Simply a beautiful day greeted the Thundering Herd as it mad its way to the grid behind the gleaming Silver Arrow of Nico Rosberg.  Around the pit lane, however, dark clouds rumbled above the heads of the Pirelli representatives as complaints about their tires had reached "shrieking weasel" levels.  So how would the rubber react when the lights went out?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2013 Grand Prix of Spain!

*RACIN':  "We have to drive slowly to protect our tires."  "We're not racing, we're conserving tires."  These and other statements like them have been heard for weeks around the F1 paddock.  Very quickly today, however, it very quickly became obvious that one team had finally gotten tired of whining and decided to make the best of the tire situation.  Scuderia Ferrari had told their drivers "we've got six sets of tires, let's use them."  This may have meant another pit stop in relation to their competition, but the tradeoff was that they'd be going faster than the teams "protecting" their tires.  It pains us to say this, but BRAVO, Ferrari, bravo. 

*EVEN BETTER:  It worked.  Right from the beginning, Ferrari had planned to do a four-stop race, while everybody else were suspected of committing to three-stoppers.  By the end of the first round of pitstops, Ferrari's HWMNBN had all the advantages, and very soon thereafter, the lead.  Meanwhile, his teammate Felipe Massa was shadowing him just a few positions behind.

*SCRAMBLING:  At one point in the race, Hannibal Vettel's chief mechanic "Rocky" Rocquelin called to his driver.  "Relax, it's the last five laps that'll be decisive."  This came after HWMNBN had made the three-time World Driver's Champion look slow and bad and awful.  Shortly thereafter, though, Red Bull came to the realization that they were going to lose, and lose badly, if they didn't mirror the four-stop strategy.  Alas, they made that decision too late, and Vettel was never a real threat during the race.  Such a shame.

*GENTLE LOTUS:  In contrast to all the teams reacting to Ferrari's novel concept of "going racin'," Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen kept on his three-stop strategy, comfortable in the knowledge that he could drive smoothly and quickly while being gentle on his tires.  It used to be that Jenson Button was the king of tire kindness... no more.  While he wasn't quite able to dice with HWMNBN for the lead, he was able to lock down second place ahead of Massa.

*MERC MASSACRE:  As expected, from the moment the lights went out to the time the race ended, the Mercedes chassis drove like crap.  You know times are bad when the pit wall is telling their drivers to slow down in the middle of a race.  Shiv Hamilton, who began the race in second place, finished up  12th with tires that refused to warm up and fell apart when he pushed.  "I can't drive any slower" he replied to the pit lane.  Pole sitter Nico Rosberg finished in 6th, having managed to keep the lead until the first round of tire changes. 

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  HWMNBN.  From the start of the race, it was clear that The Spaniard had come to his home track to win.  A brilliant pass through Turn 3 served notice that he was feeling his oats, and that he was going to be dangerous.  That proved to be accurate as he won by nine seconds.  Just an outstanding performance.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  Ferrari.  They had both drivers on the podium and forced everybody else to adjust to their strategy.  Yep, that's the way to do it all right.  The church bells are ringing in Maranello tonight.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  One of the standing rules of F1Update! is that nothing that occurs during the first lap of the race is eligible for either the Move or the Mooooooo-ooove of the Race awards.  We are breaking that rule today.  As soon as the lights went out and the field began to move, it was clear that HWMNBN had a wild hair going today.  Heading into Turn 3 he was on the outside, with Kimi Raikkonen, Shiv Hamilton, Hannibal Vettel and, ultimately, Nico Rosberg ahead of him.

Secure in the knowledge that he could run his tires into the ground without penalty, he charged into the long, fast 180° Turn 3 with blood in his eye.

Raikkonen didn't fight HWMNBN, but Shiv Hamilton was less accommodating, making sure that the Ferrari driver had to take the really long way around.

Undaunted, The Spaniard did just that, getting past the Mercedes and pulling himself back inside in the process.  As it was, if Turn 3 had been longer, HWMNBN might have been able to track down Hannibal Vettel for 2nd.  As is, he had picked up two places nearly before the race began.  Just an astonishingly virtuoso performance, and worth us breaking our rules to give him the Move of the Race.

*MOOOOOOOO-OOOVE OF THE RACE:  On Lap 23, Geido van der Garde pitted his Caterham, emerged, drove half a lap and... his left-rear tire came off.  Half-a-lap later, he managed to bring his car into the pit lane!

Impressive driving performance, but the team still got fined for an unsafe release fro the pit lane.  Caterham, here's your Mooooo!

*SELECTED DRIVER'S QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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Remember when you could watch a Formula 1 race and expect that Hannibal Vettel was going to win?  It was only two seasons ago that he dominated the sport, so we're not talking that much time.  Remember how much fun that year was?  You do?  Good.  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2013 Grand Prix of Bahrain!

*BACK IN THE BAD OLD DAYS:  It took two laps, but Red Bull's Hannibal Vettel passed the Mercedes of polesitter Nico Rosberg for the lead.  He then proceeded to run away and hide.  The only car that seemed to have the guts to hang with him, the Ferrari of HWMNBN, managed to stay in contact for eight laps.  At that point, his DRS flap stuck in the open position, requiring two unscheduled stops to close permanently and the last possible challenger was gone.  Vettel ran away with the race.

*OH SO CLOSE: For most of the race, Force India's Paul di Resta had a podium position.  For a few laps, in fact, he led the race while Vettel pitted.  Eventually the Lotus of Kimi Raikkonen passed him for second.  Then, alas, with five laps remaining, Lettuce Grosjean's newer tires took him past for third.  It would have been Force India's second ever podium, and di Resta's best finish ever.

*THE REST:  Meh.  Sergio Perez apparently thought that Red Bull thing of a few weeks ago was cool, so he decided to run into his teammate, Jenson Button.  Felipe Massa had two right-rear tire failures to kill any chance he had.  We here at F1U! just couldn't be bothered, to be honest.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  HWMNBN.  His DRS system stuck open twice in two laps.  It looked like it would open, then for whatever reason, it would get caught in the airflow and open wider than it was supposed to.  After it happened the second time, Ferrari told him "don't use it anymore." Racing from last, he managed to drive a crippled car back up the grid to finish eighth.  Amazing job.  Honorable mention to Paul di Resta for a heckuva weekend.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  Lotus.  Kimi in second, Lettuce in third, and the team is now second in the Constructors Championship.  Yeah, not bad.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  On Lap 20, Lettuce Grosjean passed Nico Rosberg for third.  To do so, he took advantage of McLaren's Jenson Button having passed Rosberg mere moments earlier, as Rosberg was out of position.  It was a slick move, but completely unphotogenic.  Still, here's your award, Lettuce!  Nice job!

*MOOOOOOO-OOOVE OF THE RACE:  Oddly enough, the only Moooooo-ooove-worthy thing that occurred today was on Lap 1, which means it isn't eligible to win the award.  It also wasn't on camera, so Giedo Van De Garde gets away with it.  Barely.  We've got our eyes on him, though.  So this week's award goes to Pirelli for Felipe Massa's right-rear tire failures.  They claim it was due to debris, but there were no other failures all day.  Methinks Pirelli just had some bad rubber in the mix.

Look how close that hull came to coming off the rim altogether.  Great job, Pirelli!  Here's your Moooooooo-oooove!

*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:08 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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There are races that are nailbiters from start to finish, where you have the leaders racing mere feet from each other, while the rest of the grid hovers just carlengths behind, hoping for an mistake.  Then you have the races where one or two cars dominate the field, running away over the horizon, leaving the field fighting for second or third.  Today was neither of these.  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2013 Grand Prix of China!

*GRAPHS AND CHARTS:  There were actually two races going on today: the one on-track, and the one on the tires.  Those who started on the Soft tires and got off them at the beginning of the race, i.e., most everybody, had one race going on.  Those few who started on the Medium tires and chose to pit late in the race for the Soft rubber (Vettel, Button, Hulkenberg) had the other race, which turned out to be for the fastest non-podium position.  That meant that we had the weird image of Hannibal Vettel leading the race on track, but in fourth position on the pit rotation.

*THE RACE IN GENERAL:  Meh.  Once the first pit stop to get off the Soft tires occurred, it became something of a processional.  HWMNBN passed Shiv Hamilton on Lap 5 using the DRS system, and though we didn't realize it at the time, that was the end of the race right there.  The Ferrari was just awesome today, pretty much dominating the field.  Vettel would take the lead on the pit stops, but when the Ferrari wound up passing the Red Bull despite the difference in tires, it was clear who had the best car.  When Vettel finally stopped to get his Soft tires, he was nearly eight seconds behind HWMNBN on track... but nearly 30 seconds behind on paper.  He re-emerged in fourth, 12 seconds behind Shiv Hamilton.  While he would eat that up, closing to less than an half-second behind in five laps, but the Soft tires turned into the legendary jelly donut just as he was getting ready to make a move for the podium.  HWMNBN led Kimi Raikkonen by 10 seconds at the checkered flag, and the Finn led Shiv by two seconds to complete your podium.

*FINAL JUDGEMENT: What was the race like?  We here at F1U! kept falling asleep.  In the middle of the day.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  HWMNBN got his first win in 13 races.  Just hugely dominant.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  Ferrari.  They finished 1st - 6th, closed the gap to Red Bull in the constructor's championship to just a few points, and generally dominated the day.  What more could you want?

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  On Lap 5, we had the image of HWMNBN and teammate Felipe Massa behind the Silver Arrow of Shiv Hamilton as they turned onto the start/finish straight.

The Spaniard made quick work of the Brit with his DRS advantage (the FIA added a second DRS zone late; the front straight), clearing the road for his Brazilian teammate.

While Shiv did everything he could to keep Massa behind, weaving across the track (legally!), the result looked inevitable.

...and sure enough, Massa outmuscled the Merc into Turn 1, slapping Hamilton in the face and handing him a two-position loss... to the SAME TEAM... in one straightaway.  Bravo, Ferrari.  Here's your shared Move of the Race!

*MOOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE:  There can be only one.

Sauber's Esteban Gutierrez, in a odd attempt to get past the McLaren of Sergio Perez, decided that he didn't really need to break for a turnOHCRAPFORCEINDIA!!!  The Sauber was out on the spot, Adrian F'n Sutil managed to make it back to the pits with a deranged rear wing, at which point the hydraulic fluid for the DRS dripped onto the hot brakes and caught fire.  Nicely done, Gutierrez!  Welcome to the big show, here's a Mooooo!

*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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Well, that was different.  Going into the 2013 Grand Prix of Malayasia, all the talk was about tires and rain.  The race was supposed to be run in the middle of a deluge, and both Red Bull and Mercedes had come out publicly and called for Pirelli to return to last year's tires.  Heck, Red Bull even flat-out claimed that these tires were designed the way they were to specifically not work well with their car.  Coming out of the 2013 Grand Prix of Malaysia, all the talk was about something entirely different.  This is YOUR F1Update! for today's race!

*THE RACE:  Formula 1 is the pinnacle of motorsport.  The best equipment, the best technology, the best drivers, the best mechanics, the best strategists, you name it, F1 is where it's at.  But every now and again, the best will sometime pee their abilities right down the leg of their firesuits... a driver turns left instead of right, a team sets themselves on fire (metaphorically, it is hoped), that sort of thing.  Rarely, however, it appears that everybody involved with the sport goes completely bugnutty at the same time.  That's what we got today at Sepang.  The weather didn't help any; as the cars made their way to the grid, rain was falling fairly heavily at some places on the circuit.  Five or six cars wound up going off on the recon lap, though none of them suffered more than a broken nose.  The race began with everybody on the Intermediate tires, and right away someone suffered a bit more than a broken nose. 

HWMNBN's Ferrari bumped into the back of Seb Vettel's Red Bull in the first turn complex, deranging his front wing drastically.  However, he didn't appear to suffer any in performance, being able to keep the rest of the field (including Mark Webber, who had a great start) behind him.  Still, from the sparks flying from the dragging wing, it was pretty clear that he had to pit at the end of Lap 1.  According to the Legendary Announce Team's on-site reporter, Ferrari's mechanics were in the pit lane, new nose at the ready, as he came running down the long back straight... and drove right past pit-in.  The team later said that they told him to stay out, hoping to get one more lap done before they changed the Spaniard onto slicks.  We here at F1U! think that HWMNBN made the call on his own, and the team is covering for him.  Whichever it was, it was a stupid mistake, one that every announcer on the planet was decrying the second he went past pit-in.  Just a few seconds later, they were proven correct.

HWMNBN's wing came off, slid right under the "tea-tray" and popped his front tires off the ground right when he should have been braking for Turn 1.  Once the tires ended up back on the tarmac, it was too late and he just skidded straight on into the kittylitter.  Beached, he was out of the race on Lap 2.  But that was merely the first of a parade of unforced errors committed by these, the best teams in motorsport.

*PITS.  STAHP!!!  STAAAAAHP!!!:  All the first round of pitstops needed to make everything perfect was circus calliope music and mechanics coming out in clown shoes.  It all began with Shiv Hamilton, current driver for Mercedes, trying to stop at his old team McLaren's pitbox.

Then Jules Vergne, leaving his box, ran into Charles ToothPic, coming in for his first stop.  During the next round of stops, around Lap 22, Force India brought Adrian Sutil in for a stop, and spent what seemed to be an hour trying to get tires off the car.  It may have been a design flaw, but the team wound up retiring (pardon the pun) both Sutil and di Resta for safety reasons. 

*THEN IT GOT UGLY:  On Lap 28, Seb Vettel was on the hard tires, and behind his teammate Mark Webber, on the mediums.  Vettel began to bitch over the radio that Webber was too slow and the team tell the Aussie to let him past.  As he was saying this, Webber was in the process of turning the fast lap of the race up to that point.  By Lap 40, the race had settled down: Webber led Vettel, then there was a decent gap back to Shiv Hamilton, who led his teammate Nico Rosberg.  Thanks to some blisteringly fast pit-in laps, Vettel managed to finish his final pitstop and come out right on Webber's tail.  The two began to duel for the lead while Team Principle Christian Horner began to chastise Vettel: "Come on, Seb, this is silly."  Red Bull has standing orders: after the final pit-stop, their positions are locked: the driver behind at the last stop must stay behind the leader.  Both drivers had been given orders to turn down their engine power as well, better to preserve them for later races.  Except Vettel decided to ignore both instructions.  Meanwhile, down at Mercedes, Rosberg had been talking to his pit lane, pleading that he could pass Shiv Hamilton.  THEIR Team Principle, Ross Brawn, had to get involved and explain that Hamilton had been instructed to drive to a time, protecting tires.  The difference is, Rosberg and Hamilton obeyed their boss.  Vettel, knowing that his teammate had turned his engine power down, decided to blow off team orders.  He passed Mark Webber, though not without some effort, and rocketed away into the distance.  Webber's firmly extended middle digit let us know his opinion.

