Well I suppose it couldn’t last. Eventually the real world had to return and the fantastic action packed racing had to be .... well packed away for another year.
Valencia is a dull, tedious, boring track in the middle of a dockyard with absolutely nothing to commend it what so ever. Even the drivers in the post race interviews complained about it being a dull race to take part in and no doubt a dull race to watch and they weren’t far wrong.
It comes to something when the most memorable thing about the race is the BBC endlessly banging on about how the pits used to be a fish market once upon a time. Come on, I’m sure Valencia has a lot to commend it, but its ex-fish market pit complex is not one of them.
Anyway there was a race and yet again yada yada yada Vettel blah blah won at a canter ho hum. This time it was Alonso keeping Vettel honest and the Spanish crowd happy. Webber tried to remind everyone that he still drives for the world champion team and to be fair he didn’t hit anyone for a change. But he drove a bit slow for a minute or two at some point or other and found that Alonso had gone from third place to second place whilst he was in the pits. Dullsville central.
The McLaren’s didn’t seem to be able to get their tires working all weekend. Hamilton started third and well, ended up forth after a lap or two. Button didn’t have much more to offer. Same for the Mercedes and Renault's, nice try ... no bananas chaps. Even Kobayashi, normally the sort of driver to keep up entertained with the odd random Banzai overtaking move, failed to do anything of any note.
For big chunks of the race we were watching the battle of 13th place!
Oh well, Silverstone next, let us pray to the Gods of Petrol that the action picks up again there. And dear Lord, let’s have a British winner for a change, not the bloody German and his bloody pointy finger please.
So then, Vettel won .... again. Lets play a game of stat watch shall we ..... Vettel has now over taken Michael Schumacher with the ‘Most consecutive starts from the front row’ Vettel now has 13 to Mickys 12. Our Nigel is next with 15 then Prost with 16. He has some way to go to beat Senna’s 24 though. Next ‘Most consecutive podiums from the first race of the season’ Vettel now has 8 just one behind Hamilton and Alonso, Mickey got 17 in 2002 and I think Vettel has a shot at that. Vettel now has 567 points from 70 starts, that’s an average of 8.10 points per entry, which is better than Hamilton’s 7.51 or Alonso’s 5.41. So far this season Vettel has got 186 points that 93% of the points available, in 2002 Mickey got 84.71% of the available points with 144 of a possible 170. Vettel now has 22 poles from 70 starts, that’s 31.4 % whilst Senna only managed 65 from 162 starts or 40.1%, can you see Vettel not blowing that away this year. Finally, Vettal has lead over 1000 laps this year. God I hate him.
Alonso in 2nd managed to give the home crowd something to cheer about.
Webber, yes he’s still driving 3rd.
Hamilton, driving as fast as he could, gets a 4th.
Massa 5th could do better. See Alonso for details.
Last week’s hero Jenson is this week’s 6th place loser.
Rosberg was 4th at one point, ends up 7th.
Alguersuari was quite good in 8th and may get to keep his seat for the second half of the season.
Sutil beats his better team mate to 9th, just ahead of.
Heidfeld in 10th who is fast going off the boil.
Finally Narain Karthikeyan was dead last and not a happy bunny. This weeks HRT watch makes rather depressing reading I’m afraid. Narain had this to say ;
“At the beginning I was trying to keep with the pack, with Liuzzi and D’Ambrosio, but after seven laps I locked the front and after that I had a lonely race. I finished the race but there aren’t many positives I can take away from it”.
Oh dear, I know how he felt.
There you go then. Valencia is apparently getting a five year extension on its contract. The FIA must love that old fish market because the racing sure isn’t up to much.
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