Belgian GP: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The F1 cavalry was back on track after a long hiatus at the legendary Spa-Francorchamps circuit, host to the Belgian Grand Prix. Sebastian Vettel, in his Red-Bull, got back to his winning ways with the fifth win of the season.

Here’s a look at the good, the bad and the ugly of what transpired at the 2013 Belgian Grand Prix.

Vettel flies high with Red-Bull

The ease with which Vettel’s Red-Bull zoomed past the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton in the very first lap surprised everyone. That no other car or driver posed any threat to Vettel during the remaining part of the race was evidence enough of the German and Red-Bull dominance of the F1 season this year. Whilst Vettel extended his lead to 46 points in the table, Red-Bull sit pretty at the top with 312 in the Constructor’s tally.

Ferrari, on the other hand, would be happy to get back on the podium. Fernando Alonso made quite a few moves at the first corner and during the race, muscling his Ferrari past his competition with a good enough straight line speed. But the important question remains: is the Championship title moving into the hands of Vettel again?

It’s hard to place your money on that but with 8 more races to go in the calendar, the other front runners (Ferrari, Mercedes and Lotus) have their tasks cut out. Monza hasn’t been the favourite destination for the Red-Bull as was evident last year and Vettel was candid enough to admitting it at the podium talk. All that can be said is that the season is far from over and there’s still some excitement to watch out for.

Hamilton and Kimi disappoint

You know there’s something wrong when you get overtaken in the very first lap after taking pole. Lewis Hamilton must have felt it and wouldn’t have been a happy camper after throwing away the qualifying advantage. But it was more to do with Mercedes, as it wasn’t a match for the speed of the Red-Bull or the Ferrari. Eventually, finishing at the podium was probably the best result for Hamilton and Mercedes.

Kimi ‘Iceman’ Raikkonen would be utterly disappointed with a retirement. His Lotus went out of the race with a brake failure on lap 26. With that came to an end an amazing streak of 27 consecutive point earning finishes and an impeccable achievement of 39 race finishes since his return to F1 in 2012 after a 2 year sabbatical. From being 2nd in the championship before the beginning of the race, he is now 4th after Vettel, Alonso and Hamilton and with some catching up to do at Monza.

Of Penalties and Protests

With rain staying away from track on race day, the overtaking moves added to the excitement. While there were some neat overtaking and defending moves, there were track penalties handed out to erring drivers by the stewards. The first of those was given to Sergio Perez in the McLaren-Mercedes for forcing Romain Grosjean off-track just after the Kemmel straight at Le Combe.

While Perez was quite vocal on the team radio that he did nothing wrong, he eventually came in for a drive through. Perez managed to keep it steady despite the penalty and was among the points with 3 laps remaining, before Danniel Ricciardo overtook him, taking the final point to finish 10th.

Things got ugly when Pastor Maldonado in Williams took out Paul di Resta’s Force India at the bus-stop chicane, completely damaging the Force India’s rear end. Di Resta was forced to retire but Maldonado was served with a 10 sec stop-go penalty, eventually moving him further down to finish 17th . Esteban Guitrrez was the last of the drivers to be handed a drive through penalty on lap 40 for leaving the track and gaining an advantage.

It’s not good to have protests take over a sporting event. However, the Belgian GP seemed to have been stormed by Greenpeace activists, who were protesting against multinational firm Shell for its controversial oil drilling in the Arctic. Shell was the official sponsor for the race.

There were protest banners all around and a women managed to abseil above the podium celebrations like a spider-woman with a protest banner. This didn’t surely go well with the organisers but the protesters managed to get their message across and gain plenty of eyeballs. Will Spa, the financially struggling legendary circuit, be in trouble because of this? We await to get an answer.