*THEN IT GOT UGLIER:  The race ended with Vettel leading Webber, then Hamilton ahead of Rosberg.  There was much symbolism involved in the way the Red Bull drivers crossed the finish line: Vettel swerved close to the inside wall, where the mechanics were gathered.  Webber, on the other hand, took the checkered flag as far on the other side of the track as it was possible to go, clearly signifying his distaste of the goings-on.  Hamilton and Rosberg crossed nose-to-tail, both close to the wall.  Then, in Parc Ferme, Webber parked his car first and was nowhere to be seen when Vettel finally pulled in; instead of waiting for his teammate, he just went into the "green room."  By contrast, Shiv Hamilton waited to speak to Rosberg before going up to the podium.  In the green room, the tension between the Red Bull teammates was obvious, and it got worse during the podium celebration and post-race interview.  When it came time to spray the champagne, Webber immediately moved very far away from Vettel, who went in the other direction, with Hamilton.  Neither congratulated the other, neither even looked at each other.  Then, during the interviews, the less than pleased Webber ended his statement with "...and in the end, Seb made his own decisions today, and will have protection as usual, and that's the way it goes."  Meanwhile, Hamilton said in his interview segment that "to be truthful, Nico (Rosberg) should probably be up here instead of me."  There's clearly going to be some rather heated discussions in a couple of teams between now and the next race in China.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  Felipe Massa.  He finished fifth, kept his car clean, and showed what he can do when his teammate isn't in his way.  A solid performance for a driver resurrecting his career.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  Lotus.  The first team to get both cars across the line without their drivers wanting to kill each other.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  Vettel's pass on Webber towards the end of the race was pretty nice.  Other than being done against team orders, against a teammate with a purposely-slowed engine, that is.

*MOOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE:  HWMNBN's decision to blow off the team and keep going on a broken front wing on Lap 1.  OR Ferrari's decision to keep HWMNBN out with a broken front wing, whichever way you think it went.  Just dumb.

*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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Hello, greetings and welcome to the new format of F1 Update!, the venerable (not vulnerable) flagship of The Pond.  In the past, F1U! has evolved from a simple e-mail to a light-hearted romp to a much more formal, almost regimented, review of each race.  Today, we here at F1U! are going to take it away from that style to a more conversational tone.  There are undoubtedly going to be people who won't care for this change, but we're doing it because, to be blunt, it takes too much time to do it the more formal way.  When the race is two hours and the F1U! takes four, there's something wrong, and this new style aims to fix it!  So let's get to updatin'!

*FIRST RACE:  The most exciting part of any F1 season isn't the end, but the beginning.  Nobody has the faintest idea about which teams are good, which need help, who the surprises are going to be, and perhaps most importantly, how the tires are really going to last.  Offseason testing is one thing, practice sessions give you clues, but it isn't until the lights go out, you've got 300 pounds of fuel on board and a Lotus trying to get past you that you know how things are going to work out.  When today's race began under cloudy skies but on a dry track, the front-row Red Bulls started exactly the way we expected them to.  To whit, polesitter Seb Vettel galloped away and began to gap the field, and second-place Mark Webber had one of his patented Lousy Starts^©, dropping from his starting position to seventh in a heartbeat.  It looked very much like a repeat of Australia 2011 was in the offing, but once Vettel got out to a two-second lead, it stopped there and began to shrink.  Behind him, the Ferraris of Felipe Massa and HWMNBN, followed by the Lotus of Kimi Raikkonen, kept in touch and forced him to run hard.

*TIRE WAR:  One of the things you can't be sure of during the offseason is how the tires will last.  Yes, everybody knows the super-softs won't last as long as the mediums, but they'll be faster, yadda yadda.  What's important is exactly how long they'll go, and with the top 10 qualifiers on the super-softs to start the race, it was hardly a theoretical question.  Answers came quickly: Vettel pitted on Lap 7, and everybody in the top 10 had stopped by Lap 12... the two Mercedes, coming in last, were coughing up a full second a lap to the fresher medium-shod cars.  Once everybody stopped, we had a surprising leader: Force India's Adrian F'n Sutil.  He had qualified 12th and thereby got to start on the tires of his choice, the longer-lived mediums.

*WAIT, WHAT?:  It quickly became quite obvious that Sutil wasn't a fluke.  He made his mediums last some 20 laps, long enough that HWMNBN actually made a (strategic) second stop before Sutil made his first.  The race clearly was going to be one of tire maintenance: he who made the fewest stops and could keep pace in worn tires was going to win.  Sutil's Force India clearly was gentle on its tires, but the Lotus of Raikkonen was, too... and was a faster car, to boot.  It was quickly clear that Force India's strategy was to hope for rain, not a bad plan this weekend, all things being equal.  If it came before they had to stop for the mandatory super-soft tires, the team would win their first ever race... and the forecast was changing every minute and from team to team. 

*AW DRAT: Unfortunately, all of Force India's prayers to Indra went unanswered, and Sutil wound up having to stop for super-soft tires.  These proved to be even worse than they had been earlier, giving him two good laps before they went to heck.  He wound up falling all the way to 7th, and only a questionable team call kept his teammate, Paul di Resta, from passing him.

*UP FRONT: While every eye was turned to the excitement of Sutil's story, Kimi Raikkonen's tire care had put him firmly in front, leading HWMNBN and Vettel.  In fact, once the Finn drove past Sutil for the lead, it was clear that the win was going to be his, and that's the way it worked out.  In fact, it wasn't even close: Kimi finished 12 seconds ahead of HWMNBN, who was 10 seconds clear of Vettel, who was 11 seconds up on Felipe Massa.

*WHAT DID WE LEARN?:  Having good pace in practice and qualifying means nothing when it comes to the long distances of the race.  Being easy on your tires is better than one-lap pace.  And that McLaren is in serious, serious trouble: they finished 9th and 11th, and never once looked good.  There's even rumors of them switching back to last year's chassis.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE: Adrian F'n Sutil.  His first race back after being out of the sport in 2012 turned out to be pretty decent.  If a rain shower had come by around lap 35, the race would have been his... and the sky looked like it could have happened at any minute.

*TEAM OF THE RACE: Ferrari.  HWMNBN's second place is hardly a surprise.  Felipe Massa's fourth-place finish at a track he hates probably has to be counted as a surprise.  They've got a nice jump on the constructor's championship already.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  On Lap 32, Ferrari's HWMNBN was going to pass the Mercedes of Shiv Hamilton.  It wasn't a question of "if", but when and that's all there was to it.  Didn't mean that Shiv was going to make it easy for the Spaniard, however.  When the Ferrari made its move, Hamilton held off on braking for as long as possible... and maybe a little longer.  When he did finally step on the clampers, he immediately locked up his front-left tire and had zero ability to steer.

HWMNBN, who was past the Merc driver and just about to begin the turn, saw what was going on next to him (though with a smoke trail that long, it'd be hard to miss) and decided that he didn't need to turn right then... it could wait.  While this let Hamilton keep the place for a few more seconds, it did keep the Merc out of the Ferrari sidepods.  For that quick reaction, HWMNBN gets the Move of the Race.

*MOOOOOOO-OOOVE OF THE RACE:  A remarkably clean race today, with really only one bit of poor driving.  On Lap 25, Papabile Maldonado was heading down to Turn 1 and did what hundreds of drivers had done before him: he moved as far outside as possible to get the best angle into the turn.  And then the Williams driver went a few inches too far, his left side tires leaving the pavement and hitting the grass.  The result was preordained.

He was out of the race on the spot, the only car to be eliminated via a method other than technical fault.  Here ya go, Maldonado: have a Moooooo-ooove!

*SELECTED DRIVERS QUOTES OF THE RACE:


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As the field formed up on the grid behind polesitter Shiv Hamilton, the skies above Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace were... confused.  Grey, leaden clouds predominated, umbrellas popping up in the grandstands, while at the same time there were desperate glimpses of blue sky.  Despite the greasy conditions, the entire Thundering Herd was on dry tires for this final race of the season... the race that would decide the World Driver's Championship.  Would Ferrari's HWMNBN come back after leading in the points for much of the season, or would Red Bull's Seb Vettel join elite company with his third consecutive championship?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2012 Grand Prix of Brazil!

*LIGHTS OUT:  When the lights go out on a F1 race, it can sometimes be difficult to figure out what's going on.  24 cars, V8 engines screaming at 18000 rpm, all trying to slot themselves into a narrow band of asphalt can occasionally make for action-packed confusion.  And then you have starts like this one.  The two McLarens on the front row got away clean, but both Red Bulls experienced Mark Webber Lousy Start^©s, letting both Ferraris do terrible things to them.  Hometown boy Felipe Massa jumped up to second, and title contender HWMNBN got ahead of rival Vettel to take fifth, while Force India's Nico Hulkenberg was a surprise sixth with Vettel on his diffuser as the field headed into Turn 4.  So far, so good... busy, but not too bad. 

*LOOK OUT!!!:  As the bunched-up field of cars began to enter Turn 4, there was a sudden billow of tire smoke as someone discovered that they'd missed their braking point.  That someone was Seb Vettel.  Kimi Raikkonen was forced to dive offtrack to avoid plowing into the back of the wallowing RB8, which then maneuvered into Turn 4.  At the same time, the Williams of Brazilian Bruno Senna, passing two cars in the turn, pulled next to Vettel who appeared not to see the Williams.  The coming-together sent Senna careening into the Sauber of Sergio Perez, ending both drivers' races.  But what of Vettel?  This is the view he had after the contact.

By luck and skilled driving, nobody else slammed into the backwards-rolling leader.  After the remaining cars swept by, Vettel righted his ship and rejoined the race, albeit in 22nd and last place.  The Williams launching itself off his left side managed to damage the RB8's sidepod and floor, doing unrepairable damage.  And then, it began to rain.

*THAT WAS ONE LAP!:   ...and Brazil is a short track, to boot.  By the end of Turn 1 on Lap 2, HWMNBN had jumped to third place, behind Shiv Hamilton and Jenson Button, and was on-pace to win the Driver's Championship.  Of course, there were 70 laps to go, but one got the feeling that back in Maranello, there were people in the belltowers, polishing their clappers to give a perfect tone.

*THE RAIN:  As those things go, the rain wasn't much of a much.  However, it doesn't take much wet to make a F1 car skittish, and what was on the track was just worst type of rain possible: there was enough to make the asphalt slippery, but not enough to consider changing to intermediate tires.  HWMNBN lost third place to Nico Hulkenberg when he slipped off-course, but managed to stay ahead of the closely pursuing Mark Webber.  Two laps later, the Aussie wound up spinning off, just moments after the Lotus of Lettuce Grosjean ended up in the wall, recording a reading of 7.2 g in the process.  Oh, and the McLaren teammates were trading the lead between themselves and Seb Vettel had made it up to 7th place.  Yep, it was going to be that sort of race.  Eventually, teams began to wise up to the fact that the track was begging to have intermediate rain tires on it and drivers began to pile in.

*MEANWHILE:  Not everybody, however.  Jenson Button stayed out, as did Nico Hulkenberg, who moved into second place and was rapidly catching the McLaren up.  One might be excused for thinking that's an odd result, but remember: two years ago in qualifying, in exactly the same conditions as these, Hulkenberg earned an out-of-nowhere pole here at Brazil.  There are certain drivers who like certain tracks in certain conditions, and it appears that Hulkenberg at Brazil in light rain is one of those great combinations.  Throw in a set-up dialed in for these conditions by the team, and suddenly it's not so far-fetched.  The pass for the lead finally happened on Lap 19, and a Force India was legitimately leading a race.

*HUH?:  Then something really odd happened.  While everybody else was pitting for intermediate tires, Red Bull decided to do something they didn't need to do: gamble with Vettel's tires.  He pitted on Lap 20, rejoining with the dry-weather prime (hard compound) tires on his steed.  The benefits of this choice were not readily apparent to either the F1U! team or the Legendary Announce Team.  Fortunately for him and his title hopes, he wouldn't have to worry about them for very long.

*SAFETY CAR:  On Lap 22, HWMNBN called his pits to report a lot of debris on the track, and he wasn't wrong.  Through various contacts, lost noses, damaged endplates and the like, there was probably enough spare parts on the circuit to build a new car.  Charlie Whiting apparently agreed, and called out Berndt Maylander.  Nico Hulkenberg and Jenson Button, who had opened a 45 second lead on Shiv Hamilton in third, had to have been beside themselves.  When the Safety Car left the Thundering Herd to its own devices on Lap 30, the order was Nico Hulkenberg, Jenson Button, Shiv Hamilton, HWMNBN, and Seb Vettel, who was under investigation for passing Gandalf Kobayashi under yellow flag conditions back around Lap 16 (he was cleared).  And then the rain stopped and the track began to dry.

*CONFUSED YET?:  Now you know how we here at F1U! feel.

*DRY MEANS... SLOW?:  All week long, Ferrari had been performing rain dances, thinking that was their best chance to get HWMNBN his championship.  Ironically, as things dried out Seb Vettel began to slow down.  The aerodynamic damage from his Lap 1 accident wasn't much of a hindrance in the wet, but as speeds began to build, it proved to make things quite difficult for the young German.  From fifth place, he began to lose contact and drift back, eventually falling down to 10th place after pitting for medium tires on Lap 53.  Meanwhile, the undamaged Ferrari could do nothing against the three cars ahead of him.

*AWWWWWWW... SHHHHHUCKS.:  Eventually, all good things must come to an end, and Shiv Hamilton managed to get past the Force India of Nico Hulkenberg as the returning rain caused Hulkenberg to lose just enough grip to nearly lose it on Lap 49.  The German kept in contact with the Brit, however, and on Lap 55 saw an opportunity to retake the lead as Heikki Kovaleinninninnie's Caterham came into view at Turn 1.  A momentary loss of traction made the Force India fishtail... right into the side of the McLaren.

Hamilton's front suspension folded itself like origami, ending his McLaren career on the spot.  The Force India bounced a couple of times, but suffered no obvious damage and, after recovering from the spin, continued on in second place, having seen Jenson Button get past.  This also had the effect of promoting HWMNBN to third place, the bare minimum he needed to have any chance of winning the driver's championship.

*RAIN FALLS:  Then around Lap 60, the skies opened up.  Nico Hulkenberg, obviously having some ill effects of the Hamilton contact, had slumped to 5th place, with Button leading Massa, HWMNBN (who had pitted for inters), Mark Webber, Slappy Schumacher in 6th place, then Seb Vettel.  Unsurprisingly, HWMNBN got to sweep by his teammate for second, which cut Vettel's championship lead to merely one point. 

*ENDGAME:  Unfortunately, there was nothing that HWMNBN could do against the McLaren ahead of him, so he had to hope for the Red Bull behind him to make a mistake or have a late-race failure.  This was not an impossibility; the sidepod damage that Vettel's RB8 had suffered included a crushed exhaust outlet, which if it cracked open would set the car ablaze.  The young German had also had a radio failure, perhaps the first indication of an electrical failure.  Or maybe Slappy Schumacher, in the last race of his career, would take offense to being passed by a young upstart and hipcheck him to Belo Horizonte.  None of these things occurred... indeed, Slappy was passed by Vettel for 6th on Lap 65.  At this point, Red Bull was on the radio, on the off-chance that their driver could hear them, telling him to "just keep it on the black part."  With darkness falling and the rain coming down even harder, this was becoming more and more difficult to accomplish, until it all became moot.  On Lap 70, Paul di Resta, in the other Force India, lost control and clouted the wall halfway between Turns 13 and 14, then slid all the way up to 14, leaving pieces of the car behind as it went.  A Safety Car was called for, and all positions were locked in.  Jenson Button had won his third race of the year, HWMNBN led his teammate home in second and third, respectively... and Seb Vettel finished in sixth place, winning the World Driver's Championship by 3 points after an extraordinary race.

