Kimi Räikkönen & Sebastian Vettel

Kimi Räikkönen & Sebastian Vettel

tiistai 26. heinäkuuta 2011

German GP: Formula 1 racing at its best!

Writing about the German GP is kind of difficult for me due to a couple of things. First of all, like I wrote on the previous blog post, it was the first race for a very long time that I wasn´t able to watch live on TV! So I didn´t see the whole race, just a 1-hour summary broadcast of the highlights. And on the other hand... I guess I was partly on some other planet whilst watching the race because I had just witnessed Kimi Räikkönen and Sebastien Loeb driving live on the streets of Helsinki! And standing opposite the 7-time rally world champion and getting his autograph made my heart pound and my thoughts wander... So overwhelming emotions for me on that Sunday afternoon!

The German GP, however, was Formula 1 action at its very best! The battle for the victory was as exciting as it could possibly get :) Now I just have to praise Hamilton´s performance, it was absolutely outstanding! Taking the lead right after the start was more than I could have expected from the McLaren driver! Which meant another lousy start for Mark Webber... Three poles this season and three failed starts!

The battle between Alonso and Vettel was intense indeed. Vettel wasn´t able to maintain his position as 3rd because thanks to the DRS Alonso was able to overtake him easily. All I can say, it seemed to me that Vettel´s performance wasn´t as good as we all have got used to see. And then on lap 9... Vettel went wide, not much but still enough to cause him spin... An easy looking mistake from him which cost him positions. His team-mate Webber, Alonso and Hamilton were battling for the victory but Vettel was clearly out of that struggle. After the second pit stop he managed to close the gap to Massa who was on 4th place at that stage. But Vettel wasn´t able to overtake... Until at the last pit stop when he pitted at the same time with Massa and Vettel managed to get ahead of him. Vettel has kind of reputation that he can´t overtake on the track and this race certainly didn´t make the reputation any better.

Hamilton was the first to put on the hard tyres which was the right choice. When Alonso pitted Hamilton was able to take the lead. Second win of the season for Hamilton! No doubt about that the right man won. Hamilton´s performance was absolutely outstanding and after the practices I could never have believed he could be that fast! It was almost touching to hear Hamilton´s comments on the team radio and at the press conference. He was truly happy about his win and it´s always touching to see such genuine emotions!

Alonso finished 2nd and Webber 3rd, leaving Vettel 4th and Massa 5th. Though Vettel had the worst race of the season on his home soil, 4th place is no bad achievement! I agree with Hamiltons´s words after the race: nobody can be perfect all the time! Making mistakes is what makes us humans... And finishing 4th made Vettel lose only 3 points of his lead in the championship standings, the man is still leading with 77 points! But to be honest, I felt weird not to see Vettel sitting at the press conference after the race... I missed his comments and that adorable smile of his :)

Looking from the racing point of view I´m really happy to see both Ferrari and McLaren have improved their performance massively! This may be some kind of a turning point for the second half of the season. As far as especially race pace is concerned, the RB7 isn´t necessarily the fastest car on the grid anymore! It means Red Bull has a lot of homework to do like Vettel stated after the race. They have to improve if they want to win in Hungary! And I would certainly love to see the adorable German back on the podium at Hungaroring before the 4-week break on the Formula 1 calendar.... :)

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