Round 8 out of 19! Time for the British Grand Prix! Only one of two races to have been featured in every Formula 1 season! There sure is something magical about the race. The name Silverstone circuit speaks for itself! What a circuit with high speed corners! Lets take a look at how the racing weekend panned out!
Practice:
FP1 was almost washed out! With only half the grid setting times there was not much to talk about. The session was topped by Torro Rosso's Daniel Ricciardo who was looking to impress the RBR team for their 2nd seat next year after Webber's retirement! FP2 started on a drying track! The drivers came out and tested the prototype tires along with the usual hard and mediums for the weekend! Lotus tested out the Double DRS system, which is said to give up to 10kmph advantage on the straights! The session was topped by Rosberg in his quick Mercedes! Massa put his Ferrari into the wall, on the inside of Stowe, for the third Grand Prix in succession! FP3 on Saturday started with clear skies and the teams were getting ready for Qualifying! The two Mercedes cars finished on top followed by the two Bulls!
The FIA President along with the Marshals and drivers observed a minute's silence in honor of Mark Robinson, the marshal who lost his life after the Canadian Grand Prix!
Qualifying:
Q1 saw the usual suspects fall out! Apart from the two Marussias and Caterhams, Gutierrez and Bottas did not make the cut! Ferrari looked like they were having a tough weekend at this point! Q2 saw the two Mclarens drop out along with Massa's Ferrari! It was turning out to be a disastrous weekend for the Brazilian. Vergne, Maldonado and Hulkenburg dropped out! Q3 saw a really good fight for pole between the two Mercedes cars with Hamilton coming out on top! They locked out the front row! The bulls were right behind them! Alonso had a disappointing qualifying and wasn't happy at all! Di Resta, Ricciardo and Sutil impressed after qualifying in 5th, 6th and 7th respectively! Hamilton was elated to be on top in front of his home crowd!
After qualifying Di Resta's car was found to be underweight in the post qualifying checks! This demoted him to last place! A very disappointing result after a great qualifying!
Race:
German driver Nico Rosberg won the British Grand Prix this year which turned out to be one of the most dramatic races seen in the recent past! Rosberg was up there all through the races and capitalized on others failures!
At the start everything seemed fine for Hamilton, who headed the field for the first 8 laps, but then a rear-left tire failure resulted in the Briton being dropped to the tail end of the field! This was not all, two laps later Massa suffered a similar result when his rear left blew up into the entry of the Wellignton straight! A few laps later and again there was a similar rear-left tire failure, this time for Vergne! The debris were too much that the Safety car had to be brought out!
In the mean time Vettel, who made up one place at the start, was having a clear lead from Rosberg! The safety car brought the bunch back together! Adrian Sutil was up into 3rd at this point!
Vettel's teammate Webber had a bad start and dropped back to 15th after a incident with Grosjean at the start! He along with Hamilton started making up places!
After the safety car was back in, the race restarted and was going great with Rosberg closing in on Vettel but then on lap 42, Sebastian Vettel suffered a gearbox failure and stopped on the start/finish straight! A big blow to him and his team after a great race! This put Rosberg into the lead with Raikkonen and Sutil behind him!
Massa, who had made up the most number of places after the start, was disappointed that the tire failure put him back. He made a late race charge after the safety car went back and finished in 6th!
In the closing stages of the race, Webber was going all guns blazing and he passed everyone in his sight. He finished just 7 tenths behind Rosberg! He set the fastest lap of the race on the very last lap! A great race for the Australian considering his early mishap!
Alonso and Hamilton too had great final stints. Both of them were moving up the field from 8th and 9th! Alonso managed 3rd while Hamilton bagged 4th! A great race for Alonso after starting in 9th! Hamilton started in 1st and finished in 4th! He surely wont be happy with that, then again it could have been much worse!
Raikkonen and Sutil who looked set for a podium suffered tire degradation and were over taken by the rest! They finished in 5th and 7th! Sutil's teammate and home hero Di Resta made up 12 places to finish in 9th! Another great performance from the young driver! Hulkenburg was the last of the points scoring drivers!
Late in the race Perez suffered his second rear left tire failure of the weekend and 4th victim of the day! He later retired due to extensive floor damage! His teammate Button failed to score any points! Their season seems to be getting worse!
Willams, who are celebrating their 600th GP this weekend, finished in 11th and 12th and are still yet to score points this season!
Kimi Raikkonen manged to set the new record for the most consecutive races in the points! He doesn't really care about the records! He needs a better car from Lotus or for sure he will be off to RBR to replace Webber!
After the race Rosberg was reprimanded for going to fast in a yellow flag zone!
A major talking point during and after the race was how so many tires could fail in a single event! This could have been one of the most dangerous days in recent racing history where we saw tires going out! The teams were unsure what caused this! Some suggested it has got to do something with the kerbs on turn 4 but again if it was the kerb, it should have resulted the in previous sessions too!
Many drivers called this dangerous and Race Director Charlie Whiting admitting that the race could have been red flagged on safety grounds!
The FIA have called for an emergency meeting to sort this out and make sure something like this doesn't happen again! Lets hope Pirelli find out what went wrong and fix it because this is just unacceptable! Pirelli claim this isn't because of the new construction of the tires but nothing can be ruled out at this point!
