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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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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Though there had been a threat of rain, the weather at Barcalounger was perfect, as is usual.  In the 21 year history of this track, the winner of a non-rain F1 race has been the pole-itter every time save one... and that one rogue win came from 2nd on the grid.  So when Williams' Primate Maldonado led the field to the grid, he had to be feeling pretty confident.  Was that confidence misplaced, or would it prove to be well-founded?  THIS is your F1Update! for the 2012 Grand Prix of Spain!

*LIGHTS OUT:  The run from the starting line to the first turn at the Circuit de Catalunya is one of the longest in F1.  There's always something of a mad sprint to the first corner at the start of any F1 race, but in Spain it's even more frantic than usual.  Maldonado decided that he really wanted to cut Ferrari's HWMNBN, #2 on the grid, off at the pass, such as it was, so right off the bat he began to drift over to driver's right.  The Ferrari driver was having none of it and drove straight ahead, letting the Williams take the (slightly) longer route to the first turn.  When they reached the right-hander, HWMNBN had the inside line, a miniscule lead, and position: in short, he had taken the lead.  A lead he would not relinquish during the first stint.  Indeed, it looked like a Ferrari runaway was in store as the Spaniard, buoyed by the screams of his home fans, pulled away to a two second lead and more.

*THEN:  The first round of pitstops came early, beginning on Lap 8 as the soft tires, used in Quals the previous day, began to go off very quickly.  HWMNBN came in on Lap 11 for hard tires, as did Maldonado the following lap.  On Lap 13, however, something with impossible-to-forsee consequences occurred when Mercedes' Slappy Schumacher, looking to get past Maldonado's teammate at Williams, Bruno Senna, instead drove directly into the rear of the car.

Both cars then went directly into the kittylitter and were out of the race.  While the immense amount of debris on track seemed to beg for a safety car to be deployed, nothing of the sort happened.  Schumacher's radio call of "...what an idiot!" indicated who he thought caused the incident, but Slappy was the one penalized five grid places for the next race.

*FURTHERMORE: On Lap 24, Maldonado, unable to close with the Ferrari, dove into the pits for a new set of hard tires and emerged in third, behind HWMNBN and the Lotus of Kimi Raikkonnen.  With a relatively clear track ahead of him, he rips off two fast laps in a row.  At the same time, HWMNBN was struggling to get through traffic before he pitted from the lead on Lap 26.

After a clean stop by Ferrari, as HWMNBN was making his way back to the racing surface, he was passed by Primate Maldonado for second place... effectively, the lead, as Raikkonnen still needed to pit, which he did on Lap 28.

*CONTINUING:  And that's how it stayed until late in the race: Maldonado in the lead, HWMNBN as many as seven seconds behind.  Then the Ferrari began to slowly claw back some time on the Williams, cutting the lead down to just under two seconds with four laps to go.  However, Raikkonen was on the charge as well, taking over a second a lap off of HWMNBN at the same time.  It quickly became apparent that the two-time World Champion, in his attempt to track down the Williams driver, had burned his tires off the car.  Gone were hopes of winning the race; all that was left was holding onto second position.  On the penultimate lap, the Lotus driver hacked two full seconds off of the gap to 2nd place and looked ready to do the same on Lap 66.  In the end, HWMNBN managed to keep Mumbles seven-tenths of a second behind.  But four seconds ahead of the two, Primate Maldonado had become the fifth winner in five races this season, the first Venezuelan to ever win a F1 race, and had led Williams F1 to victory for the first time since 2004... all of which occurred the day after Sir Frank Williams, team owner, turned 70.


*AND THEN:  As is usual in F1, a team victory photo was taken, made extra-special by it being a first victory for the driver and the first win by the team after such a long time of mediocrity or worse.

As Sir Frank Williams addressed the team, thanking them for their efforts, there was an orange flash of light from the team pit box. 

Immediately, thick black smoke began to pour out of the garage as flames billowed up.  Mechanics hurriedly dove for fire extinguishers while non-essential personnel  cleared the area.  Emergency fire hoses were brought into play from both sides of the garage area.

Mechanics from the entire pitlane were involved in assisting with the fire fighting efforts.  Some 31 people were treated by the circuit medical staff, with seven people from three teams being sent to local hospitals for their injuries.  The worst we here at F1U! have heard of so far is a broken wrist (as twittered by Heikki Kovaleinninninnie) suffered by a Caterham mechanic. 

The chassis of Bruno Senna's car, brought in after being run over by Slappy Schumacher, was in the garage and looked... well, pretty good, actually.  The garage itself, on the other hand, is going to be something of a total writeoff, most likely, mostly from water damage.  One shudders to think how a relatively small team like WilliamsF1 will be able to replace it all, though there are reports of the other teams already being willing to donate equipment.  Initial reports suggested a KERS-induced fire, though this was later changed to a fuel blaze.  We'll keep you updated as more comes out.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE: Pastor Maldonado.  Like there was any doubt?  He didn't panic after being passed at the beginning, kept his tires fresher than HWMNBN, never put a wheel wrong... well-deserved.  One might ask whether he would have won if Hamilton had been on pole, but that didn't happen. 

*TEAM OF THE RACE: Williams, despite the fire. 

*MOVE OF THE RACE: Maldonado passing HWMNBN, Lap 26/27.  (see above)
*MOOOOO-OOOVE OF THE RACE: Slappy Schumacher running into Bruno Senna. (see above)

*SELECTED DRIVERS QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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All the hand-wringing and complaints proved not to be enough and the 2012 Grand Prix of Bahrain was to take place as scheduled.  How was the race?  Did protesters manage to disrupt the event?  Did it rain? Could Mark Webber manage to finish 4th in his fourth straight race?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2012 Bahrain Grand Prix!

*BACK TO THE BAD OLD DAYS:  When the lights went out, polesitter Seb Vettel was off and away, opening a 2.2 second lead by the end of the first lap.  Other than a failed late-race challenge from the Renault Lotus of Kimi Raikkonen, the result was never in question... just like in 2011.  If we're exceedingly fortunate, this was just an aberration and things will return to chaotic-normal in Spain.  If we're not... *shiver*

*WHAT WE WEREN'T SHOWN:

Smoke rises as protesters burn tires at a march in the vicinity of the Bahrain International Circuit. 

*DRIVER OF THE RACE: Red Bull's Seb Vettel had an opportunity to regain his glory days of 2011.  He grabbed it off the line, ran with it, and left the rest of the field in the literal dust.   Other than a lap or two during the pit rotations, he lead the entire race.  Even when Kimi Raikkonen pulled within a couple of car-lengths of him later in the race, one never got the feeling that he was in danger.   

*TEAM OF THE RACE: Renault Lotus.  Both drivers on the podium, and only a dominant drive by the reigning world driver's champion kept them from a win... yes, that's a good day for any team.  When it's from a team trying to prove that it deserves to be mentioned with the big boys?  Well done indeed.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  On Lap 21, Sergio Perez and Dean Maldonado had been scrapping for the past five minutes.  Meanwhile, the Force India of Paul di Resta casually made its way up behind them, looking for some opportunity to get by.

As the Sauber and Williams drivers threw haymakers at each other, the Force India danced in and threw a little jab.

...and came out the other side leading the both of them.  For making it look so incredibly easy, Paul di Resta wins his first MotR!

*MOOOOOOOO-OOOVE OF THE RACE:  On Lap 10 Lewis Hamilton attempted to pass the winner of last week's race, Nico Rosberg.  For his part, Rosberg decided that he didn't want to let the McLaren by without a fight...

...so he pushed him nearly two car-widths off the circuit.  He then whined back to the pit wall that Hamilton had passed him off-track.  On Lap 25, HWMNBN came up on the Mercedes of Rosberg, and what do you think happened?

That's right!  Rosberg, apparently taking lessons in good driving from his teammate, shoved the Ferrari off-track in the same place he did Hamilton.  While both incidents were investigated by the stewards after the race, neither earned Rosberg a penalty.  They did earn him a Moooo, however, as one suspects that this will come back to haunt him.

*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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No rain in the forecast, a jumbled grid, a first-time polesitter with six World Champions poised behind him, and arguably 10 cars with a valid chance to win.  To say today's Chinese Grand Prix had potential would be something of an understatement.  But did it live up to that potential?  Did we get our third winner in three races?  Or did someone take firm command of the Championship?  THIS is your F1Update! for the 2012 Grand Prix of China.

*LIGHTS OUT:  It's often said that Formula 1 is, above all other things, a team sport.  The evidence for that usually lays quite thin on the ground, however.  The start of today's race was a good example of a team's two drivers working together, though.  As the red lights began to come on, nobody honestly expected polesitter Nico Rosberg to hold the lead past a few laps; his Mercedes hadn't shown the staying power.  The same could be said for Slappy Schumacher, his teammate and partner on the first row.  When the lights were extinguished and the race begun, the two German drivers worked together to maximize the team's chances of getting a victory.  Polesitter Rosberg got away blindingly fast, while Slappy's getaway was good but not great.  He very carefully managed to bottle up the rest of the field as they headed through Turn 1 while Rosberg began to disappear over the horizon.  The other 22 drivers could only sit on Schumi's tail and make occasional attempts at a pass, all of which were easily fended off by the surprisingly quick Mercedes.  Rosberg pulled away to a four second lead; hardly insurmountable, but far enough away that it'd take a heroic effort to track him down.

*BORING:  And that's how it stayed for the first 12 laps.  The train held up by Schumacher was released when he went into the pits... a pitstop that turned out to be the end of his race.  Miscommunication between the jackman, lollypopper and a tire changer saw his car released before the front-right tire was entirely torqued down.  A few turns later, he pulled over before the wheel could work itself free.  That was the last bit of excitement we saw until around Lap 45 or so.

*NOSE-TO-TAIL:  One common complaint American viewers often have about F1 is the way the field gets spread out during the course of a race.  "It's not exciting", they say, and it's hard to argue with that point.  Close racing is preferable to having everybody 200 yards apart.  On Lap 46, here's how the field looked:

This is the battle for second place.  Kimi Raikkonen leads Seb Vettel, Jenson Button, Lettuce Grosjean, Mark Webber, Lewis Hamilton, Bruno Senna and Pontiff Maldonado, with the whole group separated by two seconds.  There were a couple of reasons for this admittedly uncommon occurrence.  The first was that all of these cars have roughly the same level of performance in comparison to each other.  To be sure, there are differences: the Red Bulls are the slowest on the straights, Renault Lotus the fastest, for example, but everything seemed to be balancing out.  The other reason may have been the most important... tire clag.

This season, tire manufacturer Pirelli vowed that they'd make a tire that didn't wear as dramatically as the 2011 tire did, and for Australia and Malaysia, it looked like they had succeeded.  In China, however, the tire clag began building up early and never stopped.  Drivers were reluctant to leave the clean asphalt to make a passing attempt on the less grippy marbles... leading to Kimi Raikkonen leading a train.

*EXCITEMENT:  The last 10 laps had enough excitement to make up for the rest of the race.  Kimi's tires fell off the infamous cliff, and in the space of one lap fell from 2nd to 10th.  This lead to the uncorking of the rest of the field.  To begin with, Button got past Vettel, then Lewis Hamilton did the same.  As the race neared completion, Vettel's teammate Mark Webber muscled the young German aside to move into 4th place, in a moment that had to feel good after the crap he's put up with the past two seasons.  Leader Nico Rosberg, far enough up the track to not be able to see what was going on, said he had no idea what was happening.  "The pit wall was calling, saying 'Kimi is in second, now Button is, now Vettel...'.  I didn't know what to expect next!"

*WONDERBOY: Years ago, when Nico Rosberg came into F1, we here at F1U! nicknamed him "Wonderboy."  Near as we could tell, he had everything you could possibly ask for in a driver: GP2 champion, the ability to drive fast under pressure, a good bloodline (his father is a former World Champion), and a great hairstyle.  The only thing he didn't have was success in F1.  "Wonderboy" became derogatory, then we stopped using it altogether.  On Lap 56 of the 2012 Grand Prix of China, Rosberg finally began to live up to his billing, bringing home a 20 second victory for his first F1 win, and the first win for Mercedes as a Constructor since 1955.  Button and Hamilton trailed behind, followed by Webber and Vettel.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  Nico Rosberg.  Other than laps during the pit rotations, Nico led from pole to flag, at one point had a 25-second lead, and was never in danger of losing control of the race.  Easily the equal of many of Vettel's dominating performances in 2011.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  McLaren.  A 2-3 finish is always a good result, though they did throw away any chance at a victory during Jenson Button's nine-second-long pitstop towards the end of the race.  Still, could be worse, they could have thrown away a possible 1-2, like Mercedes. 

