Pastor Maldonado took his first Formula 1 victory for
Williams-Renault today and became the first ever Venezuelan to top the podium.
It was also the team’s first win since the Brazilian Grand Prix in 2004. It was
quite an incredible drive resulting in the fifth different driver and
manufacturer to win a race from the first five races, something not seen since
1983.
Fire in the garage
However, this amazing story today was soured by a freak fuel
explosion in the Williams garage about an hour after the race. Just after the
team had had a celebratory team photo taken, fuel somehow ignited. While
watching the BBC F1 forum you could see thick black smoke pouring out the back
of the garage.
It was quickly under control, but team members from
Williams, Force India and Caterham have reported injuries to a few team members
who helped tackle the blaze. So far it thankfully looks like they escaped
anything too serious.
The fight for victory
Before this incident though, the Williams team were
revelling in the glory of victory and the brilliance of Maldonado. He’s been
involved in a few incident in his short Formula 1 career and been labelled wild
and a pay driver.
Admittedly he comes with a whole heap of Venezuelan money,
and his crash on the last lap in Australia this year while chasing Fernando
Alonso kept up his wild man rep, but if ever there was a performance that
highlighted just how quick he can be, especially this year, then this was it.
He inherited pole position after Lewis Hamilton was
disqualified for not having enough fuel to take a sample but Pastor looked
relaxed before the race, and he wasn’t being cagey about what result he wanted.
He realised he had a chance of winning, it’s that kind of
season, and he exploited this fully. However, at the start he had the Ferrari
of Alonso alongside him into the first corner and made a wise decision to let
him go.
After the first lap he was 1.3 seconds behind Alonso, but
Maldonado was going to make a race of this, the very next lap Maldonado brought
the gap down.
Williams looked like they were playing it cautious in the
first round of pit stops, playing into the hands of the bigger teams like
Sauber had done with Ferrari in Malaysia and Lotus with Red Bull in Bahrain.
Maldonado pitted a lap later than Alonso on lap 12 and they looked content to
cover what Alonso did.
Maldonado stuck close and was unrelenting in his pursuit; Alonso
couldn’t drop Pastor. Coming up to the second stops Maldonado went on the
attack.
Williams brought him in on lap 25 before Alonso this time
and got him out on fresh tyres and into clear air. Alonso was delayed by
Charles Pic in the Marussia, but stayed out two laps longer which seemed a
fairly fundamental mistake.
Perhaps Ferrari wanted to be sure they’d be on fresher
rubber come the end of the race, but despite passing being significantly easier
these days track position is still king and Alonso had just lost it. As
Maldonado shot through on the start finish straight, the Spaniard was only just
exiting and was over 6 seconds behind.
It wasn’t all over for Pastor, Alonso doesn’t give up
without hassling and getting a few punches in first. He maintained the gap for
a while, but the Ferrari started gaining putting the pressure and the gap was
down to three seconds when the Williams pitted for the last time on lap 42.
It was a slow stop, but he again exited on fresh tyres and in
clean air, until he caught Kimi. Alonso dearly wanted to win again in front of
his home crowd and kept on coming at him, he’d looked after his tyres well and
pitted three laps later to exit close behind.
They both passed Kimi quickly who had yet to stop, with
Alonso right on the back of Maldonado. For all the world it looked like Alonso
was about to make the move to win. But it never quite came, the DRS was open
but Maldonado wasn’t rattled and remained just out of reach.
Ferrari were obviously hoping that the Williams’ tyres were
about to drop off, they’d not had to do a 25 lap stint before, and with three
laps extra life they thought they’d be ahead of the fight by the end. However,
they dropped out of contention with four laps to go as Alonso’s tyres went off
first leaving
Maldonado safe to take a fantastic win for Sir Frank Williams 70th
birthday.
Maldonado displayed a fantastic maturity and grabbed his
moment well, he really earned it the right way.
Ferrari looked to have the opportunity to be the first team
to claim a second win, the updates they brought certainly helped Alonso, Massa
not so much who qualified 16th, got a great start, fought around the
top 10, got a drive through penalty and finished 15th. Not a good
day after the progress he’d made in Bahrain.
But Fernando enjoyed the weekend, he qualified well and
altogether looked a far more competitive proposition but I think Ferrari believed
they would beat Williams and didn’t factor in that they’d have to earn it
first.
Perhaps if they’d covered Maldonado after the 2nd
stop to try and maintain track position they’d have been able to control the
race, but it wasn’t to be and in fact Kimi Raikkonen in the Lotus nearly caught
him on the last lap. Still Alonso is now joint championship leader and Ferrari are on the up.
Lotus maintain consistency
but could they have won?
