After a massively impressive Pole Position for Lewis Hamilton on Saturday, Sebastian Vettel spent little time getting past the Mercedes on lap 1, to go on and lead for the rest of the race, set the fastest lap and take the top step of the podium for dominant victory around the classic track. This victory puts Sebastian a substantial 46pts in front of his next rival in the championship and so he was rightly super chuffed this afternoon.
Fernando Alonso had a stonker of a race, recovering from a disappointing 9th in qualifying to charge through the field to take 2nd by the chequered flag, ahead of Lewis Hamilton for 3rd.
Kimi Raikkonen’s chances of catching Vettel came to a sudden stop, unlike his car which suffered brake issues and ended a 38 race run, free of retirements and the end to his record of 27 consecutive point scoring finishes.
McLaren faired better today, relative to their form earlier this season with Button grabbing 6th and spending much of race battling with Mark Webber who finally took 5th.
Romain Grosjean kept his nose clean (just) to bring the sole-remaining Lotus home in 8th, behind Felipe Massa who faired well, albeit with a KERS issue throughout the race.
Daniel Ricciardo wrapped up the top 10 with solid performance making up for the Toro Rosso woes in qualifying.
The dream qualifying for Marussia and Caterham didn’t transform into a dream result during the race. Maybe a bit of rain could have given them a chance of points, but on a dry track they simply didn’t have the pace to compete. That said, Giedo Van Der Garde did bring his pretty green machine home in 16th, ahead of both Marrussias and Pastor Maldonado.
Speaking of Pastor, the often criticised Venezuelan gave his critics another reason to speak up today by ending a four car battle by taking Paul Di Resta out of contention and was handed a 10sec stop-go penalty as a result. Williams’ pre-summer break point scoring sadly didn’t continue.
All in all, it was far from a classic Spa grand prix that we’re used to. Thankfully though, it’s *just* 2 weeks until Monza.