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  Towards the end of the race, there were so many passes it was hard to choose just one.  After lengthy contemplation, the F1U! team decided to go with the pass that led to the end of Kimi Raikkonen's stay in the points.  Seb Vettel had been stalking the mumbling Finn for a couple of laps, looking hither and yon for an opening.  On Lap 48, he made a go of it.

Going into the turn, he looked like he was going to try going around the outside, so as to be better positioned for the next bend.  Raikkonen, holding the racing line, could not have been particularly concerned.

Surprisingly, Vettel tightened up his turn and undercut the Renault Lotus driver, then stomped on the gas and smashed the KERS button.

He then proceeded to out-muscle the Kimster into the next turn.  In the process, Kimi burned off what was left of his tires' grip, sending him staggering into the clag on the next turn.  Pretty much everybody passed him after that, including two soapbox derby racers, a R/C car, and Narain Kittylitter.  Okay, that last one is too ridiculous to believe, but our point is made.

*MOOOOOO-OOOVE OF THE RACE:  It's unfair to give this one to the recipient, as he really didn't do anything wrong per se, and indeed it could be argued that it's more an example of fine car control than anything else.  But we've gotta give it to someone, and Mark Webber is the lucky fellow.  On Lap 37, the Australian ran very wide off the turn known as "Indianapolis" and discovered that doing so might not be the best of ideas.

A driver the height of Mark Webber pretty much is sitting on the floor of the cockpit with no padding of any sort, and it's well-known that F1 cars are entirely unsprung.  The jolt Webber must have received upon landing had to have been teeth-rattling and spine-compressing.  Despite this, the RB8 showed no ill effects, and he still finished fourth.  Good job, Mark... here's your (undeserved) Moo.

*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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Posted by: Wonderduck at 07:20 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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(As I got ready to post this, the signal came back... if I may quote Emily Litella, "Never mind."  It's not raining, by the way.)

A rather burly line of storms is in the process of floating over Duckford and Pond Central as I type...

The "*" is a pretty good generalization of Pond Central in relation to the rest of the city... and where the thunderboomers are... or were.  It's bucketing rain, and there's been some big bass rolls of thunder, but that's all.

Unfortunately, my DISH satellite signal has packed up and gone away.  "Total Signal Loss" is the message, which means who knows when it'll come back?!?  Of course, as I type this, SPEED's coverage of the GP of China has begun, and I'm staring at the "Total Signal Loss" message.

Guess I might be watching the Sky/BBC download sometime in the afternoon.  This might delay the F1Update! a bit.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 12:39 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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When it rains in F1, everything you've known previously goes out the window.  Usually this means you're in for a wacky race, as rain is The Great Equalizer.  As the storm clouds crowded around the Sepang International Circuit, it looked like we were all set for a hefty dose of the wacky.  But who would take advantage?  Who would lose out?  And would it even rain after all?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2012 Grand Prix of Malaysia!

*PRE-RACE:  The closer it got to the point where the teams had to get off the grid and the cars had to roll out on the recon lap, the closer and heavier the rainclouds got.  Then, with around five minutes to go, the rain began to fall gently upon the asphalt.  Off came the slick tires, on went the Intermediates, and the mechanics scurried to the grass.

As the cars circumnavigated the track, the calls began to come in... some parts of the circuit were wetter than others.  Maybe it was just a localized shower and the Inters would only be on for a few laps.  The Thundering Herd took their places on the grid, anticipating the extinguishing of the lights and the start of the race... but at this point, nobody noticed that the lone HRT on the grid, driven by Narain Kittylitter, was on the full wet tires, while his teammate, Pete Rose, was in the pit lane, getting the Wellingtons put on his car as well.

*LIGHTS OUT:  As the field made its way to the Turn 1/2 Complex, everything was fine, just another drive in the park.  This week, polesitter Lewis Hamilton kept his teammate Jenson Button behind as they swung through the turns, while behind them there was much in the way of sound and fury, in the end signifying nothing.  Because when they reached Turns 3 and 4, all the skies broke loose.

The Sepang International Circuit is uniquely suited for wet races, in that it is wider than most tracks at 45 feet.  This allows the field to spread out to a certain degree so as not to be blinded by the spray.  While this is great for the leaders, it just makes life even harder for the people behind.  The man they call "The Rainmaster," Slappy Schumacher, spun almost immediately upon hitting the wet, maybe taking Lettuce Grosjean with him (or maybe being helped by the Renault Lotus).  Coming to a halt nearly in the center of the track, it was only by luck he wasn't run over by the cars behind.  Two turns later, Bruno Senna rotated his way off-track, missing the nearby graveltrap by scant inches.  By the end of Lap 2, some members of the field were diving into the pits for the full wet tires, others were staying out on the rapidly weakening Inters but keeping their cars on-track by force of will alone it appeared.  As occasionally happens at larger racetracks, the rain was heavier on one part of the circuit (the two straights and the first set of turns) than on other parts (the "back side").  Lettuce Grosjean, perhaps from damage suffered in his little dance with Slappy, spun off into a graveltrap and dug himself in on Lap 4, never to be seen again.  Jenson Button decided, apparently on his own, to come in and change to the Wet tires on Lap 5 while his teammate stayed out in the lead... as the rain began to bucket down even harder, now spreading to cover the entire circuit.  Even as skilled a driver as Hamilton began to suffer with the Inters as the Sepang International Swimming Pool began to retain, not shed, the water.  Meanwhile, Button on the Wets made up ground hand over fist.  Lewis ducked into the pit lane for his Wet tires on Lap 6, and it was going to be close to see if he'd get out ahead of Button.  The difference ended up being around one car's length, but Hamilton just barely stayed in the lead.  In the pit shuffle, the Sauber of Sergio Perez, who stopped at the end of Lap 1, wound up in third place. 

*SAFETY CAR:  At this point on Lap 7, a number of things happened at the same time.  First, Jenson Button radioed to the pit wall (and by extension, to Charlie Whiting, race controller) that "the third sector was a lake."  Second, the Safety Car was sent out.  Third, and perhaps most importantly, multiple bolts of lightning touched down in the vicinity of the rear grandstands, knocking out power to a number of the FIA cameras (and, coincidentally, much of the SkySports feed).  Then came the news that it was going to rain for at least another half-hour, and suddenly there was a lot of talk of the 2009 GP of Malaysia.  Well, the rain wasn't that heavy, but it was a valid concern.  It only took one lap behind Berndt Maylander before the red flag was thrown, and the race ground to a halt on Lap 9, the Herd forming up on the grid. 

*AMAZING: As the cars were put under the collapsible gazebos, deadly creatures they may be, some oddball bits of information began to appear.  For example, starting on the full wet tires had paid off for Narain Kittylitter, who was sitting in 10th place!  Jules Vergne's Toro Rosso was in 7th having never put on Wet tires at all, perhaps the bravest piece of driving we'd ever seen. 

*THUMB-TWIDDLING:  And so we sat under the red flag for nearly an hour.

Drivers would eventually get out of their cars and wander off the grid, presumably to towel off, play parcheesi, talk about the weather, that sort of thing, then eventually wander back, only to be told to go back and play Stratego... or something.  On the grid, the teams would every now and again stick a mechanic in the cockpit and fire up the cars, so as to keep the engines warm.  This is imperative, as when cold, a F1 engine is essentially a solid block of metal, the tolerances are so fine.  To start one, you need to preheat the lubricants, water, and so forth, then feed them in before it'll fire up.  Letting the lump get too cool on the grid means you're out of the race.  Eventually the rain cleared off, the track began to dry a bit, and the field was given five minutes to get ready. 

*HERE WE GO AGAIN:  The field perambulated behind the Mercedes AMG for three laps, then the race began again... but we must acknowledge the jape played by The Varsha, lead member of the Legendary Announce Team.  As the Safety Car pulled away from the field to get clear before the restart, he said "The lights are out on the Safety Car, we'll be back after this commercial break."  As the other two members of the L.A.T. made incoherent noises of outrage, The Varsha merely replied with "Somebody dared me." 

*AND WE'RE OFF: The race resumed, eventually the field came in for Inters around Lap 15 or 16.  Lewis Hamilton's stop was mangled terribly and he rejoined the field in 9th, which would become 3rd as the cars ahead of him stopped for tires.  Then Jenson Button, who had already stopped, got tangled up in the HRT of Kittylitter and lost his front wing.  To be fair, Kittylitter did nothing wrong.  He was under no obligation to move aside, since this was for position.  Button just made a mistake, and paid for it.  His stop was a hopeless blunder, the front nose going on well enough, but the tire change taking forever and the rear jack seem to get hung up.  Button fell from 9th to 20th, and would never factor in the race again. 

*SETTLING IN:  Then a frantic race began to relax a bit, with the Ferrari of HWMNBN in front, followed by Sergio Perez' Sauber and the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton.  Seb Vettel, Nico Rosberg and Kimi Raikkonen followed behind, but were never close to a podium position.  On Lap 31, with everybody still on Inters, HWMNBN led Sergio Perez by nearly eight seconds...

*RATCHETING UP:  ...and then the Malaysian Miracle began.  It was clear at Australia that while the Saubers were gentle on their tires, the Ferraris weren't overly so.  The gap dropped to seven seconds... then 6.5 seconds... on Lap 35, it was just under five seconds.  Then it was clear that HWMNBN must have burned his tires straight off, because by Lap 36, the lead was 3.95 seconds.  Now the concern for both drivers had to be how long the tires would last before completely failing.  HWMNBN, Perez, and Hamilton were all on the Inters they put on some 20 laps previously, and while they may have been babying them, Inters just aren't designed to go that long.

Hamilton's were essentially slicks already, the Ferrari was showing signs that his were dying... only Perez was looking solid.  There was a stop coming... the only question was, would they go with Inters, or would they put on dry tires?  When Daniel Ricciardo put soft slicks on at Lap 39, everybody held their breath... as lightning flashed in the background.  Not only did Ricciardo survive the first try on drys, he turned the fastest lap of the race so far.  Since most of the rest of the field had Inters that looked like Hamilton's, everybody began to put on the racing shoes.

*THE MIRACLE MANIFESTS:  Everybody but the two men up front.  They had opened up such a gap to the McLaren that they could pit, put on new tires and come back on track and still not lose their positions.  A shocking turn of events after the prior week!  On Lap 40, Perez had nearly caught the Ferrari, cutting the lead to under one second.  The Red Team knew something had to be done, and they called their man in for fresh tires.  Shockingly, Sauber left Perez out on-track instead of ghosting the movements of the Ferrari.  Sergio Perez had the race in his hand at this point; if he could push hard enough and fast enough, he might be able to pit and get out again before HWMNBN could get by, taking the lead in the pit rotation.  It was not to be, however, and when the Sauber pitted, he rejoined the race behind the Ferrari... still in second place, but some four seconds behind and dropping rapidly as he tried to get the dry tires up to temperature.  By the time they were there, he was some seven seconds in arrears.  But nothing was going to stop the Mexican, not today.  By Lap 46, the lead was 3.2 seconds and again falling fast.  The stress levels were going through the roof, and even a little comic relief from Seb Vettel couldn't help (see Mooooooo-ooove Of The Race, below).

*MIRACLE MASSACRE: On Lap 49, the lead was .670 seconds and it was clear that there was little that HWMNBN would be able to do to defend the lead, what with Perez being able to use the DRS seven more times.  He'd be able to block, surely, but with the rulebook having been rewritten to prevent weaving, there's only so much that even a driver of HWMNBN's caliber could do to stop a clearly faster car from getting by.  Then the radio to the Sauber driver came alive with a call from his race engineer: "Remember, Sergio, we need this position."  While this was valid, particularly considering what happened to Williams F1 at the last race on the final lap, it seemed an odd time to make such a call.  Your driver is getting ready to stampede past a Ferrari for the lead and, incidentally, Sauber's first victory since 2008 and their second in 20 years of racing, and you're telling him to be careful?  Immediately the LAT wondered if the call was made because they run Ferrari engines.  While all three poo-poohed the idea, the thought remains... particularly because on Lap 50, mere moments after the call was made, Perez blew Turn 14 and ran wide, handing HWMNBN a full five seconds cushion.  At this point, the official F1U! notebook is filled with profanities and incoherent screamings. 

