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Monday, June 18, 2012

F1 in Valencia from the McLaren Garage

I'm not a particular fan of Valencia as a circuit but there's no question that it has provided some controversy over its four year history and then there was THAT crash with Webber launching himself over the back of Kovalainen's Lotus in 2010.



Ed Note:    I've given a basic history of the circuit below but I had to come back and slot this paragraph in because the real point of this post is to link you to the F1Elvis site of Mark Priestly, ex-McLaren Mechanic who has put together a great post about his memories of working at the circuit.
It is definitely worth checking out his first person view from the pit garage.

In 2008 it was Massa beating Hamilton even though he nearly took out Sutil in the pits with an unsafe release.  He ended up with a financial penalty but no in race sanction, no doubt much to Lewis Hamilton's disgust.



2009 was pretty uneventful on track, as they all have been, to date.

Apart from the crash in 2010 there was the incident after Webbo's crash where Hamilton overtook the Safety Car as it came out of the pits, leaving Alonso stuck behind it.  this gave Lewis the opportunity to pull out a massive gap and, while Alonso fumed very publicly about it over the radio and later through the press, Hamilton had built a huge lead over the Ferrari and his McLaren took a drive through penalty and still came out to take second place from Vettel, while Alonso came ninth due to staying behind the Safety Car.



Of the four races three have been won by the pole sitter, with only Brawn, in the guise of Barrichello, winning it in 2009.

The circuit has the dubious honour, won in 2011, of hosting the only F1 race with no retirements and 24 finishers.