F1:Japan (Part Two) - Day of the Vettel

Okay, so that's qualifying taken care of, let's take a look at what happened in the race itself...

THE RACE

For me, this one was all about the start and Romain Grosjean proved that he was building up to fill Raikonnen's shoes as the number one driver at Lotus the moment the lights went out. He was away like the proverbial you-know-what (nope, I'm NOT going to stop saying that, it's MY blog!:P) and managed to overtake the bogged down 2nd place-sitter Vettel, this time it was as if Vettel was in Webber's car and vice versa because apart from that, Webber made a really impressive start as he looked to get one over on his team-mate for at least one of the remaining four races this year.

Straight away though saw the first retirements of the day and the Caterham of Giedo Van Der Garde and the Marussia of Jules Bianchi came together and went flying off into the gravel that ultimately proved terminal and THEN SOME... they could be seen stood by the side of the track shortly afterwards analysing their crash and from their demeanour it suggested that neither one really blamed the other as it was a racing incident (probably!).

Lady Luck had definitely abandoned more than her fair share of drivers this season and once again, Lewis Hamilton was her next victim as he was slowing considerably in a manner that befitted a driver with a puncture and it turned out that his third placed qualifying had seen him come together with Vettel's front wing at the very start.

A replay of the start showed Adrian Sutil make an impressive getaway and make up a few places which was nice because lately was all about Paul Di Resta and his non-finishes in recent races, so to get some attention was nice this time. Amidst all this chaos, DRS had been disabled to help the drivers calm themselves down and their machines also in a bid to maintain safety as a high priority like it usually is.

By lap nine, Lewis Hamilton had pulled into the garage and was shown to be retiring for the first time this year with floor damage and the rear brake temperatures being too high. He was even at one point told to ease off the pace because of said temperatures, which leaves me wondering what is so temperamental about the Mercedes that sees it suffer like this when its not happy with the tires it's having to use (and DON'T get me started about the Pirelli tires being confirmed as next year's supplier either!)!

Things did not (despite as the song might imply) get better for Rosberg either, because due to an unsafe release from one of his engineers, he almost had a coming together with Sergio Perez in the pit lane resulting in a drive through penalty (a move which he said was expected the moment he saw it unfold around him.

A little further back down the grid, the ever impressive Nico Hulkenberg had managed to get his Sauber past the Toro Rosso of Daniel Ricciardo and this was two drivers that would DEFINITELY be battling against each other in years to come, but in different teams no doubt leaving me confident for the future of F1 as THE PLACE for the top racers to go to.

The final part of my review is after the jump===>>