*THE END:  Sergio Perez wasn't done.  He returned to his prior quickness, taking a second per lap off the Ferrari, but he ran out of laps.  He finished second, only 2.26 seconds behind the Ferrari of HWMNBN.  Lewis Hamilton finished third, nearly 13 seconds behind the Sauber.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  HWMNBN has a lousy Ferrari underneath him, but even a bad Ferrari is usually better than the rest of the field, and he's now won 28 times in F1.  Sergio Perez has started fewer races than the Spaniard has won, and nearly took this victory away from him in an underfunded Sauber.  If Gandalf Kobayashi hadn't've retired his car from the points just before the radio call for Perez to be careful, would he have won?  We'll never know.  What we do know is that Perez had the bigger challenge ahead of him, and nearly shocked the world.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  None.  The top eight positions were held by eight different teams.  If pressed, we suppose we'd have to give it to Ferrari.  They won the race after all, right?  But we'd prefer to go with none.

*MOVE OF THE RACE: On Lap 30, Gandalf Kobayashi was all over the back of seven-time World Champion Slappy Schumacher.  The Mercedes had lost whatever pace it had shown back in Quals, while the Sauber was proving to be rather spritely on the day.  Nevertheless, just the fact that Slappy was involved meant that any passing attempt would be difficult.

Out of Turn 4, Gandalf got better grip out of the exit of the turn and was therefore able to pile on the power faster than Slappy.

Through the entrance of Turn 5, the two were side-by-side, with Gandalf on the outside of the turn, but on the inside of the upcoming Turn 6.  The Sauber kept the power on, and though the track was dryer than it had been earlier, it was hardly dry.  Both drivers managed to keep control, and Kobayashi kept Shadowfax right alongside the Silver Arrow all the way through the long turn.

As Five turned to Six, Slappy wisely backed out of the throttle and let the youthful Japanese driver by.  A solid pass in questionable conditions, and the best one of the day.

*MOOOOOOO-OOOVE OF THE RACE: On Lap 46, Seb Vettel was in 5th place and solidly in the points.  As he blew past the lapped HRT of Narain Kittylitter, he braked hard and cut across the nose of the Indian driver.  Now, the new tire compounds brought by Pirelli are called "hard", "medium" and so forth, but to be honest, that's only in comparison to each other.  You can easily push a finger deeply into the "hard" tires.  Now, when they're rotating fast enough to make a car go 140mph and you run them over another car's carbon fiber front wing, what do you think happens?

By the time Vettel made it back to the pits and returned to the track, he had dropped to 12th, and the damage from the flailing tire carcass would eventually cause him to drop out on the final lap.  No points and while Kittylitter got penalized for the incident, Sebby should have known better than to have cut it that fine.  Here's your Mooooooooo-ooove, World Champ!

*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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Posted by: Wonderduck at 10:10 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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In the long history of Formula 1, only 32 men are able to say that they were World Driver Champion.  Six of those champions took to the grid under sunny skies at Melbourne, over one quarter of the number of drivers in the contest.  But would we see any change from last year's Red Bull race dominance?  Or would there be a bright new day ahead?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2012 Grand Prix of Australia!
*LIGHTS OUT:  Once the mandatory flag-carrier flyby took place, and at an altitude that shows that Qantas has more sense than Etihad Airways, all attention was focused on those five little lights that would signal not only the start of the race, but the start of the longest season in F1 history.  Right away, it became obvious that some things will never change: we had a Mark Webber Lousy Start^© that saw him drop all the way to the mid-field.  Up at the front, Jenson Button outdragged his pole-sitting teammate Lewis Hamilton into the first turn, and Lettuce Grosjean winds up getting shuffled back to sixth.  Into the first turn, it looked for a moment that the Thundering Herd would get through in one piece, until Bruno Senna's Williams got tipped into a spin... and worse.

Surprisingly, neither Daniel Ricciardo's Toro Rosso nor Senna's car suffered any major damage in this incident, and both were able to continue after stopping for a new nose (Ricciardo) and new tires (Senna).  On Lap 2, the races of both Nico Hulkenberg and Lettuce come to an end in separate incidents.

*BREATHE DEEP:  Up at the front of the field, we were seeing a repeat of 2011, just with a different name at the top.  Jenson Button, taking advantage of the lack of traffic in front of him, simply began to run away from the rest of the pack.  It wasn't to the same degree as Seb Vettel's 2011 dominance, but by Lap 7 the McLaren driver had a four second lead on his teammate, and nine seconds on the Mercedes of Slappy Schumacher.  Meanwhile, Vettel was finding that the RB8's handling was nothing more than ordinary, running off the grass and bringing him into a short scrum with Nico Rosberg and Ferrari's HWMNBN.  Slappy, on the other hand, discovered that his Silver Arrow was... fragile.  He drove through a gravel trap on Lap 11... and his gearbox stopped working.  This is hardly uncommon; the transmissions of a F1 car are more finely crafted than any high-end watch.  While they're built to stand up to the stresses of running during a normal race, the odd shock can sometimes cause them to either try to chose two gears at once (bad) or basically forget how to function at all (also bad).  While he got back to the pits, the seven-time Champion's day was finished.  More importantly, Seb Vettel moved into third and immediately began tracking down Lewis Hamilton.

*FIRST PITS:  As the cars began to filter into pit lane for the first tire changes of the season, it became clear that the teams had put a lot of practice into their mechanical ballet.  If anything, the tire changes are even faster than in 2011.  For example, the F1U! official notebook of the race records that Felipe Massa came in on Lap 12, and as the crew reached for a pen and began writing, Ferrari changed his tires and got him going again.  We missed his stop entirely.  There are rumors that the Mercedes team have been able to change a car's tires in less than two seconds in practice.  Astounding.  By the time the pit rotations were done, Jenson Button had solidified his lead massively, opening an 11 second gap to his teammate.  His teammate, however, only had one second in hand over the reigning Driver's Champion, and it didn't look like Vettel was going to be going away anytime soon.

*HARD LUCK SAFETY CAR:  That's how it stayed until the next round of pitstops approached around Lap 34.  On Lap 36, McLaren gambled on their mechanics, bringing both their men in for their tire change at the same time.  The gamble seemed to work; as Button pulled out of the pit box, Hamilton, some 10 seconds behind, pulled in.  What the team didn't count on was the Lotus Caterham of The Red Menace coming to a halt on the front straight just past the start/finish line.  For The Menace, this turned out to be a stroke of good fortune, as reportedly his steering column completely failed and he had a nice empty stretch of road to bring his car to a stop with.  Almost immediately, the yellow flag was thrown, and moments later the Safety Car rolled out.  Taking advantage of this, Red Bull brought in Vettel, who had taken the lead while the McLarens were pitting.  When he rejoined the field, he was in second place, having jumped Hamilton in the chaos.  After the race, neither Vettel or Hamilton were willing to say what exactly would have happened if the Safety Car hadn't come out, if Vettel would have caught the McLaren, or having caught it, passed it.  In any case, when the Safety Car came in on Lap 42, the lineup was Button, Vettel, Hamilton, Webber and HWMNBN, who was hanging on grimly in his recalcitrant Ferrari.

*RESTART HO!:  If there's one thing we learned in 2011, it's that there was nobody better during restarts than Seb Vettel.  When Berndt Maylander shut off the lights on the Mercedes SLS, Vettel got a wonderful jump, making it impossible for Lewis Hamilton, who is possibly the worst restarter in the world, to make any threatening move.  However, Jenson Button's restart wasn't shabby, and he immediately began to open up a gap on the Red Bull.  In one lap, he opened up a 2.5 second lead, and it looked like a win was locked up... as long as nothing went wrong.

*SPOKE TOO SOON:  On Lap 48, Felipe Massa and Bruno Senna were dicing for position, and by dicing, we mean "attempting to shiv each other."  When both dodged by Daniel Ricciardo, Senna tried to go around the outside of the Ferrari... who kept drifting farther and farther outside.  The inevitable inevitably occurred.

The two cars managed to get locked into each other for a good two hundred yards, maybe.  Massa's Ferrari, a massive circular scrape gouged into his right sidepod, retired shortly after making it to the pit lane.  Senna's Williams, however, has shown that it is made of sterner stuff than pretty much any car on the grid, and at least half the cars on the road today.  First it got bounced into the air on Lap 1, now this, and it still continued on.  The F1U! team held it's collective breath, waiting for a Safety Car to be called out for debris, which would again throw the last few laps into a cocked hat.  It never happened.

*FINALLY: On Lap 55 of 58, it started to look like we'd have a rather exciting finish.  Both Red Bulls were closing in on both McLarens: Vettel on Button, Webber on Hamilton.  Button's lead over Vettel had dropped to two seconds, and Webber was in DRS range of Hamilton.  It later came out that both of the Glare With Wheels were short on fuel, though at this point the team told Button that he was good to finish the race.  By Lap 56, he had tacked another second onto his lead.  Hamilton and Webber, on the other hand, stayed close all the way to the end, just unable to get close enough to make the DRS advantage work.  In the end, it was Button, Vettel, Hamilton, Webber and HWMNBN.  Alas, The Williams That Wouldn't Die retired on Lap 56, presumably of exhaustion.

The mad scramble that arose for the final three points-paying positions between four cars was just icing on the cake of a wonderful first race of the season.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  One would think that Jenson Button would win this with his clear victory today.  One would be wrong.  The Ferrari F2012 is an ill-tempered beast.  It's not fast enough nor is it nimble enough.  It has no grip.  It chews through its tires in a ridiculously short amount of time.  There's no way it should be able to contend for anything other than midpack honors.  But there sits HWMNBN in 5th, a good 15 seconds ahead of his nearest competitor.  All day, he kept his Lame Horse in the mix where a poorly-turned wheel or unforseen technical glitch or two would have put him on the podium.  Gotta respect that, particularly when his teammate could never even get into the top 10 all race.

*TEAM OF THE RACE: McLaren.  In preseason testing, they looked the class of the field.  In the first race of the season, they proved it.  Only an unlucky break with the safety car cost them a 1-2 finish.  While they don't seem to be as dominant as Red Bull were last year, they do indeed appear to be the best... but it's close enough that it should prove to be an exciting dominance.

*MOVE OF THE RACE: On Lap 25, Gandalf Kobayashi was busy being a thorn in the side of HWMNBN.  He was just fast enough to threaten, but maybe not quite fast enough to pass, the Ferrari.  Around halfway through the lap, he made a try on the outside to the outside of a turn, heedless of the lurking Renault Lotus of Mumbles Raikkonen behind.

This attempt failed when HWMNBN pushed him far outside, forcing Gandalf to either brake or end up in the kittylitter.  He touched the brakes.

His momentary loss of headway gave former World Champion Raikkonen all the impetus he needed.  He lunged for the opening left to the right of the Sauber and kept the power on.

Even though he could have been forced outside by Gandalf, much like what happened with the Ferrari, the difference was that Mumbles had the racing line.  An opportunistic move from a driver called "Iceman" by his peers for the cold-blooded way he drives... welcome back, and here's your MotR! 

*MOOOOOO-OOOVE OF THE RACE: On the final lap of the race, Pastor Maldonado had a chance to take 5th away from HWMNBN.  The two had been fighting madly, with the superior driving skills of the Ferrari driver looking like they would be enough to keep the Venezuelan behind.  The Williams driver looked to be getting ready for one last desperate lunge, though, when he got a little too much of the outside of a turn.  The result of this unforced error?

A hard head-first impact with the barriers and a throwing away of the best finish for a Williams in three years.  While we can't fault him for trying, we can hand Pastor Maldodo a Moo.  Good jorb!

SELECTED DRIVERS QUOTES:

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The skies above looked ugly, big black clouds approaching the Autodromo Juan Carlos Pace seemingly from all directions.  It wasn't raining yet, but every driver on the grid and every mechanic in the pit lane had an eye cocked towards the heavens, looking for the first hint of drizzle, downpour or deluge.  Would rain be the deciding factor in this, the last race of the season, or would we get a straight-up run to the checkered flag?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2011 Grand Prix of Brazil!

*LIGHTS OUT:  As we've come to expect, once the race began Seb Vettel streaked away from his pole position to open a 1.1 second lead over his teammate Mark Webber.  After two laps, it was 2.4 seconds and this began to have all the hallmarks of a battle to see who would be the first to finish the race AFTER the Driver's Champion.  But all was not well inside the guts of Seb Vettel's RB7.

