F1:USA (Part One) - Vettel For the 8th Time!

Well, this is the penultimate race of the season so here are my thoughts on the US Grand Prix from Austin, Texas...

This one had dead cert written all over it, though maybe not for the same reasons as expected because last year, it was Lewis Hamilton who came home victorious as Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel tripped over a back marker allowing the Mercedes driver to overtake him.

This time, however, things would not go according to plan for Hamilton and he would end up finishing in 4th place and was heard at one point to be critical of his team's distracting radio comments on the car's performance, compared with another occasion afterwards where he was heard asking the team to keep him in the loop on the usual things like tire temperatures, car performance ratings etc... for his team-mate, it would be a rather disastrous qualifying resulting in a 14th position on the starting grid.

Also, there were a few penalties handed out...

One for Jenson Button for ignoring red flag conditions due to the non-arrival of the air ambulance, with others going to Max Chilton for unnecessary movements in blocking an opponent in Q1 (one that he had to take during the first five laps of the race) and Esteban Gutierrez, given a 10 place grid penalty for impeding Pastor Maldonado rendering his 10th placed qualification moot.

The race itself was a fairly entertaining, yet somewhat clean race as there was only one DNF; Adrian Sutil of the Force India team, though you could hardly blame him as it looked like contact was made with one of the other cars careening him out of control and into the barrier, breaking the front suspension. For once it wasn't Paul Di Resta!!! :O :O :O

Up front, it was a case of Red Bull beating Red Bull in qualifying and in my mind it looked as though Mark Webber had outsmarted (no, more like out-paced, which is something I don't say very often!) Vettel as Q3 closed... but an error at Turn 19 had him ruing his misfortune as Vettel took it by a tenth.

Webber's start would also be one left ruing as, due to track positioning of rivals going down to the first corner, it meant that the next non-RBR car, Grosjean, could easily blow past him along with Hamilton (only the latter would get passed later on in the race the RBR cars were performing that good!).

Vettel again took off like the proverbial and opened out a lead that was that insurmountable, even during his pit-stops it made no difference to the others being able to catch him... it was all moot!

DRIVER OF THE DAY

But the star of the day, and naturally my "Driver of the Day" has to go to none other than: -

Romain Grosjean

This is simply because of the way he's come out of the shadow of Räikkönen since the announcement that he would be returning to Ferrari next season (the only thing interesting about that announcement is who will be the number one driver, lol!). He has been fairly consistent in either out-qualifying or sometimes even out-racing him.

This means that he is the shoe-in I'm tipping to build on the success he's been having this season (in terms of keeping his nose clean compared to last season!) going into the final race next time out in Brazil and into next season also... so watch out for seeing Grosjean as P1, bro's!

The other star who narrowly misses out on the "D.o.t.D" award has to be the Williams driver Valteri Bottas who was phenomenal in both qualifying 2nd briefly (before being shunted down to 9th in Q3!) and then going on to secure his first ever points in a season... GO BRO'!!!


Next up, I'm going to take a look at what's been going on off the track==>>