Opportunity Lost

Continuing to talk about F1, this weekend's race was a complete let down for me. But it was one of the most topsy turvy races I had seen. The race was in Hungary and the championship was hotting up between Micheal Schmuacher and Fernando Alonso, 11 points in favor of Alonso.

Now the drama starts.. Alonso loses his cool in practice and brake tests Dornboos, a Torro Rosso driver and gets a penalty of 2 secs on his qualifying time effectively putting him down in the grid. This was a golden opportunity for Michael to close the gap. But then, to increase the dramatic element of the race, Micheal makes a mistake and overtakes a car during the final practice session minutes before the start of the qualifying and he too is awarded a 2 sec penalty. So it was even-stevens between the 2. But Micheal qualifies better at 11th and Alonso ends up 15th.

Now for the race.. To spice it up, nature throws in its bit too. It is a rainy race day. So anything could happen. The race starts and Micheal though he gains lot of positions in the opening lap, is pathetically slow and starts dropping back. Alonso goes past him. Looks like the bridgestone rain tyres were doing bad this time. His speed upto 4-5 secs off Alonso's. All Bridgestone drivers were dropping down the order.

Then the rains stops, and it starts to dry. Soon Micheal gets faster and faster and starts to close the gap. And lo one more twist, soon after the pitstop, Alonso seems to have a problem and he crashes out. This is it.. this was the first time the Bullet Proof Renault had buckled.. Ferrari and Micheal could stand to gain the most and close the gap tremendously. But then, the script for the race would have been too predictable.. can it be. Ferrari and Micheal make a tactical blunder. The track was drying fast, everybody was switching to dry weather tyres, but Micheal opts to stay with wet tyres hoping to finish the race without losing the track position. That was the serious mistake. He started going slower and slower, and the others with slick started going faster and faster. Guys like Pedro and Nick, closed up on him soon as he was upto 6 secs slower than them. Though he held them for quite some time behind them actually around 6-7 laps, he eventually was overtaken and to add that, Nick and Micheal collide putting Micheal out of the race.

That was very bad planning by Micheal and Ferrari. It was race where they should have tried to get as much points as possible as Alonso had crashed out, but ended up getting only one point due to the disqualification of Robert who finished ahead of Micheal.