Fernando Alonso's Ferrari delights Italy with a victory at Monza
Fernando Alonso gave the team what they needed to stay in the championship after struggling at the Belgian Grand Prix two weeks ago. The crowd went wild as their home team won and Alonso scored his first victory at the Italian Grand Prix.
Fernando struggled for some time after losing the lead to Jenson Button into the first corner as the McLaren driver made an amazing start from second place on the grid. Jenson Button had an ideal start while his teammate Lewis Hamilton had the worst start a driver could have expected. Lewis was not able to execute his move on Felipe and ended up with a broken steering arm after a contact with the Brazilian’s rear tyre.
The Red Bull’s of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber had a disastrous start to the race as well as both of them lost some ground, dropping to the sixth and ninth places respectively. Nico Rosberg however, had an outstanding start as he flew from seventh to the fourth place after Hamilton’s retirement.
The Spaniard did not let Button get away in the early stages of the race as his Ferrari was swarming all around the McLaren. Button seemed to look more comfortable later on as his higher downforce configuration was working well through the high speed corners and his tyres were starting to warm up.
The British driver was the first of the leaders to stop for the pits on lap 37 before the two Ferraris stopped back-to-back. Alonso gained the advantage after squeezing out of the pit lane just ahead of the world champion and did not look back after that. The Spaniard kept the lead until the end of the race and gave Ferrari their desired victory at their home grand prix.
Felipe Massa put the cherry on top for Ferrari after finishing third for the team, giving them a solid result. It was damage control for Red Bull as Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber finished in fourth and sixth place respectively. Earlier in the race, it seemed that Vettel may retire after he had some engine issues, which resulted in him dropping behind his teammate.
The German stayed out on the same set of soft tyres until the last lap and managed to pull off two dozen fast laps, making it enough to enable him to overtake four cars and finish ahead of the Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg. Mark Webber was not at ease at all either as he had to find his way past Robert Kubica after his pit stop before making an attempt on Nico Hulkenberg.
Nico made it quite difficult for Webber to pass him. The German rookie skipped the first chicane while trying to defend his position. Red Bull appealed to the stewards about this incident on behalf of Webber but they dismissed their appeal. Webber had to deal with this matter himself and eventually passed Hulkenberg at the second chicane as the Williams continued making mistakes and looked a little out of control.
Robert Kubica finished in eighth place, 10 seconds ahead of the seven time world champion Michael Schumacher. Rubens Barrichello was able to secure the 10th place to secure a point for Williams.
Force India’s cars were not able to score a single point after Adrian Sutil was forced to pit after his car was damaged in the first lap but managed to fight his way to the 16th place. Tonio Liuzzi was able to overcome his car’s problems during qualifying and managed to fight his way from the 19th to the 12th place behind Sebastian Buemi.
Timo Glock won the battle of the new teams for Virgin after a tough time with Heikki Kovalainen in the Lotus.
However, Mark Webber leads the drivers’ standings again by five points from Lewis and Fernando. Fernando Alonso is now at 3rd place - a point ahead of Jenson Button. It seems that the Spaniard and the McLaren driver are back in the game for the title hunt this year.
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