Just as soon as the race weekend started up on Friday morning as the rain descended, the race has come to a conclusion and as per normal Spa threw up a little bit of madness through the opening corner of the 44 lap journey. Now the teams are packing and in some cases sweeping up the remains of their cars before heading off from one hight speed track to another and another historic venue. It has been a day of vastly contrasting fortunes, not just this afternoon but from qualifying yesterday and today - Sauber being significantly on the the receiving end of the negativity all in the opening corner of the race.
It is always a shame to see the season move away from Spa, leaving one of the greatest tracks behind us and only eight more events left on the calendar to decide the championship and of course the even more important bonus points championship. It also days like today where the championship can be sculpted, where some rivals have dropped scores and failed to finish. But the rest of the race generated some interesting points, illustrating the impact of losing the running on Friday, as picking the gearing and down force levels became the downfall to several strategies up and down the field. Allowing some surprise contenders climb up the running order to finish a long way from where they started. Even at this point the final result is still up for speculation as some stewards decisions are yet to be decided but the podium positions should remain secure.
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| image credit to F1Fanatic.co.uk |
Spa looked just as resplendent in the Belgian sunshine the cascade stretch of tarmac through the forest inviting waiting to greet the drivers on the 4.4 miles of spectacular corners and powerful straights. The sky remained a bright as it was following qualifying yesterday and the rains of Friday afternoon were a thing of the past as we prepared for the start of the Belgian GP. Although season villain Pastor Maldonado had already started the race ahead of everyone else, clearly a little aggrieved by the penalty drove up into his original spot before the lights changed. Meanwhile in the part of the race where all the other drivers were competing Kamui lined up with a lot of smoke pouring from the overheating front brakes and left the start line with a little too much wheelspin losing places.
After Maldonado's race, had started the rest of the field were released and in such a short run down to the first corner it didn't seem like there was enough space for things to go dramatically wrong, and the drivers have been mostly well behaved. Well turns out that was quite the opposite as Romain Grosjean eased his Lotus over to the inside of the track, unfortuneatly there was a McLaren in the way. The two made contact and then things went from bad to a lot worse, as both cars ploughed into the field on the apex of La Source. One-Stop Perez took the brunt of the first impact as Romain climbed up the rear of his car, flying over the Sauber and landing on top of Fernando Alonso's Ferrari. The Frenchman slid right across the nose cone rotating through the air in the process. If that wasn't enough devastation there was the other matter of an errant McLaren heading for the stricken Ferrari - Fernando took another hit and gained a fair bit of air in the process from Lewis' car. Was the carnage over - not quite yet as the damaged McLaren then itself took flight over the side of Kamui's Sauber who was trying to avoid the melee but took a lot of aero damage after being run over by Hamilton. So with a lot of debris and ruined cars in the first turn the safety car was deployed.
As to the survivors of the mayhem in the opening corner Force India were the major winners getting both cars up into 3rd and 4th from only having one car in the top ten at the start. Mercedes had also made strong gains avoiding the flying cars, Nico Rosberg had gained 10 places in one corner and Schumacher was into 5th place behind the SLS. A couple of drivers had to pit for repairs after running through the debris namely Maldonado and Kobayashi - but the Sauber had the excuse of having a McLaren drive over the sidepod, and both cars fell down the order to the back of the train. The safety car was out for a while as there was quite a bit of damage and debris littering the track from the pile up.
On the restart Button cleared off to a sizeable lead from Raikkonen in second as the Lotus was struggling for top speed on the end of the Kemmel straight allowing him to fall victim to the Force India of Hulkenberg into Les Combes. The other Force India came under attack from the Mercedes of Michael Schumacher exhibiting the speed advantage that car had, a little further back there was some more contact as Maldonado appeared down the escape road missing a front wing, no idea who he hit but more damage on that side of the Willams garage. With a depleted field the opening few racing laps were much more conservative than the opening corner, additionally the longer time behind the safety car stretched out the strategies edging some into single stop strategy. Normally at this point I would direct attention to a Sauber but both of them had been compromised by the accident and Perez was out of the race.
