HE'S DONE IT AGAIN!
(Image taken from BBC)
So, what happens after the greatest rookie of all time wins his first race? Well Alonso starts acting like he expected Michael Schumacher treatment from McLaren, Ron Dennis scrabbles to put out the resulting fires and even the Yanks start taking notice of F1's new headline maker! Good thing too as the show quickly made it's way to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where the main other non-Lewis point of interest was that BMW had temporarily turned into Mannschaft Deutschland with 19 year old German Sebastien Vettel temporarily replacing Robert Kubica after the Pole's injury in Canada.
In qualifying, well Wurz was the biggest name casualty in Q1, though the locals won't have been that happy with Speed not making the cut either. Q2 though was once again where both Jenson and DC hit the end of the line, DC starting 11th, Jenson 13th. Vettel made it through to Q3 at the first attempt though! In Q3 Heidfeld was the early pacesetter before Massa took over before Hamilton makes his move to grab provisional pole! Now Alonso had beaten him in both Q1 and 2. Not this time though, Lewis could not be beaten to his second pole in a row!
In the race itself, the hard luck story belonged to DC! He made a rare mess of the start and found himself tangling with Schumacher near the back of the field after the Scot fell back to 16th! Ralf was the first guy out of the picture but DC had to go into the pits soon after and the mechanics declared it was game over! Bummer for DC, the North American part of the season turning out to be a complete write off for him. Fingers crossed he can sort it out back in Europe.
As for Jenson, well his Honda was yet again a beast to handle and he soon wound up scrapping with Fisichella for 16th spot, losing that battle but not doing so without a fight. Fighting was what he had to do for most of the race with the gremlins seeming worse than usual but Jenson dids manage to keep the car going and scrabbled to a 12th place finish. Not that bad a result given the hopelessness of his car but it does mean that he has to start thinking about '08 already!
Lewis, is there anything more to say? Well, OK, credit to Alonso for not letting the Brit run away on this occassion. Unlike Canada there were no safety cars but there was a double World Champion snapping at Lewis's heels but the fact that said individual could never get past him says it all! Alonso made one serious attempt at a pass, couldn't make it work and then whined about it! Lewis just did what he does. This guy is seriously unreal, but he has just won his second Grand Prix in a row! Further down though, credit to Vettel for finishing 8th and becoming the youngest driver to score a World Championship point.
There is more to say about Lewis though. Like, he has only competed in seven Grand Prix but he has won two of them and that's more than Jenson has won in a career that goes back to '00! No Brit has won two Grand Prix in a season since DC won in Brazil and Austria back in '01! No Brit has won two Grand Prix in a row since Eddie Irvine followed a win in Germany with one in Austria back in '99, going back to my school days. We're talking about a rookie here though and even Villenerve, as a rookie and reigning Indycar champion in '96 didn't win two Grand Prix in a row that year!
And one more stat. With 58 points, Lewis Hamilton has extended his World Championship lead to 10 points! DC's down to 12th with four points, equal with Sato but only he out of the two of them can claim a top five finish this season! Jenson still has zippo!
The show heads back to Europe now and the biggest unanswered question is "how much more history can Lewis Hamilton make?"
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