*INTERLAGOS HATES GEARBOXES:  Around Lap 14 we first got evidence that this race was not going to be going all Seb Vettel's way.  A radio broadcast from the pit wall said it all: "We need you to short shift into second gear."  A couple of laps later came another call: "We have a gearbox problem.  Short shift for second and third gears."  As the race went on we were treated to more such calls... and Seb Vettel's unintentionally humorous responses.  For example, on Lap 25 the team's message was an audibly more urgent "we have a serious gearbox problem, short shift please."  In response, Vettel ripped off the fastest lap of the race thus far.  Then, finally, the team made it perfectly clear to their World Champion that he had to baby the gearbox if he wanted to finish the race: "Short shift every corner, every lap."  If nothing else though, Vettel wanted to race, impending gearbox failure or no, for he replied the way a racer should: "If I do that, I'll fall behind!"  Alas, the radio was cut at that point, for we suspect the pit wall's response would have done justice to a pissed-off Marine drill sergeant.  While Vettel's situation proved to be the most amusing, his was not the only car to be plagued by a balky gearbox.  McLaren's Lewis Hamilton was warned that he had a dying gearbox and that there was nothing he or the team could do about it.  A few laps later, an ugly grinding noise announced that the ratios had departed this Earth and headed to gearbox heaven.  Force India's Paul diResta and Renault's Red Menace also had gearbox issues but they held together long enough to complete the race with little reduction in speed.

*RAIN.  PRECIPITATION.  MOISTURE.:  As the race began, the FIA's weather prognosticators  reported that it was going to rain, it was just a question of when.  They had good reason to believe this; you could see rain falling in the city of São Paulo just beyond the Autodromo Juan Carlos Pace's walls.  Repeatedly the purveyors of precipitation sent warnings to the teams: "Rain in five minutes." "Rain in 10 minutes." "Rain expected inside of 30 minutes."  On Lap 35, Ferrari tweeted that there was going to be rain in just a few minutes... and immediately brought HWMNBN in for a set of dry weather tires.  Confusion reigned amongst the Legendary Announce Team.  Finally, the masters of moisture gave up, saying that they didn't expect any rain until after the "current checkered flag."  As Bob Varsha said, "what, there are more than one?"  In the end, the expected rain never did fall and the race proceeded apace.

*TOWARDS THE END:  After the Red Bull pit wall blistered the ears of their youthful wunderkind, his Australian teammate began to close in at the rate of a half-second per lap.  On Lap 30, the Driver's Champion pulled aside to let Webber go by.  A good call, as racing a hobbled car against a teammate's healthy vehicle never ends well.  Suddenly everything became much more interesting, for while first place in the Driver's Championship had been locked up a month ago, there was still an active battle for second, third and fourth.  The only hope Webber had to finish second was to win the race and for McLaren's Jenson Button to have a breakdown and for HWMNBN to finish fourth or worse.  If Button got even one point, he'd be second no matter what the Red Bull driver did.  The failure of Hamilton's gearbox gave hope that Button's would suffer a similar fate, but the Ferrari driver seemed to be firmly ensconced in third place.

*AND THEN...:  Going into the final round of pit stops, the order was Webber, Vettel (driving a gritty race), HWMNBN and Button.  All four drivers put on the harder tires and set sail for the end of the race and the season.  It looked like Button would finish second in the Driver's Championship, followed by HWMNBN and Webber... except for one thing.  If there was a single overarching problem with the Ferrari F150° Italia all year, it was that it was terrible on the harder tires.  If there was one thing that Jenson Button had proven again and again this year, it was that he could make his McLaren MP4/26 work well on any tire compound... and today was no exception.  He began to take huge chunks of time out of the Ferrari's lead, leaving no doubt what was about to occur.  On Lap 61, Button simply cruised past HWMNBN for the bottom step of the podium, coincidentally handing third place in the Driver's Championship to Mark Webber.  However, the race was not yet over, for as Button dealt with the Spaniard, Seb Vettel began to show signs that his gearbox was making his life a nightmare.  He completely blew a turn, taking to the asphalt runoff area to continue the race.  If that continued, Button had a slim chance to catch him for second place.

*THE END:  While Button was snipping a half-second off of the gap to Vettel per lap, the lead was much too great.  Mark Webber swept across the line for his first (and only) victory of the year, followed some 17 seconds later by Vettel's limping Red Bull.  Button was next to cross the finish line 11 seconds later, followed by HWMNBN with a similar gap. 

*FINAL DRIVER'S CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS: Vettel, Button, Webber, HWMNBN, Hamilton, Felipe Massa.  Curiously, Grizzly Nick Heidfeld, who hadn't driven since Round 11 in Hungary, still finished in 11th place.

*FINAL CONSTRUCTOR'S CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS: Red Bull, McLaren, Ferrari, Mercedes, Renault, Force India, Sauber, Toro Rosso, Williams, Lotus, HRT, Virgin.  If you took all the points from third through 12th and added them together, you'd have a total of 772 points.  Red Bull alone had 650.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  Seb Vettel.  At one point in the race, he radioed to his pit wall that he felt "like Senna in '91."  In that particular Brazilian Grand Prix, Ayrton Senna won the race despite having only first, second and sixth gears.  Here, Vettel kept his crippled gearbox going well enough to not only finish second, but finish second easily.  While we still don't know exactly how bad his gearbox damage was, the increasingly strident calls from his race engineer suggested it wasn't good.  A sterling drive for the two-time World Champion in difficult circumstances.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  Red Bull.  Really, how can you not give it to them?  They finished 1-2, they coaxed an ill car for some 60 laps across the finish line (when their biggest rivals couldn't get one of theirs to last 10 laps from when the problem became apparent), and heck, they just squashed the sport all season long.  Just tip your cap to them and move on to next year.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  In Formula 1, particularly in the age of DRS and KERS, a pass can come at any time two cars are close enough.  There are certain places and times, though, that a pass just doesn't occur.  In the S-Curves at Suzuka, for example, or Turn 1 at Monaco.  It just isn't done.  Another of that sort is Turns 6 and 7 here at Brazil.  Fast right-hand sweepers of decreasing radius, blowing those will ruin the entire middle sector of Interlagos, if it doesn't pitch you off into the Brazilian terrain.  So of course it's ridiculous to expect to be passed there, and it's even more unlikely that you'll have to defend against a pass on the outside of the turns.  So on Lap 11, when HWMNBN closed in on Jenson Button heading down the short chute to Turn 6, Button probably felt pretty good.

...and then the Ferrari, tires apparently covered in stickum, Krazy Glue and honey, swooped to the outside of Button and blew the metaphorical doors off the McLaren.  A heckuva pass in a very unlikely spot!

*MOOOOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE:  Rule #1 when performing a tire change: tighten down the wheel nut.  Rule #2: make sure you follow rule #1.

Thanks, Virgin Racing.  We knew we could count on you to give us a laugh today, and you didn't disappoint.  The wheel nut's bid for freedom gave us a chuckle during a tense race.  Here's your Mooooo!

*DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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The grid formed up under a bright but setting sun for the penultimate race of the season with the familiar sight of Red Bull's Seb Vettel on pole.  However, McLaren's Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button obviously had the measure of the RB7.  On this track where passing is a rarity, the run to the first turn could be decisive.  Which car would lead the field?  THIS is your F1U! for the 2011 Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi.

*SHOCK:  The lights went out, releasing the Thundering Herd to charge down to Turn 1.  In what had to be the least surprising outcome ever, Vettel not only held the lead into the first bend, but quickly showed that everything we had thought about the McLaren's advantage over the Red Bull was false.  As the Red Bull powered into and through the turn, it opened a four or five car-length advantage over Hamilton and we here at F1U! threw up our hands in disgust.  And then...

We still haven't heard exactly what caused Vettel's right-rear tire to deflate, sending the Red Bull into a spin just as he turned into Turn 2.  It may have hit a carbon-fiber shard left over from the earlier GP2 race.  When the car accelerated off the line, it may have had enough grip to torque the tire off the rim.  It may have had a slow puncture even before the race began.  Whatever the reason, by the time Vettel got his car back on track for the slow, difficult crawl back to the pits, tire flailing at the rear bodywork the whole time, the entire field had gotten past.  By the time he made it to his pit stall and officially completed his first lap, the field had mostly finished the second.  Mechanics swarmed the Champion's car, but a fast and thorough inspection of the right-rear made it clear that the damage inflicted by the shredded rubber was too bad to allow the RB7 to continue.  Seb Vettel had retired from a race for the first time this season.

*AWE:  With Sebby out of the picture, the mantle of "dominating leader" fell to Lewis Hamilton.  By the end of the first lap, he had a 2.5 second lead over the Ferrari of HWMNBN who got into a scrap with Jenson Button for second place, aiding Hamilton's attempt to pull away.  Once things settled down, it became clear that the McLaren would not be headed in any way.  Farther back, Jenson Button fell to 4th place, passed by Mark Webber, when his KERS unit failed.  While he was eventually able to get it working again, for the rest of the race he would wind up having to reset it every two or three laps.  Back up at the front, it was obvious that we were looking at a strategy race.

*PITS:  With Lewis Hamilton able to open a lead but not able to run away and hide, any excess time spent in the pits would be crucial.  Of course, pit stops have always been important in F1, but it's been rare this season for the pit crews to be decisive.  At a track where a pass was difficult to pull off, and even harder to make stick, time lost or gained in the pits would be a bonus beyond horsepower's abilities to create... or make up.  As it turned out, that's exactly what occurred: cars that had quick stops were able to maintain their positions, and those with poor stops lost position.  When Button had a good first stop but Red Bull had an uncharacteristically slow one for Mark Webber, Webber fell out of the race for third place.  As it turned out, he never recovered, even with the team switching him onto a three-stop strategy... with the third stop, for the mandatory run on the harder of the two tire compounds, coming on the final lap.  On the second round of stops, HWMNBN stayed out two laps longer than Hamilton, trying to open up enough of a gap to jump the McLaren for the lead.  Any sort of gap he had been able to create was thrown away by a methodical, safe... and slow... stop from the Ferrari mechanics.  Where McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull routinely spit out stops in the 3.5 second range or even faster, it took Ferrari 4.5 seconds to service HWMNBN.  Going into the stop, he had maybe a 50/50 chance to keep the lead.  Coming out, Hamilton had easily gone past, regaining the lead and holding it for the rest of the race.

*ENDING:  The rest of the race was somewhat anticlimactic.  Hamilton took his third victory of the season by over eight seconds over HWMNBN.  Jenson Button had managed to keep his recalcitrant KERS unit functional enough to take third, some 20-odd seconds behind the leader.  Mark Webber looked like he was going to have a tough time finishing fourth; his lead over 5th place Felipe Massa was right on the edge of the "pit delta", the amount of time it took to drive into the pits, get serviced, then rejoin the race.  The delta time was 20 seconds, and he had almost exactly that much of a lead.  But then Massa made the matter moot by spinning and handing Webber 15 seconds to play with.  Somewhere in the Red Bull compound, a bemused Seb Vettel could only wonder what could have been...

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  HWMNBN.  Hamilton had the better car, the better pit crew, and the better strategy.  Yet he just could not dispose of the Ferrari driver, who hung grimly just off the tail of the McLaren, never letting him get free and clear.  All of this was done with a Ferrari that wasn't as fast or nimble as his opponent.  Probably one of the most impressive drives for second I've seen in a long time.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  McLaren.  When Sebby went away, the boys from Woking knew they had a chance to play Bigfoot... and they took it.  Even a balkly KERS unit in one of their cars didn't prevent them from getting both drivers on the podium.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  To be honest, it's hard to give this award today.  There just wasn't all that much passing of note.  We suppose we'll have to give it to both Mark Webber and Jenson Button, for their duel on Lap 3.  Button led the pair into the long long straightaway.  Webber got to use the DRS and just barely managed to get past the McLaren when they swooped into the chicane.  However, there were TWO DRS zones today, and now Button got to use it to counter-attack... and immediately blew Webber's metaphorical doors off.  Highly entertaining, but not exactly dramatic.  A tepid "Meh" to the Abu Dhabi track, and a "meh" MotR.

*MOOOOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE:  Another "meh" for this award.  There just wasn't that much bad driving occurring.  The most bovine maneuver had to be Felipe Massa's spin when he had a chance to finish fourth.

To be fair, he did have some damage to the right element of his front wing from running over some debris, and he was on the harder tires.  A spin is a spin, however, and it did kill any hope he had of his best finish of the season, so Felipe Massa: A Moooooo is you!

*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:
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A hot, smoggy day greeted the F1 Circus as they formed up on the Buddh International Circuit's grid.  Would polesitter Seb Vettel continue his domination of the year, or would he let his teammate by in an attempt to get him second place in the driver's championship?  Or would the Ferraris and McLarens make the question moot?  THIS is your F1U! for the inaugural Grand Prix of India!