Rosberg got a great birthday present while Vettel will be looking to win his home race next weekend at the Nurburgring and celebrate his own birthday in style!
Have a great week!
Results:
Practice:
FP1 was almost washed out! With only half the grid setting times there was not much to talk about. The session was topped by Torro Rosso's Daniel Ricciardo who was looking to impress the RBR team for their 2nd seat next year after Webber's retirement! FP2 started on a drying track! The drivers came out and tested the prototype tires along with the usual hard and mediums for the weekend! Lotus tested out the Double DRS system, which is said to give up to 10kmph advantage on the straights! The session was topped by Rosberg in his quick Mercedes! Massa put his Ferrari into the wall, on the inside of Stowe, for the third Grand Prix in succession! FP3 on Saturday started with clear skies and the teams were getting ready for Qualifying! The two Mercedes cars finished on top followed by the two Bulls!
The FIA President along with the Marshals and drivers observed a minute's silence in honor of Mark Robinson, the marshal who lost his life after the Canadian Grand Prix!
Qualifying:
Q1 saw the usual suspects fall out! Apart from the two Marussias and Caterhams, Gutierrez and Bottas did not make the cut! Ferrari looked like they were having a tough weekend at this point! Q2 saw the two Mclarens drop out along with Massa's Ferrari! It was turning out to be a disastrous weekend for the Brazilian. Vergne, Maldonado and Hulkenburg dropped out! Q3 saw a really good fight for pole between the two Mercedes cars with Hamilton coming out on top! They locked out the front row! The bulls were right behind them! Alonso had a disappointing qualifying and wasn't happy at all! Di Resta, Ricciardo and Sutil impressed after qualifying in 5th, 6th and 7th respectively! Hamilton was elated to be on top in front of his home crowd!
After qualifying Di Resta's car was found to be underweight in the post qualifying checks! This demoted him to last place! A very disappointing result after a great qualifying!
Race:
German driver Nico Rosberg won the British Grand Prix this year which turned out to be one of the most dramatic races seen in the recent past! Rosberg was up there all through the races and capitalized on others failures!
At the start everything seemed fine for Hamilton, who headed the field for the first 8 laps, but then a rear-left tire failure resulted in the Briton being dropped to the tail end of the field! This was not all, two laps later Massa suffered a similar result when his rear left blew up into the entry of the Wellignton straight! A few laps later and again there was a similar rear-left tire failure, this time for Vergne! The debris were too much that the Safety car had to be brought out!
In the mean time Vettel, who made up one place at the start, was having a clear lead from Rosberg! The safety car brought the bunch back together! Adrian Sutil was up into 3rd at this point!
Vettel's teammate Webber had a bad start and dropped back to 15th after a incident with Grosjean at the start! He along with Hamilton started making up places!
Massa, who had made up the most number of places after the start, was disappointed that the tire failure put him back. He made a late race charge after the safety car went back and finished in 6th!
In the closing stages of the race, Webber was going all guns blazing and he passed everyone in his sight. He finished just 7 tenths behind Rosberg! He set the fastest lap of the race on the very last lap! A great race for the Australian considering his early mishap!
Alonso and Hamilton too had great final stints. Both of them were moving up the field from 8th and 9th! Alonso managed 3rd while Hamilton bagged 4th! A great race for Alonso after starting in 9th! Hamilton started in 1st and finished in 4th! He surely wont be happy with that, then again it could have been much worse!
Raikkonen and Sutil who looked set for a podium suffered tire degradation and were over taken by the rest! They finished in 5th and 7th! Sutil's teammate and home hero Di Resta made up 12 places to finish in 9th! Another great performance from the young driver! Hulkenburg was the last of the points scoring drivers!
Late in the race Perez suffered his second rear left tire failure of the weekend and 4th victim of the day! He later retired due to extensive floor damage! His teammate Button failed to score any points! Their season seems to be getting worse!
Willams, who are celebrating their 600th GP this weekend, finished in 11th and 12th and are still yet to score points this season!
Kimi Raikkonen manged to set the new record for the most consecutive races in the points! He doesn't really care about the records! He needs a better car from Lotus or for sure he will be off to RBR to replace Webber!
After the race Rosberg was reprimanded for going to fast in a yellow flag zone!
A major talking point during and after the race was how so many tires could fail in a single event! This could have been one of the most dangerous days in recent racing history where we saw tires going out! The teams were unsure what caused this! Some suggested it has got to do something with the kerbs on turn 4 but again if it was the kerb, it should have resulted the in previous sessions too!
Many drivers called this dangerous and Race Director Charlie Whiting admitting that the race could have been red flagged on safety grounds!
The FIA have called for an emergency meeting to sort this out and make sure something like this doesn't happen again! Lets hope Pirelli find out what went wrong and fix it because this is just unacceptable! Pirelli claim this isn't because of the new construction of the tires but nothing can be ruled out at this point!
Rosberg got a great birthday present while Vettel will be looking to win his home race next weekend at the Nurburgring and celebrate his own birthday in style!
Have a great week!
Results:
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