BOW DOWN TO THE DREAM TEAM
The F1 show was just ending the first leg of it's journey...when a volcano in Iceland decided to make things interesting. Getting back to Europe from Shanghai was going to be a lot easier said than done. In the meantime, there was some racing to be done. The word was that the McLaren's were meant to be off the pace and that Red Bull would be the team to beat. Fact is though three teams winning the first three races of an F1 season doesn't happen very often. The grandstands were still half empty but Bernie was happy to blame that on local marketing efforts or lack of. This race has had it's interesting moments since it started up in '04 though.
As for qualifying, well the Brits never looked under threat in Q1 which turned out to be a return to the new teams getting the early boot, Glock turning out to be the best of that bunch. The McLaren's continued their form for Q2 though Barrichello wound up missing out on the top ten by the skin of his teeth. Alonso was the first guy to get people's attention only for Vettel to edge ahead soon afterwards. Webber responded at the last minute only Vettel to come up with the goods at the flag, grabbing his third pole of the season. Webber would start P2 to complete the second all-Red Bull front row of the season. Alonso P3 for the first time since Australia, Rosberg P4 and Jenson P5. Further down, Lewis would start P6 though at least he was getting his act together in qualifying again.
Well the biggest concern pre-race was the weather and Lewis was one of those that wound up coming in for intermediates and wound up stuck in 12th. As we've already seen this year, this is not a problem for the likes of Lewis and he soon made it into 10th, then 9th then took both Vettel and Sutil at the ame time to grab 7th. His next trick was to rumble with Schumacher for 5th place - and while the German veteran showed that he hasn't lost it completely, Lewis was still the winner there. Still another pitstop saw him back down to 6th. By the time of a second safety car he was back up to 5th and not long after that he took Petrov for 4th then Kubica tried to stop him taking 3rd but couldn't and a late pitstop saw him get ahead of Rosberg and no one was going to stop him getting 2nd from there. His best result of the season so far.
Jenson meanwhile started the race by not going in for intermediate immediately and therefore soon found himself in 2nd, chasing down Rosberg before an early safety car came out. After we started racing again it looked as though the German driver had an edge on Jenson who didn't look to consolidate his earlier smart move...untill Rosberg had an off which allowed Jenson to close the gap and then take the lead. Other than another safety car, Jenson had no serious issues for the rest of the race and claimed his 2nd win of the season and Lewis backing him up resulted in the first McLaren 1-2 since Italy '07 and the first British 1-2 since the '99 Austrian Grand Prix when Eddie Irvine led home DC! Nothing short of sensational!
Bottom line is, that means Jenson has surged forward to lead the championship on 60 points, ahead of the rest of the competition by ten points. Further down, Lewis is up to 4th on 49 points(but no wins - yet).
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