F1:Belgium Part One - Seb's The Man... Again!

Whassup, bro's!

This one comes having finally seen the Belgium race on BBC1 on Saturday, yet this was the first chance I've had since the hectic lifestyle I'm now given because of 'The Idea' (don't worry, I won't infect this post with more on that, lol!) and as there's a lull in the storm albeit temporarily, let's take a look at what went on over in Belgium...


QUALIFYING

For me, this one was all about whether the news would be announced over whether Daniel Ricciardo would be taking Mark Webber's place in the vacant Red Bull seat next season.

Eddie Jordan had been telling everyone that the deal 'was as good as done' and it was likely that Dietrich Mateschitz, the owner of the RBR team, was just waiting to come back from his holiday before confirming it. He kept on pestering team principal Christian Horner on whether the deal was done and I've got to hand it to him, Horner handled the situation with aplomb (or with a great amount of Teflon coating, I might add!), refusing to commit to an answer as any true professional would when the press come a-knocking.

Aside from this, it was down to the other teams, the lesser one's on the grid to see whether they could take advantage from any slip ups from either the Red Bull's or the Toro Rosso's.

Straight away, my attention's drawn to the two Marussia's of Max Chilton & Jules Bianchi as they each managed to get their cars onto the grid on 16th & 15th positions respectively, thus making it their best ever performance.

The highlight in Q2 was the somewhat surprising outqualifying of Jenson Button on his team-mate Sergio 'Checo' Perez, for it had seemed earlier on that the pendulum was swinging towards the feisty-on-track Mexican.

Now, onto the business end of qualifying and Q3 where we had quite a remarkable closing few moments that saw first Nico Rosberg had pipped the desperately unlucky Paul Di Resta to what would have been his first ever pole position.

On first glance it seemed to have been a genius decision by him & the team to make the tire choice they did to outsmart the rest of the field due to adverse weather conditions at the time. However...

The weather dramatically improved allowing Rosberg to bring his car home in 2:02.251 (.081 of a second ahead of Di Resta's time!) before in the dying minutes Webber snatched pole by going a scorching 0.9s ahead of the Mercedes driver. This started a frantic celebration that was soon cut short by reigning World Champion Sebastian Vettel going fastest, only for Lewis Hamilton to literally follow him over the line as the final seconds ticked off. He clocked in at 2:01.012 which by then was over a second faster than his team-mate's original Di-Resta beating time.

So with that in mind, this was Hamilton locking down his fourth pole position in a row, proving that the Mercedes team truly are the geniuses when it comes to qualifying performance!


Onto the race...

THE RACE

As the lights went out both Mercedes & Red Bull cars of Hamilton & Vettel were squabbling for position at the first corner and it looked ideal for Hamilton as he edged out his rival to get into the first corner; the La Source hairpin.

But then there was the drag going into Radillon/Eau-Rouge and right at its peak, Vettel was carrying just that bit more speed than Hamilton so was able to edge him out and steal the race lead.

A little bit further back and Jenson Button, having put his impressive qualifying to good use, managed to scrape up into fourth position, not knowing that behind him had gone Di Resta who got an incredibly poor start. Di Resta it was who was fighting for position with Frenchman Romain Grosjean and it was this that allowed Button to pull away from Mark Webber as well.

I wish I knew what the heck it was that's wrong with Webber's starts, as he all-too-consistently ends up getting bogged down (or just plain is real sluggish off the line). We did get a clearer picture this time of what's going on for him as he seemed to be blaming the clutch saying it was a "terrible clutch" that needed sorting out.

Onto lap 3 and already a rather surprising warning is given to Vettel, 'watch your tires, they're heating up too much' was an example of a message he was given from the team. You had to wonder at this point if this really was going to be one of those days for him, didn't you?

Further down the field, in 16th position, Giedo van der Garde was impressively holding his own having got the better of one of the Marussia's at this time and you could only wonder how long this would last.

So, that was the front two fighting on their own for the race lead, the next group of Button back, were headed up by Nico Rosberg who put his 4th place qualification to good use.

A tire warning I've mentioned was given to Vettel, yet due to the sheer performance of the Ferrari of Fernando Alonso, I would have thought it should have been given to him!

Why? Well, having started in 9th position, had already clawed his way up to follow Button around and it was not long at all before he overtook Webber and the pair of them (Webber and Alonso, that is) overtook Button implying that this might be 'one of those days' for McLaren too.

