Brazilian Grand Prix Results and Winter Stories Already!

And so closes the 2011 Formula One season. In Brazil, as is traditional. And as is becoming tradition for this race, the winner came not from pole, but from second on the grid. Mark Webber brought home his first win of the season in a fully Red Bull dominated race. And were it not for Sebastian Vettel’s car having a gearbox problem (or so the team says) Mark would have finished a distant second methinks. But aside from that, the battle for second in the championship came down to this race as well, and with Alonso, Button and Webber all in the hunt, it would be up to those three men to fight it out. As it turns out, it wasn’t much of a fight, as in the second half of the race, the Ferrari of Fernando Alonso became anemic and very uncompetitive against the surging Jenson Button, who flat out destroyed Alonso down the straight with his DRS enabled. From there, the team told him that he could do qualifying paced laps till the end, and he did so to finish third, and in doing so, securing second behind Vettel. Webber, with his win and Alonso’s fourth took third in the final standings, by one point from Alonso. Hamilton finished a distant fifth after his gearbox let go while chasing Felipe Massa. If not for Schumacher having a coming together with Senna and Hamilton’s gearbox letting go, I would have once again called exactly who finished in the top 10. However, because of those two going down or out, the finishing order looked like this:

1. Mark Webber

2. Sebastian Vettel

3. Jenson Button

4. Fernando Alonso

5. Felipe Massa

6. Adrian Sutil

7. Nico Rosberg

8. Paul di Resta

9. Kamui Kobayashi

10. Vitaly Petrov

And so it is on to next season and already there is a lot of intrigue. With the US Grand Prix looking like it is about 100% unlikely to take place and a returning driver in the Ice Man, Kimi Raikkonen taking a spot at Lotus Renault in place of the still injured Robert Kubica, there will be plenty of stories. Plus, coming up in just a few days time, a lot of this current crop of drivers will know whether they will be still be Formula One drivers or not. This includes Vitaly Petrov, Adrian Sutil, Rubens Barrichello and quite a few others. Also, there is now the story emerging that Bernie Ecclestone is saying that Europe is finished in F1 and that there will be only five races to be held there out of the 20 on the calendar in the next few years. WHAT LUNACY! I’m pretty sure I call for Bernie’s head every year, but seriously, can someone please get this senile octogenarian out of a position of power soon!?!

2012 can’t come soon enough. Next up, the Australian Grand Prix in March.

2011 End of Year Driver Lineup

The Run to the First Corner

Mark Webber Celebrating Win

Champagne Flies as Driver’s Celebrate in Brazil

Senna In and Ferrari’s F150 Italia Out

In an odd bit of coincidence with the release of the documentary on his uncle titled “SENNA” in Minneapolis (where this is being written), Bruno Senna will take over the Renault seat from the underperforming – and now badly nicknamed – “Quick” Nick Heidfeld. Apparently, the veteran Heidfeld wasn’t going along quite like his moniker suggests and the Renault team are seeing to it that he is replaced by Senna for the Belgian Grand Prix this weekend. The team is, of course, without their number one driver Robert Kubica this season after an accident before the start of the season, and now the team will field Vitaly Petrov as the number one, and Senna as the number two driver after bringing in Heidfeld at the start of the season because of his knowledge and superior driving record.

In other team news, it seems as though Ferrari has finally decided to throw in the towel for this season and are now working on what they are calling a “very innovative” 2012 title challenger. Although they say that they are not giving up on this season’s vehicle, the reality is that they will have very, very few new upgrades to it as they begin to pour all their resources into next season’s vehicle. Team principal Stefano Domenicali is saying that work on the 2012 car is already well under way and that it will be very innovative, and has to be, because their goal is to win right out of the gates. After slow starts the last couple of years, Ferrari need all the help they can get and with them having a quick car next season, from the start, it should be a nice three – or four if Mercedes can get their act together – way fight from when the lights go out.

Race One: Australia

As the 2011 Formula One season has now officially begun, it is very easy to see that it will be much the same as ever. The Red Bulls are very fast over one lap. The McLarens were sandbagging like I thought. And Ferrari is struggling to keep up, which is a bit of a surprise, but they should be able to fight for wins with the other two teams soon enough. A bit of a surprise was that the Renault in the hands of Vitaly Petrov performed so well. One can only wonder what that car would be doing with the more experienced, and much more highly lauded, Robert Kubica behind the wheel. Here is the finishing order.

1. Sebastian Vettel

2. Lewis Hamilton

3. Vitaly Petrov

4. Fernando Alonso

5. Mark Webber

6. Jenson Button

7. Felipe Massa

8. Sebastian Buemi

9. Adrian Sutil

10. Paul di Resta

In other news, it has also come out that former Ferrari World Champion Kimi Raikkonen is going to try his hand at NASCAR, becoming the latest in a handful of former F1 drivers to try and make the switch to the big oval. Best of luck Ice Man, you’re going to need it.