The drivers championship was once more turned upside down, yet another fascinating race, this time in Korea. The big race day story was the rain; the conditions at the start were atrocious. Lots of standing water and almost zero visibility for everyone except the leader.
The race was held up for more than an hour for the torrential rain to dissipate and actually give the drivers a chance to see what was going on.
Ferrari and Ferdinand Alonso are clearly the on form team and won for the third time in four races. The Spaniard now leads the championship by 11-points.
Once again Red Bull were dominant in qualifying and had troubles during the race, if the team could translate qualifying position to race results the championship would have been all over weeks ago. Webber made a mistake and crashed out while Vettels engine let go in a fairly comprehensive way towards the end of the race.
McLaren had what we could call a rather mixed weekend. Lewis Hamilton kept alive his somewhat slim hopes of the title by finishing second. He looks to be back after his luck left him struggling over the last few races. He lies in third-placed and 21 points behind Alonso with two races (and 50 points) available.
Button on the other hand is all but eliminated from the championship. He’s 42 points out of first place and now needs way too much to go his way over the next two races to have a shot at retaining his title.
The first three laps of the GP were led by the safety car, the conditions were that bad. Then the race was suspended for over an hour while the worst of the weather cleared.
After the restart the safety car led the cars around again for another 14 laps. The worst of the water was cleared off the track by the circulating cars and on lap-17 racing got underway.
Webber crashed out on the 19th lap, he was running second and spun out, damaged the car on the wall, and was then collected by Niko Rosbergs Merc. Both cars were out on the spot with lots of damage.
Vettel did well to open up a decent lead over Alonso, with Hamilton behind him. Hamilton did pass the Ferrari, but braked too late into turn-1 and gave the place back to Alonso.
Vettel looked like he was in cruse and collect mode, and did not appear to be troubled by either driver behind him. When they pushed a little, Vettel would respond and keep the gap comfortable. On the 46th (out of 55) laps Vettels engine let go in a rather spectacular way. Renault was very apologetic this morning, and the Red Bull garage looked shocked when it happened.
Drivers are only allowed 8 engines over the course of the year. The teams are struggling to keep the running time on each of them down as the swap them in and out over the course of the year. Vettels blow up is maybe a sign that all eight of the engines for some drivers have a lot of miles on them and reliability may be an issue in Brazil and Abu Dhabi.
This was Alonso’s fourth win in the last seven races. Ferrari are coming good at the right time, the championship is so close, even with the all-but mathematical elimination of Button there are still four drivers in this thing. Red Bull may be the quickest, but points are awarded for finishes, and Ferrari look awfully good.
2 Comments
Great summary, interesting race and a great championship.
The rain, both in qualiying and the race made it fascinating to watch. I do thing Alonso and Ferrari will keep doing enough to stay in front and win the title, with out pushing the car too hard.