Small groups of drivers were starting to pair themselves off in small mini-battles all of which started to catch up to the back of Bruno Senna in the Williams. It was Webber in the Red Bull who was first to catch the back of the Brazilian's car, and Mark was blatently faster than Bruno, but the straight line speed deficit of the Red Bull prevented any overtaking chances. Each time Webber closed in the DRS zone, the Williams was able to pull away as the Australian hit the rev limiter, which allowed the cars behind to close in lead by the second Red Bull of Vettel. We've seen internal battles in the team go quite a lot wrong in the past, namely in Turkey 2010 when the pair drove into each other, so when the German bloke caught Mark there was a little sense of nervousness. But when Vettel made the attack into the bus-stop chicane everything was fair - mostly, Mark defended naturally but Sebastien went round the outside which seemed to be a running theme later on. The outside became the inside for the second part of the corner and the German bloke just eased the other Red Bull car off on the exit of the chicane.
It was then Vettel's turn to fight with the Williams, and as demonstrated earlier it was far too quick in the straight out of Eau Rouge to be caught, considering Senna also had DRS from the Torro Rosso in front of him. While this battle was going on several of the drivers had taken to the pits, opting to stay on the original two stop plan, with Hulkenberg, Raikkonen and Webber changing tyres. It didn't work out too well for Kimi as he rejoined trapped behind the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg who was closing in the end of his tyre life. Turning into a less than enjoyable phase of the race for Nico as lots of different cars were cruising up to the back of his car and getting trapped in the building queue. Everyone in the queue was having exactly the same problem the Red Bull team had with Senna - the Mercedes was mammothly fast in a straight line and the Lotus really wasn't. However the DRS didn't come into effect in the bus stop and it was there Kimi managed to pass the Mercedes.Once one car had made the pass the remainder of the train followed suit, with Massa and Hulkenberg both taking the position.
Meanwhile back in the pit lane there were more problems, as if the race didn't need enough madness, the Catherham team decided that they weren't getting enough TV coverage and released Heikki Kovalainen into the back of an HRT. Both cars only appeared to sustain minor damage, and both Heikki and Narain were delayed but able to rejoin the race. If you were wondering if life was getting any better for Nico Rosberg, well it wasn't as now Ricciardo and Webber had caught and passed the slowing German while Felipe Massa and Di Resta were closing in too. Making Rosberg perhaps the most passed driver of the afternoon. Looking back at the front of the race Button was leading, lapping at metronomic precision each lap 0.7s with each other. But Schumacher was gaining some attention from a certain German bloke who was still going rather quickly on his opening set of tyres, and after a brief dual the elder German decided to pit. Normally this is not too much of a problem but he was racing two wide with Vettel in the final chicane almost resulting in a collision as the Mercedes jinked right into the pit lane entry road.
The middle section of the race was fairly stable, the cars that were causing queues of traffic had pitted and released those who were trapped, and the one stop runners completed their only visit to the pits they would be making. After such a chaotic start things were finally beginning to settle down a fair bit - Button was so far ahead he could stop for tea and continue. Even the two stoppers were beginning to filter down the lane and it seemed as if the strategy had played into the hands of Michael Schumacher who was running in third ahead of the remaining Lotus of Kimi Raikkonen. But in Kimi's cockpit things were not so settled, as his KERs power was starting to fail with suspected heating problems, meaning on 90% of the charge was available. An interesting call on the team radio to the Finn asked him to go a little quicker, only to be responded to by Raikkonen: "well give me some more power then". But the Lotus was closing in on the Mercedes ahead of him for the final podium position.
A little further back, well alot further back at the tail of the field a battle was erupting between Kovalainen and Kathekeyan because the two drivers were on similar parts of the track once more after the Caterham had a lead over the HRT. As the replay made the screen it was shown that Heikki went on a powersliding moment of his own through Pouhon, handing the place to Narain as he recovered. Life at this end of the grid was going to get a lot busier as a train of cars containing Di Resta, Rosberg and a couple of Torro Rossos closed in on the lapped drivers. Heikki managed to move his car out of the way through Fagnes but things went less so well for the HRT, putting a wheel on the grass on the entry to Stavelot and spinning into the gravel. A seemingly innocuous accident but the wheel that hit the tyre wall came off, which in itself is a little disturbing, as the crash was fairly light large structural elements should not be parting company. In this case the car was well off the track and was easy to clear without a safety car but if the same problem occurred on track then the consequences could be very problematic.
