RACE TRACK: I'm Only Happy When It Rains - Garbage
Hard to believe that, after the rain-soaked chaos of Friday and Saturday (on and off the track), we had a completely dry race! A wonderful reprieve for the brave souls at the circuit of course but, for those of us safely ensconced in front of the TV, a bit of slipping and sliding come race day wouldn't have gone amiss. But despite the dry running there was plenty of action to discuss, so on with the show...
Firstly, congratuwelldone to Mark Webber for being only the second double-winner this season! Of course he celebrated his win in typical mental fashion:
I dread to think what his passport photo looks like. Good ol' Mark, providing us with ridiculous material for photoshopping since 2002.
This first section will contain a small amount of casual Red Bull fangirling, before we get into the usual torrent of rants. Not only did RBR have the wonderful Simon Pegg as a guest this weekend (who, when Webber took the lead, appeared to be TRAPPED IN A plastic GLASS CASE OF EMOTION), but they also had the most stunning livery.
It's not just 25,000 pretty faces, it raised over €1 million for Red Bull's Wings For Life charity. So it was certainly an added bonus for the thousands of donors that they were able to accompany Mark Webber as he took the chequered flag at Silverstone. For both drivers to finish on the podium even with all those people in the cockpit with them (ooer) is quite an amazing result. And so, cue Mark's jet-propelled podium jump, Seb cheekily pouring champagne onto Jackie Stewart's head and the various presenters and pundits having to bellow over the top of the exceptionally loud music coming from the Red Bull garage.
Onto rather more useless teams: McLaren strike again! Supposedly the second best team on the 2012 grid, both McLaren cars showed an alarming lack of pace throughout the entire weekend. I'll point out at this stage that being a Jenson Button fan is not the same as being a McLaren fan. Jenson's qualifying was yet another dismal affair, resulting in him starting from a lowly 16th place on the grid. In the past few Grands Prix, Button has been diagnosed by some with the Felipe Massa Effect (please note: I despise this concept, merely referencing what I've heard), of losing your mojo alongside a superstar teammate (I, however, rooted out his problem from his facial hair). But at Silverstone, the mediocrity reached Lewis Hamilton as well. At least Button managed to work his way up 6 places to 10th and earn himself 1 world championship point (THRILLING) - Hamilton couldn't gain on his start position at all. And aside from the downright lack of pace, yet again the strategy wasn't all there. Hamilton was on the radio saying "we shouldn't have covered Grosjean, he's much faster than me" only a few moments before the giraffe in the Lotus galloped right past him. So a very poor showing from MEHcLaren, and as for the other British driver, well he wobbled off the track in the first lap. ...Not the best showing in front of the home fans, boys.
But I suppose one consolation for McLaren fans (hello? anybody out there?) is that they didn't have the worst pit stop of the weekend. That award, sadly, goes to Kamui Kobayashi and Sauber.
I am very glad to report that none of the Sauber pit crew were seriously hurt, although apparently one mechanic is receiving treatment for an injured thumb - get well soon! Hopefully Kamui will get back to his usual method of KKing people next time out...
Now I suppose it's time for my semi-regular segment: tirelessly and defiantly defending Pastor Maldonado! For the record, I'll just point out that I really like Sergio Perez too. He's a good driver, interesting on strategy and I wish he'd won in Malaysia. But I think sweet little Checo might have overreacted just a tiiiny bit after his retirement from the race following this incident with Pastor:
Yes, it was an unfortunate incident, and Maldonado hasn't exactly had the best record for clean races this year, but... you can see he's lost control of the car before the contact with Perez. Even if the Sauber hadn't been there, I think Maldonado would have lost it in that corner and spun off. So I find it difficult to agree with Sergio's slightly mad rant where he called Pastor a "stupid and dangerous driver" and worried that he "could hurt someone". I understand that tensions run high so soon after a frustrating incident, but sadly this has fuelled a lot more blind hatred for the Venezuelan. I think he just hasn't had the chance to build up a fanbase that contains more than just me. If he had anything like the number of insane fans that Lewis Hamilton has built up over the years, Maldonado's driving would merely be 'aggressive' and it would win their hearts. Let's just be grateful he hasn't said he's being picked on because he's Latino. But really, I only hope that Pastor can have a few good, clean races in the weeks to come, so that people might remember his mighty drive to his maiden victory in Spain, rather than the recent dodgy incidents. ...Plus if he stops crashing about, I can stop ranting on and on defending him! Because someone in the one-person fan club has got to.