*EVERYTHING NEW IS OLD AGAIN: Once the lights went out and the race began, it was exactly like most of the previous races this season.  Seb Vettel got a good start, pulled away and never looked back.  At the end of Lap 1, his lead was 1.3 seconds and nobody ever got any closer.  By the end of Lap 8, it was over 8 seconds.

*BLUNDERING HERD:  The first turn saw a shower of carbon fiber, front wings and bodywork like we haven't seen all season.  Five cars had various degrees of damage as the back half of the field approached the braking zone, and a sixth, the Lotus of Jarno Trulli went for a spin in Turn 3, provoked by a nudge from behind.  We here at F1U! aren't exactly sure just why such carnage occurred today as the first turn is plenty wide, but there it is.  It was entertaining, if nothing else.

*THE TRACK:  In another era, it's clear that the Buddh International Circuit would be another processional circuit.  However, with two DRS zones and KERS, there was some fun racing back in the midpack.  Hermann Tilke got lucky with this one.  As long as the rules stay the way they are, India will be a race to look forward to.  That long long looooooong straightaway looks like it has the ability to kill a powertrain, however.  Two cars suffered failures as they ran down the 4000' length of tarmac: one dead gearbox and one blown engine.  The curbs also reached up and broke Felipe Massa's suspension again, though this time the left front.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  Seb Vettel led his 711th lap of the season today.  Not only is that a record, it's also more laps than Jenson Button has led in his entire career... and yes, that includes his 2009 Championship season.  More than that, Vettel today earned himself a rare F1 Grand Slam.  He won from pole position, led every lap, and set fast lap of the race.  In a season of great drives from the young German, this was probably his best.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  McLaren clinched second place in the Constructor's Championship with the combination of Jenson Button's second-place finish and Lewis Hamilton's 7th.  In a year that was so dominated by one team, that's quite the accomplishment for the team from Woking.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  Not always do the best moves of a race happen up towards the front of the field, and today was a perfect example of that fact.  On Lap 14, the surging Toro Rosso of DJ Squire was hunting down the hometown Force India of Adrian Sutil.  When the two cars crossed the DRS detection marker before the long straight, DJ Squire was about a half-second back.  Opening the flap on the rear wing let the Toro Rosso pull close, but it didn't really seem like he had the speed to make the pass as they approached the braking zone.

Despite what we thought, DJ Squire pulled his steed to the outside of the Force India and held off on the braking for as long as he could.

Keeping the Toro Rosso under control into the fast sweep, DJ Squire just barely managed to pull ahead of the Force India, forcing Adrian Sutil to back down.

While it was only for 9th place, it was still an impressive move, and without a doubt the best of the day.  It just wasn't as... exciting as some have been.  This isn't a negative.

*MOOOOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE:  Because "exciting" is exactly what you don't want when you're making a pass at 150mph  On Lap 24, McLaren's Lewis Hamilton had the Ferrari of Felipe Massa right where he wanted it.  That the two of them had made contact five previous times this season probably should have given Hamilton some pause, but heading into Turn 5 he still had some KERS juice remaining while Massa did not.  He used it and tried to get underneath the red car...

...and Massa tried to guillotine the McLaren, which had his front tires in front of the Ferrari's rears.  Massa went for a slide and a spin, Hamilton went to the pits for a new nose.  Massa was later given a drive-through penalty for his rather bovine attempt to keep Hamilton behind him, and his later suspension failure seemed like a case of just desserts.  Congratulations, Felipe, this Mooooooo-ooove's all yours.

*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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A low, heavy sky and thin sunlight greeted the Thundering Herd as it formed up on the grid.  Reports were that rain was in the near future.  Would it affect the race for the Constructor's Championship?  Would the McLaren Resurgence continue?  Would we ever hear from Ferrari again?  And now that he had wrapped up the Driver's Championship, whither Vettel?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2011 Grand Prix of Korea!

*LIGHTS OUT: It's a very short dash from the front of the grid to the Turn 1 / Turn 2 pairing at Korea, something on the order of 150m.  This favors the driver that can make a clean getaway off the line, as that counts just as much as raw acceleration on a short run.  Despite a fairly aggressive move from Seb Vettel, sitting second on the grid, McLaren's Lewis Hamilton held pride of place into the first turn and down the endless straight to Turn 3.  It wasn't until Turn 4, at the end of the next straightaway, that Vettel managed to take the lead from his rival.  From there, it became just another Seb Vettel sort of race: get clear of the field by at least a second before DRS usage was activated on Lap 3, then run away and hide.  And that's exactly what he did, though the lead in the first part of the race wasn't more than five seconds or so. 

*CUE THE RAIN:  The men on the pit walls had a few anxious moments as the windows for the first pit stops began to open, as the sky began to spit rain here and there around the circuit.  Do you gamble on intermediate rubber, or stay on slicks and hope that the rain goes away?  Everybody rolled the dice to stay on slicks, and the rain, never more than a sprinkling around Turn 4, disappeared as quickly as it came.  Didn't stop the F1U! crew from cackling evilly though, as we hoped a good frogswallower would develop.

*SAFETY DANCE CAR:  When Renault's Red Menace decided that braking was for wimps on Lap 16, turning the rear of Slappy Schumacher's Mercedes into so much oatmeal in the process (see "Mooooo-oooove of the Race", below), a Safety Car was called out to allow the track workers to remove the debris.  After the restart on Lap 21, it looked like we were going to have a race again.  Vettel stayed ahead of Hamilton, but the lead was just a touch over a second... and the McLaren began to (agonizingly) slowly reel the Red Bull in.  However, Vettel's teammate Mark Webber also began to reel in the two of them.

*HELLO, GOODBYE:  On Lap 33, Webber went all furious koala on Hamilton, hanging onto back of the McLaren driver all the way around the circuit.  The two put on a tremendous exhibition of wheel-to-wheel racing from Turn 3, ending only when they came to the technical section around Turn 7.  However, this tete-a-tete let Vettel drive off into the distance, adding three seconds to his lead in one lap.  After the second round of pitstops, the Driver's Champion's lead had ballooned to 10 seconds and the race was, for all intents and purposes, over.  Hamilton and Webber pitted together, came out together, and their battle continued on Lap 34 (see "Move of the Race", below).  Vettel was unchallenged for the remaining 20 laps and took his 10th win of the season, followed by Hamilton, Webber, Button and HWMNBN.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE: Seb Vettel has already won the 2011 Driver's Championship, but it's clear that he isn't content to rest on his laurels.  All he did was take the lead in Turn 4 and then keep a fast Lewis Hamilton behind him until the safety car came out.  After the safety car period ended, he ran away and hid to blow the rest of the field off the track.  Pretty much the perfect race for the two-time champ.

*TEAM OF THE RACE: Red Bull.  Both drivers on the podium with a 1-3 finish, and clinching their second Constructor's Championship?  Yeah, not bad.  The only thing that kept this from being a perfect day for the team was a dumb strategy call to bring Mark Webber in at the same time as Lewis Hamilton that may have cost them a 1-2.  Still and all, if that's the worst thing that happened to Red Bull today, they'll probably live with it.

*MOVE OF THE RACE: McLaren's Lewis Hamilton and Red Bull's Mark Webber had themselves an epic duel today, one that lasted from the Safety Car period to the end of the race.  On Lap 33 the two pitted nose-to-tail and came out the same way to begin Lap 34.  Surprisingly, the Red Bull couldn't get close enough to pass at the end of the DRS zone, and it looked like that was that for this lap... until Hamilton locked up his brakes heading into Turn 5, and the furious koala pounced.He took the inside line away from the McLaren into Turn 6, and again, it all looked over.  Surely the furious koala would pull away and set sail after his teammate.But no!  The McLaren dangled a piece of bamboo in front of the koala and squeezed him over into the next turn, retaking second place. A simply exquisite piece of racing from both men, an exchange that earns them a rare shared MotR!

*MOOOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE:  Slappy Schumacher was cruising towards a solid points-paying finish.  To be sure, he had a hard-charging HWMNBN behind him, and Renault's Red Menace was looking awfully racy, but as the race neared the half-way point Slappy had to be feeling pretty good about the way his day was going.  Heading down to Turn 4, The Red Menace and HWMNBN were dueling hard, with the Ferrari driver apparently not planning on braking until he reached Pyongyang.  The Red Menace held off on braking as long as he could, then stomped hard on the slow-down pedal.  The brakes did their job well enough to lock up the front tires and the Renault was suddenly uncontrollable... with Slappy right in his way.

Both cars were taken out of the race, and The Red Menace nearly collected HWMNBN in the process.  Nicely done, Red!  Here's another Mooooooo-oooove for your collection!

*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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A sunny afternoon greeted the F1 Circus as the cars made their way to the grid.  Would Jenson Button be able to extend the fight for the Driver's Championship for another race?  Or would polesitter Seb Vettel score the single point he needed to lock it up today?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2011 Grand Prix of Japan!

*THE RACE:  Over the years, Suzuka International Race Course has given us some great races, including quite a few that have decided championships.  While we here at F1U! wouldn't classify the 2011 entry as a "great race," it certainly had its share of moments.  When the lights went out, Red Bull's Vettel made a clean getaway from the first spot on the grid... but McLaren's Jenson Button had a better one, pulling nearly even with the reigning Driver's Champion before the cars had gone more than twenty meters.  It then became a drag race down to the first turn, a drag race that Vettel seemed to think he was going to lose, as he began to squeeze the Glare with Wheels closer and closer to the grass on the inside of the straight.  Eventually the Brit was shoved so far over that he raised a big cloud of dirt when his right-side wheels left the tarmac, a maneuver that let his teammate, Lewis Hamilton, sneak past for second place as the Thundering Herd entered the first turn.  Unlike the rest of the season to date however, Vettel did not go flying off into the distance, leaving the competition fighting for second place.  Instead the two McLaren drivers hung grimly onto his rear wing, Hamilton just out of DRS activation range of the leader and Button a couple of seconds behind Hamilton. 

*ABRASIVENESS:  As had become clear during the first two days of the race weekend, the tires Pirelli had brought to the track (medium and soft compounds) were proving to be terribly vulnerable to the abrasive surface of the Suzuka Circuit.  The prime tire was lasting around 20 laps, the options about half that, depending on the driver.  Lewis Hamilton, who's never been thought to have a smooth flowing driving style, drove the rubber right off his options in eight laps, earning a slow leak on his right-rear tire in the process.  With his car becoming less and less controllable, he backed off the throttle and let his teammate into second, five seconds behind the leader.  He'd pit and come back out in sixth place, never to be involved in the outcome again.  This began a general run into the pits by the field.  While Vettel continued to hold the lead after the first pit cycle, it may have been significant that Button, the generally acknowledged master of tire conservation, stayed out for a lap longer than the Red Bull driver.  When Button came back out, the lead had dropped to 2.5 seconds.

*AND THEN...:  Seb Vettel stayed out in front for another 10 laps until his second set of soft tires quietly sighed and gave up the ghost.  He brought his RB7 in for his second stop on Lap 20, secure in the knowledge that his mechanics were the most consistent in F1, always getting him in-and-out in about 3.4 seconds.  Except not this time.  It's not like the Red Bull driver's stop was a bad one, right around four seconds.  Most other teams would be perfectly content with taking four seconds to change four tires.  Jenson Button swept into the pitlane on the next lap.  When his McLaren came back onto the circuit, he was a couple of car-lengths ahead of Vettel, leapfrogging the Red Bull driver on the pit rotation.

A half-second doesn't seem like much, but in F1, it's all the time in the world.

*CHECKERED FLAG:  From then on, the question became "would Vettel even try to pass for the lead?"  Quickly enough, the question became moot as Button slowly pulled away from the Red Bull driver, opening up a two-second lead.  When Vettel pitted on Lap 34 for his run to the end on the medium rubber, he lost another place on the pit rotation, this time to Ferrari's HWMNBN.  Coming up quickly behind Vettel was his Red Bull teammate, Mark Webber, but there was no way the team was going to let them do anything stupid.  A quick radio call from the pit wall to both Red Bull drivers on Lap 47, in effect telling them both not to take any risks, made it clear that they wanted Vettel on the podium.  But could HWMNBN catch Button?  At one point he got the lead down to 1.1 seconds, but Button had simply been conserving fuel.  The moment there was any sign of a threat, on Lap 51, he ripped off the fast lap of the race and then took the checkered flag.  HWMNBN finished 1.1 seconds behind, with Vettel a second behind him.  Jenson Button had won the race, but by virtue of  his third place finish, Vettel had won the 2011 Driver's Championship.