*AND THEN...:  HWMNBN climbed from his car and... just stood there, seemingly for an hour, all sorts of emotions visible in his eyes.

Eventually, he made his way to the gathered Ferrari mechanics and thanked them, but in a way that made it clear, he wasn't happy at all with the way things had worked out.  Meanwhile, a few yards down the pit lane, a whole different emotion was on display.

Almost as soon as he was out of his RB8, Slappy Schumacher was there to congratulate Seb Vettel, a lad who had grown up idolizing the older man. 

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  Jenson Button.  HWMNBN did everything he needed to do to win, but couldn't come close to either McLaren.  Button never put himself in a position where he could be taken out by a poorly-placed Force India, managed his car brilliantly on a wet track with dry tires, and all-in-all owned this race.  Well-deserved.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  They couldn't get their man the championship, but they still brought home a 2-3 finish and locked up second place in the constructor's championship.  Not bad for a car that was pretty much average all year.  Honorable Mention to Caterham for finishing in 11th today and therefore finishing the Constructor's Championship in 10th, therefore taking home a big check and probably bringing back Heikki Kovaleinninninnie in the process.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  We here at F1U! have a rule against awarding MotR or MooootR to anything that occurs on Lap 1.  Lap 2, however, is fair game, and HWMNBN announced that he wanted this championship badly.  As Lap 1 came to an end, he was in 5th place, behind Webber in 4th and Massa in 3rd.

As they raced down the front straight, HWMNBN slipstreamed behind both cars, then dodged inside.

Obviously Massa wasn't going to be putting up much of a fight, but Webber was a different story.

As they raced into Turn 1, HWMNBN kept the inside line, braked a smidge later and picked up both places in one swoop, despite some serious efforts from the Red Bull driver to prevent it.  Well done, HWMNBN, and while it's no replacement for the championship, it's still something.

*MOOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE:  This was just weird.  On Lap 54, Kimi Raikkonen got bit by the dampening track and wound up going off at Turn 1.  Fortunately for him, there's a lot of run-off area there now... enough that he found himself on an access road behind the grass near Turns 1 and 2.  Instead of cutting across the grass, he followed the road, obviously thinking yes, this will take me back to the track.

Instead, it took him onto the OLD Interlagos circuit, and henceforth to a dead end.  He was obliged to do a U-turn and come back the way he came... one can only imagine a GPS device screaming "recalculating" furiously at him as he tried to figure out where he was.  Thanks, Kimi, for the comedy relief!  Here's your Moooo!

*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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They say they do things big in Texas... big country, big cattle, big hats, and now, biggest of all, the big Circuit of the Americas in Austin.  The past few days has confirmed that it's a nice looking track, but how will it race?  Who would win the return of F1 to the US?  And biggest of all, would Seb Vettel and Red Bull take home the two championships: Drivers and Constructors?  Or would HWMNBN and Ferrari manage to stretch them both out to the last race in Brazil?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2012 United States Grand Prix!

*BEFORE:  Things looked bleak for HWMNBN.  He qualified ninth behind Vettel's pole, and when Lotus' Lettuce Grosjean served his five grid-spot penalty, he got bumped up to eighth, but to the dirty side of the track.  The consensus view was that trying to start on the dirty side would be similar to running in the wet: lousy.  Some wags were even saying that being on the even-numbered side would immediately cost a driver four places at the start.  And then Ferrari did something quite sneaky, quite legal, and very, very clever: they snipped the FIA seal on Felipe Massa's gearbox.  You see, once a car begins Quals, it is in parc ferme condition and unable to have any changes done to it beyond the most basic (front wing angle changes, mostly).  Things like engines, gearboxes and the like are sealed by the FIA with a lead... well, seal.  If that seal is broken during parc ferme, there's an immediate penalty.  This morning, Ferrari walked into the stewards' office and dropped the two chunks of seal on the desk.  Of course, there was nothing to be done but give Felipe Massa a penalty... the team didn't even change the gearbox, they just broke the seal.  Massa was dropped down to 11th, and HWMNBN was promoted to 7th place.  On the clean side of the track.  Somewhere, an evil genius is rubbing his hands together, cackling "excellent, excellent!" to himself.  And wearing red.

*LIGHTS OUT:  While being on the clean side of the track did not, in fact, immediately convey a four-spot advantage to those fortunate enough to reside there, it certainly helped HWMNBN.  By the time he maneuvered his way up Phil Hill and Turn 1, he was in fourth.  Meanwhile, McLaren's Shiv Hamilton, starting second on the dirty side of the grid, lost a place to Vettel's teammate Mark Webber... and at this point, we here at F1U! want to point out the greatest visual we've ever seen in Formula 1:

We've been expecting this ever since we saw the elevation map for the Circuit of the Americas, and we're glad the F1 camera team caught it.  Now, Vettel and Webber in front set up the worst nightmare of the fan hoping for an exciting race: two Red Bulls galloping off into the sunset, and of course Seb Vettel began to pull away from his teammate.  But Hamilton, knowing that he couldn't let the German get away if he wanted to win this race, pushed Webber hard.

*NOW IT'S A RACE!:  It only took four laps for Hamilton to get past the Australian, and he immediately set off after the leader.  There was about three seconds between the two, and for once, it was clear that the combination of Vettel and RB8 chassis wasn't, in fact, the best car/driver combo on the track.  No, today it seemed that Hamilton and the McLaren MP4/27 was the class of the field, for he began to rip off fast lap after fast lap in his pursuit of the reigning world champion.  By Lap 10, the lead was cut in half, to 1.5 seconds, with Webber 4.5 seconds behind Hamilton, and HWMNBN a further three seconds adrift and not making any headway on the Australian.  However, nobody else could hold a candle to him as Nico Hulkenberg was nine seconds behind in fifth and fading.

*MARANELLO CHUCKLING:  Considering that everybody was predicting a one-stop strategy, seeing cars beginning to make their way into the pits on Lap 14 had to be a surprise.  What wasn't really surprising was the radio call to Mark Webber on Lap 16: "KERS has failed, KERS has failed."  How many times have we heard Red Bull say that this year?  Ferrari certainly began to get excited about that, and only got moreso when, a moment later, the Aussie pulled to the side of the circuit with a cascading electronics failure.  This promoted HWMNBN into third place... but it was still early.  Hamilton and the Ferrari pilot pitted on Lap 21, with Vettel doing the same on 22.  Unsurprisingly, he kept his lead during his stop and when the rotation was over, everything remained the same: Vettel, Hamilton and farther back, HWMNBN.

*NO WAY!:  While Hamilton kept on coming, it looked like he could get close, but couldn't make the move on the leader.  The McLaren's advantage in top speed and parity in the twisty bits began to tell, so that by Lap 40, the gap between the two was down to 0.6 seconds, well within the DRS activation range.  On Lap 42, the two encountered the HRT of Narain Kittylitter in the 'esses' and Vettel had some trouble getting around the backmarker, allowing Hamilton to close up even more.  At this point, Vettel was complaining on the radio about Kittylitter slowing him up, none of which made any difference.  As the leaders entered the DRS activation zone, the McLaren had a huge advantage in speed.  Vettel made it difficult, maybe even stretching the rules as he kinda-sorta weaved a little bit as Hamilton closed in, but it made no difference: the RB8 was passed for the lead, and Maranello was suddenly going crazy.

*THE END:  Hamilton quickly opened a 1.5 second lead over Vettel, who was over a half-minute ahead of HWMNBN, and for all intents and purposes, that's how the race ended.  On the final lap, Vettel cut the lead to under a second, but couldn't get any closer and Shiv Hamilton, winner of the last US Grand Prix at Indianapolis, became the first winner of the US Grand Prix at Austin.  Vettel came home in second place, with HWMNBN in third, minimizing the damage to his championship hopes to only three standing points.  The German now has a 13 point lead over the Ferrari driver as they head into the last race of the season in Brazil.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  Shiv Hamilton.  He's been saying that he wanted one more win with McLaren before he leaves the team.  He's been saying that he really wanted this one.  He got it with a sterling drive, taking advantage of every and any opening given him by Seb Vettel, few they may have been.  Nearly perfect.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  They only had one car finish the race, and they somehow lost the lead in the process, but Red Bull locked up the Constructor's Championship here at the United States Grand Prix.  It's their third year running for the championship, and there's little doubt they really have joined the big names of the sport for good... or at least until Adrian Newey, designer of the Red Bull chassis, retires.  And Seb Vettel has still got to be the favorite for the driver's championship.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  It may not have been the best pass of the weekend, but it was certainly the most important.  On Lap 42, Lewis Hamilton had been reeling in Seb Vettel for nigh on 20 laps and finally had the opportunity to pass the Red Bull for the lead.

As they came down the long back straight, the McLaren driver had three advantages: first, he had a lovely tow from the Red Bull.  Second, he had a higher top speed, and finally, he got to use his DRS.

None of this was going to make Seb Vettel just allow the Brit by; he gave a quick juke to the right before backing down... Vettel knew he had more important things to deal with than just this race, after all.

Still, if Vettel could have kept the McLaren in hand, he could have used the DRS trick on the next lap.  He couldn't; by the time the detection zone came around on Lap 43, the lead was over a second and the McLaren was in the clear.  This one pass cost Vettel seven championship points... if he loses the championship next week, you can point to this Move of the Race as the reason why.

*MOOOOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE:  There really weren't any.  Everybody did a fine job except for Jules Vergne breaking his suspension on a curb.  So instead, I'm going to give this award to a pair of people... two fans who were very happy that Lewis Hamilton passed Seb Vettel.  Two fans with absolutely no coordination whatsoever. 

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:23 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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The sun was beginning to set over the Yas Marina Circuit as 22 cars took to the grid, and two took to the end of the pit lane, in preparation for today's race.  A sense of excitement was nearly palpable amongst the fans, both at home and the 40000 in the stands, thanks to the demotion of Seb Vettel... this race was wide open, and everybody knew it.  As a result, the Driver's Championship standings were also up for grabs again.  But how did everything shake out in the end?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2012 Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi.

*LIGHTS OUT:  It's a long run to the first, left-handed, corner at Abu Dhabi, which gives plenty of time for... things, both good and bad, to occur as the Thundering Herd makes its way there, and we had plenty of both today.  To begin with, Mark Webber, starting 2nd, had one of his patented Mark Webber Lousy Start^©s to the race, allowing both Hakham Maldonado and Kimi Raikkonen to quickly get past, and Jenson Button to slip by moments later.  Indeed, Raikkonen took the opportunity to also get by the Williams of Maldonado to take second place and begin to race after polesitter Lewis Hamilton.  Further back, four midpackers tried to side-by-side through Turn 1, a trick which never works in any form of motorsports.  Nico Hulkenberg's Force India wound up being craned off, Lettuce Grosjean had a puncture, and Bruno Senna's Williams... suffered nothing visible from a rather hard clout.  Back up at the front of the field, Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, racing for his Driver's Championship chances, outraced Webber for fourth place down the second back straight.  When the field crossed the line for the first time, the order was Hamilton, Raikkonen, Maldonado, Alonso, Webber, and Button.  Further back, Red Bull's Seb Vettel was 20th with a damaged front wing and beginning his long climb up the field.

*CALM BEFORE THE STORM:  After an action-packed first lap, everything settled down, at least up front.  To be sure, there was jockeying as Alonso hounded Maldonado for third, but nothing up front changed.  There had to be a portion of everybody minds, however, that was curious what the Drivers' Championship leader was doing.  "Working his way through the field" is what he was doing.  By Lap 4 he was 16th.  Lap 7 saw him claw his way up to 14th, and by the end of Lap 8 he was 13th.  All was not wine and roses, though.  The front wing damage was severe enough that Adrian Newey, designer of the RB8 and member of the Red Bull pit wall, was seen inspecting a spare nose, obviously checking to see what sort of structural stability the damaged wing had left... and not looking all that happy with what his mental tallies came up with.

*F1 DODGES A BULLET:  Nico Rosberg had to be cursing his luck.  He had started seventh, but broke his front wing against Lettuce Grosjean's Lotus and needed to pit at the end of the first lap.  Now he was working his way back up the field and closing fast on the HRT of Narain Kittylitter as they worked their way through the twiddlybits of Sector Three.  As the two came down the sole fast patch in the Sector through the dog-leg Turn 15, the Mercedes was well-positioned close behind the HRT to outbrake it into 17, or overpower it through 16.  A thin wisp of smoke was seen issuing from Kittylitter's car, though, and the Indian suddenly slowed at a dramatic clip.  Surprised, there was nothing Rosberg could do. 

The Mercedes climbed right overtop of the HRT, its right-rear corner not taking Kittylitter's head off by only a few inches.  After clearing the remains of the backmarker, the Mercedes flew a few more yards before settling back to the track with quite a bit of violence.

Rosberg would slide into the TecPro barriers at a speed seemingly unreduced from before the impact.  Fortunately, both drivers would exit their cars unaided and with some speed.  Neither were obviously injured, though Rosberg will probably be sore in the morning.  Nearly before the Mercedes stopped moving, the Safety Car was called out and Berndt Maylander began to do his thing.

*SAFETY?  CAR:  During a Safety Car period, you usually see a rush of cars heading for the pit lane.  Today, not so much.  In fact, the top 10 runners stayed firmly on circuit, fearing the loss of track position would be impossible to make up as Yas Marina is notoriously hard to pass on.  Even Seb Vettel, now in 12th place but with a damaged front wing, seemed loath to come in... until the decision was made for him.  As he horked the car left and right to keep his tires and brakes warm, the Toro Rosso in front of him did the same, but out of sequence with the Red Bull driver.  In effect, when Vettel was accelerating, the Toro Rosso was braking.  On Lap 13, the asynchronicity proved to be too much and Vettel had to take evasive action... at a part of the track where he was not alone.

Fortunately, the trackside DRS notifier is made out of styrofoam for just this reason, but the RB8 was going fast enough that the impact broke off another chunk of the already-damaged front wing.  The team immediately told him to pit, and suddenly Vettel was back in 21st place.

*GREEN GREEN GREEN:  At the end of the lap, the Safety Car came back in, and Vettel spent the next five laps climbing his way back up to 14th place while the top five was Hamilton, Raikkonen, Maldonado, Alonso and Webber.  While back in the backfield there was some action (see Move of the Race), up front it looked like Hamilton had the race solidly in hand.  Raikkonen couldn't close on him, and nobody could close on the Lotus driver.  The only question was how much damage control Vettel could execute for his Drivers Championship chances.

