Im sorry i didnt post my Japanese Grand Prix report earlier, i have been pre occupied recently, anyway, here it is
Fernando Alonso was the unlikely winner of the Japanese Grand Prix at Mount Fuji (his 2nd win on the trot) in an incident filled and controversial race.
THE RACE
McLaren's title contender, Lewis Hamilton qualified well on pole after dominating the weekend up to that point. Thats where his dominance was to end though.
As the lights went out, Hamilton made a total mess of his start allowing Kimi Raikkonen to nip in front, Hamilton though gained momentum down the long straight and pulled out of the Ferrari's slipstream in an attempt to re-pass Raikkonen, however he left his braking way way too late, ran wide, taking half the field with him in the process and amidst all the chaos, Robert Kubica who started down in 6th all of a sudden found himself in the lead ahead of Alonso, Hamilton found himself down in 6th BEHIND title rival Massa. During the 1st corner chaos, David Coulthard and Sebastien Bourdais had made contact and Coulthard spun as soon as he floored the throttle as the contact ruined his rear suspension, in the process, he clattered into Kazuki Nakajima and removed the Japanese driver's front wing completely ruining any chance the young son of former Grand Prix Driver Satoru Nakajima had of scoring a good result in front of his home fans.
The action continued on the very next lap except this time, this incident would look to have massive implications in the title race. Hamilton got a great run on Massa coming into the hairpin/chicane complex, after faking an inside run, Massa then ran wide allowing Hamilton to switchback to the inside and take 5th spot, but then Massa proceeded to run across the grass on the inside of the chicane and clash into Hamilton's left sidepod, sending Hamilton into a spin that would put him down to 18th and last, costing him any chance of a points finish, to make matters worse, Hamilton was forced to pit for new tyres after flatspotting his fronts in that 1st corner lock-up.
Nothign much happened after that until the first round of pitstops, when Massa AND Hamilton both recieved drive-through penalties for their earlier transgressons (Hamilton for Dangerous Driving, Massa for making contact with Hamilton) this would put Massa well down the field as well, Alonso in 2nd stayed out longer than Kubica on a different fuel strategy, in that time, Kubica came out in bad traffic, Alonso set some very quick laps and came out in front of the Pole. During all that came a very big rarity, an engine failure in a McLaren, Heikki Kovalainen's Mercedes engine had packed up, the first time a Mercedes engine has failed in nearly 2 years, he was running 4th at the time and his retirement seriously dented McLaren's hopes of the constructors championship.
After the 2nd round of pitstops came the biggest talking point of the race. Massa despite his penalty had fought his way up to 8th spot and a points finish (Hamilton would eventually finish 12th) but then came across Sebastien Bourdais who had driven an excellent race to run up in a net 6th spot, Massa had the outside line on Bourdais coming into the first corner, Bourdais had no-where to go, Massa tried to hog the inside line and then drove into Bourdais's sidepod and then spun (probably in frustration) Massa had only himself to blame, but the implications of that incident would be far reaching.
Alonso in the menatime had a trouble free run to his 2nd win of the season, the 21st of his career ahead of Kubica and Raikkonen, Massa recovered to finish in 8th spot. But in an outrageous move, the stewards decided to penalize Bourdais (who had finished 6th) for his role in the incident with Massa even though he had done nothing wrong. This dropped him to 10th and promoted Massa up to 7th, giving him an extra point. Hamilton though despite his troubles, left Mount Fuji with a 5 point lead
No comments:
Post a Comment