After the F1 summer break, both fans and teams were looking forward to starting the second half of the season and to close in on the title races. What better place to start the nine remaining races than in Belgium.
Lewis Hamilton had taken a surprise pole, which with 2 minutes remaining looked as though belonged to Di Resta after a wet qualifying brought surprises and shocks. Suddenly though, the track seemed to have dried considerably and this meant that Hamilton was able to take his fourth pole in a row.
All 22 drivers lined up on the grid and completed the formation lap without any problems with a dry track and a mixture of soft and hard tyres chosen for the drivers. 44 laps later the race was won, and although it wasn't a classic race at Spa and didn't provide as much action as we were expecting, it was still a fairly interesting race with a few incidents to provide discussion points.
Sebastian Vettel yet again proved to the world this afternoon how and why he is a triple world champion. Although he is not best known for his overtaking and sometimes comes under criticism regarding it, he vitally overtook Hamilton on the first lap of the race and then dominantly controlled and eventually won the race. Once Vettel had the lead, it didn't really look like it would change from there. Essentially the race was won in the first lap, because Vettel is so good at building and managing a gap, as well as making sure he isn't within the DRS range. As a result of his victory, he has also extended his championship lead, and with only 8 races left of the season, it is going to be difficult for his rivals to close this gap.
After a disappointing season and revealing that they don't expect to win races this season, McLaren had a solid race today. Button had a good qualifying session yesterday relative to where McLaren currently are, starting 6th on the grid. Button got an even better start, and by the middle of the first lap was in 3rd position. Although realistically we knew he would not finish in that position, he drove a decent race to finish 6th, beating the Lotus of Romain Grosjean and the Ferrari of Felipe Massa, which indicates some improvement from the team. I'm really looking forward to seeing what package they bring to the Italian GP in two weeks time.
Compared to Button, Perez had a rather eventful race. After a good start, where he made up places, he tried an overtake on Grosjean on lap 8, which resulted in a drive through penalty. The stewards believed he had forced Grosjean off the road once the move was complete and this rather ruined his race because it meant that he was out of the points. He managed to get back into 10th place, but that was then claimed by Daniel Ricciardo in the closing stages of the grand prix.
There were three retirements in total today, all for different reasons. The first of these was for Caterham driver Charles Pic, after a leak forced him to retire. Secondly Kimi Raikkonen, who is known for his consistency, retired after his brakes failed on lap 26. Even on the grid we saw his brakes smoking and throughout the first few laps we saw brake dust coming from the front of his car so it wasn't a surprise to see that eventually they failed.
The final retirement of the afternoon was for Force India driver Paul Di Resta. He retired after suffering extreme damage to the rear of his car after Pastor Maldonado drove into the back of him. Maldonado was able to go to the pits and continue his race, but for Paul it was his afternoon over. This meant that with Button scoring more points that Sutil, McLaren had grabbed 5th in the constructors championship.
For me, the driver of the day was Fernando Alonso. After a bad qualifying session, by his standards and starting in 9th, he made an incredible start and found himself in fourth place in the first lap. He continued to have a good race in which he stayed out of trouble and maximised the performance of the Ferrari and picked up another podium position in 2nd. Ferrari have seemed to make some considerable progress through the summer break and this has shown here at Spa.
One thing I love about watching the races live on TV are that they show you the top three drivers as they prepare to go onto the podium. Today we saw how Hamilton and Vettel interacted after the race and it was rather entertaining to see them soak David Coulthard with champagne on the podium during the post race interview.
Looking forward to Italy, I think we will continue to witness the pace of the Red Bull, the strength of the Mercedes in qualifying and hopefully some more improvements from McLaren. Although today wasn't the most spectacular of races, Vettel has shown that is is moving ever closer to a fourth successive world championship.
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