Sebastien Vettel won the Telefonica European Grand Prix in Valencia and re-enters the championship contention. However, fortunes have never gone in more dramatically opposite directions for a pair of teammates. While Vettel dominated the whole race and never lost lead to secure his second win of the season, his Red Bull teammate Mark Webber experienced an horrifying airborne after crashing the rear of Heikki Kovalainen’s Lotus car in lap 10. Fortunately Webber was unhurt after crashing into the tyre wall but Memories since 2001 Qantas Australian Grand Prix and the airborne of Villeneuve due to crash to Ralf Schumacher has been emerged, costing life of a marshal.
Webber was the biggest loser at the start, dropping all the way from second to ninth on the first lap and after his early pitstop in an attempt to gain some places he was dropped behind Kovalainen before he crashed out of the race.
Moreover, Webber lost valuable ground in the championship chase and has been dropped fourth, 24 points behind leader Hamilton.
after the race he commented:
"The cars are very safe, and I was very lucky obviously as it was a very dangerous crash. Obviously I was out of position, coming back through, and I caught Heikki. I was a lot faster than him. I wasn’t sure... At the middle of the straight I thought maybe he’s letting me go, then I thought no now he’s starting to fight and defend, because obviously it’s for points. Then a long, long way before the braking point, he braked. You’ll see it in the telemetry, it was 80 meters.
At that point I’m a passenger. And I was worried about the bridges. I didn’t know how high the bridges were, and obviously if I made contact with the bridges, it’s a big problem for me. But the car, thank God, was very safe, and I’m OK. I lose some points, but in the end, when I’m up there I’m not worried about points, I’m worried about that I’m OK. I’m happy I’m OK, and I’ll be ready for Silverstone.
When you are in that situation you cannot control where the car is going, and how hard the hits are going to be. Of course the hits were pretty hard. It’s my Monte Carlo and Barcelona winning chassis, a lot of pole positions, so this chassis has been good to me. But also good to me today, because it saved me from some injuries.
I’m not 100% at the moment, but I will be by Silverstone. For sure I’ve taken a few hits here and there. But I’ve been through a little bit, so I’ll bounce back."
Back-to-back winner Lewis Hamilton meanwhile had his own troubles - a drive-through penalty for overtaking the safety car after Alonso's complains - but rallied to finish 2nd, five seconds behind polesitter Vettel.
Yet the race began in chaotic fashion on the first lap as Vettel got a big jump at the light only for Hamilton to close rapidly on his bumper. The two drivers then touched in Turn 1 as Hamilton pulled alongside for a brief moment before Vettel maintained the position. Hamilton, who suffered minor damage to his front wing end plate, was none too happy with German Vettel, proclaiming over the McLaren in-car radio that, "Vettel hit me."
Jenson Button, Rubens Barrichello and Robert Kubica completed the top five as Adrian Sutil, Kamui Kobayashi, Sebastien Buemi, Fernando Alonso and Pedro de la Rosa filled out a surprising top 10. After removing the term "BMW" from their entry the kamikaze Kamui Kobayashi was running 3rd for the majority of the race and after his obligatory pitstop he overtook Fernando Alonso and Sebastien Buemi proving Peter Sauber's wise strategy, who commented:
"What a fantastic race, particularly considering where we were on the grid. The team and the drivers did everything right today. Pedro delivered a very solid performance and scored one point, and Kamui was absolutely amazing. The lap times which he put in while he was in third were stunning. They prove how much potential there is in this car. Congratulations to the whole team and the drivers!"
Notably missing from the group were Mercedes teammates Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher, who finished 12th and 16th, respectively, to conclude a frustrating weekend for the team.
A furious Fernando Alonso blamed stewards of manipulating the European Grand Prix after he finished a distant ninth position because he lost positions during the safety car period. Alonso was running in third behind McLaren's Lewis Hamilton at the time of Mark Webber's crash but the Briton overtook the safety car and went on to finish second. Although Hamilton earned a drive-through penalty for his misdemeanour, he kept second place while Alonso dropped out of the points having respected the rules.
"It's a shame, not for us because this is racing, but for all the fans who came here to watch a manipulated race. We were running well, in third after a good start. Then the safety car came out, which wasn't too good for us, but Hamilton overtook the safety car, something that I had never seen, overtaking the medical car with yellow flags. We were a meter off each other, and he finished second and I finished ninth. This race was to finish second. Then with the safety car I would have finished where I finished in ninth, and Hamilton in eighth. But here, when you do the normal thing, which is respecting the rules, you finish ninth, and the one who doesn't respect them finishes second."
Alonso's complaints have put stewards to examine the whole safety car session as many drivers in the top 10 were under investigation for running too fast in the circuit under yellow flags. The stewards have slapped five-second penalties onto the finishing times of nine Formula One drivers for lapping too quickly under safety car conditions.
Jenson Button, Rubens Barrichello, Nico Hulkenberg, Robert Kubica, Vitaly Petrov, Adrian Sutil, Sebastien Buemi, Pedro de la Rosa and Tonio Liuzzi were all handed penalties, but the finishing positions barely changed as a result.
As a consequence, Fernando Alonso moves up one place to eighth ahead of Buemi and de la Rosa is knocked out of the points as Nico Rosberg is promoted to tenth. The rest of the points-scoring positions remain unchanged. Liuzzi drops from the non-scoring 13th to 16th.
Drivers are given a target time that they must not exceed when the pace car is deployed, so that they do not race at full speed back to the pits while marshals are on the track.
Virgin's Timo Glock was hit with a 20-second penalty for ignoring blue flags in a separate incident.
