German Grand Prix – The Race (only joking!)

No prizes for guessing who won in Germany!

Long time no blogging. And a bit like running (something that has also ground to a total halt – awaits husband to insert joke about there being no difference to my usual speed) the longer you leave it the harder it is to get going again. It has been an insanely busy time. I have moved house, been to a hen do, been a bridesmaid, helped organise lots of end of year school stuff, organised a 6 year old’s birthday party and vaguely remembered to feed the kids on the odd day. Or perhaps my multi-tasking skills are disintegrating and I have no real excuse. All bloggers are busy people but anyway I’m back!

Welcome to my world around 95% of the time!

So finally after a season and a half of blogging, I missed a race in its entirety, consequently failed to blog about the German Grand Prix but hey the earth is still turning on its axis. I finally scrubbed out the recorded highlights from Sky planner a couple of days ago after realising I wasn’t going to get any say over TV watching for the next six weeks given the obstacles of (1) the 2 year old’s obsession with cBeebies (2) the fact the 6 year old is now off from school for 6 weeks and (3) the husband’s obsession with cricket and someone called Joe Root. Nonetheless to appease my ridiculous obsession with order, I shall whack out a quick blog to insert in the filing space between ‘The British Grand Prix’ and ‘The Hungarian Grand Prix’. But I will definitely be blogging about the upcoming Hungarian Grand Prix. She says temporarily blocking out the afore-mentioned summer holidays.

So what went down in Germany? Apparently it was a gripping Grand Prix despite the fact that Vettel won after pretty much leading from start to finish. I have my doubts. Admittedly he won by only a second over Kimi Raikkonen. It appears that Grosjean was reminded with 5 laps to go (when lying second) that Kimi was the number one faster driver but a double podium for Lotus definitely marks a return to form. I’m personally not bothered in the slightest about Kimi getting the nod but interestingly the press aren’t frothing at the mouth about these blatant team orders as they were with other teams earlier in the season.

Anyway barring biblical thunderbolts and flying pigs, it is hard to see anyone but vettel (and sadly Anyone But Vettel is my preferred winner in all races) winning this year’s championship. Only once before in his previous title-winning seasons was he leading the title race at this stage. In terms of season finishes, he is the Man Utd of F1.  So that’s all heartening stuff then!

Sometimes there are no words even for a triple world champion!

So what of Alonso? Well he came home in 4^th in Germany and I am guessing (as is generally the case with Fernando) that constitutes the optimum result from his car but 4^th places aren’t going to win you titles. All in all it’s a desperately disappointing season so far for Ferrari who were hoping to be at least neck and neck in the championship race with Vettel. And yet again Massa crashed out of a race making that 5 crashes over the last four race weekends. Surely Felipe cannot survive another lacklustre season. It feels like he has been at Ferrari for a billion years. Surely it has to be time for some fresh blood at Maranello?

MacLaren had better fortunes than of late with Button finishing 6^th and Perez in 8^th but still these are Dark Times for the team from Woking.

Even more exciting than the news of Bernie’s indictment by German prosecutors is the return of the Austrian Grand Prix to the 2014 calendar.  I did not see that coming although probably should have done given the Machiavellian aura of Dietrich Mateschitz (the owner of Red Bull). So we will have a race at the A1-ring next year, a track that I absolutely adore although by then it will no doubt have been renamed the Red Bull Ring and Hermann Tilke will probably have squeezed all the fun and eccentric charm out of the circuit. A Sebastian Vettel win is so nailed on that there probably isn't any point in the others turning up. Given the new Russian Grand Prix and the possible New Jersey race (but really two USA races?!), we must surely be losing a couple of races. May I humbly suggest we eject the Korean GP into the dustbin of hideous race tracks never to see the light of day ever again along with one of Bahrain, India or Singapore.

Welcome back to the Austrian Grand Prix. We have missed you!

 And so to Round 10 of the F1 championship in Hungary. You never know what to expect at the Hungaroring other than the fact it is blisteringly hot. Its not a classic overtaking track partly because the track is so narrow and twisty and it is a zillion degrees out there. But it can throw up some superb strategic battles. This is the last race before F1 shuts down for the summer. Will it more or less seal Vettel’s title prospects (he has never won in Hungary so a win for the German there would be a huge psychological blow to his rivals) or will it open the door to give the other title protagonists a glimmer of hope at the half-way stage? I am looking forward to finding out and actually just watching a race again from start to finish.