*WE SPOKE TOO SOON:  And then Lewis Hamilton was seen coasting to a stop in the grass.

The team later said it was a fuel pressure problem and Hamilton said it just happened instantly... first it was going great guns, then the engine was completely cold and quiet.  In any case, the leader had just withdrawn from the race, ceding first place to the Lotus of Kimi Raikkonen.  A half-lap later, Fernando Alonso passed Maldonado for second place and sent his Ferrari off in pursuit of the 2007 World Driving Champion.  With Hamilton's retirement from the race, he was also eliminated from the 2012 chase for the Championship as well.  At the end of Lap 26, Kimi Raikkonen led Fernando Alonso by 6.5 seconds, followed by Jenson Button, Maldonado, Sergio Perez, Felipe Massa, Mark Webber... and Sebastian Vettel.

*LET THE PITSTOPS BEGIN:  The Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi is a 55-lap race.  Despite starting on the soft Option tires, which theoretically shouldn't be able to last very long, the first of the heavy hitters (Vettel excepted, but his was a special case) still hadn't stopped by Lap 28.  To be sure, there'd been a long Safety Car period, but even given that, the tires had to have been going off soon.  On Lap 29, Fernando Alonso made the first move, pitting from second and shifting onto the medium-compound Prime tires, obviously going for a one-stop strategy.  The team knew that the race was still up for grabs and they wanted to give their man the best chance possible to win it: Alonso was stopped for only 2.7 seconds.  Over the next couple of laps everybody but Raikkonen and Vettel stopped for tires, giving us the incredible standings of Raikkonen, Vettel, Alonso, Button and Senna.  Vettel had picked up 22 places in 31 laps, and if Lotus didn't service their man cleanly, had a chance to be in the lead!  Kimi came in on Lap 32 with a nearly 23-second lead.

He came out in first, but not by a whole heckuvalot.  The thought amongst the F1U! team was that Vettel would have to pit again, that 40 laps would be too far for the Prime tires to go, even with Vettel driving... which brings up an interesting strategy dilemma.  If the RB8 pitted, he'd throw away any chance, small though it may be, for a race victory, but on fresh Option tires, he could make up a lot of time and positions quickly.   OR, he could push the old Prime tires for the remaining 23 laps and have a shot at winning... or dropping down the field if the tires fell off the cliff.  An interesting dilemma, and earlier in the season the decision would be an awfully tough one to make.  In Race 18, with Vettel not needing a victory, however, the choice was easy.  Red Bull brought in their man on Lap 38, and he fell to 4th place, behind Raikkonen, Alonso, and Button.  He then got some help.

*AGAIN WITH THE SAFETY CAR:   When you get a number of cars gathered together that all have roughly the same performance, things can get a little dicey if the drivers aren't all of superb skill levels.  On Lap 38, Paul Di Resta, Sergio Perez and Lettuce Grosjean were all dicing for fifth place, with Mark Webber hovering closely behind the three.  Di Resta attacked Grosjean, which gave Perez a chance to try passing around the outside of Turn 11.  However, the Force India cut the corner of Turn 13, sending the Sauber into the run-off area on the outside.  When he returned to the track, he found the Lotus of Grosjean there and the two made sharp contact.  Perez was tipped into a spin, Lettuce's front suspension was shattered, and his car staggered across the track.

The Red Bull of Mark Webber had no place to go.  His right rear wheel was ripped clean off, taking the rear wing with it.  While he skidded to a halt in the grass off-track, and Perez was able to limp to the pits, Lettuce's Lotus died on the racing line.  Berndt Maylander was duly summoned, and suddenly any lead Raikkonen had over Alonso, Button and yes, Vettel, was gone.

*ENDGAME:  When the Safety Car period ended, the standings were Raikkonen, Alonso, Button, Vettel, Maldonado, Gandalf Kobayashi, Massa, Senna, Jules Vergne, and Paul diResta.  Kimi had a great restart and began to pull away from the Ferrari, by Lap 50 opening a 2.129 second lead.  But Alonso, aware that Button was probably going to fall to Vettel, began to push Kimi hard.  The lead began to drop lap by lap.  On Lap 53, Vettel got past Button, and Alonso had cut the lead to 1.384 seconds.  As the Finn and the Spaniard crossed the start/finish line on Lap 54, the lead was less than a second, but somehow opened to 1.090 seconds when they crossed the DRS line... just a smidge too far apart to allow the use of the speed-boosting device.  Finally, on the last lap, the Ferrari got to use the DRS, but was too far back to make it really count.  Alonso was driving his car on the limit, almost drifting through the final few turns in his last desperate attempts to catch up to the leader.  To no avail.  Kimi Raikkonen brought his Lotus across the finish line for his first win since he unretired, just .805 seconds ahead of Fernando Alonso, who was four seconds ahead of a hard-charging Seb Vettel in third, completing a remarkable drive, and bringing the Race of the Year to an end.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  Any other race, Kimi Raikkonen would be the obvious choice.  Retired for three years and earning a win in his first season back?  Yeah, that'd be enough for a Driver of the Race award... usually.  Not today.  Seb Vettel started from the pit lane, worked his way up the field, fell back to 20th, then worked his way up the field again to finish on the podium, just behind his main competition for the Drivers Championship.  He limited the damage to his lead to just three points, earning 15 to Alonso's 18.  The possibility existed that he'd lose it all today... that he didn't can only be credited to great driving and good luck.  Drive of the race for sure.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  Lotus.  Finally. 

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  This was a wild one.  On Lap 16, the order was Charles ToothPic in 17th, then Grosjean, Vettel and Di Resta in 20th as they came down the long long back straight.  Everybody but ToothPic could use the DRS, and Lettuce and Vettel decided to make their moves at the same time.

As one would expect, the Lotus and the Red Bull made it past the Marussia, though it did require some late braking on the part of Vettel going into the chicane to the second long straight.

It then became a straight drag race to Turn 11.

Vettel managed to outrun Lettuce, while Di Resta caught and passed ToothPic, and nearly the Lotus as well.  All four of them get to share in the MotR for making it happen without wrecking.  Good job everybody!

*MOOOOOOOO-OOOVE OF THE RACE:  We still don't know just what happened between Mark Webber and Felipe Massa on Lap 26.  It looked like Webber passed Massa, the two touched, Webber left the track and when he returned, it spooked the Brazilian.

It seems ridiculous, but that's all I can come up with, because Massa just spun completely unbidden.  The Red Bull wasn't even close to him.  Whatever it was, congratulations Felipe, you just won a Moo!

*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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Smog filled the air of Greater Noida, lending a hazy aspect to the proceedings as Seb Vettel led the field to the grid.  Behind him, Mark Webber, Shiv Hamilton and HWCBN(UCC) all knew they had to get past the reigning world champion if they were to have a chance in this season.  So did they manage it?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2012 Grand Prix of India!

*LIGHTS OUT, RACE OVER: By now, careful readers know that whenever we ask if someone can reel in Seb Vettel, or if the field can track down Seb Vettel, or if anybody can get past Seb Vettel, it's generally a good bet that the answer is "no, they can't."  And so it was this race.  When the race began, Mark Webber had a great start, perhaps the best start we've seen from him all season.  He was still two car-lengths behind Vettel when they hit the first turn.  By the end of the first lap, Vettel was three seconds up on third place Jenson Button, and 1.2 seconds on Webber. 

*NO, REALLY... RACE OVER:  Nobody ever even came close to Vettel.  Like most other teams, Red Bull planned a one-stop race for their drivers, and it was up to the drivers to make it work.  Webber did a fantastic job, making his fragile soft tires last 31 laps... over half of the 60 laps scheduled!  Vettel went 34 laps and had enough of a lead that he rejoined the race in first place.  Indeed, for the second straight race he led ever lap... his run is now up to 205 consecutive laps in the lead.

*RELIABILITY PROBLEMS: ...were the only thing that kept Red Bull from another 1-2 finish.  During the final third of the race, Webber's KERS unit gave up the ghost, allowing Ferrari's HWCBN(UCC) to get past for second late.  He was still nearly 10 seconds behind Vettel though.  McLaren's Shiv Hamilton and Jenson Button rounded out the top 5.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  We're seeing a type of dominance from Seb Vettel that hasn't been witnessed in F1 in decades.  Four wins in a row hasn't been pulled off since Slappy Schumacher in 2004.  205 consecutive laps led hasn't been done since 1992.  Three races without anybody but Vettel leading?  Last time that happened was 1989... some guy named Ayrton Senna.  It's certainly a tribute to Adrian Newey, the designer of the RB8, and to Red Bull in general, for keeping his car going... but it's Vettel who has made it happen.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  It's not just the driver's championship, either.  Their 1-3 finish puts Red Bull 91 points up on Ferrari for the Constructor's Championship.  Only a KERS unit failure, mentioned earlier, kept them from sweeping the top two steps of the podium.  Nobody would have been shocked had that occurred, actually.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  There was really only one nice pass, on Lap 16, by Bruno Senna over his distracted teammate Mahamandaleshwar Maldonado, all race.  So instead, we're going to spotlight the Pit Stop of the Year.  Prior to Lap 33, Shiv Hamilton had been reporting intermittent radio communications with the McLaren pit wall and a downshift problem too.  Somehow, they came to the decision that they could fix it during his stop.

5.5 seconds have elapsed since Hamilton crossed the line denoting the entry to the pit lane.  The car has just come to a halt in its box, the tire gunners are already removing the wheelnuts, and Hamilton himself is starting to remove the steering wheel, which is quite uncommon during a pit-stop.  I'm sure the team has practiced it, because that's their job, but probably not very often.

One second has passed since the car stopped.  Hamilton has pulled his steering wheel off and is handing it to a mechanic.  A second mechanic is leaning into the cockpit and has already put the replacement wheel in place.  A moment's more work is all it will take for it to be locked in place.

3.1 seconds since the car stopped.  All four tires have been changed, the car is off the jacks, Hamilton has the car in 1st gear and is about to roll.  According to Timing & Scoring, he was stopped for a total of 3.3 seconds... not the fastest of the race, but certainly the most complex, and the one that had the most possibility of disaster, because when the wheel is removed, in theory the electronics are uncontrolled.  The car could have shut down; it didn't.  A heckuva stop from the Team from Woking!

*MOOOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE:  It's probably mean of us to do this.

A brake failure made Pete Rose spin away and into the wall on Lap 45, as opposed to driver error, but it's the worst bit of driving we saw all day.  Sorry HRT, sorry Pete... here's your Moo.

*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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This is going to be a mini-F1U! today, as I'm currently holed up in a lovely hotel in Chicago, and want to relax a bit before the training sessions start on Tuesday.  Besides, the race itself was no great shakes.  So let's get on with it!  THIS is your mF1U! for the 2012 Grand Prix of Korea!

*LIGHTS OUT: There is a 200meter run from the starting line to the first turn at the Korea International Circuit.  That's a very short run in comparison to pretty much every other circuit on the calendar.  Yet that short distance is all it took for the race to end.  Pole-sitter Mark Webber had one of his patented Mark Webber Lousy Starts^©, and that's all his teammate Seb Vettel needed.  By the time they entered Turn 1, they were side-by-side, and at Korea, the polesitter is positioned on the outside, meaning that Vettel had the best line.  Though there was a drag race down the long long straight from Turn 2 to 3, the reigning world champion held the lead... and never let it go for the rest of the race.  In fact, he was never even challenged, and only a tire that was on the verge of failing on the last couple of laps kept Sebby from winning by 20 seconds, instead of the 8.2 he led Webber across the line by.

*IN OTHER ACTION: Last week, Gandalf Kobayashi was the toast of Japan for his podium finish at his home race.  That sure didn't last long.  Heading into Turn 3 on the very first lap, he wound up playing pinball, bouncing off first Nico Rosberg, then Jenson Button.  The McLaren's front suspension was snapped like a twig, the Mercedes lasted for another lap before the damage put paid to Rosberg's race.  Gandalf himself lasted for 17 laps before having to give up and park it. 

*MEANWHILE: Shiv Hamilton had both a completely miserable day, and what may very well have been the best drive to 10th place ever.  Shortly after his first pitstop, he began to complain about how his car was handling: it wasn't.  The pit box replied that they knew what was going on, and it was a "mechanical balance change."  That's technicalese for a broken roll bar.  A roll bar keeps the car flat in the turns, instead of leaning.  It's also important in keeping the over- or under-steer controlled.  The upshot of this for Hamilton was that his car was safe to drive, but it had roughly a quarter of the grip it would normally have.  This contributed to his tires being shredded much faster than normal and a noted difficulty of keeping it on-circuit.  Which contributed to this spectacle late in the race:

If you're wondering just what that is, it's a piece of astroturf that got peeled up from the run-out of a turn.  Other cars had run over it and torn little pieces up earlier, it's just that Shiv got "lucky" and peeled up a piece that was about six feet long that got caught on some of the bodywork.  In two laps he went from seven seconds ahead of Sergio Perez to less than a half-second.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  Vettel had a great race, but we're giving the award to Felipe Massa for the second straight race.  He finished in fourth behind his teammate HWMNBN, but only because Ferrari ordered him to back off.  If they hadn't, he easily would have finished third, and probably would have passed Mark Webber for second.  A month ago, we here at F1U! didn't give a plugged nickle for his chances to be driving for Ferrari next year.  Now we'd be surprised if he isn't driving for them in 2014, too.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  Red Bull.  Well, their lead driver is now back in the lead of the driver's championship after winning his third race in a row, leading the last 145 laps, and generally looking like he did all last season.  His teammate ain't lookin' too bad, either, and the team is looking like it's a shoe-in for constructor's championship... again.

*MOVE OF THE RACE: Nico Hulkenberg passed both Shiv Hamilton and Lettuce Grosjean at the same time on Lap 40.  To be sure, Shiv was dealing with a car that couldn't corner, and Lettuce was dealing with bad tires and just being generally insane, but it was still a tidy piece of driving for the Force India driver.

*MOOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE SPORT:  F1 leaving SPEED here in the US for a cable channel that nobody has.  Great, just great.  Hope it was worth it, Bernie.

There won't be any quotes of the race this time around, but thank you for reading this mini-F1U!  We'll be back in two weeks for the Grand Prix of India!  See you then, and here's the newest episode of McLaren's Tooned!

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The afternoon sky was a brilliant blue as the field took their places on the grid.  Seb Vettel's Red Bull took pride of place on pole while points leader HWMNBN was back in 6th... could the Ferrari driver catch the young German?  Could anybody?  Would Vettel take another chunk out out of the Spaniard's lead?  Or would someone like Gandalf Kobayashi, driving in his home race, make a major statement?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2012 Grand Prix of Japan!

*RED LIGHTS GOING OUT / THE FIELD SITS ON THE GRID / SOON THERE WILL BE WRECKS:  As expected, Seb Vettel got a clean start and began to head for the hills.  A surprise, however, was that Sauber driver Gandalf Kobayashi got a brilliant getaway and was ahead of Mark Webber within 10 car lengths.  To say that the fanatical Japanese crowd was going crazy would be an understatement.  Behind them, however, disaster lurked.

