Lotus Racing F1 Team Race Report: Belgian GP

After a 3-week summer break, the F1 circus returns to one of the legendary curcuits that all drivers love: Spa-Francorchamps. Rain played its full hands and the race was peppered with carnage as well as two Safety Car periods. Saturday's qualifying saw Red Bull Racing's Mark Webber claiming his 5th pole position of the the season and also Red Bull's 12th in 13 races with Lewis Hamilton of McLaren Mercedes next to him on the front row. Lotus Racing F1 Team drivers, Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen meanwhile qualified at 18th and 16th respectively, but were promoted with Kovalainen in 15th and Trulli to 16th when several drivers were handed penalties for various reasons. In conjunction with Malaysia's Independence Day on the 31th August, both Lotus cars carried the Malaysian flag on the engine cover. The race on Sunday saw Kovalainen raced home to 16th while Trulli ended up 19th when the latter spun in the dying minutes of the race. Drama begun on the first lap itself when light rain fell. Up front, Webber suffered from a slow start, which Hamilton took full advantage of and rocket up front to the first corner, with the Briton's team-mate Jenson Button coming up second from 4th on the grid. William Racing Team's Rubens Barrichello, racing in his 300th career race, saw his milestone ended in a bitter note when, on the final corner, his car couldn't brake in time and he droved straight into Scuderia Ferrari's Fernando Alonso. Alonso escaped unscathed while Ruben's car suffered heavy nose damage. The McLarens were dominating the race until Webber's younger German team-mate Sebastian Vettel ploughed into Button on the 15th lap while trying to overtake the 2009 champion on the final corner, effectively ending the Briton's hopes of challenging for the win and also re-igniting his title chase. Subsequently, Vettel was handed a drive-through penalty for being at fault of the crash, dropping the him back further to into the pack before finishing 15th and out of the point scoring zone. The Safety Car was deployed for the first time and Ferrari, seeing the rain is starting to get a little heavier brought Alonso in to change to intermediate tyres, only to find the rain slowly fading and the new tyres burning themselves up quickly. Rain clouds with even heavier and longer rain visited the circuit at the late stages of the race which on lap 37 caused Alonso to spin out and stop in the middle of the track with front suspension damaged. The Safety Car then came out for the second time. Throughout all these, 2008 champion Hamilton ran an almost faultless race in 1st until the end, with a heart-stopping moment on lap 33 when his car went off-track and came narrowly close to the wall at the in-field hairpin. With this victory, Hamilton now mans the driver's standing with 182 points and Webber in second with 179 points.