*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  Jenson Button may not have had a car that was faster than the Red Bull, but it was just as quick.  In effect, this turned the race into a straight battle between drivers, one that Button won.  He took better care of his tires while keeping his speed high, drove a flawless race, and took a well-deserved win.  That it wasn't enough to keep the championship alive wasn't his fault.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  Red Bull.  One championship down, one to go.  Neither driver made any particular errors.  Heck, we didn't even  get to see a Mark Webber Lousy Start^©. The pit stop that may have cost Vettel the victory was good enough for just about any other situation... just not this one at this time. 

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  The least likely place to pass at Suzuka is the infamous 130R.  To try a move on the fastest point of the circuit while you're entering a flat-out sweeper requires either massive attachments or massive brain damage.  Mark Webber pulled it off early in the race, but his victim (HWMNBN) was on old tires while the Aussie was on brand new rubber... hardly a fair fight.  On Lap 46 though, Adrian F'n Sutil was fighting Gandalf Kobayashi for 9th place.  Both were on similarly worn tires, both cars were solid midpackers, and both drivers have more-or-less equal skills.  When Sutil made his attempt on Gandalf by going to the inside (and getting squeezed in the process), our first thought was "brain damage."

Full throttle onto the dirty side of the track at 185mph into a fast left-handed sweeper next to an insane Japanese driver on his home soil.  This is not the recipe for a long and happy life.

Nevertheless, Sutil took his Force India into the turn and kept it firmly planted in place despite not being on the optimal racing line through 130R.  He took the position and we here at F1U! immediately awarded him the MotR award.  We still think it's an example of "brain damage," though.

*MOOOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE:  For the most part, this was a cleanly driven race.  Yes there was contact between Webber and Slappy Schumacher... and (wow, what a shock) Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa (again), but neither of those incidents were particularly egregious.  So instead, we're giving it to the front-right tire changer for Toro Rosso.

I suppose it's not a great feeling when your tire just rolls off the hub in the middle of the race... but it did earn the airgunner a Mooooo!  That's a fair trade, right?

*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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It was 92° and humid as the cars formed up on the grid for race start.  Would the heat cool off the red-hot Seb Vettel, who could clinch the World Driver's Championship this race?  Or would the cold-silver McLaren of Lewis Hamilton, lined up next to the polesitter, ruin the party?  Or perhaps the fire-red Ferrari of HWMNBN could start nibbling at Vettel's nigh-on insurmountable lead.  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2011 Grand Prix of Singapore!

*LIGHTS OUT!:  As the race began, all the usual tropes about the start of F1 races applied.  The Red Bull of Seb Vettel made a good start and immediately began to pull away from the field.  His teammate had another installment of the Mark Webber Lousy Start^© series, giving Lewis Hamilton a chance to get past.  When the Australian defended his position by drifting to his left, he left the door open on the right-hand side for both McLaren's Jenson Button and HWMNBN to streak by into second and third respectively.  While it was a blisteringly exciting beginning to the race, from then on it was all Vettel, all the time. 

*DOMINATION: By the end of the second lap, the lead was already 3.5 seconds over Button.  By the end of Lap 6, it was 8.2 seconds.  By Lap 15, Vettel's lead was nearly 12 seconds over the Briton, and nearly 30 seconds over the Force India of Paul di Resta, who was in third place by virtue of not yet having stopped for tires.  When both Vettel and Button pitted for tires on the same lap and Red Bull's crew got their man out in 3.2 seconds, it was clear that the race was over; the only remaining question was "would Vettel clinch the championship today?"

*AS IT TURNS OUT:  Earlier in the week, we here at F1U! said that is Vettel won and HWMNBN finished off the podium, Vettel would eliminate the Spaniard from contention and thereby clinch the championship.  While the first part of the equation was undoubtedly true, it didn't take into account Jenson Button.  While Vettel opened up a 20-second lead on the McLaren driver at one point, as long as Button finished second, the driver's championship could not be clinched.  Appearing to realize that, Mark Webber began to close up the gap to the McLaren, but at no point managed to get closer than five seconds to the Glare on Wheels.

*ENDING: While the race was surely over by the first turn, that doesn't mean there wasn't some glimmers of hope for those who aren't rooting for Sebastian Newmacher Vettel.  With some ten laps to go, the Red Bully's lead over Jenson Button was roughly ten seconds.  With six laps to go, it was 8.6 seconds and dropping rapidly.  At first we here at F1U! thought that Vettel had just "dialed it back" to conserve fuel or to limit wear on the engine... but then we realized that Button had just ripped off the fast lap of the race.  Then he did it again.  Vettel may have slowed, but the British pilot had the bit in his teeth and was pushing hard.  When he was balked by backmarkers with five laps to go, it looked like the game was up; he lost nearly two seconds in the first sector of the track alone.  Once past the slowboys however, Button again gave it the beans and the gap to the leader continued to drop.  While it seemed awfully unlikely that the McLaren would catch the Red Bull, it sure looked like it was going to occur.  Three laps to go, 3.7 seconds... two laps, two seconds... when Seb Vettel swept across the line, Jenson Button was only 1.7 seconds behind.  That's pretty amazing, considering that Vettel had nearly thirty seconds in-hand at one point in the race.  Mark Webber, who apparently ran the tires off his car in his attempt to catch up to the rocket-powered Button, finished a distant third, nearly thirty seconds adrift of the McLaren.  Ferrari's HWMNBN was fourth, some 25 seconds behind the Australian.  Fifth went to Lewis Hamilton over a minute back of the winner.  Sixth went to Force India's Paul di Resta, who, while 111.067 seconds behind Vettel, was the last man unlapped.

*STANDINGS (AND FALLINGS):  Seb Vettel has eliminated everybody from contention from the Driver's Championship... save for Jenson Button, holding on by the proverbial skin of his teeth.  With five races remaining in the 2011 season, there are a maximum 125 standing points available.  Seb Vettel's lead... is 124 points.  If Button wins every race from here on out, and Vettel finished lower than 10th in every race, Button will win the championship.  If anything else occurs, if the Red Bull driver manages to come in 10th in one of the next five races, the season is over.  So while we can't quite hose down Seb Vettel with champagne yet, the bottles are standing by.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE:  Seb Vettel led from lights to flag today, yet he's not getting the DotR award.  Jenson Button was in second place by the first turn and stayed there the rest of the race, in the process showing his teammate just who's in charge at McLaren... and he's not getting the DotR either.  No, today's Driver of the Race is going to Force India's Paul di Resta, who drove the hell out of his steed and finished a brilliant sixth after losing fifth place to a pissed-off Lewis Hamilton on Lap 55 (of 61).  Good tire strategy, mixed with a shedload of pace and a Button-like ability to protect his tires from excess abuse, kept him on the first screen of the SPEED leaderboard all day long.  The rookie has been impressive all season, but today he did it towards the front of the field and got to show his skills to the world.  DotR material for sure.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  We here at F1U! so want to give this to Force India.  This was the first time all season both of their cars were in the points (6th and 8th), and as just mentioned, di Resta's drive was helped along by the team's excellent tire strategy.  But we just can't do it.  Red Bull gets it with their 1st-3rd result, a pit crew that's second to none, the perfect chassis, you name it, they got it.  FIndia gets an honorable mention though.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  On Lap 10, Mark Webber blew the doors off of HWMNBN for third place in a pass that we here at F1U! were sure would be the MotR.  We were wrong, because 24 laps later he again passed the Ferrari driver for third place.  Except this time, it was even more amazing because of how and where he did it.  The field was jumbled by the Safety Car that had just gone in as Lap 34 began.  HWMNBN was just ahead of Webber as they came through Turn 9, but a mess of slower cars were in front of the two as they approached the tricky Turn 10, the "Singapore Sling" left-right-left corner best known for being Gandalf Kobayashi's launching pad both in practice and in Quals.  As they approached the braking zone for the turn, Webber slipped to the inside of the Ferrari and decided that he didn't need to actually brake.

The Spaniard, apparently caught by surprise by Webber's decision to forgo the clampers, made no immediate attempt to make life hard for the Aussie.

As they got to the point of no return, Webber threw out the anchor, dragged his feet, did everything but put the RB7 into reverse, to slow down... and did it all without a puff of tire smoke.  HWMNBN, his jaw bouncing off his lap, could only watch in amazement.

But it would all go to naught if the Red Bull overextended himself into the turn and got too much curb at Gandalf's Launching Pad.  Didn't happen.  Webber looked like he was on rails as he went through the most dangerous point on the track, completing the pass with style and finesse... and earning the MotR in the process.

*MOOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE:  At the end of the race, we were going to give the Moo to Slappy Schumacher for his use of Sauber driver Sergio Perez' car as a take-off ramp.

No.  Instead, we're giving this to the driver who is rapidly becoming one of the most clumsy in the field: 2008 World Driver's Champion Lewis Hamilton.  In today's incident, he was harrying Felipe Massa for position on Lap 13.  Either because he misjudged where his front wing was, or out of sheer cussedness, Hamilton wound up applying a liberal dose of carbon fiber to the Ferrari's rear tire in a maneuver that was completely unneeded.  He was faster than Massa and could have passed him at nearly any point on the circuit the next lap.

The result?  A punctured right rear for Massa, which disintegrated on his way back to the pits.  This dropped him down to 16th, never to be seen again.

On the other hand, Hamilton lost the entire left-side element of his front wing.  Despite this, he stayed out for another lap in a car with a distinct lean to the right.

He also earned himself a drive-through penalty and some after-race sarcasm from Massa.  He wound up finishing fifth.  Just think what might have happened if he had controlled himself a little better... a podium?  Second?  For ruining both Massa's race and your own, Lewis, here's your Mooooooooo. 

*SELECTED DRIVER'S QUOTES OF THE RACE:
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A bright, beautiful sunshiny day met the F1 Circus as they formed up on the grid at Monza.  The Red Bull of Seb Vettel sat on pole for the 10th time this season, but seemed to be down on speed.  Would either of the two McLarens be able to disrupt his plans, or would he run away and hide on the fastest track of them all?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2011 Grand Prix of Italy!

*LIGHTS OUT:  At the front of the field, the leaders had perfectly acceptable starts, but things were different down towards the back of the grid.  HRT's Daniel Ricciardo went into anti-stall, jammed in 3rd gear, then stalled anyway.  Since he was starting 23rd, there was nobody to run into the back of him other than his teammate Vitantonio Liuzzi, who managed to get past easily.  We'll come back to Liuzzi in a moment.  Back up with the leaders, Seb Vettel was passed heading into the first turn.  The surprise came from who did the passing.  Ferrari's HWMNBN, the hopes and dreams of Italy propelling him forward, sneaked by the Red Bull on the inside and led the Thundering Herd into the first turn.  Just for a moment, the cheers of the partisan crowd drowned out the screaming of 23 V8 engines turning at 18000rpm.

*TOTAL CARNAGE:  Vitantonio Liuzzi either had God's Own Start or a RATO unit stuffed up the tailpipe of his HRT, for he had passed five cars right off the bat and was heading to the inside of victim number six with a big head of steam.  Then two things happened: first, the RATO unit ran out of oomph.  Second, victim number six decided that he didn't want to be passed by a HRT, even one with an Italian driver at Monza, and moved over enough that the opening up the inside was no longer there.  Liuzzi, being a hot-blooded son of Italy, decided to try and pass anyway and wound up with his right wheels on the grass.  The car immediately snapped to the left.  Now at this point, a great driver would gather the car up and continue on with maybe a slightly elevated pulse rate.  A good driver would save the car, maybe spin, and rejoin the field at the back of the pack, wiser and still racing.  But this was Vitantonio Liuzzi.  He immediately overcorrected and found himself sideways on the grass, moving around 150mph and not slowing down in the least... just as the Thundering Herd filtered through the first chicane.

Nico Rosberg had to be feeling pretty good about his chances today.  He had a car that had shown a good turn of speed through the weekend.  Further, he was on an alternate tire strategy from everybody else in the top ten.  He had started the race on the prime tire (medium rubber), and if he could manage to stay in contact with the leaders, he'd be able to attack on the option rubber when everybody else switched to the prime late in the race.  Meanwhile, Renault's The Red Menace looked like a definite contender for points today as well.  As the two of them guided their steeds through the chicane side-by-side, neither of them saw what was bearing down on them from the right side.

