QUALIFYING
With teams taking gambles on strategies in a bid to make sure they did not get caught outside the 16th placed position in Q1, this one was a time for Lewis Hamilton to once again shine.
So far, he led the pile when I joined the 5live coverage in terms of qualifying as Q1 came to an end. He was heading up his ex-McLaren team-mate Jenson Button & Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso. The biggest surprise though, was Paul Di Resta failing to boost his Force India from 17th, losing out on the rest of qualifying.
Q2 saw once again the likes of Sebastien Vettel, Hamilton and Alonso make it safely into Q3, but not before two surprises in Kimi Räikkönen and Sergio 'Checo' Perez were both outpaced by the cars around them to end Q2 outside of the 10th placed pre-requisite to get through to Q3.
Ending up where they did in 13th and 14th respectively means that they'll both be battling hard to prove that they can do better than their qualifying has suggested this season. It's not the first time they've ended up there, down the pecking order, but it just goes to show that when the cars around you are really on it like the proverbial car bonnet, there's nothing you can do, try as you might...
Q3 was a formation of the regular guard and order as the likes of Vettel, Nico Rosberg and the Red Bull of Mark Webber heading up the qualifying early on. Before Vettel was that confident with his time of 1:42.841 that he came into the pits and removed his steering wheel, handing it to his race engineer. He was effectively saying 'beat that, bro's!' to the rest of the grid... talk about confidence, huh?!
In the closing stages Rosberg managed to get his car into second ahead of Webber who would go on to lose out to an electric Romain Grosjean as the chequered flag came down, pushing him from 2nd and a Red Bull lockout, down to fourth. The reason this came about was because of his lost time on that final push in the 1st and 2nd sectors on that final qualifying lap.
Surely, it's gotta be time for Grosjean to shine...
So, heading into tomorrow's race, it promises to be an epic GP and it's anyone's guess whether: -
- Vettel can be caught in the championship; and
- Anyone OTHER than Vettel can win the race itself
This was promising to be an action packed race and it certainly did not disappoint, that's for sure, and it may also be the longest review I've conducted yet, which is great too!
From the moment the lights went out it was a straight up fight between Rosberg & Vettel over who would get into the first corner first and, though Rosberg did manage to beat him to the punch, it didn't last as, just like Belgium, Vettel overtook his nearest rival to take the initiative and first blood to Red Bull. In all likelihood, this manoeuvre backfired because of the way he used his K.E.R.S. system forcing him to take way too much speed into the corner allowing Vettel to nip back through.
The real star of the start (hmmm, maybe that's another award I can add next season!) though, was Fernando Alonso, who despite qualifying seventh, managed to make it all the way up to third place... watch out, bro's, this man's on a charge!
Elsewhere on the grid, Perez made it up to tenth after his disappointment in qualifying all the while Rosberg was being pushed and pushed hard by Alonso in a bid to overturn the advantage that Vettel was already garnering... after only 10 laps, he was already 7.1 seconds ahead!
Lewis Hamilton was up to sixth by this point with Paul Di Resta another gainer of places up to 13th, having been down in a lowly 17th from his disastrous qualifying performance.
After all of this action took place, it would be a case of teams on pit walls watching each other to see who would make the first move and blink and that one fell to Lotus and Kimi Räikkönen.
Mark Webber, who by and large had been keeping out of trouble at this point, was still languishing well in fourth position meaning that though Vettel was well out in front, he was not out of touch with the podiums was Webber.
So, Vettel comes into the pits sacrificing only one position (one position, bro's!) before going on to stretch out another massive advantage, this time 8.5 seconds the incentive.
The first to suffer problems was Jules Bianchi who pulled off the track earlier in the race forcing him to prematurely pit and it seemed like there were gear selection issues, before Räikkönen himself reported an issue with his car too... was it gonna be one of those days?
Not according to the engineer, who said that no data confirming an error was coming through on the telemetry meaning the injured Fin would have to continue unawares of what was causing his car's problems.
Heehee, I'd say at this point 'what's new, pussycat?' just to add that the BBC cameras had picked up Tom Jones in attendance along with David Beckham, which was cool to see the celebrities at play as well as at work... for once it was real celebrities too! :P
At turn eighteen, going out on the bridge across the water (in fact, you could say for one driver it was a... "bridge over troubled water"!) was Daniel Ricciardo who lost control of his car and plowed straight ahead in a manner similar to Lewis Hamilton from recent years. He seemed to turn, but the car just did not go around the corner and just ended up going straight on. Whether he was carrying too much speed is likely, as that's what D.C. thought at the time.
This naturally brought out the safety car and must've been a 'curses' moment for Vettel and his race engineer as his ample lead of ten seconds was wiped out sharpish.
Now was a time when it would be observed who would blink first in terms of race strategies now that the safety car had come out, so in went Bianchi who really wasn't having the best day at the races, along with Jean-Eric Vergne.
Tire changes seemed to be the justification for these stops and it was understandable because if done right, they could get the jump later on in the race on those that opted to stay out in rank and file behind the safety car.
With 28 of 61 laps complete, the order had barely changed apart from Alonso's pit strategy bringing him out behind fifth placed Hamilton. His engineer at this point gave a message of positivity to remain focused after his electric start.
When the safety car went in, Vettel showed why he has won three out of three championships (and looks bloody odds on to make it four in four too!) as he got over a second ahead of Rosberg before he'd even crossed the start/finish line on the restart. He built it up into a two point five second lead giving everyone the proof they needed that he was a bro' on a mission, was Vettel!
Now... with Vettel opening out another gap just like he did before, what would become of the rest of the field, would anyone be able to stop him? Find out after the jump ===>
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