Monday, June 28, 2010

VALENCIA GP 2010

First of all, apologies for not writing as much as I could. I'm really tied up nowadays with work and my new business venture - P1 Motorsports Hospitality. We are into bringing motorsport fans to attend their favorite F1 or MotoGP events here in Malaysia (and hopefully in other parts of the world soon) in a comfortable setting but more importantly, motorsport focused. No typical tours here. We eat, sleep and breathe motorsports.

Well, on to the Valencia GP. It was thought to be another boring featureless race even with all the new upgrades teams brought with them. And going by the performance during FP1, FP2 and FP3, it was still undecided which team had the real advantage. As it turned out, Red Bull who were written off at Valencia still had the advantage.

Red Bull secured another qualifying 1-2 with Lewis Hamilton managing to hold on to P3. The race start was really edge of your seat stuff as Hamilton overtook Webber and went straight for Vettel's jugular. Almost had him too. They touched actually and Hamilton damaged his front wing a bit.

All was quiet until lap 8 when Mark Webber ran into the back of Kovalainen, flew up into the air 360 degrees, landed on his head, bounced around and hit the barriers - at 190mph! Wow! I was speechless. But due to safety measures and technology, he just walked away. Just another day at the office.

That incident brought out the safety car which promptly caused everybody to pit, except for Vettel, Hamilton, Alonso and Massa who were all out of position. Hamilton managed to overtake the SC (intentionally or not) and Alonso and Massa got stuck there for the remainder of the lap while Vettel, Hamilton and virtually everybody pitted away.

Now, Hamilton did break the rules by overtaking the safety car and he was duly punished with a drive through but the structure of the race at that time did not cause him to lose his P2, so he was lucky. Alonso and Massa's race was ruined because they got stuck at the wrong place and the wrong time. It was unlucky and that is part of racing.

But they and Ferrari can't stop complaining. They even suggested to change the SC rules again just because of this. If it was them that benefited, I'd bet my balls they wouldn't be crying to change the rules. Sore losers! Just ridiculous the statements that Ferrari and Alonso made.

But lets not dwell on that because these people are never satisfied unless they benefit or they can cheat and get away with it, like they did at Fiorano while "filming".

In the end, congrats Vettel and McLaren. Lewis still leads into Silverstone when the new updates to the car will be available and McLaren will blow Ferrari away again.

Lastly, I have to pay tribute to Kamui Kobayashi. What a race he drove. He drove with the same set of tyres for 52 laps, running 3rd for a long time and holding back Jensen Button (who wasn't really trying anyway). Then after changing tyres, he overtook Alonso on the last lap and overtook Buemi on the last corner to snag 7 points. This guy deserves a seat in a better car.

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