Liuzzi slammed into the side of the Renault, which was then driven into the side of the Mercedes.  All three cars were ruined and came to a halt in a pile of carbon fiber in the center of the track.  Rubens Barrichello's Williams had nowhere to go, but he somehow managed to get whoa'd up in time to avoid becoming the fourth victim of the wreck.  He came to a stop completely blocked by the pileup, but he was able to eventually continue.  Liuzzi was hit with a five-spot grid penalty for the next race for being a dumbarse causing an accident with his lousy driving.  Berndt Maylander was duly summoned to the track, and a three-lap Safety Car period commenced while the Italian track marshals went on strike broomed the carbon fiber off the track.

*GAME ON, RACE OVER:  When Maylander pulled over and the race resumed, HWMNBN and Vettel jumped away from the rest of the field, led by Lewis Hamilton.  Hamilton has shown that he has no idea how to react on restarts in the past, and he hasn't improved a jot since.  Vettel was all over the back of the Ferrari for one lap, during which time the two McLarens and the sole remaining Mercedes managed to close the gap.  Then going into Second Lesmos the inevitable happened and the Red Bull passed HWMNBN.  By the end of the lap Vettel had over a second on the Ferrari.  By the end of three more laps, he had a 10 second lead and the race was functionally over.  The only hope the rest of the field had was that the Red Bull pit crew would make a mistake.  They didn't, despite the psychic attacks of F1 fans the world over (minus Germany and Austria).  The remaining 30-odd laps were merely formalities to discern who would finish second.  That honor went to Jenson Button, nearly 10 seconds back after Vettel went into cruise mode with five laps remaining.  HWMNBN finished third with Lewis Hamilton all over the back of him.  Slappy Schumacher finished fifth.

*THREE INTERESTING STATS:  If Seb Vettel wins the next race, he will clinch the Driver's Championship with four races left to go.  Sometime during this race, Vettel led his 500th lap of the season.  Nobody else has led as many as 100 laps.  Finally, the first five finishers were all past World Driver's Champions, with 12 trophies between them (Slappy 7, HWMNBN 2, and one each for Lewis, Jenson and Sebby).

*DRIVER OF THE RACE: Seb Vettel.  There's no question that Vettel is a good driver, but one knock on him is that he can't race in a crowd.  Well, he put the lie to that when he passed HWMNBN for the lead.  The best car + one of the best drivers = pure gold.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  McLaren.  Even though they made a fundamental error in car setup, running too much rear wing and therefore hamstringing their top speed on the fastest track in F1, the team made it work.  The drivers compensated, and the pit crew performed amazingly.  At one point, they got Hamilton in-and-out in three seconds flat.  Red Bull has claimed that they've done a sub-3.0 second stop in practice, but that's not under race conditions.  Three seconds is probably the best you'll see all year.  A second/fourth finish is about as good as anybody could hope for these days.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  Seb Vettel saw his race strategy ("Get in the lead, get over a second ahead, cruise to victory") blowing up in his face.  One of the toughest drivers to pass, HWMNBN, was in front of him and three drooling silver cars were snapping at his heels.  If he didn't get ahead of the Ferrari, he was going to be in trouble fast.  So for a lap and change after the Safety Car came in, he harried the Spaniard like there would be no tomorrow.  Then going into the Second Lesmos, he saw a narrow opportunity and jumped on it.  Difficulty: it was to the outside of the Ferrari.  Probably muttering "In God and Adrian Newey I trust," Vettel steered himself into the gap.

Even the incredible amount of downforce generated by the body of the Red Bull couldn't keep Vettel from sliding wide as he pulled alongside the Ferrari, and he put two wheels into the grass.

Remember what happened to Liuzzi back at the start?  Vettel simply gathered up the car and continued on as if nothing happened.  Then it simply became a drag race down to the Variante Ascari... and Vettel was on the inside.

After this pass for the lead, the race was over.  A helluva nice move with a fine example of car control thrown in... yeah, that's a Move of the Race!

*MOOOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE:  Since Lap 1 incidents are not eligible for either MotR or Mooo-otR awards, Liuzzi's attempted shortcut across the first chicane can't win this.  Eagle-eyed readers might have noticed the complete absence of Seb Vettel's teammate Mark Webber from this F1U!.  That's because he took himself out of the race early.  At the same time that Vettel was working on HWMNBN, Webber was trying to get past Felipe Massa's Ferrari.  Unfortunately, the Australian tried to pass Massa in the first chicane.  He was on the outside of the first bend, which would put him to the inside of the second bend, but Massa had the racing line and squeezed Webber hard.  Instead of backing out, Webber tried to make it work anyway.  He hopped the curb and plonked right into the side of the Ferrari.  Massa spun, and Webber's nose went bye-bye.

Keep an eye on that wing endplate marked "Total".  Webber continued on, hoping to make it back to the pits to get a new nose.  Perfectly logical, the car was still moving and tires didn't seem to be cut... and hey, around Monza not having a nose wing probably helps on the straights!  Unfortunately, there are some turns around this circuit, and heading into Parabolica, Webber got a little carried away.

Oh look, there's that endplate again!  It was jammed under the chassis, taking even more downforce off the car.  Steaming into Parabolica, Webber couldn't get slowed up at all and drove right off the track, through the kittylitter and into the tire barrier.  Congrats, Mark Webber, you earned yourself the Mooooo-oooove of the Race by self-inflicted stupidity!

*SELECTED DRIVER QUOTES OF THE RACE:

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Because my right thumb touched a button on my new wireless mouse, I just lost my F1U! for Monza.  It was nearly done, too, after three hours of work.  Excuse me while I nip off and shoot myself.

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So, some thoughts and notes about the 2011 Grand Prix of Belgium, from the vantage point of a week later.

*For the first time this season, we actually saw Seb Vettel win a race where he had to fight for it.  To be sure, he led for much of the day, but it was never one of his "thirty seconds and a cloud of dust" wins.  He had tire troubles, probably because he was set up for a wet race and had excessive camber on the fronts. (JARGON ALERT: Camber is when a tire is tilted in or out when you look at it from head-on.  Streetcars generally have no camber whatsoever.  F1 cars usually have some positive negative camber, where the tops are tilted in just a tad.  This helps get heat into the inside edge of the tires in exchange for lowering the amount of tire making contact with the road.  Negative Positive camber is just be weird and would probably result in a serious accident within one turn.  Apparently it makes turning effort easier, so if there wasn't power steering it might be useful.  Or something.)
For whatever reason, Vettel suffered from severe blistering of his front tires, something that practically never happens.  You'll see it on the rears, sure, but it's strange to see it on the fronts... and quickly, too.  The problem actually started during his pole lap in Quals and Red Bull petitioned the FIA's tech director, Charlie Whiting, to allow him to start on a fresh set of soft tires.  Whiting, quite correctly, told Red Bull to get lost.  You start on what you qualified on, unless it's completely unsafe... and if it's unsafe, why is it the RB7 is having problems and nobody else is, hmmm?  Vettel actually had to pit for a new set of tires on Lap 6 (of 44).  He wound up being out of pit sequence of everybody else, which has its good points and bad.  Good, obviously, is that you're on fresh tires when everybody else is running on old rubber.  The bad is that when everybody else pits, suddenly you're the one on old rubber.  The Safety Car brought out by Hamilton's wreck solved that, and Vettel pretty much led from there... but not in the usual dominating fashion. 

*Vettel's teammate Mark Webber really needs to learn how to keep revs in his engine when the lights go out.  He really upped his game this time around, abandoning his usual patented Lousy Start^©s for a variation: the Hideously Awful Start^®.  He sat third on the grid, but was somewhere around 15th by the time the thundering herd reached La Source.  It looked like he was a tiny fish being engulfed by a horde of much larger, faster fish.  Only some of the dumbest driving I've ever seen in a first turn prevented him from falling farther back.  To call the first turn "total mayhem" would be overstating things a bit, but it wasn't exactly tidy. 

Everybody was bouncing off of everybody else, the Lotuses spun each other, NKOTT went out with self-inflicted damage, and Jenson Button suffered damage to his rear wing when Tim O'Glockenspiel forgot how to use the brake pedal.  He ALSO suffered damage when debris from someone else "went through (his) front wing and sliced off (his) right mirror." 

*In contrast to Mark Webber, Nico Rosberg had one of the best starts of the year.  This is odd, because while the cars were sitting on the grid, his Mercedes looked like it was fogging for mosquitoes, what with all the smoke it was putting out.  It's not uncommon to see a little bit of smoke come from a F1 car on the grid, but this was something else... more like a destroyer screening a battleship.  Still and all, he jumped from fifth on the grid to second by the end of the first turn, then easily blew past Vettel down the Kemmel Straight.  It didn't last long, as he was passed by Vettel for the lead on Lap 3 then was swallowed up by the rest of the heavy hitters shortly thereafter, but it was a glorious moment in a lackluster year for the Mercedes team.

*There would be two contenders for the Driver of the Race.  Jenson Button had a miserable Quals and started the race from 13th... and ended up third, behind Vettel and Webber, and given a few more laps he could have made a go at 2nd.  The other contender would be Mr 20th Anniversary himself, Slappy Schumacher.  He started dead last... and ended up fifth.  In the end, I'd give it to Button, but more because he had to pass HWMNBN for 3rd place towards the end of the race, no easy task.  Schumi had to pass his teammate, who had to conserve fuel, for 5th.  Still, great runs for both of them, and if you said that Slappy had a better race, I wouldn't argue.

*The Move of the Race... well, look: in F1, there are many truths.  Cars go fast at Monza, slow at Monaco, Hungary is dull unless it rains, so on and so forth.  One unspoken truth is that you can't go side-by-side through Eau Rouge.  It's too narrow, the compression does odd things to the handling, you stand a great chance of finding yourself in hospital, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.  So when Mark Webber had a go at HWMNBN in Eau Rouge on Lap 9, you could hear sphincters slamming shut all around the world.  They got kinda close to each other.

Now to be fair, HWMNBN had just come out of the pits and was on cold tires, so it's not like there wasn't a big speed differential between the two.  In fact, if it were anywhere else, it would have been merely a pass, no big deal.  But this was Eau Rouge.

I can only assume that HWMNBN believes he has something left to live for, and Webber does not.  Honorable mention goes to the BBC announce team, for they were classic during this pass.  David Coulthard's Chin had to be coaxed back to the microphone after, in his words, "having to turn away, I was sure there was to be an almighty coming together."  Martin Brundle replied with "Let's watch the replay, maybe from behind a pillow..."

*The Moooooo-ooove of the Race belongs to Lewis Hamilton.  He had a serious chance at winning this race, and by not checking his mirrors at the end of the Kemmel Straight, he threw it all away.

He had dispatched Gandalf Kobayashi just prior to Eau Rouge, but down the straight the Sauber got an almighty tow from the McLaren.  That, combined with some serious late braking, put Gandalf on the racing line for the turn while Hamilton was just to the inside, not having retaken the line after the pass.  Hamilton, obviously not checking to see if it was safe, began to move over to the racing line and ran into Kobayashi.  This sent the McLaren pivoting away into the barriers.

It also sent whatever hopes Hamilton had for catching Vettel in the world championship race into the wastebin.

So, that's it from Spa.  We've got Monza next week, the standard F1U! format should be back at that time.  See ya then!

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In the 25 year history of the Hungarian Grand Prix, there had only been one wet race, 2006.  That year, Jenson Button, then driving for BAR Honda, started very far back on the grid and through fine use of his wet-weather tires earned his first Grand Prix victory.  Today, despite weather forecasts calling for sunny skies, rain was falling in Budapest as Jenson Button, now driving for McLaren, took to the grid for his 200th Grand Prix start.  Would history repeat itself?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2011 Grand Prix of Hungary!

*FALLING SKIES:  Indeed, rain was falling lightly as the cars took to the track for their reconnaissance lap to the grid.  When the cars rolled off on the parade lap, everybody was on the Intermediate tires... but the rain had stopped, and nobody could say what the weather was going to do next.  By the time the parade lap was complete and the drivers were awaiting the extinguishing of the lights, there was already the faintest hint of a dry line on the circuit.  For both the men in the cockpits and the men on the pit wall, this was the worst of all possible scenarios.

*AND WE'RE OFF: Red Bull's Seb Vettel led the the two McLarens into the first turn, and us jaded watchers in the F1U! war room pretty much expected him to run away and hide.  After all, he's been one of the better wet-weather drivers on the grid in recent years.  Meanwhile to nobody's surprise, Vettel's teammate Mark Webber had another of his patented Lousy Starts^©, dropping to approximately 94th position... or 8th, if you want to be picky about it. 