Huge thanks to @F1ML for bringing to life the equal-parts brilliant and terrifying image of my Pastor Pom Poms!
Now I'm throwing my second mini-rant in here, so that we can end on something nicer... the British Biased Coverage was making me rather angry this weekend. I'm not talking about the focus being on the British drivers, because that makes sense and of course they'll do the same at every circuit with the driver(s) from that country. I'm referring to the fanatical lunacy that Jake Humphrey championed at Silverstone on the BBC. Encouraging support for specific (British) drivers is all well and good, but Humphrey decided that it would be a good laugh to get the (predominantly sane) British fans to pick which (non-British) drivers they hated the most and boo them. ...Really? Really, Jake? So of course Lewis' best mates Fernando and Pastor were getting a fair bit of a abuse, spurred on by the prominent Hamilton brown-noser Mr Humphrey. Even worse than this were the representatives of the worst kind of F1 fans on Twitter, some of whom even threatened to kill Pastor Maldonado if he 'touched' their beloved Lewis (why is it always Lewis fans being mentally deranged?). I was pleased, however, to see that this particular comment was met with much disgust online. Of course we all have our favourite and our least favourite drivers but, after a weekend of a very shoddily organised British sporting event, I don't think Silverstone 2012 needed to be remembered for anti-British hate-spewing as well.
I'd apologise for the excessive ranting, but I imagine you come here expecting it. Or you've blundered onto here by mistake, in which case: HI! Sorry!
But let's end on a more cheery note: Felipe baby is back in action!
As I said before, I find Felipe-bashing deeply upsetting, so having him back on good form in the past few races has been glorious. Felipe managed to bring his Ferrari home in 4th place and pulled off a fair few badass overtaking moves throughout the race. As I'm still bitter about Brazil 2008, him being back in points-paying positions is lovely to see. Here's hoping he can repeat these recent good performances in the rest of the season, and maybe soon we'll be hearing 'Fernando, Felipe is faster than you'.
Anyway, that's all from me. The ranting has gone on long enough. Is anyone even still reading? WELL DONE YOU. If you like, you can follow me on Twitter @F1_Obsessive, where I spout this kind of rubbish aaall day long. See you next time for the German Grand Prix!
RACE TRACK: Spanish Stroll - Mink DeVille
...Because even when he's coming from 11th on the grid, Fernando makes it looks easy. And so, we didn't get a record-breaking eighth different winner in the first eight races, because Magic Alonso stormed to victory in Valencia, taking his second win of the 2012 season and securing a 20 point lead in the drivers' championship.
His trackside celebrations in front of the predominantly Spanish crowd were fun. I mean, usually the FIA don't even let you touch anything before being weighed to ensure all regulations are met, so it was nice to see some post-race shenanigans from Fernando. Driving along with the Spanish flag, dancing about with the marshalls, and eventually being dragged away to the slightly delayed podium after several minutes' unauthorised frolicking.
When he eventually made it onto the top step, we were greeted with a blast from the past, seeing Alonso, Raikkonen and Schumacher in the top three finishing positions.
Some fun facts for you regarding this very successful trio...
- These three drivers have now shared the podium on 5 different occasions.
- In all these instances, Fernando Alonso has been on the top step, with Kimi Raikkonen taking the second place spot twice, to Michael Schumacher's three times.
- Between them, they have TEN world drivers' championships - 7 for Michael of course, 2 for Fernando and 1 for Kimi.
- This trio also have every WDC between the years of 2000 and 2007.
- All three have driven for Ferrari during their careers, although Fernando Alonso is yet to win a championship with them.
So yes, a rather retro podium, but lovely to see Fernando's emotional celebrations, Kimi getting another good points finish, and Michael finally getting a bit of luck! But onto the rest of the race now...
