Fernando
Alonso secured his second victory in 2012 bringing to an end
the unprecedented seven round streak of different race winners. After an
incredibly competitive qualifying session which saw the top 12 cars
separated by .3 seconds in Q2, Alonso found himself 11th on the starting
grid on a circuit that in recent years has seen few overtakes. A
combination of masterful overtakes and multiple strokes of good fortune
including a safety car period and a mechanical failure for the race
leader, Sebastian Vettel, placed Alonso in the lead with a little over
half of the Grand Prix completed.
Romain
Grosjean, who many had hoped would be the 8th different winner of the
season, instead continued his streak of bad luck by retiring his car a
few laps after Vettel with an identical alternator failure in his
Renault engine. Despite Romain's relatively poor results in the points
so far this season, he is making a name for himself as one of the most
talented drivers on the grid with excellent qualifying results and
moments of brilliance including his performance on Sunday before his
untimely retirement.
Lewis
Hamilton, who has been at the center of many controversies and dramas
in the past two seasons had another weekend of heartbreak and high
emotions. After qualifying second on the grid, he remained in contention
for a podium until a botched pit stop (the only consistent factor in
every race so far this year) during the safety car period dropped him to
6th. This painful stop with a double front jack failure possibly cost
him the race as he found himself under pressure from Pastor Maldonado
and Kimi Raikkonen in the closing laps of the race. Fighting for 3rd at
this stage, Hamilton held off Maldonado for a few corners with brave
defensive moves on heavily degraded Pirellis until the almost inevitable
collision between the two bitter rivals saw Hamilton out of the race
and Maldonado limping to a 10th place finish sans front wing (later
converted to 12th following a 20 second penalty for the incident with
hamilton).
Benefiting
from the retirements of the three likely podium finishers, Michael
Schumacher drove his Mercedes Benz to a third place finish and his first
podium since coming out of retirement two years ago.
Kimi Raikkonen secured second place resulting in an somewhat bizarre Ferrari World Champ Alumni Podium.
Fernando
Alonso has been somewhat overshadowed by the dominance of Red Bull and
Sebastian Vettel in the past two seasons, but performances like this
suggest that he is worth the $40 million contract he has with Ferrari.
In addition to being "the Maestro", Alonso has a sense of history and
significance of moment. His hoisting of Maldonado on the podium in
Barcelona and his riding of the Red Bull of Mark Webber last year are
examples of his appreciation for and participation in these moments. He
must certainly feel a sense of destiny in this extremely unlikely
victory.
"And
now here in Valencia, with this special team, Ferrari, with all the
grandstand full of red colour and Spanish flags. Here now, with the Euro
football championship also, there is a lot of Spanish atmosphere inside
all of us. Feeling very proud to be a Spanish sportsman at the moment
and winning in Spain this race is probably the best victory I ever felt
in terms of emotions. Nothing maybe compares to this one."
There
is very little cheering at motor races. In my experience you just sort
of stand there in awe and under assault from the volume. That is unless
you are in Spain. When Alonso took the lead following Vettel’s
retirement you could hear the roar of the crowd on the broadcast at
every turn as the director followed alonso around the circuit. I don't
think there is a venue outside of spain where this happens. The sound of
the crowd was reminiscent of Valentino Rossi’s battle with Jorge
Lorenzo at Catalunya in 2009.
Talking
about stopping his car on track after the race: "It was the right place
maybe because we had two grandstands there. It took a little bit of
time for the medical car to arrive and we had eight or 10 minutes of all
the people saying things about me, saying congratulations. They want me
to jump. You know, fun and games and we enjoy a little bit those
minutes."
We all enjoy a little bit those minutes.
