Patronise F1

Before the start of the British Grand Prix, Fernando Alonso took part in a demonstration run in José Froilán González's Ferrari 375 car, the burbling 4.5-litre monster that gave the Scuderia their first ever F1 grand prix win sixty years ago at Silverstone. Just a few hours later, the Spaniard had racked up the team's 215th GP success, and their first of the 2011 season, in a drive every bit as historic as that of González. Probably.

After his dismal 2010 British Grand Prix, where he finished down in 14th place, Alonso famously bellowed that he still felt that he would win the championship that year. He didn't, of course, but he did go on to win four of the next seven races to gobble up a 47 point deficit to the post-Silverstone championship leader and eventually go into the final race of the season leading in the standings. Tellingly though, there was no such war cry from the Spaniard after this result.

And rightly so, as this result will probably not turn out to be the turning point in the 2011 championship. Alonso has skimmed seven points off his arrears to runaway championship leader Sebastian Vettel, but he remains 92 points off the Red Bull man, who kept up his remarkable record of results in 2011 so far by finishing in second place. This was a great day for Ferrari, and a vindication of their development push with the not-a-pickup-truck 150˚ Italia, but it will take a few more telling swings away from Vettel in the next few races before everyone can break out those 'Championship On!' banners from storage.

Practice and Qualifying

The whole weekend gave writers left, right and centre the chance to roll out any number of clichés regarding the English weather, with every session disrupted by rain showers to some extent. Early morning rain saw the opening practice session begin on a rather damp track, but conditions improved throughout the 90 minutes and the final order largely reflected the slight lottery of the track surface, with only the drivers who had been lapping quickly when the circuit was at its best posting decent times.

It wasn't especially surprising to see Red Bull's Mark Webber finish up top of the times, but his nearest rival ended up being Michael Schumacher in his Mercedes, followed by the Williams of Rubens Barrichello and Sergio Perez for Sauber. Elsewhere, Alonso ended down in 7th, one place ahead of McLaren's Lewis Hamilton, while Vettel (13th) and Jenson Button (15th) fared even worse. Not as bad as Kamui Kobayashi, mind you, who damaged his Sauber when he hit the barriers following a spin on the pit straight.

In the afternoon session, the rain returned for almost the entire session, and aside from the odd data-collecting install lap, fans saw no real action until the final half hour. A flurry of semi-hectic lapping then took place, with Felipe Massa ending ahead of the pack come the chequered flag, from Nico Rosberg's Mercedes and Kobayashi, whose car had been spat and polished back into shape by the Sauber mechanics over the lunch break.

The rain was a frustration not only for the fans, but also for the teams, who arrived at Silverstone desperate to start testing the damage caused to their performance by the FIA's contentious ban on off-throttle blown diffusers. That matter took up most of the column inches in another rain-hit and largely quiet final practice session on Saturday morning, with team bosses angrily debating the topic in the background as Vettel serenely rose to the top of the timesheets.

In the end, the teams and the FIA would agree to drop the ban for the next race in Germany, and indeed for the rest of 2011. But for Silverstone the ban remained in place, and hopes were high that a combination of this, plus the mixed conditions, would lead to a mixed-up grid for the race, and an end to Vettel and Red Bull's pole position domination.

The former was duly achieved come the end of Q3, but not the latter. 2010 British Grand Prix winner Mark Webber produced a standout lap in the first runs of the final ten minute shootout to beat his team mate to the pole. Although everyone had initially planned on a second qualifying run, the weather intervened once again, and with drizzle making the final sector treacherous, everyone abandoned their second laps before the end of the session.

Webber would line up alongside his championship-leading team mate, with Vettel at least keeping his 100% front row record from 2011 intact, while the first signs that Ferrari were actually at the races for real this weekend came from the fact that Alonso and Massa made up row two, the Spaniard just over a tenth of a second off pole. Button was the best of the McLarens in 5th, ahead of a stellar performance from Force India's Paul di Resta - who continued his solid debut season by taking a third row spot for his home race.

Meanwhile, Hamilton couldn't manage any better than 10th place after the team opted to send him out on used tyres for his first Q3 run, saving his fresh tyres for a second run that never came. But it wasn't just dodgy tyre calls that were hindering Team GBR in front of their hooting faithful in the grandstands, the McLarens just didn't look fast. "I hope it rains," Hamilton muttered afterwards when looking for positives for the race itself. Given how the weekend had gone to this point, that seemed to be a given.

