So Vettel is back to the top and Alonso was livid
The European race was nothing that spectacular really, dry, an accident – more on that later, a safety car and some racing. The end result wasn’t really that interesting given the form of the teams so far this season. What was apparent was how frustrated Alonso is getting inside that Ferrari and that a Lotus and Red Bull have very different braking points. Oh and that 5sec penalties actually exist.
The race itself wasn’t actually that great once the first few corners were done. Each of the cars was just slightly faster than the ones behind and it was spreading out, except that it for Mark Webber who had managed to find himself in ninth at one point. A few laps down the road Red Bull brought him in for his stop so that he could run in clear air and make up some time of the cars around him. That however put him behind Heikki Kovalainen’s Lotus. What on earth was going through both their heads given the context of the 2010 season I don’t know but it was soon Webber going through the air. It is an amazing statement for F1 safety that both of them were able to get out of the cars and put their points across to the media. Kovalainen stated on the radio that he was defending, defending what exactly? The Red Bull is easily much much faster than the Lotus. Don’t get me wrong here I think that drivers should be able to defend their position and had it been a Sauber or a Torro Rosso I wouldn’t be saying that but the new teams are just too slow to be given the same status. Having said that what Mark Webber was doing 3 inches of the back of the Lotus he alone knows. Just as Vettel won the race, at least Red Bull have something to celebrate.
Someone else who won’t be happy is Alonso, he was showing that Ferrari have improved their car drastically but was unable to prove it in the results because of what happened behind the safety car. Hamilton was past before the safety car picked them up, which meant that Hamilton came out of the whole thing in second and Alonso in ninth even though he was running about a second down on Hamilton beforehand. The quote of the weekend has to be (I may not have the exact phrasing);
Alonso: What was his position before the penalty and what is it after..
Engineer: He was in second and he’s still in second
Alonso also hoped to gain from a bunch of the cars in front of him having gone too fast during the safety car period but that was also cut short as they were handed 5s penalties, where they came from I don’t know.
Anyway a race with little action, some technical infringements and a lot of politics…
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