This electric start from Alonso even saw him go on to add Rosberg to the scalps he'd already taken in battling up towards the sharp end of the grid. In my opinion, this gave a good example of why the D.R.S. (the Drag Reduction System) is an essential and integral part of F1 in my opinion and should not be scrapped as some have implied on occasion.

By this time, Vettel had managed to give himself some breathing space upon Hamilton by opening up a 3 second lead and I'll admit I thought at this point that it was going to be another one of those types of races were the lead just grew... and grew... and GREW... so a tire warning, he must've been thinking 'what tire warning!' at this point!

The first penalty of the day saw Checo taking Grosjean and forcing him wider than he should have done resulting in a drive through penalty for the Mexican before the first to crack with their pit stops were Felipe Massa (who yet again has been threatened with losing his seat if results don't improve!) and Nico Hulkenberg.

With the way qualifying played out contradicting his start, Paul Di Resta soon followed the others by pitting giving a clear indication to the other teams that a two stop race strategy was the way to go for Belgium.

The first race casualty came at this point and it was Charles Pic who had disappeared from the radar and I don't believe either D.C. or Ben Edwards managed to find out why he'd retired.

Whilst all this drama unfolded it was Hamilton who was the first to blink in terms of pit-stops and he came in promoting both Alonso and Rosberg onto the podium, which was quite a dramatic step given Alonso's poor qualifying position. When he came back out, Hamilton was in eighth and was left to fight over position with Grosjean who was by and large keeping his nose out of trouble apart from the incident with Checo.

Next to come in were Alonso and Webber, giving Rosberg a chance to gap him and hopefully chase down race leader Vettel before he too pitted promoting a surprising Button into race lead who during this time had overtaken the Mercedes driver. Chasing him down after his pit-stop, Alonso overtook Hamilton only to almost lose it fighting to nail down the overtake.

Further up the grid, having been granted the race lead, Button was left disappointed as the sheer pace of the Red Bull meant that Vettel was soon able to overtake him at the bus stop chicane.

Now this was where he took off like a scalded cat (yup, I did manage to get that in, didn't I?!) and opened up a 5.5s lead did Vettel and it really looked like this was going to be a masterclass in performance from Vettel and his team. Button at this point was contemplating with his team whether to revert back to a one stop strategy like they'd originally planned, but in the end they too had to blink and pit, putting him in 7th position upon his return.

So with that in mind, this allowed Alonso to benefit from said positional changes and push his way even closer to the front of the grid along with Hamilton before Rosberg and Webber followed them giving the race a similar to normal look in terms of how one would hope the race finishes with championship points in mind.

Braking into the chicane, Kimi Räikkönen overshot only to immediately pit and retire after a message to his team confirmed that there was a malfunction with the brakes. He did the right thing at this point because with the pit entry where it was, it meant there was little risk both to him and the rest of the grid in terms of catastrophic brake failure chances. This brought to an end an impressive streak of race finishes since his return to Formula One.

By now, it was looking as though the race was pretty much unfolding as standard and Hamilton came in for his second pit stop.

The next bit of drama to unfold was Pastor Maldonado scrapping it out with both Adrian Sutil, Esteban Gutierrez and Paul Di Resta and as the four of them tried to make it through the chicane at the end of the lap. Maldonado, in taking avoiding action against Gutierrez ended up colliding with Di Resta that in slow motion, seemed like it caused Di Resta's rear left axle actually blow up such was the force of the impact with which he took him out of the race. All that was damaged on Maldonado's car at this point was his front wing (though the pre-race build up had an interesting feature on the cost of parts of an F1 car) meaning he could pit and safely rejoin no bother.

Now approaching two-thirds race distance and Button had been holding his own despite having to go back to a two-stop strategy and he was currently holding down the final spot on the podium at this point. Oh how we hope fortunes can change putting him nearer the front in the not-too-distant future, huh? :)

Vettel manages to pit and rejoin the race before pulling over a 7s lead over Alonso... yikes! The man's on fire! :O

Max Chilton, who's made not exactly an explosive debut to the F1 circuit was then handed down a drive through penalty for failing to heed the blue flag conditions when it came to race leaders. I was disappointed, like D.C. to hear this because this was his first penalty in my mind and the kid's not done much wrong so far this season.

Right... more in part two as I've just recently become aware that my reviews are no doubt waaay longer than others... but that's because I'm hardcore I tells you, HARDCORE, lol! ;)

More after the jump --->