Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Lotus Racing F1 Team Race Report: Abu Dhabi GP

After 18 races and 4 drivers fighting for the Driver's Championship title, a surprise winner emerged. The Abu Dhabi GP on the 12th to 14th November once again plays host as the final race of the year. Newly-crowned constructors Red Bull Racing, fresh from their one-two finish at the last round in Brazil, wasted no time to show why they deserve the title by qualifying at the top spot again. Sebastian Vettel started the race from top-spot while team-mate Mark Webber qualified to 5th on the grid. Another driver in contention to take the driver's title, Scuderia Ferrari's Fernando Alonso stopped the clock at 3rd place. McLaren Mercedes's world champion duo of Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton took 4th and 2nd spot respectively. Lotus Racing F1 Team's Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen qualified to 19th and 20th respectively. The race on 14th November got off with a bang when Mercedes Petronas GP's Michael Schumacher came in contact with team-mate Nico Rosberg and spun his car on the 6th corner. An incoming Vitantonio Liuzzi of Force India could not avoid the former world champion's car and crashed hard into it, the impact of the crash causing the latter's car to lift off the ground and nearly missing Schumacher's head. This incident brought out the Safety Car for 5 laps, which is when most midfield drivers decided to pit for fresh tyres. One the re-start on lap 6, Vettel pulled ahead and successfully build a decent gap between him and Hamilton, with Button in hot pursuit in 3rd, who jumped Alonso after a cautious start by the Spaniard. In 5th was Webber, who in his efforts to chase those in front of him, gave the wall at turn 19 a warm kiss with his right rear tyres on lap 8, causing minor damage and bringing him into the pits three laps later. The Australian rejoined the race down in 16th in heavy traffic. Alonso pitted on lap 15 on what seemed to be a calculated strategy to baulk Webber's race progress, and rejoined the huge crowd in 15th. These moves by both Ferrari and Red Bull backfired as both Alonso and Webber could not really do much to improve their positions and finished in 7th and 8th. Alonso, furious at being unable to get past the Renault of Vitaly Petrov ahead of him, pulled up alongside the Russian rookie and gestured angrily on the wind-down lap. Meanwhile up ahead of the pack, Hamilton was the first among the top three to take his pit stop before Vettel did his. Button, who had started the race on the softer compound rubbers, ran a longer than expected 32 laps before taking his pit. At the end of the day, a surprise winner emerged. Sebastian Vettel drove a flawless race to take the chequered flag and also the Driver's Championship title. Coming in second and third in the race is Hamilton and Button respectively. Meanwhile, Lotus Racing F1 Team did well by finishing 17th (Kovalainen) and 21st (Trulli) to clinch 10th place in their first season, ahead of the three new teams. And with this the 2010 Formula 1 season draws to a dramatic finish.

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