JENSON SUPREME IN DANGER ZONE
(Image taken from Independent)
Well, despite this, the FIA, off the back of advice from some Spanish guy that spoke no English or Arabic, saw fit to re-instate the 2011 Bahrain Grand Prix. Plenty of noise in cyberspace and the FIA's ignorance of it's own small print later...and they had second thoughts. Score one for the good and sane guys. So now the show was off accross the Atlantic to the Circuit Giles Villneurve and the Canadian Grand Prix. It was good to be focussing on the racing again but it wasn't good to see Perez feeling out of whack during practice and Sauber had to hire Pedro de la Rosa, now McLaren reserve driver at short notice for his first race since Italy '10.
In qualifying, well Q1 went relatively smoothly for the Brits but d'Ambrosio was on the verge on not qualifying untill the stewards decided to be merciful. Q2 saw di Resta look promising before having to settle for P11 but both McLarens made it through to the top ten shootout. Well Vettel was the first man out and the first man to set a hot time, scratch that it was the fastest time of the entire weekend and allowed him to bank his second pole in a row. Alonso grabbed P2(his best qualifying performance of the season so far), Massa P3(his best qualifying performance of the season so far), Webber P4, Lewis P5(best qualifying performance for a couple of races). Jenson had to settle for P7.
As for the race, well it wasn't Lewis's finest hour. The race started behind the safety car due to heavy rain. He was then rammed off the road by Schumacher and tangling with Webber left him down in 7th. And then came the big one. Trying to overtake Jenson, his teammate turned inwards, didn't see him and the 2008 world champion's tyres were busted. McLaren ordered him to retire, fearing suspension damage.
Di Resta in the meantime went relatively smoothlyafter the safety car came in...only to remain in that position after the safety car came out. He was able to make his was up to 10th due to pitstops only to eventually slip back down to 11th after the safety car dissapeared again and then it returned and eventually the race was redflagged with the Force India driver due to restart in 6th, benefitting from the pit reshuffle. Two hours later(and a serious workout for the Sky+ Live Pause system) later, the race restarted. When the safety car eventually dissapeared Paul made his way up to 5th...only to get whacked by a drive through for after a clash with Heidfeld. He tried to make his way through the field put a clash with Barrichello saw him pick up a race ending puncture. Unlucky.
Jenson, well...didn't take too kindly to Lewis's collision and wound up heading into the pits which meant that by the time the red flag came down he had to start from 11th(but not before getting a lot of attention on intermediate tyres). When finally unleashed though he got into a whole load of scrapes and a few pitstops and trye changes later he was right at the back of the pack. Fine by him, within no time at all he was in the points and somehow he was surging in over a second faster than anyone else... and after thinking that this would be an awful race for British F1 fans, next thing I know he's chasing down Vettel...and the reigning world champion cracks! Jenson went on to grab his first win of the season in probably his best performance since he joined McLaren.
So, the championship looks like this. Vettel still leads with 161 points, Jenson up to 2nd on 101, further down Lewis drops to 4th on 85.
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