RED Bull Racing and Sebastian Vettel got back to their winning ways after clinching victory and a 1-2 finish at the Belgian Grand Prix. Vettel scored his 7th victory of the season and strengthened his top position in the Driver’s Championship table by 92 points. Team-mate Mark Webber finished 2nd in today’s race and is currently fighting to keep the 2nd place in the table.
Red Bull Racing leads the Constructor’s Championship with 426 points as opposed to Mclaren who are at 295 points.
The Belgian Grand Prix showed that the sport didn’t always rely on weather to make a race interesting. There were multiple strategies that worked and drivers who started at the front weren’t necessarily the ones who finished in the front. Vettel is one of the few drivers in the history of Formula1 to have started and won the Belgian Grand Prix from pole.
Coming to the Indian performances at Spa, Karun Chandhok drove in the Free Practice 1 session on Friday. He managed 11 laps and ended the session 21st, 5 seconds and 8 positions behind his team-mate Jarno Trulli. The laptimes don’t reflect true track performance as the session witnessed changing weather conditions. It is good to see Karun get mileage under his belt as a lead up to the Indian GP, which he still isn’t sure he will get a racing seat for.
Force India, India’s only F1 team, had a mixed qualifying session after both drivers couldn’t extract the true pace of the VJM04 due to driving errors. Adrian Sutil managed P15 before crashing into Eau Rouge, whereas Paul di Resta started the race from P18. The 2009 Belgian Grand Prix was when the team scored their first ever podium finish.
Come Race Day, both Force India cars made a good start and managed to stay in the top 10 during most of the race. They were matched for race pace with the Mercedes GP, Lotus Renault, Sauber and Willams F1 cars. Adrian finished in 7th, just behind the top 3 teams, whereas Paul finished just outside the points in 11th place. All in all, Force India added 6 more points to their Constructor’s tally and trail Sauber, who are 6th, by 3 points.
Apart from the on-track performances, Indian F1 fans were in for a shock when local broadcaster ESPN Star Sports decided to air an English Premier League match instead of the Belgian GP qualifying on Saturday. There was a clash in the LIVE telecast timing and the broadcaster chose football over Formula1. There was uproar on the social media networks with many fans claiming that the no-show of the broadcaster was unwelcome, especially as the country is gearing up to host its first ever Formula1 GP in less than 60 days! What irked the fans even more was that the football match was between two relatively less followed teams, Wigan and QPR.
However, the uproar was of little interest to me. ESPN’s decision to air football over Formula1 did make me wonder of a few possible assumptions. 1) Football is more popular in India than Formula1, even if the match is between two not-so-popular teams; 2) Football’s viewership is more than the estimated 25 million that Formula1 telecast attracts (data from one of ESPN’s earlier press statements). I caught up the telecast and qualifying results on the internet and I could only possibly imagine what European TV viewers will do next year when BBC doesn’t broadcast the race live!
Talking of the Indian GP, the organizers claim that the ticket sales have taken off well and there are certain stands that have already been sold out. I would expect the first few years to attract a full capacity crowd at the Buddh International Circuit. As we get closer to the Indian GP date, Indian F1 fans will be treated to various offers and promotions that will be run by sponsors of the F1 teams and of course India’s only, Force India Formula One Team.