*TURN ONE APPROACHES / GROSJEAN HITS MARK WEBBER'S CAR / JEEZ, THIS SH*T AGAIN?:  As the field piled into the first turn, three separate incidents completely changed the complexion of the race.  First, Kimi Raikkonen grazed HWMNBN'd left-rear tire, flattening it and sending the Ferrari into a spin that terminated right on the racing line as the back half of the field came thundering in.  Then Lettuce Grosjean, giving the lie to his claims that he's learned how to race, tore his front wing off in the process of running into Mark Webber, who spins and suffered damaged tires.  As if that wasn't enough carnage, Nico Rosberg slowed up to avoid that incident and got creamed by Bruno Senna.  Webber was able to limp back to the pits, but Rosberg was out on the spot.  HWMNBN should have been able to continue, but his engine died in the spin.  Because of where the dead cars were located, Berndt Maylander and the Safety Car had to be called out.

*ONE LAP SAFETY CAR / VETTEL THE BEST RESTARTER / THEN HE RUNS AWAY: We've seen this scene before: once the brief safety car period ended, Seb Vettel stole a march on Kobayashi, leaving him in the dust and, for all intents and purposes, ending the race.  The only drama left was to see if the Red Bull would hold together or if there'd be another catastrophic failure that would cost him the race.  By lap 6, he had a three second lead over the Japanese driver, who was being stalked by Jenson Button, who had Felipe Massa hanging onto his rear wing.  By lap 10, the lead was six seconds; a text message from Honorary F1U! Staffer Vaucaunson's Duck suggested that the race needed "some sort of bizarre seagull accident".  We countered with everybody's favorite flying turtle: GAMERA!  Alas, no such luck.

*STOPPING FOR TIRES / WHAT'S THE SIGN OF A DULL RACE? / PASSING IN THE PITS!:  While Felipe Massa hung onto the rear of the McLaren, he couldn't do anything to actually threaten Button's position.  So when that happens, what does a team do?  They work strategy, is what they do.  On Lap 14, Jenson Button came into the pits, followed by Gandalf the next lap.  On the other hand, Ferrari kept their man out on track, telling him to run the tires off the car and push Push PUSH.  It worked.  When Massa finally stopped on Lap 18, he came out in second place, having leapfrogged both of the men he could realistically reach. 

*THE RACE IS OVER / VETTEL IS GETTING SCARY / JUST FOUR POINTS BEHIND: And that's the way it stayed for the remaining 33 laps.  Vettel dominated the race, earning his second grand slam (pole, win, lead every lap, set fast lap) in the process.  Second place went to Massa who was nearly 21 seconds back.  Gandalf Kobayashi earned his first career podium, ending up some four seconds behind and hotly pursued by Button's McLaren.  The Brit was only a half-second back, after having taken some five seconds off the Sauber's lead in the final few laps.  Jenson Button's teammate, Shiv Hamilton, was fifth, some twenty second in arrears.  With the win, Vettel is only four points behind the stumbling HWMNBN in the race for the Driver's Championship, and looks head-and-shoulders the favorite for the rest of the season.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  In front of his countrymen, Gandalf Kobayashi drove a great race, from his fantastic start to his "none shall pass" defense of third during the last couple of laps.  In the process, he may have secured his seat with Sauber for next year.  As an aside, hearing the Japanese crowd chanting Kobayashi's name after the race was something special.

*TEAM OF THE RACE: There's nobody to give it to other than Red Bull.  They solidified their lead in the Constructor's Championship, apparently have instituted a technical change that's given their car a huge boost of speed (a double-DRS, in fact), and look set to dominate the rest of the season. 

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  On Lap 6, Sauber's Sergio Perez had been sitting behind McLaren's sixth-place Shiv Hamilton for a few laps, not quite able to close the gap to the Brit, but also unable to be shaken.  Coming out of Turn 10 and heading into the Hairpin, the man who will be taking Hamilton's seat was a few car lengths back and seemingly no danger whatsoever.

Which is exactly what the Mexican driver wanted Hamilton to think.  As Hamilton slowed for the Hairpin, the man called "Checo" decided not to bother with the brake pedal and dove really low to the inside.  Tires smoking, he finally stood on the brakes, but there was no way he was going to get whoa'd up in time.

Until he did.  Using the curb to help arrest his skid, he not only made the turn, but stayed in front of the McLaren which was on the better racing line.

He didn't so much pass Hamilton as de-pants him in front of millions of viewers.  You don't think he was trying to show the McLaren management that they made the right choice, do you?  Congratulations, Checo, here's your MotR award!

*MOOOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE:  On Lap 19, Sauber's Checo Perez was sitting behind McLaren's sixth-place Shiv Hamilton.  Coming out of Turn 10 and heading into the Hairpin, the man who will be taking Hamilton's seat was a few car lengths back and seemingly no danger whatsoever right behind Hamilton and was threatening the position. 

As Hamilton slowed for the Hairpin, the man called "Checo" decided not to bother with the brake pedal.  This time, however, Shiv Hamilton, remembering the move the Mexican native had made 12 laps earlier, protected the inside line.  So Perez decided to head for the outside... but something went wrong.  The car began to wobble, and instead of smoothly slipping past the McLaren, it smoothly slipped off-track.

The Sauber smoothly slipped into a spin and ended up in the kittylitter protecting Turn 11, stalled and out of the race.  We're not sure, but we here at F1U! believe this is the first time we've given both the MotR and the MoooootR to the same driver as he attempted to pass the same victim in the same race.  Well done, Checo!  Here's your Mooooo!

*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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We can honestly say that it wasn't a bright sunny day in Singapore today.  That's because it's a night race!  So: it was a clear, hot, humid night at this island city-state as Lewis Hamilton led the rest of the field onto the starting grid.  But would he hold his position and cut into HWMNBN's points lead?  Or would Archmandrite Maldonado or Seb Vettel get past the McLaren driver and make their charge towards the Ferrari driver's score?  Or, just maybe, the Spaniard himself might win the race and stick a shiv into the back of everybody's championship hopes.  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2012 Grand Prix of Singapore!

*LIGHTS OUT:  When the race began, it immediately became obvious that this one was Lewis Hamilton's to lose.  He pulled quickly away from Seb Vettel who had gotten ahead of Maldonado before they reached the second turn.  Behind them, we saw four cars side-by-side into Turn 2, and the usual havoc caused by minor contact.  Felipe Massa was the biggest loser in the deal, dropping from 13th at the start to dead last with a lacerated left-rear tire.  The Red Menace's Caterham lost its nose, stopped, had it replaced, and left the pits before the Ferrari had made it to the pit lane, that's how bad it was for the Brazilian. 

*SO ON THEY RACE:  While it wasn't entirely one-sided in the favor of the McLaren driver, Hamilton slowly opened a decent lead as the leaders hit their first pit stops around Lap 10; the super-soft tires were one-lap quick, but multi-lap fragile and lasted about as long as used tissue paper.  By the time the first pit rotation was over around Lap 20, Hamilton had a 1.5 second lead over Vettel, who headed Jenson Button by three seconds.  Maldonado and HWMNBN filled out the top five, and it looked like, barring incident or failures, that's how it was going to stay... and F1 cars have become nigh-on bulletproof in recent years.

*INCIDENT AND FAILURE:  ...and then we saw this.

Lewis Hamilton, his gearbox turned into metal shavings and hate, pulled his car into a runoff zone gloomily walked away, out of the race from the lead.  Both Seb Vettel and HWMNBN had to be laughing whole-heartedly.  Then we had an incident as Narain Kittylitter's suspension snapped, sending him into the wall and bringing out the first Safety Car of the night.  While the cars perambulated behind Berndt Maylander, HWMNBN started to laugh again as Archmandrite Maldonado withdrew from the race with a hydraulic failure.  In the span of a few laps, HWMNBN had gone from fifth to standing on the podium, through no action of his own. 

*RESTART, NO WAIT:  Once the Safety Car made its way off the track, the race resumed for a grand total of one full lap before Berndt Maylander made his second appearance of the evening.  Slappy Schumacher had managed to crash into the rear of Jules Vergne's Toro Rosso under braking (see the Moooo-ooove of the Race).  There was another scramble into the pits to get any car on the super-soft tires off them, and away everybody went again.

*TIME'S UP:  The two safety car periods lasted nearly 10 laps between them, thereby guaranteeing that this race was going not going to go the full 61 laps.  Y'see, there is a two hour time limit to any F1 event, and Singapore is always right up against that limit; last year's ended after 119 minutes, for example.  When time reached zero, Seb Vettel led Jenson Button and HWMNBN across the line, two laps short of the scheduled 61.  It was all a bit anti-climactic, to be honest, though there was no way anybody was going to catch Vettel, nor was the Ferrari going to run down the McLaren.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  Felipe Massa.  He had to pit at the end of Lap 1 after one of his rear tires got slashed by a front wing.  He emerged from the pits dead last.  He wound up finishing in 8th place, earned a Move of the Race, and may have saved his Ferrari career.  Good show for a guy who hasn't been the same since his horrible accident.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  Marussia.  What?  Well, nobody particularly distinguished themselves this race.  To be sure, Red Bull gained points on their closest rival McLaren, but when Hamilton went out they had a chance to bury them.  That didn't happen.  Ferrari got both their cars in the points, but combined they didn't score as many as Button.  Lotus got both in the points as well and still lost points to Ferrari.  Somebody had the chance to make a major statement in Singapore, and nobody stepped up to do so.  So when the dust cleared, nobody noticed that Tim O'Glockenspiel had brought his Marussia home in 12th place, the best finish for the team ever.  So tra-la, congratulations to Marussia, now the clear 10th-place team in the constructor's championship!

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  On Lap 43, after the second Safety Car had gone in, Ferrari's beleaguered Felipe Massa was wanting to get by Bruno Senna's Williams something fierce.  Coming out of Turns 10, 11 and 12, the red car was all over the back of Senna, and then Massa thought he saw an opening.

Under normal circumstances, there's no way anybody would think about making a pass at this spot on the circuit.  Turn 13 is a horribly tight left-hander that just isn't a good place to make a move.  Massa, however, is under great pressure from Ferrari, with some thinking that he's driving for his very career in F1.  So away he went, never expecting that his fellow Brazilian would attempt to murder him.

For his part, Senna had made the decision that Massa was NOT getting by in one piece and moved left on the Ferrari.  To be fair, there was no obvious contact between the two, nor did Massa touch the barrier.  Having said that, we here at F1U! have no idea how that occurred.  To make matters worse, the Ferrari driver then dropped the car altogether and it began to slalom down the track.  Senna, his sense of self-preservation showing, moved to the right to avoid what was inevitably going to be an  pile of carbon fiber shards and tears.  Somehow, Massa regained a modicum of control, honked the wheel hard left, and prayed.

He came out of the turn ahead of Senna, and managed to stay there.  The SKYF1 broadcasters may have had the right of it when they said that it "wasn't an overtake, it was just an attempt not to crash."  Well, it was the best attempt not to crash of the race!  Felipe Massa, here's your MotR!

*MOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE:  After Narain Kittylitter's Safety Car pulled in to restart the race,  the surviving runners were, as usual, single-file.  There was jockeying, but it looked like everybody was more or less content to let tire temperatures come up.  At Turn 14, there were two cars side-by-side, Jules Vergne to the outside of a Sauber.  Behind them was Slappy Schumacher, coming hard.  Maybe too hard, as he apparently neglected his braking point.  There was a huge cloud of tire smoke and brake dust behind the two dueling cars... and then:

The surprised and exasperated radio call from the Mercedes pit wall to the seven-time world champion was... telling: "What happened there?  What happened there???"  We suspect the reason we didn't hear Slappy's reply was that it was unfit for a family broadcast.  We here at F1U! note that this is the second year in a row he's had an incident like this under the lights at Singapore, and suggest that perhaps his eyes aren't as good as they used to be... after all, ours aren't.  Congratulations, Slappy, here's your Mooooo!  Oh, and a 10-spot grid penalty for Japan, too.  Honorable mention goes to Mark Webber, who passed Gandalf Kobayashi for 10th place near the end of the race at one of the few places you can manage to get all four tires off the circuit, thus earning a 20 second time penalty and losing his one point.  Good job!

*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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A lovely day awaited the F1 Circus as the McLaren duo of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button led the field to the starting grid.  But would the British pair dominate in Italy, or would the tifosi get to celebrate a Ferrari resurgence?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2012 Grand Prix of Italy!

*LIGHTS OUT:  The beginning of the race saw something of a surprise when Ferrari's Felipe Massa got the jump on a sluggishly-starting Jenson Button, serving notice that he was out to prove something to the fans, his team, and perhaps most importantly, his teammate, HWMNBN, languishing down in 10th place.  However, other than a nearly-brakeless run into the first chicane, Massa could do nothing with Lewis Hamilton, who began to gallop off into the Italian afternoon.

*RELIABILITY I:  Toro Rosso's Jules Vergne was having a Toro Rosso sort of day.  Starting 17th, he was still more or less in that position as he came down the pit straight at 210mph to begin Lap 10.  Entering the braking zone for the first chicane, he pressed down hard on the "whoa" pedal... and felt the back end of his car snap away from him.  It was later found that his rear suspension failed, and there was nothing any driver could have done, cold comfort for a driver approaching the ridiculously high curbing at a still-elevated speed.

Vergne's wheelie nearly turned into a full-fledged tumble when he hit the "sleeping policemen" in the run-off area while somewhat sideways, but Lady Luck smiled upon him, bringing him down on all four tires pointing more-or-less the direction of travel.  It took a lap to clear the remains, but the race continued essentially unimpeded.

*MEANWHILE:  On Lap 19, Jenson Button finally got past Felipe Massa to reclaim 2nd place.  Behind the ailing Ferrari, which had suffered an electrical fault that had rendered the telemetry feed null and void,  Red Bull's Seb Vettel and the red car of HWMNBN pitted at the same time and came out with the reigning world champion inches ahead of the Spaniard.  A few laps later, the faster Ferrari tried to pass the German driver aroudn the outside of the Curva Grande in what looked to be a mirror image of the Move Of The Race from last year.  Except for one thing: Seb Vettel was having none of it.

Despite the Ferrari being alongside him, Vettel kept squeezing, forcing HWMNBN to take to the grass.  How he managed to keep the red car from spearing off into the great unknown is beyond us.  The stewards took a dim view of the young German's actions and slapped him with a drive-through penalty, but not until shortly after HWMNBN managed to pass the Red Bully on his own for 4th place.

*RELIABILITY II:  Jenson Button had reason to feel confident.  He had won last week at Spa, and was sitting in second place, just a few ticks behind his teammate Lewis Hamilton.  He might not win the race, but he had to have been thinking podium (and an improved position in the Driver's Championship ranking, as well).  Then without warning, it all came to an end on Lap 34, when a fuel pickup problem shut his engine off and sent him coasting to a halt on the side of the track.