On track action was starting to die out, except for one key battle between Schumacher and Raikkonen for the final podium place, it was another fight where the chasing car had more lap pace but not top speed. Kimi was constantly in the DRS zone but the Mercedes was completely immune to any attack on the Kemmel straight. Therefore Raikkonen needed to be a little more inventive, and he turned to the outside of the bus-stop where so many passes have been made before today. The Lotus driver made the pass stick but was virtually immediately repassed on the exit of Eau Rouge once the Mercedes had the additional advantage of the DRS system. Which poised an interesting problem - Kimi needed to be behind at the DRS detection line and ahead at the activation line to have any hope of out dragging the faster car. The only way to do this was to pass Michael in the middle of Eau Rouge - challenge accepted. Raikkonen got as close as possible to Schumacher out of La Source and jettisoned all of the accessible KERs before Eau Rouge to get alongside by the turn in point. And in a copy of the move Webber made on Alonso last year Raikkonen took the position in arguably the move of the race.
The tyres on the Mercedes were clearly running out quite a lot now and after being passed by Hulkenberg in the Force India decided the one stop strategy was not working out for him, and a similar situation was affecting his team-mate. Rosberg had both of the Torro Rosso's swarming over the rear of his car, and this time he didn't have the speed advantage to hold them off into Les Combes - the STR cars were just as quick allowing Ricciardo up the inside. Nico tried to squeeze Daniel in the second part of the chicane but left the door open the door to Vergne in the process as he fell further back forcing a second stop on that side of the garage too.
Just when we were all out of battles towards the end of the race the two Marussia cars started duelling for second place in the bottom division as Petrov was leading the group of newer cars by a sufficient margin. Pic was leading the pair but Glock launched the car down the inside of La Source after the leaders had made their way through. However Pic cut back to the inside on the exit of the corner to retake the place only for Glock to use the DRS on the exit of Eau Rouge to take the position once more into Les Combes.
The laps had finally ran out and called an end to an impeccable race by Button, flawless start to finish race staying out of all the opening lap carnage, behind him Vettel managed to finish second benefiting from a strong tyre strategy despite not having a particularly fast car. The podium was rounded off by Kimi Raikkonen in the Lotus surviving with a lower top speed and a weakened KERs system. A brilliant fourth for Nico Hulkenberg ahead of Felipe Massa doing a decent job in the remaining Ferrari, Webber brought his car home in 6th from the recovering Schumacher in 7th. The two Torro Rossos lined up in 8th and 9th while the points were completed by Paul Di Resta in the second Force India
Bonus Points Championship points winners
From a chaotic start the race did settle down and allow some strong performances to come to the fore once the grid was shuffled by the pile-up. But here are the points winners from the Belgian GP.
- 25pts - Nico Hulkenberg - Held the fourth position throughout the race despite qualifying out of the top 10
- 18pts - Jenson Button - for being completely unstoppable
- 15pts - Sebastien Vettel - for getting a under-powered car up onto the podium
- 12pts - Kimi Raikkonen - Passing Michael in Eau Rouge, awesome
- 10pts - Felipe Massa - for picking up the torch when Alonso was taken out
- 8pts - Heikki Kovalainen - for his powerslide through Pouhon
- 6pts - Ricciardo/Vergne - the two were inseparable all day and both managed to score points
- 4pts - Sauber - how Kobayashi's car still functioned after the two cars went over the front suspension
- 2pts - Bruno Senna - put up a brilliant fight against the entire Red Bull team mid race
- 1pt - Nico Rosberg - gained the most positions over the course of the race
As the race contained many post race decisions these are the penalties that have been awarded.
- Romain Grosjean - A one race ban from the series for causing the main accident.
- Roman Grosjean - 50,000 EUR fine for the same accident
- Pastor Maldonado - 5 place grid drop - jump start
- Pastor Maldonado - 5 place grid drop - crashing into Timo Glock on the restart
- Caterham - 10,000 EUR fine for unsafe release
Incidents involving Schumacher and Webber received no sanctions
Looking ahead to Monza
We a still within the middle of the traditional season, swapping one immense high speed track for another the epic curves of Spa are replaced by the long straights of Monza right in the middle of Ferrari territory a brilliant venue to conclude the European season. The Italian GP is another formidable venue on an increasingly maddening calendar, where slipstream and DRS are the primary weapons of attack. The many chicanes were the scene of another opening lap multi-car accident, but if we were to apply this season's amount of lunacy to the compression into the first corner opens the door for carnage.
After spending so long away from the sport the races start to come quickly as Monza is in only a few days with first practice on Friday this week, but there is one small problem. The blog had a bit of a technical failure over the course of the weekend as the controller used to operate the blogmobile has failed, after several years of service the device has packed up, making filming the Monza race could be rather difficult without a controller - but a visit to argos could correct that in the coming days to catch up. So while I solve that this is farewell from the blog.
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