The Turkish GP was fairly uneventful until the latter half where the outcome of the race experienced a dramatic shift due to a collision between the Red Bull cars. There was some light rain during the latter part of the race but this didn’t influence the race much.
The Top-10:
The Red Bulls and the McLaren‘s were leading from the start with Hamilton challenging Webber during the first half of the race. Finally it was the McLarens who took a double victory. Lewis Hamilton took his first victory of the season with Button coming in second. Button tried to get past Hamilton and even succeeded at one point but Lewis was quick to take back the lead. Mark Webber recovered from the collision with his team-mate and finished 3rd, although before his collision he had been leading much of the race.
Team Mercedes drove a solid race with Michael Schumacher finishing 4th and Nico Rosberg finishing 5th. Renault’s Robert Kubica once again bested the Ferraris and finished 6th.
Felipe Massa drove an even race but couldn’t challenge Kubica. Fernando Alonso who failed in the qualifying rose up the ranks and finally thanks to the bad luck of Renault’s Vitaly Petrov (who fought hard to keep Alonso behind him) was able to finish 8th, behind his team-mate Massa.
Adrian Sutil rose the ranks to score 2 points for Team Force India and the later dramatic events also allowed Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi to score the team’s first championship point. Sauber’s excellent race day was completed by both of their cars finishing the race for the first time this season.
Golden Pineapple Award: Pedro De La Rosa (Sauber) – Sauber came close to finishing both cars on points although they were stuck at the back of the lot for a long time. However, this is by far the team’s best result this season. Perhaps Sauber is not doomed quite yet.
Drop-out count (& Back of the Lot News): 5
Once again most of the retirements were the result of technical problems causing both Lotus and Hispania cars to retire. Because of this Team Virgin was the best of the new teams. The most dramatic retirement was obviously that of Sebastian Vettel who tried to over-take his team-mate towards the end of the race in order to take the Grand Prix victory. However, Webber kept his line and Vettel’s right rear wheel collided with him causing both cars to go off course. Webber did finish but Vettel was clearly upset by what happened. Vettel’s mistake also cost him a serious position drop in the Driver’s Championship to 5th place.
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