*SUPER SAUBER STRATEGY:  Sergio Perez started the race 12th on the grid.  After running his hard tires for 32 laps or so, he finally came in for his one and only pit-stop, the last to do so.  He emerged in eighth, and immediately began to show that the Sauber chassis really really liked the softer tire.  Lap after lap, Perez had the fastest car on track.  Eventually he was up in second place, a full second per lap quicker than leader Lewis Hamilton.

*RELIABILITY III and IV:  Earlier in the race weekend, Seb Vettel had an alternator fail on his RB8, ending his practice session early.  Today, a radio call to his teammate Mark Webber was the first indication that there could be a problem: "Seb has a problem that might end his race at any time, be careful."  Indeed, a few minutes later on Lap 48, the world champion was pulling over, his race ended by a truly frantic radio call to 'stop the car and save the engine.' 

Webber got to enjoy his promotion for a few laps until he too ended up withdrawing from the race.  In his case, however, it was less mechanical and more tire-related.  A late spin on worn tires put massive flat spots on all four corners, and he had to crawl back to the pit lane at reduced speed to keep the suspension-threatening vibration down; at speed, Webber said that he couldn't see the track because the vibration was so bad.

This was the first time since Korea 2010 that Red Bull did not earn points in a race.

*THE END:  The only laps Lewis Hamilton did not lead today were the ones Sergio Perez held before he made his very late pit stop.  Fittingly, Perez finished 2nd, a mere four seconds behind Hamilton and closing fast.  Behind him, HWMNBN came in 3rd, nine seconds ahead of his teammate Felipe Massa.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  Sergio Perez started 12th, stayed on-track on his first set of tires longer than anybody, then regained six places after he stopped.  He finished second for the second time this season, and now must be considered a dark horse for a win this year.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  Ferrari.  They finished both cars while their two closest rivals, McLaren and Red Bull, could only get one across the line combined.  In the process, they've made great strides in the constructor's championship.  Not exactly what the tifosi wanted, but it's a decent enough consolation prize.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  On Lap 37, Sergio Perez tried to pass Kimi Raikkonen at the first chicane for 4th place, and had his hat handed to him.  So on the following lap, he tried it again.

This time it worked, the Sauber slithering around the outside of the first bend, then powering around the second while the Lotus tried everything he could think of short of squeezing the Mexican to prevent the pass.  Nothing worked, and Perez took off after Felipe Massa for third.  A nice pass for the driver of the race, with a pat on the helmet for the Finn for letting it happen safely.

*MOOOOOO-OOOVE OF THE RACE:  On Lap 22, Felipe Massa led Seb Vettel and HWMNBN after all three had made their pit stops.  Coming out, they found themselves behind the Toro Rosso of Daniel Ricciardo.  Massa made a speed move just before they entered Variante Della Roggia, followed by Vettel a moment later... a moment too late.

Boop!  In NASCAR, it's called "bump drafting."  In F1, Vettel is lucky he didn't lose his front wing... but, to be fair, it was awfully gentle contact.  There wasn't even much of a mark on the yellow nose cone of the RB8.  But we're talking about the reigning world champion here, so he gets the Mooooo!

*SELECTED DRIVERS QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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A stunningly pretty blue sky greeted the field as they rolled towards the grid on the 7.004km Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps.  Jenson Button led the field but how long would that last once the lights went out?  Only one way to find that out: go racing!  THIS is your F1U! for the 2012 Grand Prix of Belgium!

*YESTERDAY, ELATION.  TODAY?:  As the leaders sat on the grid, waiting for the back of the field to take their places, cameras were focused on Monisha Kaltenborn, CEO and part-owner of Sauber F1 Team.  Yesterday, her look of pure joy as Gandalf Kobayashi took second place in Quals was a wonder to behold.  Now however, her look was one of concern and fear as Shadowfax, Gandalf's trusty steed, began to billow clouds of smoke.

The smoke was coming off of overheated brakes; not a bad thing, per se, unless they burst into flame, and that almost never happens.  One can only wonder what Gandalf's teammate Sergio Garcia, positioned directly behind him, thought.  As it turned out, this little occurrence was soon to be quickly forgotten.

*LIGHTS OUT... OH MY GOD!:  This was actually heard in the Official F1U! Viewing Center today as the race began, for many reasons.  First, Akhoond Maldonado had either the greatest start ever or he jumped the lights rather drastically, one of the two.  While the Stewards would later declare that he had jumped the start after viewing the telemetry and timing data, and Maldonado himself made it sound like he thought he jumped the gun ("My hand slipped off the clutch...") the Legendary Announce Team made a convincing argument that he, in fact, did not.  To be sure, in drag-racing terms, his reaction time was zero-point-zero-zero-zero and he aced the tree, but visually he looked to be okay.  It was only when the F1U! Technical Team got a HD version of the feed that we could see his Williams moving slightly just a couple of frames before the lights went out.  In retrospect, we should have known better: it was Maldonado, after all.  But then the real reason for the verbal explosion occurred.

In the always-crazy dash down to La Source, Lettuce Grosjean decided that he really wanted to be on the inside edge of the track, despite starting on the direct opposite side of the circuit... and nothing was going to get in his way.  As it turned out, he was very wrong about this, as the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton happened to be right where the Lotus was headed.  Grosjean's right-rear tire made contact with Hamilton's left-front, jerking the McLaren to the right, then once it was on the grass and uncontrollable, it snapped back and plowed directly into the rear of the Lotus. 

The two cars, steering completely wrecked, plowed straight ahead as the cars ahead of them made the right turn into La Source across their nose.  The Sauber of Sergio Garcia was ruined on the spot, Gandalf's steed took damage and would never be in contention again.  It goes without saying that Hamilton and Lettuce were out on the spot.  The Ferrari of HWMNBN was dead as well...

...and very nearly its pilot with it.  Fortunately, the Spaniard was uninjured except for a sore back caused when the Ferrari got airborne off the wheels of Shadowfax.  Hamilton's McLaren bounced off a different tire of the Sauber and caught air as well.

As a result of this incident, caused when he didn't look where he was going, Lettuce Grosjean has been given a one-race ban and will not participate next week at Monza.  The official statement from the Stewards reads, in part, "The stewards note the team conceded the action of the driver was an extremely serious mistake and an error of judgement. Neither the team nor the driver made any submission in mitigation of penalty."  He was also fined €50000.  As one would imagine considering the amount of carbon fiber shards carpeting the track surface, the safety car was called out, and the field would circulate behind it for four full laps.

*HERE WE GO AGAIN:  Once Bernd Maylander took the AMG-Mercedes SLS into the pits, Jenson Button led Kimi Raikkonen and the two Force Indias as the race restarted.  Almost immediately, Button began to pull away from the field, opening a nearly three-second lead on the Lotus by the end of the lap, helped by Raikkonen being passed and then held up by the FIndia of Nico Hulkenberg.  Then it became a race of tires.  Unseen by US viewers, Akhoond Maldonado plowed into the Marussia of Tim O'Glockenspiel and retired.  For this and his jump-start, Maldonado earned two separate five-spot grid penalties for Monza... we here at F1U! wonder just what the record for individual penalties in one race weekend is.  Maldonado must be in the running, having earned three between Quals and the race.

*HOW MANY STOPS?:  Surprisingly, it quickly became clear that the frontrunners were planning a one-stop tire strategy.  Button didn't pit until Lap 21, at which point everybody else behind him save Seb Vettel had already stopped.  He had enough of a lead on the Red Bull driver to emerge from the pits still in first place, at which point the F1U! Strategy Crew wrote "race over" in the logbook.  It became merely a question as to whether Button, a driver known for his smooth tire-friendly style, could make his rubber last 23 laps around the longest track in F1... and who would finish second behind him, and could they make a one-stop work.

*YEP, AND NOPE:  Both of the Red Bulls and Kimi Raikkonen's Lotus were having problems with straight-line speed, a major blunder around this fast circuit.  The Finn had too much rear wing, causing  huge amounts of drag, down the Kemmel Straight, while Vettel and Webber had their gearing set wrong, resulting in their engines bouncing off the limiter much too early, limiting their top speeds.  This caused all three to give up any chance they had of catching the McLaren and battle amongst themselves for whatever final positions they could grab.  Vettel made his one-stop strategy work, keeping his tires fresh and finishing in second place.  Kimi's tires faded away, ruining his try for a one-stopper and placing him solidly in third after a snarling dogfight with Nico Hulkenberg.  Webber, on the other hand, was essentially crippled by his limited top speed, which made him relatively easy pickings for Felipe Massa of all people.  Massa finished fifth, Webber sixth, a full 20 seconds ahead of Slappy Schumacher.  The closest anybody came to Jenson Button, though, was that three seconds at the restart.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE: As much as it pains us, Seb Vettel gets this award over Jenson Button.  While Button drove a fine race, Vettel started from 10th place on the grid to take second, passing his own teammate and Slappy Schumacher in nasty struggles along the way.  Just an all-around swell drive for the reigning World Champion.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  Force India finished fourth and 10th today, after starting ninth and 11th.  They avoided the first-corner carnage, drove professional races, challenged some of the biggest names in the sport, and heck, Paul di Resta earned a point despite a non-functional KERS unit.  Fantastic result for a team that needed it.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  On Lap 33, Kimi Raikkonen was crawling all over the pewter tail of Slappy Schumacher's Mercedes, but just wasn't able to find a way around down the back half of the circuit, the pit straight, or La Source.  Out of La Source, however, and in the run down to Eau Rouge, Kimi's nose was tucked right under the rear wing of Slappy.

Now you may notice that white line stretching across the track just ahead of the nose of Slappy's car.  That is the DRS detection line, which decides which cars get to use DRS on the Kemmel Straight (just after Eau Rouge) and which ones don't.  You have to be within one second of the car ahead to be able to use the DRS... Slappy Schumacher will not be able to do so, as there's no car ahead of him.  Kimi, on the other hand, will be able to; with his top speed limited by his mis-set rear wing, he'll need it just to stay in contact with the Mercedes.

Then Kimi went completely insane, diving inside on Slappy in Eau Rouge, a place you pass only if you have a death wish or supreme confidence in your abilities. 

Slappy, realizing he was being passed by an insane Finn, gave him room and let him go, perhaps secure in the knowledge that he'd be able to use DRS at the top of the hill and just catch him back up.  Oops.  Not only could he not do that, the Force India of Nico Hulkenberg could... and nearly caught him in the process.  For having two huge ball-bearings of steel and a working brain to calculate the best time to pass the German, we hereby present Kimi Raikkonen with the Move of the Race.  Sneaky clever!

*MOOOOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE: By rule, we can't give it to Lettuce Grosjean, as it occurred on the first lap.  So, instead, it goes to Akhoond Maldonado.

I think this picture sums up his entire career.  Three penalties in one race weekend, two of them in six laps?  Congratulations, Akhoond, you just got another Moooooo!

*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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The umbrellas were out in force as the Grumbling Herd began to make their way onto the grid, but would the weather make a difference?  Would Jenson Button swim to a victory, or would polesitter Lewis Hamilton run away with it?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2012 Grand Prix of Hungary!

*UMBRELLAS?  OR PARASOLS?:  Considering the way it'd been described in Practice and Qualifying, we were expecting to see a grumpy old man with a long beard building a big boat in the infield paddock area, while pairs of animals waited for him to finish up.  Instead, when SPEED's coverage came to life, we were shocked and surprised by the sight of blue skies with nary a cloud visible.  Disgustedly, the F1U! staff packed away the water wings and flippers.

*AND WE'RE OFF!  NO, WE'RE NOT!:  As the field began to form up on the grid after the recon lap, it seemed to be taking a long time.  Since F1 cars have no fans, cooling is accomplished only when they are in motion... and the cars at the front were getting hotter and hotter as the cars at the rear took their places.  Eventually, the track official at the back of the grid began to trot across the track, waving a green flag; this signaled to Charlie Whiting, F1 race starter and technical supremo, that everything was okay and he could begin the race.  But halfway across, suddenly he stopped waving the flag and reached for a radio.  And then we saw a sight that hasn't occurred in years:

The start was aborted and the field was sent around for another recon lap.  Nobody is quite sure why the start was aborted, and the confusion claimed one car, that of Slappy Schumacher.  "The car was overheating.  When I saw the yellow flags, I shut the car off," he said, apparently not expecting to be sent around again.  He wound up starting from the pit lane, getting a puncture, earned a drive-through penalty for speeding in the pit lane, losing all telemetry feeds, then retiring from the race completely.

*AND WE'RE OFF!  THIS TIME FOR SURE!:  When the lights went out on the now one-lap-shorter race, polesitter Lewis Hamilton got away clean, led the field through the first turn and headed off over the horizon.  Behind him, Lettuce Grosjean held second, but Jenson Button beat Seb Vettel into the turn for fourth. 

*NAP TIME:  And then it settled into a typical dry race at Hungary... dull.  Oh, to be sure, there were moments of the race where it looked like we could have some excitement, such as when first Grosjean, then much later his teammate Mumbles Raikkonen, had runs at Hamilton for the lead.  Indeed, both Lotus drivers managed to cut the lead down to a second or less, but could never quite get close enough to make a move on the leader.

*NOTHING VENTURE, NOTHING WIN:  Realizing that their cars couldn't compete straight up with either the Lotii or the McLarens, Red Bull rolled the dice and went with three-stop strategies for both of their drivers.  For Seb Vettel, it paid off; he was one lap away from getting a podium spot as the race ended... the one lap lost with the aborted start.  For Mark Webber, the strategy failed; he was in 5th when he made his third stop, resumed in 8th, and was unable to make the new tires work.  He finished in 8th.

*RED STORM RISING:  While HWMNBN was never within sniffing distance of the podium at any time during the race, he still managed to increase his lead in the driver's championship by finishing fifth.  With second-place Webber in 8th, the lead is now 40 points... which means that, in the worst possible case, the Ferrari driver could DNF the next race, Webber could win, and HWMNBN would still have a 15-point lead.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  Mumbles Raikkonen looked exactly like The Iceman of old today, relentlessly closing in on the leader without ever putting a wheel wrong.  Only a KERS problem kept him from making a serious attempt at the lead.  If there was ever any doubt to his ability to win a race, he buried it today.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  Like Raikkonen, if there was any doubt that Lotus had a serious chance to win this year, the race today put paid to it.  2-3 on the podium, with both drivers having had good runs at the leader at various times in the race.  They're close, and Raikkonen and Grosjean look like they'll make it happen sooner rather than later.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  On Lap 45, Mumbles Raikkonen came into the pits for his last stop of the race.  As he came out, his teammate Lettuce Grosjean was thundering down the front straight at full steam.  As Raikkonen crossed the pit exit line, the two were neck and neck.

Raikkonen, on the inside, had the racing line, but Grosjean the momentum.  So Mumbles, being a cold-blooded Finn, decided to make life difficult for his teammate.  Very difficult.  In the process, he probably caused multiple cardiac arrests on the Lotus pit wall.

Tires interlaced, the two headed right for the outside of the turn.  Mumbles, not caring that it was his teammate to his left, kept pushing outside.  Grosjean had two choices: abandon the turn or crash the two of them out of the race.

