Fernando Alonso Storms to victory at Singapore Grand Prix
Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso stormed to victory at the Singapore Grand Prix under lights. The championship race for the 2010 F1 title is truly on now. Alonso has leapfrogged Lewis Hamilton of McLaren to 2nd place on the leader board.
Hamilton for the 2nd race in a row suffered an accident and had to be withdrawn. The last accident in Italy had cost him the top spot in the table and now he has moved down to 3rd. Mark Webber, the championship leader managed to hold
on to the top spot in the standings by finishing 3rd and his team mate Sebastian Vettel pushed Alonso hard throughout but could not break him down and had to settle for 2nd
spot. Vettel is on 4th spot in the table, just one behind the unfortunate Lewis Hamilton. Jenson Button the current world champion did well to end on the 4th place in the end. Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg managed the 5th spot
and continued his consistent performance for the season. Former Ferrari driver Rubens Barrichello did well to end 6th, Robert Kubica ran into some trouble at the tail end of the race but recovered well to get the 7th spot. Force India’s
only driver remaining in the race Adrian Sutil got 8th place, Hulkenberg got 9th and Ferrari’s 2nd driver Felipe Massa who started from the end of the grid did exceedingly well to get the final championship points which would
help Ferrari in the constructor’s title.
The challenging Singapore circuit meant that the start of the race was going to be ever so crucial in the final outcome of the race.
Alonso held off Vettel when the lights went green. As the cars emerged from the 2nd corner the top 5 were in unchanged order and that meant that it was going to be difficult to overtake and something extraordinary had
to happen for them to change order.
Looking at the record of the new Singapore track that has hosted just 2 races prior to this, accidents were bound to happen and that would have been the best chance for any driver to make the move.
Not surprisingly just in the 3rd lap there was a suspension damage in the car of Vitantonio Liuzzi and that forced him out of the race.
Red Bull decided to make a gamble with the yellow flags coming out. Mark Webber was called in for an early pit stop. The Austrian team quickly changed the tyres on Webber’s car from soft to hard and he knew he had to make good
use of them till the end.
Webber rejoined the track in 11th position, but knew that as others start to pit he would have his moments. The Australian wasted little time in going past Timo Glock and then Kamui Kobayashi.
Meanwhile at the top of the track, Alonso was going strong and giving no room to Vettel who was fighting hard at his tail. The McLaren duo of Hamilton and Button were close by as well.
Webber continued to make use of the tyre advantage and made his way past Michael Schumacher to move into 8th.
Mark Webber at that point was trailing the race leader Alonso by 18 seconds, but knew as soon as the pits start coming he had a great chance of getting into the top 4.
Lewis Hamilton decided to pit at the 29th lap, his team mate Button did it on the next one and Mark Webber was able to make his move and went past both of them to 3rd place. In the next lap, the top 2, Vettel
and Fernando Alonso pitted together and almost identically moved out of the pits to keep the race order intact.
Then came the big talking point of the race, and probably the incident that may end up causing Hamilton the world championship. After taking the pit stop, Hamilton was behind Webber and in an effort to move ahead he ran the Aussie
close. Hamilton was halfway through making the pass when the 2 cars came into contact. Webber was towards the inside line and did well to hold his ground while Hamilton trying to make the slingshot move and go ahead from the wide ran into Webber’s car.
Mark Webber’s car hardly got any damage, while Haimlton’s race ended right there. It was soon announced that the race Stewards would not take any action against Webber following the incident. Meanwhile when the little accident
took place, there was pure joy and loud cheers in the Ferrari camp as one of their main rivals had crashed out.
After that the race was almost straight forward, Alonso continued to dominate and the curvy narrow circuit meant that unless the Spaniard made a mistake Vettel really did not have much of a chance to get by.
Fernando Alonso completed his 4th win of the season, and stormed to the 2nd place in the Championship table. The final 4 races will be the most exciting as the closest title race in F1 heads to its climax.
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