It was now beginning to look like a one horse race as it has for most of this season in terms of the championship, so again the focus has to be on whom will make up the rest of the podiums for the rest of this year.
Before all that though... disaster struck for 'Checo' Perez as his tyre delaminated in a move that once again proved an old ghost once thought to have been laid to rest reared its ugly head again. Though as the replays showed, Perez had done himself no favours in locking up massively at the end of the start/finish straight going into the first corner and by the time he accelerated out, the Pirelli tyre had a hole burned right the way through it, such was the ferocity with which the lockup hurt it.
This was the only way that many people thought Vettel could be stopped; the introduction of a safety car... so out it came effectively resetting his lead and forcing him to build it all over again, which he would do if the rest of them weren't careful. Savvy as they were the Red Bull team called in their lead driver, as did Lotus so as to limit the damage done to places lost now that the safety car was out.
Webber also came in albeit still under safety car conditions a lap or so later due to rubble collected from the marbles left by other cars' tyres.
So with 36 laps gone, the safety car came in and the race was under way again, only for Adrian Sutil's luck to go from bad to worse his lock up a sign of what was to come and he collected Mark Webber on the restart. This caused yet another fire on the Australian's car, this time the bodywork had been pressed up against the exhaust causing a fireball of quite spectacular proportions.
Luckily no one was hurt, even if the marshals sent out the recovery jeep before the safety car had been released onto the grid to gather up the cars and back them up so that the car could be safely retrieved. He could not go anywhere, could Webber and therefore pulled his car off to the side of the road seemingly out of harms way, but not far enough for the marshals' liking, though what possessed them to released the jeep before the car is beyond me!
Only one clean lap had been completed between the two incidents and you could be forgiven for thinking that this was a sign of things to come for the final third of the race but that wasn't the case and things soon settled down into a fairly steady rhythm.
Lap forty it was before the safety car retreated into the pit lane giving the guys another fifteen laps of racing action before the chequered flag fell. By now, Nico Hulkenberg was benefitting from his excellent qualifying pace as he battled hard, fairly and well with Lewis Hamilton for fourth position and it would be where he was to finish meaning Sauber had their best ever result from a driver rumoured to be going to Lotus next year to partner Grosjean!
In the pit lane, meanwhile, Adrian Sutil received a penalty for speeding after the collision with Mark Webber and this would effectively end his race, though not as permanently as what happened soon after...
With eleven laps to go, Hulkenberg was still keeping Hamilton at bay and I'd say he's a shoe-in now to replace Räikkönen. His team-mate was told swiftly that 'you are racing him', meaning he was free to push and press as hard as he liked.
His (Grosjean's) response after being overtaken by the Finn? Something along the lines of "That's not possible!"...
I'd bemoan his luck and ask when it's all going to come together for him, but I predict that when Räikkönen goes to Ferrari, this will open the door for Grosjean to develop into a fully fledged and competitive race driver.
If you want an idea of the raw pace of the Sauber compared to, say, the Mercedes, then at this point Hamilton appeared to have got the better of Hulkenberg at the end of the start/finish straight, only to lose out due to a combination of Hulkenberg's pace and in being behind Hamilton at the start of the D.R.S. activation zone, the D.R.S. too, proving it an essential part of racing (as I've said before!)!
Adrian Sutil's misery was complete as he pulled into the pits and was effectively wheeled into the garage thus ending his race...
My goodness, it's never been known that a review goes over into four parts, has it? More after the jump ===>>
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