Still, it could have been worse for the 2008 champion, he could have been Michael Schumacher - who dropped out in Q2 for the fourth time this year, or the Toro Rosso squad - who saw both cars fall out in Q1 in a disastrous session for the Red Bull junior squad. At least there was one happy face to be found at the back of the grid, as new HRT loan signing Daniel Ricciardo ensured that the grid was bookended by Antipodeans, as he qualified for his first ever F1 race in 24th place.

The Race

The changeable weather was back for the start of the race, and in slightly Spa-esque circumstances. A heavy rain shower hit minutes before the start of the race, but for reasons known only the Mother Nature and particularly savvy meteorologists, it chose to only douse half of the track. The new start-finish line next to Silverstone's swanky new pit and paddock area was as dry as the Atacama desert, but around most of the rest of the track, the rainwater was prevalent. So much so that Sergio Perez managed to spin off on his way to the grid, and the entire field chose to start on intermediate tyres, guessing that the issue of them overheating on the dry stuff would be more than offset by the deluge on the other parts of the circuit.

The grid lined up, bracketed by Australian drivers, but sadly for this particular piece of punctuation-based analogising, that situation didn't last very long. And sadly for Australia, that wasn't because Ricciardo suddenly exploded into a comeback drive from the back of the grid. Instead, Webber was slightly slow away, more than slow enough for Vettel to cruise past on the run to the super-quick new Abbey chicane. Further back, Button jumped Massa to move up to fourth behind Alonso, while the two Mercedes cars went in opposite directions, with Rosberg dropping to 12th from 9th on the grid, and Schumacher nailing yet another start to jump from 13th to 9th. 

The man on the move early on was Hamilton, who charged through from 10th to the point that he was already seventh by the time the field rode around Luffield for the first time. As they left the wet part of the track at Chapel onto the dry Hangar straight, he then slung his McLaren past di Resta into Stowe to take sixth by the end of the first lap. Hamilton then quickly got into the scrap between Button and Massa ahead, and followed the Brazilian past his team mate on the second tour, Button strangely uncomfortable in the early stages of the race despite conditions appearing to suit his recent reputation as a damp track specialist. 

By now though, the race already appeared to be slipping away from anyone not called 'S. Vettel' in typical fashion. Vettel led by 4.6 seconds at the end of lap five, coasting clear of his team mate, while Webber was holding a similarly comfortable gap back to Alonso. Massa was close behind his team mate in fourth, ahead of Hamilton - who fell back from the Ferrari after running wide into Brooklands on lap four, Button, di Resta and Kobayashi, while Schumacher still ran ninth from Adrian Sutil's Force India, the German having passed Pastor Maldonado's Williams. 

With no more rain in the air, and the wet part of the circuit drying quickly as the cars cleared the water away, the pressing issue became the matter of when to switch to dry tyres. The crossover point was quite helpfully flagged up by Schumacher when he was forced to pit for a nose cone change after he misjudged his braking into Brooklands on lap 9, clumsily running into the left rear wheel of Kobayashi. He was able to change to slick Pirellis at the same time as taking on the new nosecone, and became the acid test for the other teams to watch, but picked up a stop-go penalty (rather than a drive-through because of Silverstone's new and rather short pit lane) for his mistake. 

Still, he did at least give the other teams their cue to take on the slicks, and the rampant round of pitting started in earnest a couple of laps later. Webber and Alonso pitted as one from second and third at the end of lap 12, with the pair of them resuming in the same places on track, while Hamilton was in on the same lap from fourth after getting past Massa on his pair of ailing inters at Brooklands on that lap with a DRS-assisted pass, only to then sail wide into the corner again. Vettel was in a lap later and easily retained his lead, from Webber, Alonso and Hamilton. 

The next stage of the race saw the McLarens suddenly come to the party, with both Hamilton and Button finding their fresh slicks a much happier proposition than the intermediates. Button quickly caught up Massa for fifth place, the Brazilian dropping back after doing an extra lap on his knackered inters for some reason, and dived for the outside at Stowe on lap 14, hanging on around the outside to run side-by-side with the Ferrari through Vale and down into Club, completing a daring move with a puff of tyre smoke as Massa ceded best. Moments later, the other Ferrari and McLaren were at play ahead of this battle, with Hamilton diving up the inside through the still-slippery Copse corner to take third from Alonso. 

