Button wins from Pole in Belgian Grand Prix

Jenson Button Wins from Pole in Belgian Grand Prix

Jenson Button of Mclaren won the Belgian Grand Prix starting from pole using a one stop strategy. 

As I mentioned earlier this was to be a interesting Belgian Grand Prix race.

The start of the Belgian Grand Prix was pretty eventful with Romain Grosjean cutting across Lewis Hamilton while taking a corner. Predictably he got hit and then dangerously jumped over Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari and Kamui Kobayashi’s Sauber. He nearly hit Kobayashi’s hand. Romain Grosjean this year has shows good speed and an equally bad erratic crash prone driving.

FIA authorities should remember that they had earlier banned a Japanese driver and Grosjean should be added to that list for saving a few lives.

Michael Schumacher who was on 2^nd position and was about to be overtaken by Sebastian Vettel, stopped on the 20^th lap to change over to hard tyres. He had planned for a one stop strategy. He then joined in 8^th position. This was a disastrous strategy, as Schumacher was on No. 2 and stayed there for too long and lost a lot of time vis-à-vis his other competitors who closed in to him after doing one stop. Mercedes didn’t manage a good pit stop from Schumacher either. As a result, Vettel who stopped a lap later could rejoin at 6^th position as Red Bull team managed to change his tyres at only 3.7 seconds. This incident will be investigated after the race.

There were some interesting racing between Raikkonen and Schumacher at Spa in the Belgian Grand Prix. Raikkonen passed Schumacher on the outside of the chicane in the 32^nd lap and then Schumacher passed him again by using DRS in the DRS zone.

Narain Karthikeyan spun and hit the barriers in the 32^nd lap and one of the wheels was seen coming out but Narain was safe.

Kimi again passed Schumacher on the 34^th lap and then Nico Hulkenberg too passed Schumacher. It seems Schumacher was trying to conserve his tyres. Schumacher again passed Hulkenberg using the DRS keeping the spectators entertained. Mercedes decided it was enough and then brought Schumacher to pit in lap 36. Ross Brawn was supposed to be a superb strategist but this was a blunder deciding a one stop strategy when Schumacher was losing so much time in the first stop. Schumacher despite pitting for the second stop continued to lose time.

Button won peacefully with his one stop strategy. This is his first win in Spa. This was also Jenson Button's first pole in Belgian Grand Prix. Vettel could also make his one stop strategy work and finished second. A two stopping Raikkonen finished third. The big loser being Michael Schumacher who finished seventh. Hulkenberg finished 4^th, Massa 5^th and Webber 6^th. Vergne was 8^th, Ricciardo 9^th and Paul di Resta 10^th.

Belgian Grand Prix Final Standings: 

1.     Jenson Button

2.     Sebastian Vettel

3.     Kimi Raikkonen

4.     Nico Hulkenberg

5.     Felipe Massa

6.     Mark Webber

7.     Michael Schumacher

8.     Jean Eric Vergne

9.     Daniel Ricciardo

10. Paul di Resta

11. Nico Rosberg

12. Bruno Senna

13. Kamui Kobayashi

14. Vitaly Petrov

15. Timo Glock

16. Charles Pic

17. Heikki Kovalainen

18. Pedro de la Rosa

Drivers who Did Not Finish Belgian Grand Prix

Narain Karthikeyan

Pastor Maldonado

Sergio Perez

Fernando Alonso

Lewis Hamilton

Romain Grosjean

There will be post race investigations by the stewards of the Belgian Grand Prix 2012.