Wisely, he headed for the run-off area and let his teammate keep 2nd.  Just behind the two of them, Seb Vettel yelled "drat".  So Mumbles Raikkonen, for holding your place against your teammate, here's your Move of the Race!

*MOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE:  On Lap 48, Hazzan Maldonado decided that he needed to get past Force India's Paul di Resta.  He had an entire track-width to work with as he pulled alongside the Scot into a right-hand turn... and then he flicked the Williams' steering wheel to the left.

The result was a hard thump to the side of the Force India, which was shoved off the track.  Unsurprisingly, the Marshals took a dim view of this tactic and gave Maldonado a drive-through penalty a few laps later.  There's nobody in the field right now that is as blatantly dangerous as Maldonado; here's your Mooooo, and you now have a month to get over yourself, jerk.

*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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In contrast to the sopping wet Qualifying, the skies over the F1 circus was partly cloudy as they waited for the lights to go out.  Would it stay dry?  Would HWMNBN, the season's first two-time winner be able to become the first three-time winner?  Or would national hero Seb Vettel finally win his home race?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2012 Grand Prix of Germany!

*WE'VE SEEN THIS ONE BEFORE, JUST WITH DIFFERENT ACTORS:  When the lights went out and the grid accelerated away, polesitter HWMNBN's Ferrari charged away and headed for the hills.  While Vettel wanted dearly to chase after him, he had to spend the first couple of laps fending off a concerted attack from Mercedes' Slappy Schumacher.  By the time the silver arrow had been dealt with, the red car had a few seconds in hand over the Red Bull, and it looked like HWMNBN had every intention of keeping that way.

*RED HOT LEADER ON BACKMARKER ACTION: It stayed that way through the first round of pit stops, with Jenson Button, in what must be considered a surprise third place, around five seconds back.  As the race neared the halfway point, it was obvious that Vettel was quicker than HWMNBN, closing the lead down to six-tenths of a second and looking like he was going to blow the red car away with the aid of DRS.  But it never happened, in part because the Ferrari driver made good use of terrain, i.e., Marussia's Charles ToothPic.  Just as it looked like Vettel would be able to get past with the speed boost from the open slot-wing, HWMNBN got the same bonus.  Y'see, the DRS detection system does not differentiate between leaders and backmarkers... if you're within one second of a car in front of you in the detection zone, you get to use the DRS, even if the car in front is in last place.  So at that time, HWMNBN got to stay ahead, and put a car in between him and Vettel to boot, but surely that wouldn't last, and it didn't.  But then the Red Bull driver had to contend with another annoyance... Lewis Hamilton. 

*PULLING GUARD:  To say that Hamilton was having a bad day would be an understatement.  At the beginning of Lap 2, he ran over a carbon fiber shard and suffered a ruined tire.  As he limped his way around the Hungaroring, he bemoaned his fate, even going so far as to get on the radio and say that the team should retire the car.  He managed to get to the pit, the team checked him over and sent him back out... nearly a lap down with sixty-odd left to go.  But after his second stop around Lap 35, he came out of the pits a lap down, but right behind Vettel (and just ahead of his teammate), and with fresh tires.  Much to the Red Bull driver's surprise, Hamilton attacked, got past, then tried to go after the Ferrari... perhaps halfheartedly.  "I don’t see the point in him trying to race us," said Vettel afterwards. "It is a bit stupid to race the leaders."  As it was, Hamilton could not catch HWMNBN to unlap himself, and maybe kinda held up Vettel a bit while his teammate dove into the pits.

*WOW THAT WAS FAST:  A few races ago, McLaren couldn't do a pitstop without it all ending in tears, flying tireguns and lost places.  Not this time.  Button came in, got a fresh set of tires and got out again.  He had been stopped for 2.31 seconds.  When Vettel stopped next lap, Red Bull could not match that and Button passed him for second place.  He then set sail for the Ferrari in the lead.

*FAIL, AND FAIL AGAIN:  He tried.  He really did.  He closed down on the red car, pulling to within a half-second, but no closer, and perhaps killed his tires in the process.  Ultimately, Button had to stop attacking for the lead and start defending his position from Vettel's attacks.  In fact, on Lap 66, Vettel made his move around the outside of  the Hairpin.  Button defended, pushing Vettel wide, but the Red Bull still got by...

...at this point, the F1U! team was yelling at the TV that this was illegal as Vettel had left the racing surface.  When honorary F1U! team member Vaucaunson's Duck asked if anything was going to happen to the reigning world champion, the jaded response was "not a chance."  The race ended with HWMNBN leading Vettel, who was a second ahead of Button.

*...AND THEN:  The FIA had been keeping a gimlet eye on Red Bull all race, and had been made aware of Vettel's transgression.  Shortly after the race, the stewards handed down their judgement: a drive-through penalty.  As the penalty was given after the race, it was changed to a standard "add 20 seconds to his race time."  This dropped Vettel to fifth place, promoting Button to 2nd and Mumbles Raikkonen to the final step on the podium.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  Other than the first race of the year, Jenson Button has had a terrible season.  It was nice to see him fighting for the win again, and he drove an excellent strategic race.  Well deserved.

*TEAM OF THE RACE: Sauber.  Yes, Sauber! Gandalf finished 4th, Sergio Perez 6th, and they proved that they're the best of the midpack by routinely powering by Force India all day.  Heck of a result for the "privateer" team.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  On Lap 15, Slappy Schumacher was hunting down Nico Hulkenberg for 7th place.  Heading into the braking zone, he was in perfect position.  Meanwhile, some distance behind, Mumbles Raikkonen seemed to be out of the squabble.

Into the turn, Slappy dove inside Hulkenberg, slipping past and forcing the Force India to go wide into the next turn...

...when from out of nowhere, Mumbles ignored his braking altogether and still somehow managed to make the turn, getting by Hulkenberg and nearly surprising Slappy in the process.

For his banzai move from out of nowhere, we'll give Mumbles Raikkonen the MotR!  Good job!

*MOOOOOO-OOOVE OF THE RACE:  There really weren't any, so we're bending our rules that prevent Lap 1 incidents from winning either Move or Mooooo-ooove of the Race awards.  Heading into Turn 1 at the start, Felipe Massa just drove directly into the back of Lettuce Grosjean.  The result was... predictable.

The carbon fiber shards left behind were the cause of Lewis Hamilton's shredded tire, and race.  Good going, Massa... here's your Moooooo.

Drivers quotes will be dropped this week, as this F1U! is late enough as-is.  Next week is the Grand Prix of Hungary... god help us.  See you then!

Almost forgot!  Here's the latest episode of McLaren Tooned!

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While it hadn't been raining for the proverbial forty days and forty nights, it had rained a lot at Silverstone Circuit, to the point that the race organizers asked people not to come to Quals.  So what effect did the weather have on the field as they pulled onto the grid?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2012 Grand Prix of Great Britain!

*WHAT IS THAT?:  As 23 cars pulled onto the grid (The Red Menace's engine went ploin! halfway around), there were shadows on the ground and a flaming ball of burning gas in the blue sky.  Yes, that's right, the sun made an appearance today.  The Legendary Announce Team said that there was rain in the area that would show up around halfway, but it never happened.  This is not as beneficial to the teams as you might think; pretty much everybody had a wet-track setup on their cars.  Still, when everybody is wrong, ain't nobody disadvantaged, we suppose.

*LIGHTS OUT:  Once the field got away, polesitter HWMNBN made it perfectly clear that Ferrari had completely turned their season around.  Back at the beginning of the year, their car was totally uncompetitive, and only the Spaniard's skill kept it anywhere near the points.  Now he cut hard across the nose of Red Bull's Mark Webber and began to head off into the sunset.  When Seb Vettel pitted on Lap 11, his soft tires worn to nubs, it looked like HWMNBN's gamble of starting on the Hard tires had paid off.  It looked doubly so when Webber brought his car in on Lap 15, soft tires exhausted and failing. 

*NEXT UP:  HWMNBN brought his Ferrari in for another set of hard tires the next lap, with enough of a lead to stay five seconds ahead of Webber.  In a complete inversion of the usual case, the Hard tires were clearly the compound to be on, both fast and durable.  The Soft rubber just wasn't doing much.  Continuing his domination of the race, HWMNBN continued to open the lead, reaching 19.8 seconds when Webber stopped for another set of hard tires on Lap 34.

*THAT'S OMINOUS:  The dark clouds beyond Woodcote made Ferrari's plan very clear: run on the hard tires as long as possible until the rains came, make one less stop than everybody else, and stand on the podium in wet-weather slickers, galoshes and Ferrari-red umbrellas.  All they needed was for the rain to fall.  The problem with this strategy should be clear: if it doesn't rain, you're stuck on the poorer-performing soft tires at the end of the race.  When HWMNBN's tires fell off the cliff and he began to cough up a second per lap to the fresh-tired Webber, he pitted for Soft tires on Lap 39.  He emerged from the pits still in the lead, but now desperately praying for the rains to fall so he could get off the Soft tires for something... anything... else. 

*PROHIBITION IS ALIVE AND WELL:  It stayed dry, and Webber began to stalk the red car, taking chunks out of the Ferrari's lead each lap.  On Lap 45, the lead was down to a half-second, and Ferrari had sent half of their pit crew out behind the mobile homes to do a frantic rain dance.  Missing a supply of eagle feathers and tomahawks, their shimmying had no effect and the clouds refused to open up. 

*AND THEN...:  Inexorably, the Australian Red Bull driver, the support of the crowd firmly behind a member of the Commonwealth, closed in on HWMNBN.  It was just a matter of time, and Webber waited patiently until his opening came.  With five laps left, he cleanly slipped by the Ferrari for the lead and drove away, eventually winning by three seconds.  HWMNBN finished second, with Seb Vettel less than two seconds behind him.  Five seconds further back, Ferrari's other driver, Felipe Massa, finished a desperately needed fourth.  It never did rain.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  The first lap of the race was rather confused and exciting, with plenty of action, at least one occurrence of three-abreast racing through a turn, and more than a little carbon fiber shed.  In the biggest incident, Lettuce Grosjean made contact with Paul di Resta, which eventually led to the Force India driver retiring from the race.  Grosjean, a slow puncture affecting his tires, pitted on Lap 2 for new soft tires, falling all the way down to 22nd... effectively last place, what with di Resta retiring and The Red Menace having died on the way to the grid.  Over the course of the next 50 laps, the Frenchman drove a sterling race, eventually finishing in a more-than-solid sixth place.  Not bad for someone who was told they weren't good enough for F1 a few years ago.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  Red Bull.  They out-strategized Ferrari, then outran them on a circuit that really favors cars that have different strengths than theirs possesses.  They then finished 1-3.  How can you not give them the award?  Honorable mention to Ferrari, 2-4 at the end of the race, jumping to 2nd in the Constructor's championship, and HWMNBN leads the Driver's championship.  Not bad at all.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  Late in the race, Red Bull's Mark Webber had the tail of HWMNBN's Ferrari in his sights as they both roared down the Wellington Straight.

Using KERS and DRS, he pulled past as the two ran into the big sweeping left-hander, kept his momentum up, and was able to keep the Spaniard behind when he tried to counterattack.  A perfectly clean pass, not the most dramatic in the world, but it WAS the most important: it was for the lead, after all.

*MOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE:  On Lap 38, Gandalf Kobayashi, locked in a legit struggle for points, swept into the new pit lane right at the speed limit, his Sauber team kneeling in position to receive their car.  Nothing out of the ordinary here, something the Japanese driver had done hundreds of times before... except this time, apparently distracted by something bright and shiny, he hit the brakes a moment too late.

In the process of locking his clampers down, he skidded into four of his mechanics, wiping out the front jackman and the three front-right tirechangers.  Fortunately, nobody suffered anything more than bumps and bruises, though there are reports of a sprained finger on the wheelgunner.  Because nobody was hurt, I'm happy to give Gandalf his well-deserved Moooooo!

*SELECTED DRIVER COMMENTS OF THE RACE:

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A lovely, but hot cloudless day shined down upon the members of the F1 Circus as they formed up on the grid behind Seb Vettel.  The asphalt of the harbor-circling circuit was running right around the point where the tires would begin to be goofy, but wasn't quite there yet.  Would the conditions play into the reigning world driver champion's hands, or would we see an eighth winner in eight races?  Or would one of the other previous winners figure out the challenge of the Red Bull driver?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2012 Grand Prix of Europe @ Valencia!

*LIGHTS OUT:  As the race began, all of our worst fears came to the fore.  Seb Vettel had an absolutely blinding start, streaking away from McLaren's Lewis Hamilton to the tune of 1.7sec by the end of the first lap.  It was four seconds by the end of the third lap and 7.6 seconds by the end of lap five.  In short, it looked like we had a flat-out massacre in the making.  By the time the first round of pit stops had ended on Lap 20, the lead was up to 19 seconds over Lettuce Grosjean, who had three seconds in hand over Hamilton.  The surprise of the race to this point was the performance of Ferrari's HWMNBN, up to sixth from his starting position of 11th on the grid.  Of course, picking up three spots on the first lap goes a long way towards that jump, but the fact still remains.

*A MOMENT OF LEVITY:  On Lap 14, the Williams of Metropolitan Maldonado was being closely pursued by the Lotus of Mumbles Raikkonen when, out of nowhere, this occurred:

A straw hat came flying out of one of the radiator inlets of Maldonado's car, flooping through the air and landing harmlessly behind the Finn's chariot.  An odd moment in an otherwise dull race at the time.

*AND THEN:  Everything was tossed into a cocked straw hat.  As the leaders were on Lap 28, Jules Vergne tried to pass the Caterham of Heikki Kovaleinninninninnie.  As he went past the left side of the green car, his right-rear tire gently kissed the Finn's front-left.  The result was amazing and swift, despite the gentleness of the contact.

Vergne's tire shredded itself and whatever bodywork the flailing carcass could reach, scattering debris over a long, wide stretch of the circuit.  Kovaleinninninnie, more experienced, guided his car slowly to the pits, keeping his tire in more or less one piece.  He would continue, but the rookie's car was retired immediately on making it to the pits.  Because of the stunning amount of debris, the Safety Car was called out to allow the sweepers to man their brooms.

*EVERYTHING CHANGES:  After the rush of pit lane activity, the standings were Vettel, Grosjean, HWMNBN, Daniel Ricciardo (who had not yet stopped for tires), Mumbles, Hamilton (who lost at least two positions when his pit stop went to hell due to falling off the front jack), Nico Rosberg, Slappy Schumacher, Mark Webber (who started 19th) and Maldonado.  On Lap 33, the Safety Car turned off its lights and Vettel slowed to let it pull away, then got on the gas to stay ahead of the drivers behind.  Both Grosjean and HWMNBN ran with him, leaving the rest of the field in their dust.  As the first three turned onto the front straight, the Ferrari leaped all over the back of the Lotus, passing Lettuce as they went into Turn 2, in something of a brave move.  And then...

...Vettel pulled over to the side of the track, his alternator burned out from the heat.  The somewhat partisan Spanish crowd went somewhat insane as their native son improbably took the lead of the race.  The race was far from over, however, as Lettuce Grosjean smelled a chance to win his first ever Grand Prix.  Following closely, he hounded the two-time driver's champion for seven laps before...

