damn good kicking, it was still there afterwards.
So in the end Vettel won easily, followed by Hamilton, Button, an excellent Barrichello, Kubica, Sutil and Kobayashi. After that it got a bit confusing. 9 drivers had been a bit too nippy after the safety car came out and were subsequently handed a 5 second penalty, which gently mixed the remaining results, handing Alonso 8th.
Germany 1, England 2 (and 3).
Finally worked out how to record the red button Forum on the BBC post race. It was great for 20 minutes, before the power went out at the circuit leaving us with blank screens. And it never came back...
(Playing tonight, Bowling For Soup's most recent CD, which dropped through my letter box this week, "Sorry for Partyin'" and the track "America (Wake Up Amy)". Woop Woop!)
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