So don’t let me down Hungary. Please.

British Grand Prix – The Race

 

For totally selfish reasons, a tiny little part of me was hoping for a deathly dull, processional British Grand Prix where Sebastian Vettel bored everyone into extinction and won by a country mile or three. But only because since the last race (was it Canada…it feels like a lifetime ago) my life has been properly bonkers.

I do not recommend moving house right slap bang in the middle of summer when for various other reasons (many of them lovely ones to be fair) our next free weekend appears to be in August. Throw into the mix the loose cannon of the 2 year old who isn’t very understanding of house moves or anything on the TV which isn’t Mr Tumble and well it doesn’t make for a serene blogging haven. Also ignoring all those reasons, I don’t recommend moving house generally. Still we’re very happy to be in the New House even if it has a baby garden (thanks to the 6 year old – yes he was 6 yesterday!!! – for that disarmingly honest description).

I missed all of qualifying so suffice to say I didn’t even realise or notice that Paul Di Resta was last on the grid. I missed all the build up. I even missed all of the must-watch #MartinsGridWalk (although according to Twitter, poor Martin had to attempt to interview such petrolhead luminaries as Carol Vorderman and Jamie Redknapp so in retrospect that was a good dodge) but unlike many other years, I did manage to watch the British Grand Prix and what a stonking race it was.

Here’s how it unfolded in Power Towers. Time For the Start and Go Go Go...!

Lewis Hamilton on pole made a brilliant start. In contrast, Mark Webber had a catastrophic start. Having qualified in P4, he was suddenly in 15^th place in a matter of seconds. It transpired that Grosjean had given him a little bump but nothing more untoward than a classic ‘start incident’. So the opening order was 1. Hamilton 2. Vettel (who took Rosberg at the start) 3. Rosberg 4. Sutil 5. Massa and 6. Kimi. After a disastrous qualifying performance, Alonso was making his way up from P9.

Then on lap 8, the race leader and GREAT BRITISH HOPE (not my words but the imagined hysterical, patriotic nonsense that the Daily Mail would no doubt be spouting), Lewis Hamilton, suffered a puncture and his left rear tyre spectacularly delaminated scattering scraps of rubber everywhere. To make matters worse, he was nowhere near the pits and had to pedal his car back slowly to whack on a new set of tyres. This meant that Vettel now led the race. Oh good *sarcastic face*.

 

And less than two laps later, there was more drama as Massa had a tyre delamination at almost exactly the same place as Lewis. And in an entirely unrelated coincidence at that very moment, Paul Hembery glanced down at his mobile phone to see an incoming call from Bernie.

So the order on lap 11 was 1. Vettel 2. Rosberg 3. Sutil 4. Kimi 5. Ricciardo 6. Perez. And the first round of pitstops were all kicking off.

Then on lap 15, just as Kimi was taking Grosjean (who had just received the helpful instruction of ‘remember Romain, Kimi is faster than you’….hmmmm team order much?) it was the turn of Jean-Eric Vergne to experience the headrush of a left rear tyre delamination while driving very, very, very fast. New underpants please for Jean-Eric and Kimi who got a face full of burning rubber flying past him at 200 miles an hour. Nice.

There was no other option but to bring out the safety car while all the team principals shat on Paul Hembery from a dizzy height the marshalls cleaned up the track. The camera panned across to Adrian Newey practically sobbing with his head in his hands. We then saw shots of Pirelli technicians literally running into their compound with bags of shredded tyre. Turned out that Adrian Newey had pulled himself together and was now conducting his own analysis. Newey conclusion: more pressure needed in the tyres. Probably a good idea just to go with the advice of the resident F1 genius than…er…the people who keep producing tyres that suddenly delaminate.