...he pulled over to the side of the track, his alternator burned out from the heat.  It is no coincidence that both the Red Bull and the Lotus are powered by Renault engines.  The failure allowed Hamilton to move into second place, followed by Mumbles and Metropolitan. 

*ENDGAME:  It stayed this way until the closing couple of laps, when Hamilton's tires began to fade, allowing him to be passed by Mumbles for second on Lap 55, while Maldonado closed in as well.  And then the red mist settled over Hamilton's eyes and he went into full defensive mode.  As Maldonado tried to pass after the DRS zone, the McLaren driver shoved him wide.  With a set of "sleeping policemen" staring him in the face, the Williams driver had no place to go.

While the BBC announcers were somewhat apoplectic, the Legendary Announce Team had the right of it: the way the rules are written now, Hamilton had to leave Maldonado some room and didn't.  Hamilton ended up in the wall, radiator broken.  Maldonado lost his front wing, and with the resultant loss of downforce ended up 10th, and was later given a 20 second penalty for "causing the accident".  This coming together had the amazing result of vaulting Slappy Schumacher into third place, with Mark Webber close behind in 4th... which is the way the race ended.

*AFTERWARDS:  HWMNBN violated the rules.

We believe that, if the FIA penalizes him for pulling over and taking a flag from track worker, the entire country of Spain should march on their offices and cover them in paella.  And we don't like HWMNBN.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  It's hard to not give it to HWMNBN.  Sure, everybody ahead of him died on the track, essentially handing him the win, but he had to be in position to take it... and he was, despite starting 11th.  A solid drive indeed, and one that made him the surprise first two-time winner this season.  Honorable mentions to both Slappy Schumacher for his first podium in the three years since he unretired, and Mark Webber, who finished fourth despite starting 19th.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  We're proud to give this one to Force India.  They finished 5th and 7th and didn't put a tire wrong at all.  Mercedes may have finished higher (3rd+6th), but something about their result felt... wrong, probably because Rosberg started sixth and should have done better than finishing in the same place.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  HWMNBN's pass on Lettuce Grosjean for 2nd place was quite good, but there's no good footage of it.  Just take our word for it.

*MOOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE:  Jules Vergne's clumsy wallowing that put paid to his race and damaged Heikki Kovaleinninninnie's Caterham was pretty egregious.  It was like he forgot he was passing another car.

If you look carefully, you can see an orange spot where they're making contact.  There's so much room around them, it's amazing... and Vergne still hit him.  Simply stupid... and the perfect Moo.

*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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A nigh-on perfect day for racing awaited the drivers of the F1 Circus as they waited for the lights to go out.  Would it be a perfect day for pole-sitting Seb Vettel, who has never won in Montreal?  Or would one of his title rivals, Ferrari's HWMNBN or McLaren's Canada specialist Lewis Hamilton, jump up over the young German?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2012 Grand Prix of Canada!

*RED-HOT CONFUSION ACTION:  Some races are defined by speed, guts, risk-taking and dramatic passes, a mere knifes-edge from disaster.  Other races are decided by cold, calculated numbers, saying if a car does this and that, it'll end up here... the type of race that turns on a pitstop taking an extra tenth of a second to complete.  Then you've got the 2012 GP of Canada, where what worked for one team didn't work for another, and even within a team, what worked for one car didn't work for the other.  In other words, what should have been relatively straightforward turned out to be a total crapshoot. 

*TIRES RULE THE ROOST:  The race began with Seb Vettel's patented "run-away-and-hide" start, which got him out of DRS striking range, but not much farther than that.  As the first round of pitstops occurred from Lap 17 on, HWMNBN took the lead on a fast stop, but on cold tires was quickly passed by Hamilton.  Remember what we mentioned in the previous paragraph?  The "total crapshoot" part?  Here is where it applies.  As Hamilton came in for his second pitstop (another of the now-common McLaren FAILstops, I might add), neither Vettel or HWMNBN batted an eye; they were clearly going for a one-stop strategy.  So were the two Lotuses (Lotii?) of Mumbles Raikkonen and Lettuce Grosjean.  As the race went on, Raikkonen faded away as Grosjean got stronger and stronger.  Meanwhile up front, Hamilton, some 15 seconds back due to his stop but on much fresher tires, began to take a second per lap off the Red Bull and the Ferrari.

*SO THEN WHAT?:  About what you would expect.  Both Ferrari and Red Bull, seeing the difference a change of tires made for Hamilton, brought their drivers in for a new set of tires as well, creating a tight race for the finish between three world champions.  Except that's not what happened.  Vettel and HWMNBN stayed out on their worn and fraying tires, just begging to be picked off by the McLaren, which is exactly what happened.  Vettel didn't even try to defend his position, and the Ferrari driver put up only the most token of defenses as Hamilton aimed for first place.  At which point, Vettel made the tire equivalent of a "splash-and-dash" pit stop (a "tread-and-go"?), which allowed him to eventually catch HWMNBN... for fourth.

*WAIT, WHAT?:  Where the one-stop strategy didn't work for Vettel and HWMNBN, it worked like a charm for Lettuce Grosjean and Sauber's Sergio Perez.  Both drivers came steaming up from behind the two world champs and made them look slow... which at that point, they were.  HWMNBN ended up in 5th place, having lead only 10 laps before, with Mercedes' Nico Rosberg a half-second behind and closing hard.  All in all, a fitting end to a head-scratcher of a race.  A race where what should have worked, didn't, except when it did. 

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  Lewis Hamilton became the seventh driver to win in seven races, a F1 record.  In doing so, he drove a nearly flawless race (marred only by his gagging in the first pitstop), never pushing his car or, more importantly, his tires, too hard.  The victory, his third in Canada, also moved him into the lead for the driver's championship.

*TEAM OF THE RACE: Red Bull.  Off the podium but still in the lead for the constructor's championship, their last minute call-in of Vettel for fresh tires allowed them to take a position off of Ferrari.  A logical call, but logic wasn't much in evidence in some parts of the pit wall today.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  Around about Lap 40, Slappy Schumacher was clearly annoyed at being stuck behind the man who had become something of a nemesis, Gandalf Kobayashi.  So, heading into the Hairpin, he decided to do something about it.

To say he held off until late on his braking would be something of an understatement.  In truth, he held off until too late, flambe-ing his tires in an orgy of smoke, squealing rubber and hate.  He was probably locked up for nearly 100 meters and the Mercedes staggered into the turn like a drunken sailor.  Gandalf, in a momentary flash of logic and reason, moved outside to give Slappy a place to go when he failed to make the turn.

Except he didn't.  Fail to make the turn, that is.  Somehow, he found enough traction on his tortured tires to yoink the car through the opening stages of Epingle, a suprised Gandalf falling behind in his wake.

On the way out, the Mercedes again found traction on ruined rubber and powered his way onto the back straight, a marvelous example of car control at a time when that shouldn't have been possible left behind him.  That Kobayashi repassed him in the DRS zone a few seconds later doesn't matter: Slappy either got really lucky, or he's still really good.  Either way, he wins the Move of the Race.

*MOOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE:  It looked like Ferarri's Felipe Massa had come back from his terrible start to the season.  First, a good finish at Monaco.  Then a good qualifying performance in Montreal.  Now a great start had moved the Brazilian into 5th place with an eye cocked towards Mark Webber's 4th place.  Then on Lap 6, with no external prompting whatsoever, it all went pear-shaped.

The spin flat-spotted his tires, dropped him to 12th, and we never heard from Massa again.  Good jorb, here's your Moo!

*VERY SELECTED DRIVER'S QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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An absolutely perfect day in the Principality of Monaco greeted the F1 Circus as they pulled their steeds onto the starting grid.  Would we see our sixth winner in six races today?  Or would there be our first repeater?  And would those clouds hovering off the Cote d'Azur make their way over the circuit?  THIS is your F1Update! for the 2012 Grand Prix of Monaco!

*GOOD LUCK... YOU'LL NEED IT!:  When the lights went out to start the race, polesitter Mark Webber got a clean start with the man who shared the front row with him, Nico Rosberg, shuffling in directly behind.  It stayed that way as the rumbling horde charged down towards Sainte Devote. We've gotten pretty lucky over the past few years, in that there hasn't been one of those legendary first-turn disasters that take out a quarter of the field.  However, in the few seconds it took to send the 24-car field towards the first turn, the educated fan got an inkling that something was about to happen; we don't usually go four cars wide, after all.

*TOTAL CARNAGE: Slappy Schumacher was probably in a bad mood.  He had been the fastest qualifier for the race, but was punted down to sixth due to a penalty earned at the Grand Prix of Spain.  He is also something of a Monaco specialist, having won here five times.  When the lights went out, he had a great start and went to the left of the Lotus of Lettuce Grosjean.  Over on the other side of Grosjean, the Ferrari of Felipe Massa drifted towards the right side of the Lotus, trying to slip onto the racing line for Sainte Devote.  Lettuce, knowing that while one can't win the Grand Prix of Monaco on the first lap, you sure as heck can lose it, moved to the left, towards Slappy.  It didn't go well.

Grosjean, his rear suspension gone, staggered to the right, stretching across the circuit at the narrowest point on the front straightaway.  Slappy got away clean, though he would retire with a fuel problem 65 laps later.  With Lettuce blocking the circuit and the thundering herd bearing down on him, something bad was sure to occur.
Half the field dove inside the curbing to avoid the spinning Lotus.  The other half squeezed as far outside as possible.  And then, there was Gandalf Kobayashi.  Trapped in a place where he could do neither, he wound up going over the rear tire of Lettuce.  While his Sauber seemed to survive the landing, he wound up pitting twice by Lap 6 and retiring the car.

*SAFETY CAR:  Amongst the many things that makes Monaco unique on the F1 calendar, one of the less-obvious is the incredible skill of the track workers.  Made up out of the elite of the pool of European race track workers, they can make a wreck disappear nearly before the carbon fiber shards stop moving.  As the HRTs swept past the broken Lotus, the track workers swarmed over the car... and discovered they had a problem.  The nearest crane had been pre-positioned a little farther down the track and would take a minute or two to get to them.  To exacerbate the problem, the Lotus was stuck in gear, and no amount of pushing of the "emergency neutral" button would allow them to shove the car around.  As the track workers ganged up on the ruined car and began to shove it off the racing line by brute force, the thundering herd rocketed around the shortest track on the F1 calendar.  Almost before anybody realized what was happening, the first lap was over and the Red Bull of Mark Webber, followed by the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg, was barreling down towards Sainte Devote... and there were track workers just inside the curb.  A Safety Car had to be called out, and a near-disaster was only averted by the thinnest of margins.   

*DEEP BREATH:  Once the Safety Car went away and everything started over again, the race settled down.  Oh, there was some drama early as rain was expected, but never materialized.  When everybody made their first pitstops by around Lap 25 or thereabouts, the lead devolved to Seb Vettel, who didn't stop on the hard tires, and kept increasing his lead.  At the end of the first stops, he had a 12 second lead.  It got all the way up to 17 seconds as Lap 40 approached... and the "pit delta," or the time it took to enter the pits, get serviced, and leave the pits, was 20 seconds.  And then Red Bull's strategy became clear as rainclouds began to move back over the circuit.  But would any rain actually fall, and would it fall before Vettel burned the tires off his car?  If it did and everybody needed to pit for Inters, he would win the race.  If it didn't, he'd drop back into the pack, but Mark Webber, sitting in second, would win.  Eventually, the tires could take no more and Vettel was forced to pit on Lap 46.

*IN THE END:  It never did rain.  While things got tighter and tighter as the tires on the cars wore at different rates, Webber stayed in front ahead of Rosberg, HWMNBN and Vettel... though it did look impressively close at the end.

The Aussie became our sixth winner in six races.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  Mark Webber.  He did everything right today, up to and including perhaps slowing the field down a touch so Vettel could extend his lead in case it rained.  Fortunately for him, it didn't rain, he won the race fair and square, and did so impressively.  Good job!

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  Red Bull.  This one was theirs no matter how the weather played out, it was just a question of which driver would get the winner's trophy.  Brilliant strategy, and with a little bit of luck (a problem on a pit stop by Ferrari or Mercedes), they could have had both drivers on the (non-existent) Monaco podium.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  On Lap 35, we had a tidy little race going between the Sauber of Sergio Perez, the Lotus of Kimi Raikkonen, and the Force India of Nico Hulkenberg.  All three were tucked behind the car in front, looking for any opportunity to try a pass on the tight streets of Monaco.  As the three went into the desperately slow Rascasse, Kimi got his nose under Perez.

It wasn't so much that he was trying a pass, as he was maybe angling for a slight advantage somewhere down the line.  Except there was a little problem...

...in that the Sauber was actually heading for the pit lane.  Instead of accelerating out of Rascasse like most drivers would, he just sort of ambled towards the entry.  This forced Raikkonen to jump on the brakes and scramble to the outside to avoid the Sauber that had suddenly come to a virtual halt in front of him.

As the Sauber slid into the pit lane and the Lotus floundered around, Nico Hulkenberg undoubtedly could not believe his good fortune.  He just drove around the outside of the World Driver's Champion, opportunistically picking up two places at once.  It wasn't a masterpiece of technical driving, to be sure, but it was my favorite move of the race... even if the Sauber later got a penalty for "late entry" into the pit lane.

*MOOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE:  When your car isn't performing the way it really should be, a driver may be tempted to feel frustration and annoyance.  When the driver is a former World Driving Champion and is a member of the McLaren F1 team running in the most important race on the calendar, they have good reason to feel that way.  When Jenson Button found himself racing with the Caterham of Heikki Kovaleinninninnie for 13th place, having been stuck behind him for a dozen laps or more, his frustration was palpable.  And then he tried to pass him in the Chicane...

...which was a dumb thing to try, particularly when you screw it up so badly that you wind up 1) spinning and 2) being unable to continue with seven laps to go.  Good jorb, Jenson!  Here's your Moooooo!

*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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Posted by: Wonderduck at 01:22 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 Six winners in the first six races is awesome. A season to dream about!

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 27, 2012 08:46 PM (+rSRq)

2 didn't realise you were quite the f1 fan. i thought it was hilarious they kept on showing and talking about button, bbc bias!!

flying kob is the best picture ive seen from f1 in a while.

and the goddam rain. seriously. do they have one guy staring up at the clouds or something. "yup, its gonna rain annnnny second"

Posted by: carnett at May 27, 2012 10:39 PM (cuntQ)

3 New around here, eh, Carnett?  The F1Update! is why this blog started in the first place, nearly seven years ago.  There have been 859 F1-related posts here at The Pond, out of 2141 total.  God only knows how many words and pictures... or hours spent... have been involved.

Posted by: Wonderduck at May 28, 2012 06:05 AM (q2lfL)

4 Oh, and welcome!!!

Posted by: Wonderduck at May 28, 2012 06:05 AM (q2lfL)

5

Posted by: carnett at May 28, 2012 07:02 PM (PL9Eu)

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