*BUT...:  Not only didn't Vettel gap the field, it very quickly became clear that he was actually holding up the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton!  For the first four laps, it looked like the Glare On Wheels was attached to the Red Bull by a tow bar, so firmly was Hamilton stuck to the rear of Vettel.  On Lap 4 Hamilton nearly pulled off a pass going down into Turn 2, but had to back down.  In the same place on Lap 5, he tried again... and Vettel lost grip on the wet pavement and staggered wide, letting the 2008 World Champion by with nary a shout.  In fact, he nearly let the McLaren of Jenson Button, shadowing the two in third place, get by while recovering.  By the start of the sixth lap, Hamilton had a 2.5 second lead, and showed no sign of slowing up.

*HOW DRY I AM: On lap 11, with very little to lose Mark Webber became the first driver to risk shedding his galoshes and tried on the super-soft tires.  A lap later, so did Button from third, and then everybody else came in the next lap.  The order remained Hamilton, Vettel and Button... until Button blew the metaphorical doors off the reigning World Champion to take 2nd place.  Meanwhile, in all the scramble and hubbub in the pits, Webber ripped off some blistering laps and wound up in fourth.  Gamble won for the Aussie.

*RENAULT FLAMBE:  The day had not been going well for Grizzly Nick Heidfeld.  Nowhere near the top 10, with no visible hope of improving much, he ducked into the pits for another set of tires.  A recalcitrant wheelnut kept him in the box for a long stop... just long enough for the Renault's forward-facing exhaust to begin burning sidepod carbon fiber.  As he was released from the stop, smoke and some sparks were visible, and by the time he reached the end of the pitlane, it was clear something was very very wrong.  When he pulled over onto the grass, things got even worse.

Heidfeld quickly scrambled out of the car and headed for the hills, unharmed but lightly toasted.  As he ran towards the armco, track marshals ran towards the now merrily burning Renault with fire extinguishers.  Soon, most of the fire was out, and it became a case of preventing it from restarting.  A marshal went around to the left-hand side of the car and hosed down the most obviously burned part of the sidepod...

Reports are that the extinguisher spray hit a superheated aluminum bottle of nitrogen, used to pneumatically actuate the cams in the engine, that through last season was kept inside the monocoque.  This year, Renault moved the bottle to the outside of the cockpit, inside the sidepod.  The sudden blast of cold fluid, combined with the heat expansion of the nitrogen inside the aluminum bottle, caused the bottle to fail explosively.  While debris was scattered some 20 feet onto the track and the marshal suffered some minor leg injuries from carbon fiber shrapnel, all was basically okay.  Dramatic, though. (UPDATE: Video can be found here)

*MORE DRAMA:  On Lap 45, Hamilton still led Button by some 6.5 seconds, followed by Vettel, HWMNBN and Webber.  Nobody else is within 50 seconds of the leader... but there is trouble in the air.  Specifically, a light rain shower had begun to fall on the back half of the track.  Hamilton looped his car in the sudden slickness, letting his teammate by for the lead, but gets back on the pace before Vettel can catch him.  On Lap 50, Button returns the favor by sliding wide in a puddle and Hamilton regained the lead.  At this moment, the race seemed poised on a knife's edge.  If the rain continued, you'd have to go onto Intermediate tires just to stay on the track... but if it didn't, the slicks would remain the way to go.  On Lap 52, Webber again made the call first and went for the Inters.

*SNAKE-EYES: On Lap 53, the McLaren pitwall got on the radio to their drivers: pit for Intermediate tires.  Hamilton dove in, but Jenson Button stayed out on the slicks to retake the lead.  Suddenly every eye in Budapest was affixed to the skies... would it or wouldn't it continue to rain?  In two laps, as HWMNBN made easy work of the galoshes-shod McLaren, it became obvious that Button, not Hamilton, had made the right call.  Hamilton went back into the pits for dry tires, then was told he'd have to make a drive-through penalty for his actions during his spin recovery on Lap 45.  He would rejoin the race in 6th, never again to be a threat.

*THE END:  Button eased off on the final lap, allowing Vettel to close to within 3.5 seconds as they crossed the finish line, but it wasn't really that close.  Ferrari's HWMNBN crossed the line 20 seconds later in third.  Hamilton, taking advantage of Webber's Red Bull in traffic, managed to finish fourth, nearly 50 seconds adrift, with Webber a second behind him.  Some 30 seconds after that came Felipe Massa's Ferrari, some two years after he was nearly killed at this track.

*OH, ONE MORE THING:  The Hungarian Grand Prix saw the title hopes of 17 drivers dashed.  The only people mathematically in contention now are the drivers of the Red Bulls, McLarens, Ferraris and Nico Rosberg.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE: The Hungaroring horks up a good race only when it rains.  The first time it happened was 2006; Jenson Button won that one too.  A superb drive from the 2009 World Champion, who made the right call to stay out despite ominous skies... a call that won him the race.

*TEAM OF THE RACE:  McLaren.  Red Bull still has the lead in both the Drivers and Constructors championships, but the gap is closing.  At least for the moment, it looks like McLaren has caught the leaders on the track, and their drivers are showing that they, not the Red Bull men, are the class of the field.  Might make for an interesting second half, that.

*MOVE OF THE RACE:  While serving Lap 64, Lewis Hamilton was hotly pursuing Mark Webber for fourth when they came upon Gandalf Kobayashi, who was trying to make a set of tires go some 30 laps... and failing miserably.  He'd lost five places in two laps as the two heavy hitters came up behind him.

Knowing that Gandalf was there, Hamilton dove to the inside of Webber.  Just for an instant, the Red Bull driver was pinned in place, unable to get out from behind the Sauber.

Quick as a flash, Hamilton zipped by Webber for fourth place.

For taking advantage of of the prevailing terrain (the Sauber Rolling Chicane?), we hereby bestow the MotR upon Lewis Hamilton.

*MOOOOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE:  Yes, we know it was damp and slippery out there.  Yes, we understand that the racing surface is different than the surface in the pit lane.  Yes, we are also aware that the paint on the pitlane gets even more slippery when it's wet.  But c'mon, Custard d'Ambrosio, it's not like you're driving on an olive oil-covered ice rink.

Spinning in the pit lane and sending your crew scrambling for cover?  Yes, you'd best believe that's a Mooooooooo-oooo.  Way to go!

No driver quotes, as this F1U! is late enough as it is.  F1 now enters its summer vacation period, so our next race isn't until the end of August!  Oh, but it's a special one... because we'll be in Spa-Francopants!  See you then and there!

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Grey, leaden skies hovered over the Nurb Jr today.  Every member of every team kept one eye cocked to the heavens looking for the first hint of rain, and wet weather tires were never far from reach.  Would they be needed?  THIS is your F1 Update! for the 2011 Grand Prix of Germany.

*NOPE:  While the clouds overhead kept everybody on their toes all day by squirting tiny amounts of moisture at the racing tarmac, it never progressed to the point where the galoshes had to come out.  The hob this played with team strategies was tremendous (as we'll see later).  Everybody knew it was coming, everybody was planning for it, and nobody ever got it.

*THE BAD OLD DAYS... NOT SO BAD ONCE IN A WHILE:  Judging the 2011 German Grand Prix is somewhat difficult.  Those expecting a pass-fest full of excitement and NASCAR-like swapping of places didn't get it, and thus will decry the race at boring.  They might even be correct.  What we got today was an old-fashioned race of dueling pit strategies, seeing who could make their soft tires last the longest while trying to stay off the hard compound tires Pirelli brought to the track.  The hards had two problems this weekend.  While they could last forever on the non-abrasive surface at Nurb Jr (Pirelli estimated that they'd be able to go 100 laps), they had no grip whatsoever.  The second problem was that the grip was made even worse by the chilly temperatures.  It was 54 degrees at race time, and the track surface wasn't much warmer.  Getting heat into the tires proved to be awfully difficult today.

*THE START'S THE KEY:  In most respects, the race today was decided when the lights went out.  Polesitter Mark Webber had another of his patented Lousy Starts^©, losing the lead to Lewis Hamilton before the first turn.  He would never legitimately hold the lead again.  When Seb Vettel spun on Lap 10, he fell from third to fourth place, but 12 full seconds back and would never be a threat.  It became a race between Hamilton and Ferrari's HWMNBN, with Webber grimly hanging on, ready to take advantage of any mistake... and maybe drive somebody into one.

*MIDRACE:  It became clear that some drivers were banking on rain.  Adrian Sutil didn't make his first stop until Lap 24, Jenson Button until Lap 25.  Both were as high as fourth place, and both looked to be ready to score some serious points, but Button blew a hydraulic line and had to retire on Lap 36.  Up front, Hamilton, HWMNBN and Webber were basically racing in the pit lanes: whichever's mechanics could get them in and out the fastest would win.

*ENDGAME:  In the end, nothing could deny Lewis Hamilton his second win of the season.  HWMNBN finished less than four seconds behind in second, with Webber almost six seconds adrift of the Ferrari.  Behind them however, Ferrari's Felipe Massa and Red Bull's Seb Vettel were in quite a little duel... and an eye-opening one it was.  Vettel was obviously faster than the Ferrari, yet he could do nothing with the Brazilian.  The media has been saying for quite some time that Seb Vettel is a great driver from the lead, but put him back in the pack and he's merely average, with an amazing penchant for some awfully clumsy driving (see Turkey 2010).  As it turned out, Massa led Vettel until the final lap, when the two had to pit and put on hard tires to satisfy the sporting regulations.  They came in nose-to-tail, about a half-second separating them.  They left the pits with Vettel holding a nearly two second lead over Massa, courtesy of a miserable 5.5-second tire change from Ferrari.  They finished over a half-minute behind the winner.  Force India's Adrian Sutil, stretching his tires to the limit, brought it home in sixth, almost 90 seconds back.  Nobody else was on the same lap.

*AFTERWARD:  Shortly after crossing the finish line, the Ferrari of HWMNBN ran out of fuel and coasted to a stop somewhere on the course.  Mark Webber, right behind him, decided to stop and give him a lift back to the pit lane.

We here in the US never saw it.

*DRIVER OF THE RACE: Lewis Hamilton.  At the start of the race weekend, Hamilton was quite vocal about his chances: slim-to-none.  The car just didn't have the pace.  After Quals, he was saying that it was the the best lap he'd ever turned, and that there wasn't anything else in the car... and all he could manage was second place.  Hamilton won the race, set fast lap, and led more laps than anybody today.  Either he did a fantastic job or his car is better than he thinks.  Or both.

*TEAM OF THE RACE: McLaren.  When they had to perform, they did.  They consistently made the right strategy calls at the right time, their mechanics were flawless, and the drivers made their plans work.  That Jenson Button lost hydraulic line knocked him out of the race is the only black mark on a sterling day.  Ferrari's mechanics lost Massa a position on the last lap, Red Bull kept Mark Webber out a lap or two too long on his final stop, costing him any chance at second.  Only McLaren kept it together.

*MOVE OF THE RACE: On Lap 32, Lewis Hamilton pitted from the lead and came out in 2nd place behind HWMNBN.  The gap between the two was very close to the pit lane "delta time," or how long it would take to drive into the pit lane, change tires, then drive off the pit lane.  The next lap, the Ferrari driver pulled in for new tires.  He got out ahead of the charging McLaren, but the Glare on Wheels had the momentum.

The Ferrari had problems getting the power down; the one drawback of brand new tires is that, until they get heat in them, they aren't particularly sticky.  No grip = no power.

Heading into Turn 2, Hamilton put his foot down and began to charge around the outside of the turn... not the easiest way to make a living, particularly when you've got a squirrely Ferrari a foot or so to your left.

Outpowering the red car through the outside of the turn, Hamilton showed all sorts of guts and racing skill.  His reward?  First place, and the MOTR.

*MOOOOOOO-OOOOVE OF THE RACE:  On Lap 11, Renault's Grizzly Nick Heidfeld was harassing Toro Rosso's Seb Buemi back in the order.  It was clear that Heidfeld was faster and was surely the better driver.  All Buemi had in his favor was a lead and an aggressive desire to keep the Renault behind him.  When Grizzly Nick made his move to the outside going into a chicane, Buemi threw a block that would have made Merlin Olson proud.  However, blocking in F1 shouldn't be a contact sport, and Buemi turned it into one.  The result was not pretty.

Buemi ended up with a punctured rear tire and a five gridspot penalty for next week's race in Hungary.  Grizzly Nick ended up in the kittylitter with a broken car.  If anything good came of this clumsy Mooooo-ooove, it was that we got to see this camera shot:

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