The race started with a bad start for Nico Rosberg and Mark Webber, who started the race in the dirty side of the track, and that has been taken as an advantage by the second placed Sebastian Vettel, while Fernando Alonso did a reasonably conservative start and lost positions with Felipe Massa, who has made a really good start, and Jenson Button. In the first corner, a Lotus has touched Mark Webber0s car, which has suffered damage in his front wing. Lewis Hamilton had achieved some gap with Sebastian Vettel and Lotus would get into an interesting fight behind Daniel Ricciardo.
On lap eight started the chaos of shredded tires, the race leader punctured his left rear wheel in the main straight after turn 5 just like Sergio Perez did in free practice, losing any chance of victory, but this only was the beginning of an absurdity that has caused a flood of criticism towards Pirelli by fans, drivers and the world of Formula 1 in general, as two laps later Felipe Massa had exactly the same problem at Turn 5, and all the teams made their drivers stop to put new tyres, in fear that the problem will reproduce in their cars. On lap 15, Jean Eric Vergne had the same problem, this time in the straight before Turn 15, but this time he did it with the hard compound. At that time the Safety Car went to the track for the stewards to discuss the matter and the marshalls to clean the track. The drivers were puzzled by this, Mark Webber on the radio asked “what the hell was going on”, while all the engineers advised their drivers not to touch the kerbs, and to control the pressure on the next set of tyres they would use.
When the safety car had gone, Vettel did well and opened a gap with Rosberg, while Alonso was fourth, thanks in part to the problems of the other drivers, and began to fight with Adrian Sutil to enter the podium, while Massa and Hamilton regained positions. The race has become an resistance test, and soon entered the teams info box to gamble with the tyres. We also saw pieces flying before Copse, supposedly from Gutiérrez, but the television had not shown the incident, only the pieces that went flying. Kimi Raikkonen has stopped early and overtook Fernando Alonso in box, which almost collided with Romain Grosjean as he left his box. Jean Eric Vergne was forced to retire due to the damage he had suffered in his car after the puncture. Mark Webber overtook Fernando Alonso by strategy, and began to attack Kimi Raikkonen for the podium. Adrian Sutil was sixth and was also attacked by Daniel Ricciardo.
P | Driver | Diff. |
1 | Nico Rosberg | |
2 | Mark Webber | +0.7 |
3 | Fernando Alonso | +7.1 |
4 | Lewis Hamilton | +7.7 |
5 | Kimi Räikkönen | +11.2 |
6 | Felipe Massa | +14.5 |
7 | Adrian Sutil | +16.3 |
8 | Daniel Ricciardo | +16.5 |
9 | Paul di Resta | +17.9 |
10 | Nico Hulkenberg | +19.7 |
11 | Pastor Maldonado | +21.1 |
12 | Valtteri Bottas | +25.0 |
13 | Jenson Button | +25.9 |
14 | Esteban Gutiérrez | +26.2 |
15 | Charles Pic | +31.6 |
16 | Jules Bianchi | +36.0 |
17 | Max Chilton | +67.6 |
18 | Giedo van der Garde | +67.7 |
19 | Romain Grosjean | + 1 l |
20 | Sergio Pérez | + 6 l |
21 | Sebastian Vettel | + 11 l |
22 | Jean Eric Vergne | + 17 l |
The world is tightened, with Alonso 21 points behind Vettel. The German Grand Prix will take place next weekend.