As we know the tyres are affected by all sorts of circumstance
such as temperature and track surface, but despite this many people predicted a
Kimi victory today after both Lotus’ displayed good race pace in Friday
practice. But it was colder today, perhaps explaining why they couldn’t extract
the pace they thought they had.
Anyway after the start Kimi shot into third place from
fourth and from then on actually ran a pretty lonely race. The expected
challenge never materialised although after the final stops he had a lot
fresher tyres than the two ahead of him, and almost caught Alonso towards the
end, but I think the team may view this as another missed opportunity.
They certainly seemed a bit conservative with strategy.
Grosjean backed Kimi up well with fourth place, he made a poor start from third
but still managed to achieve a respectable result. Lotus surely have to be the
next manufacturer to get a win, so far they’ve probably been the most
consistent, look out for them in Monaco, especially Kimi who surely has to be a championship contender now?
Hamilton charges from
the back
McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton was astoundingly quick in
qualifying and took pole position by over half a second. Although we’ve seen
McLaren drop away on race day over the last couple of races you have to believe
he’d have been a significant challenger for victory.
His chance was taken from him after a team error in which
the car wasn’t fuelled enough to get back to the pits after his pole lap. This
was already contravening regulations which state the car must be able to return
to the pits and have a litre of fuel left over to be tested. The punishment to
disqualify him and send him back to the grid was harsh, perhaps send him to the
back of Q3, but the whole grid?
Anyway despite this, Lewis maintained a positive outlook and
said he’d ‘drive his heart out’. But he must be becoming frustrated with some
of the basic mistakes his team are making? He’s not under contract next year…just
saying.
Despite another troubled pit stop, Lewis was great today.
From last on the grid he was the only one to make a two stop strategy work,
looking after one set of tyres for nearly half the race. He made some great
passes on Senna, Massa and particularly the Toro Rosso’s.
He cut past Daniel Ricciardo just after turn 3 to split them
then dived around the outside of turn 4 to set himself up with the inside line
at turn 5 to get past Jean-Eric Vergne, brilliant stuff. Despite fading tyres
at the end which lost him a place to Vettel he was challenging Rosberg for 7th.
A great drive to 8th was his reward today but it could have been so
much better.
Tyres make championship
challengers become bit-part players
Jenson Button started 14 places higher and ended up 9th
a place behind Lewis. Not a good day for him and one of many drivers who
complained of being baffled by why they didn’t have the speed or why they
couldn’t make the tyres work as well as others.
Mark Webber for Red Bull was 11th and was another
one to wonder why he just didn’t have the speed. It’s a mark of the season how
managing the tyres can make previous race winners and even championship leaders
just bit part players at the very next race.
Sebastian Vettel joined Webber in not understanding why Red
Bull switched the front wings over, but apparently it was because they were
losing down force from them. Vettel hadn’t set a time in Q3 and so started 7th.
He didn’t make a great start but was running 6th by lap 19 after
pitting early to find some clean air.
However his afternoon turned into a comeback drive after
being given a drive through penalty for failing to slow down at yellow flags.
He fought back wonderfully with some superb moves against Button, Hamilton and
Rosberg that yielded him a final result of 6th. It kept him in a
joint championship lead, but his disappointment was clear to see after the
race.
I think they’d all like a more consistent tyre so they know
where they stand rather than the lottery we have now, but it does result in a
great show.
The Schumacher-Senna
incident
Michael Schumacher had another terrible race, this time he
crashed into the back of Bruno Senna’s Williams taking them both out.
Schumacher has argued that Senna changed direction in the braking zone which
took him unawares. Certainly Senna does move just before turn 1 to the right
just as Schumacher did the same to try and take the outside line, but to me it
looked like a racing incident.
However it is Schumacher’s responsibility as the car behind
to avoid that sort of contact, and as a result has been given a five place grid
penalty for Monaco, while Senna’s day got worse after his car was damaged by
the fire in the Williams garage.
Rest of the top 10
Kamui Kobayashi had a starring role today and deservedly
took 5th making some aggressive moves, especially on Button; giving
him a slight tap on his way past. His team mate Perez retired but was never in
it after suffering a puncture when Grosjean hit him on the opening lap.
Nico Rosberg finished up 7th after making a good
start but faded badly towards the end of the race when he was passed by
Kobayashi and Vettel near the end. Nico Hulkenberg rounded out the top 10 and
put up a great defence of the final point, refusing to give into Mark Webber.
So that was it for Spain, it was another race for of
unpredictable twists and turns and yet another winner in this 2012 season. Next
up is Monaco, always a highlight in the Formula 1 calendar. We head to the Mediterranean
knowing that Williams are back, no one has control over the tyres, the top
seven drivers are separated by less than a race win and no one can predict who’ll
win; something to look forward to then.
all photo's taken from autosport.com
great article :)
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