Back in the late 1990s, Ferrari driver Eddie Irvine commented after a particularly dull Spanish GP that he wished he had had some music on in the car to listen to liven things up. Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa made their own sweet music earlier today on their way to Ferrari’s first double podium finish of the season.
They say you can’t win the race on the first lap but Alonso laid the foundations by passing both Kimi Raikonen and Lewis Hamilton enabling his first pit-stop to put him ahead of Sebastian Vettel. Nico Rosberg was a sitting duck and actually did a superb job to finish where he did – in sixth – despite having to try to save his tyres throughout.
Behind Alonso, Massa made light of his grid penalty to jump up the field and drove a strong race, only beaten by his inspirational team-mate and Raikkonen in a Lotus that we know looks after its tyres better than most cars.
Meanwhile, the 2013 Mercedes is behaving like a more extreme version of Jarno Trulli. Almost peerless on a Saturday during qualifying, they go backwards on raceday. Rosberg handled things better than Hamilton, who drifted back through the field and ended up finishing 12th, even being passed by the likes of Pastor Maldonado and Jenson Button during his difficult race.
Button was completely overshadowed in qualifying by his team-mate Sergio Perez, who was impressive come raceday but through a different strategy, and doubtless a bit more experience and tyre-management nous, he ended up finishing one place in front. Common sense seemed to prevail towards the end and there was no repeat of the wheel-banging of Bahrain.
The weekend was, in Button’s own words, ’embarrassing’ enough without the pair of them running into each other again.
With Perez in seventh place early on, it looked as if he might bunch up the field and allow the top six to surge clear, but with Rosberg and Hamilton not having great pace, that didn’t happen, but we did see a few teams trying different things in terms of strategy. Mark Webber had an awful start but his early stop worked for him and he finished just behind Vettel in fifth while Esteban Gutierrez stopped late, led briefly and then took fastest lap although was just out of the points in the end. A timely strong day for him, however, after a poor start to his season.
Daniel Ricciardo might have finished higher than the 10th he managed had he not been rear-ended by Nico Hulkenberg in the pits in the sort of accident that will be familiar to anyone who has played for any length of time on Microprose F1GP.
And while Paul di Resta finished as top Brit, it was something of a disappointment that he wasn’t able to force his way past Rosberg in the closing stages, as he looked to have the quicker car and the obvious advantage of DRS. Would a Raikkonen, Hamilton or even a Perez made more of that situation? Maybe, but at least he beat his team-mate.
Anyway, the result at the front leaves Vettel just four points ahead of Raikkonen with Alonso overcoming the dramas of Malaysia and Bahrain to sit just 17 points behind the championship leader.
Then come Hamilton, Massa and Webber, but it looks like the cream of this year’s crop has already risen to the top. It will take an extraordinary series of events, upgrades or mishaps for one of the current leading trio to not be celebrating another title later this year.