I'd say it's pretty rare that we see reliability problems in more recent years, but this race had 2 major retirements due to alternator failure. Of course (as regular readers and my Twitter followers will have come to expect) my heart broke into a million pieces when the legendary giraffe Monsieur Grosjean slowed to a halt after 41 of the 57 laps. All the more devastating given that he was within a second of the leader when it happened, he was potentially our 8th different winner!
His reaction was classic Romain: a shrug of mild disappointment, and then immediately back to his usual, smiley self as he walked back to the garage. A slightly more extreme reaction came from Sebastian Vettel who, a few laps earlier, had retired from the race with what turned out to be the exact same issue. We've seen one or two stroppy moments from the reigning world champion since he's not been dominating the races like he used to (such as Cucumbergate and the use of his other finger in Malaysia) and, after his retirement from this race, he provided us with a frustrated but rather jazzy glove slap. Cue the remixed GIFs - and feel free to add some dance music in your head.
But my 'most twatty flamboyant reaction of the race' award goes, naturally, to Lewis Hamilton. I'm sure the McLaren budgeting department winced a lot when he threw his £50,000 steering wheel out of his car in annoyance after his collision with Pastor Maldonado on the penultimate lap of the race. Literally throwing (very expensive) toys out the pram (/cockpit).
I guess my rant of the race will have to be on that Hamilton/Maldonado incident. I tweeted and tweeted about it at the time, but there's no point in stopping now. First of all, let's remember that both drivers ended up with nil points where they might've had 15 or 12. And so both of them lost out equally, if not slightly less lost for Hamilton as his tyres were going off the cliff anyway. But the main point really is that they both COULD have chosen to act differently in that split second to avoid the collision. Hamilton could've left space for Maldonado on the track. Maldonado could have cut the corner completely rather than trying to rejoin straight away. Hamilton could've anticipated Maldonado rejoining the track at that moment and gone a little bit wide to leave some space. But they didn't. And to be honest, I didn't really expect them to, because they're racing drivers. Of course neither one of them wants to yield to another driver, it's their natural instinct to fight to win. And yes, sometimes this attitude causes avoidable accidents, but that's motor racing. Plus, in that moment, they have the tiniest fraction of a second to decide where to look, which pedal to push, which buttons to press, and which direction to steer. So I don't think either driver is to blame really. They both made a decision that wasn't the most sensible, and they both paid for it. Although I think of it as a racing incident, I suppose Maldonado's penalty is reasonable as it gives him a result equal to Hamilton (0 points) - it would've been quite cheeky if Pastor had gotten a point out of all this. But mad Hamilton fans the people calling for him to be banned from Formula 1 for dangerous driving... well they obviously haven't seen any of Lewis' driving. Anyway, I really should shut up on this now, but that's my view. If you disagree, we can agree to do so, that's fine (and feel free to put forward your opinion in the comments), but let's not try and force each other to change our views. Because that is truly maddening. Ok? Ok.
As for the rest of the race... well I forgot we were in Valencia for sure! There was actually overtaking - although some more successful than others. Obviously JEV's cutting across Heikki stands out as maddest move of the race (some nice expletives from KOV in the official race edit), not to mention how fast he was driving with that severely punctured tyre. Although at the time, I was desperate for a safety car to give Vettel some company at the front again, so no complaints really.
What else? Well it was good to see the Lotuses/Loti/Kimi-and-Romain doing very well, both drivers making some excellent passes - think it could've been a Lotus 1-2 if things had happened differently... but you know I don't do what-ifs! And more LOLZ at the outstanding McLaren pit crew, as Hamilton's reserve front jack man did a nervous jig trying to work out if he was needed. It must've been amateur hour in the Valencian pitlane because there were dodgy stops from more than just McLaren for once, even some mismatched tyres on one car.
So overall, the European Grand Prix was a pleasant surprise. Usually we all expect to doze off like we're watching a Paul di Resta interview or something, but 2012 offered a good amount of race action. But that's all from me for now! Feel free to follow me on Twitter @F1_Obsessive aaaaaand I'll see you next time for the British Grand Prix - where perhaps the Jubilee/regal theme of 2012 will rub off on Silverstone and provide race vehicles more like this...