So on lap 22 the race restarted. And the order was (actually this may have been the order before the safety car but who knows!) 1. Vettel 2. Rosberg 3. Sutil 4. Alonso 5. Kimi and 6. Grosjean (and Lewis was 14^th). Vettel was advised by the team to avoid kerbs and high speed corners. It soon became very clear that he wasn’t going to avoid kerbs and high speed corners and nor was anyone else. Racing drivers will be racing drivers at the end of the day. They are hard-wired to find the shortest possible angles around a track and why should they be made to do anything different because the tyres are a collective crock of shite.

Lewis got a slapped wrist over the radio for over-using his pedals which apparently meant he was stopping the KERS from harvesting. The husband did explain it to me and actually it sounded quite a lot like the way I drive. Lets hear it for pedal fiends. Meanwhile Ricciardo was continuing to put himself verrrrrrrrrry nicely in the shop window by catching Grosjean for 6^th place.

Button languishing much further down was radio-ing through a litany of complaints to McLaren as well he might. They might want to rethink their new strapline of Believe in McLaren which surely some marketing executive dreamt up in a drunk moment. Webber had now manoeuvred his way up to 7^th having just passed Grosjean.

Meanwhile the weak chink in Mercedes’ armoury (ie. race pace – which I admit is a very big chink) was starting to take its toll. On lap 33, Hamilton was passed by Kimi, then Alonso and Webber. As the second round of pitstops got underway, Hamilton had a fantastic ‘Battle of the Brits’ scrap with Di Resta just after exiting from the pits. Di Resta gave everything he had in his locker to cling onto his track position (and oddly enough that gutsy cameo impressed me more than almost anything he has ever done) but ultimately and inevitably Hamilton managed to sweep past on lap 38.

In other feisty battles, Kimi and Webber were having a hard-fought tussle for 3^rd place and Sutil was taking no prisoners in keeping Ricciardo at bay.

The SUDDENLY, another moment of SENSATIONAL DRAMA. Vettel was SLOWING and was OUT OF THE BRITISH GRAND PRIX. A huge roar went up from the grandstand and I’ll be honest there were some huge cheers in Power Towers. Apparently it was gearbox failure. Adrian Newey will definitely be weeping buckets now. Because Vettel’s car conked out at the side of the track the safety car had another outing and racing resumed on lap 45. All of which meant that the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg was yet again leading a Grand Prix.

But guess what? We had ANOTHER TYRE DELAMINATION. This time for Perez who was forced to retire for the fairly terminal reason that his car had a giant hole in its left side. The one great side effect of the safety car late on was that it bunched all the cars up close and so we had some really insane racing in the final few laps.

Ricciardo was passed by Alonso and Hamilton. Then on lap 48, Webber overtook Kimi for P2. That’ll be a difficult post-race debrief at Lotus given Kimi asked ‘did we make the right choice not to pit?’ during the safety car period. My guess is no. Sometimes I think if Lotus had Ross Brawn as technical director, Kimi Raikkonen might be on his way to winning a 2^nd title. I note since Mercedes’ huge resurgence there are positive indications that Brawn may be extending his tenure there. Wise move dudes.

The race had now gone totally batsh*t mental and the cameras didn’t even know who to focus on. Even on the penultimate lap, there was a further mini-twist as Lewis Hamilton (he of the first delaminated tyre) passed Kimi for 4^th place.

Here are the results from the British Grand Prix 2013:

1. Rosberg – His second win for Mercedes of the year. All hail Nico.


2. Webber – Pretty much perfect day for Mark. A fantastic drive from the back of the field and his team-mate’s race (and almost certain win) implodes into the bargain.


3. Alonso – A typically masterful performance by Fernando who worked his magic to fashion a podium place from P10 in qualifying. If only he had a Schumacher-esque Ferrari.


4. Hamilton – An excellent comeback after the appalling misfortune in the opening laps.


5. Kimi – Should have been a podium. Your bad, Lotus.


6. Massa – See Hamilton, above.

Well that was one of the best British Grand Prix races in a long time. Dare I say it, perhaps the best race of the season so far. While the tyre delaminations are obviously extremely dangerous and unacceptable, the drama definitely injected some real excitement and unpredictability into the race.

The sport logistics for Sunday are slightly frightening. The German Grand Prix and the Wimbledon Mens Final (watching the semis as I frantically type) at more or less the same time and its going to be 25 degrees. Sounds pretty darn perfect to me.