Formula One: The Belgium Grand Prix 2010
With the weather dominating proceedings in practice sessions, qualifying and eventually the race, Lewis Hamilton found his road to the championship clearer than it was before the Belgium Grand Prix.
The McLaren Mercedes driver registered his third race victory this Sunday at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit in Belgium, finishing 1.5 seconds ahead of Mark Webber in second place. Robert Kubica after a gallant performance claimed the final podium spot for Renault.
Whoever considered Formula One a boring sport definitely missed this Sunday’s Belgium Grand Prix. The 44 lap action packed race on the longest and one of the most challenging track in the Formula 1 calendar gave all 24 drivers a run for their money.
Qualifying on pole for the fifth time this season, Mark Webber lost track place to Hamilton and Kubica. Alonso who made a quick start, gaining 2 spots to 8th had little to celebrate after a crash with Rubens Barichello who started his 300th GP. The latter had to retire while the Ferrari driver immediately dived into the pits. With the momentary chaos as the safety car was deployed, Button and Vettel overtook 2nd place Kubica in the third and fourth laps respectively. Schumacher was perhaps one of the most improved drivers as he jumped into 14th place after starting 21st due to his ten-place grid penalty.
However things went further south for Fernando Alonso who had earlier on gambled with intermediates due to damp conditions and had to jump back in again for dry weather slicks. Hamilton was dictating proceedings setting the fastest lap for lap 7.
Schumacher and Petrov soon took advantage as Nico Rosberg ran wide on lap 11 – Both on the tail end of the point scoring ten effectively. Button, whose team radio suggested had damage to his front wing was struggling for performance as a hungry Vettel was breathing down his neck. However, it took ten more laps for the Red Bull Racing driver to make any substantial amount of impact; crashing into the back of Button in controversial fashion. The McLaren Mercedes number 2 had to retire from the race while Vettel lost a lot of track time as he had to jump into the pits for a new front nose for his car.
All this played into the hands of Lewis Hamilton with spots 2 and 3 taking each other out while potential challengers in the form of Kubica and Webber had a lot to do to challenge the Briton for position. Things went from bad to worse for Vettel who not only incurred a drive through penalty for the crash but also had to limp back to the pit lane to replace a punctured tyre after chipping a part of Liuzzi’s front wing at lap 26.
However it wasn’t a perfect day for the only remaining McLaren Mercedes driver as on lap 35, he slid wide into the gravel with rain coming in for an encore. A possible gamble by the team not to dive in for a scheduled pit stop till the need for wet weather slicks. Thankfully for the Briton, his earlier hard work in the form of a +12 sec gap on second place Kubica did not loose him any track position.
Subsequent tyre replacements saw Kubica loose track position to Webber due to a slow pit stop for Renault – the car failing to stop at the prescribed working box with nearly no grip left on those worn out slicks.
Another challenger for the 2010 F1 throne had to bid his race goodbye as Fernando Alonso retired after colliding with a side wall, breaking the Ferrari’s front suspension. Replays suggest that Alonso got a wheel on the wet paint which induced his car to spin. The incident led to the safety car being deployed from lap 38 to 40. This meant an undoing of all the hard work put in by the race leader as all cars had to drop their pace and move in a convoy with overtaking banned under safety car conditions.
With four laps to go as the safety car lights were out, we were in for a last minute change of position; depending on whoever had better poacher instincts. The most meaningful swap of places was when Rosberg overtook teammate Michael Schumacher on lap 41 to claim the sixth spot.
The last three laps of the race were nervy, nobody really wanting to make a mistake and top-ten drivers content on the points they were going to get at the end of a testing and rather dramatic race. It ended in the same order.
At the end of 44 laps, Lewis Hamilton claimed the chequered flag with Kubica in second and Mark Webber in third. A strong performance by Sutil saw Force India car come in 5th position. Both the Mercedes GP cars came in 6th and 7th saw Nico Rosberg pull another one over Michael Schumacher. Kobayashi, Petrov and Alguersuari rounded up the top ten.
The next race will be in 2 weeks time when all 12 constructors head to Ferrari’s home ground for the Italian Grand Prix.
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