Sunday, April 18, 2010

Chinese Grand Prix




Jenson Button won today's Chinese Grand Prix in the McLaren while teammate Lewis Hamilton finished second, and Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes rounded out the podium by finishing third.

Other notables included Fernando Alonso finishing fourth in the Ferrari, Sebastian Vettel finished sixth in the Red Bull, Vettel's teammate Mark Webber finished eighth, Alonso's teammate Felipe Massa finished ninth, and Rosberg's teammate Michael Schumacher finished tenth.

The 56-lap race at Shanghai was marred by rain for most of the time but turned out to be uneventful and saw a lot of pit stops for tire changes between the slicks and intermediates. With Schumacher's tenth place finish and other mediocre results to start the season, I'm wondering if Schumacher's heart is really in F1 right now and I'm sure I'm not the only one asking this question. I'm sure many will say it's because of the car or this and that, but Nico Rosberg has put up solid results so far and Schumacher has Button's engineer's from last year on his side so I don't think it's so much the car. Even if it was the car, Schumacher has done some amazing things with inferior cars with his stint at Benetton during the early-mid 90s being an example. I was also hoping Adrian Sutil in the Force India would finish in a stronger position since he started off strong and did well for most of the race but ended up finishing eleventh, just out of the points.

With the Chinese results, Button moves into top spot for the Driver's title with 60 points, while Rosberg has 50, Hamilton and Alonso both at 49, Vettel at 45, Massa at 41, while Robert Kubica in the Renault sits on 40.

The next race is the Spanish Grand Prix at Barcelona in three weeks time.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Malaysian Grand Prix




Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel won today's Malaysian Grand Prix with teammate Mark Webber finishing second and Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg rounding out the podium.

The 56-lap dash around the Sepang circuit in Kuala Lampur was not a very interesting race although I did find the battle for positions 5 through 9 to be very interesting until Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso scoring a DNF towards the end due to a mechanical failure. The battle consisted of Alonso, Force India driver Adrian Sutil who ended up finishing fifth, McLaren-Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton who finished sixth, Alonso's teammate Felipe Massa who finised seventh, and Hamilton's teammate Jenson Button who finished eighth. Rosberg's teammate Michael Schumacher scored a DNF after experiencing mechanical problems on Lap 10.

It was nice seeing Sutil have a strong race and I am also interested in seeing if Rosberg is the real deal this season as he has started off strong so far. The next race is the Chinese Grand Prix at Shanghai in two weeks.

On to China we go.