All the time, Vettel's pace on the slicks was not proving to be as brilliant as when he was on the intermediates, and on lap 16, he was just 1.6 seconds ahead of Webber, with Hamilton starting to close down the 7.3 second gap to the leader at a rate of knots now he was third. Alonso ran fourth, ahead of Button, Massa and di Resta. Schumacher was still eighth, but he still had his stop-go penalty to serve - something he duly did a lap later, with Sutil and Rosberg completing the top ten, the latter recovering from his poor start and making up places thanks to a pass on Perez on lap 7 and Kobayashi's Schumacher-induced spin on lap 9. 

The race then became a tit-for-tat scrap between the front four, as the two Red Bulls, Hamilton and Alonso all went through brief phases of being the quickest man on the track, Alonso's tyres coming back to him after losing that place to his old McLaren team mate and bosom buddy. The net result was a nailbiting phase of lap time comparison, even if the net result was largely that the gaps remained rather constant. Towards the end of the second stint though, Hamilton's tyres predictably began to fade, and he was passed by Alonso for third. He stopped as soon as the Spaniard got past for a fresh set, in an effort to 'undercut' his way back ahead. 

But Alonso was flying towards the end of his own second stint, and he quickly closed up to Mark Webber in second. That prompted the Australian into making his own second stop, but critically it was a tardy changearound, and Webber emerged behind Hamilton's McLaren. After one dubious stop, the Red Bull team may have taken their time to get the next one right, but a rear jack issue delayed the championship leader, and Alonso - who had followed the German in to the pit lane - emerged ahead of the German to take the lead from Hamilton. Vettel got back out in third, with Webber now down to fourth place. 

The challenge was now laid down to Vettel, he needed to catch and pass two of his biggest rivals if he wanted to extend his record of race wins for the season. But Alonso, now released into the lead, was flying. On lap 30 he led Hamilton by 3.2 seconds, with Vettel a further 0.8 seconds back and Webber an extra 1.2 seconds in arrears. Two laps later, his lead over the British driver was out to some 6.8 seconds. It was some blistering pace from the heavily-revised Ferrari, and one that slowly but surely made the battle for the win a one horse race.

Vettel wasn't being helped in his efforts by being caught behind Hamilton for lap after lap, the German doing little to shake the perception that a key part of his racecraft - his ability to decisively overtake a rival - still needs plenty of work for those odd occasions when he is not serenely leading the field around. He had the DRS available to him on virtually every lap as he toiled behind the McLaren, but Hamilton was never really forced to do anything particularly drastic to protect his position.

Frustrated, Vettel turned to the alternative method of passing in 2011, and dived for the pit lane at the end of lap 36 to utilise the undercut on his final new set of tyres. It was a slightly earlier stop than the optimal time to come in, but needs must for the German driver. And it worked, Hamilton was in a lap later, but Vettel cruised through into a net second place behind Alonso. Worse was to transpire for the other McLaren driver in these final stops, though, when Button pitted on lap 39, only for the wheelgun on his front-right side to fail. As the mechanic reached for the security of the second gun, Button was mistakenly released, and he was forced to retire at the exit of the pit lane with a terminal case of 'floppy wheel'.

With the stops claiming a single casualty, the rest of the field took on their own final set of soft Pirellis and the race was now a clean fight to the line. On lap 40, Alonso led by 10.3 seconds from Vettel, with Hamilton a further 3.3 seconds behind in third. The second Ferrari of Massa was running fourth, but he appeared to be on the oddest pit strategy of the season so far, dawdling around on used options for no real reason. He had already been passed by Vettel and Hamilton after their final stops, and was being closed down by fifth placed Mark Webber. A long way behind the chosen five, Rosberg was embroiled in a scrap with fellow two-stopper Perez for 6th place, with Sutil, Heidfeld and Schumacher completing the top ten. 

The closing stages rapidly became less an issue of the fight for the lead, as Alonso continued to stretch his advantage at an unrelenting pace in front of Vettel, and more a fight for the remaining two podium spots. Hamilton's chances of a home podium were shattered on lap 42 when the team gave him a fuel-saving call, his MP4-26 underfilled to make it to the end of the race at full chat, and that slowly but surely allowed Webber to gain on him. By lap 45, the Australian was on his tail, and he was able to easily coast past through the DRS zone a lap later, taking over third place.

That set up the two big scraps of the final few laps, two scraps which went in very different, but equally entertaining directions. Webber set about catching up Vettel for second place, while Hamilton - still fuel-saving - fell back into the clutches of Massa's Ferrari. The two Red Bulls entered into an absorbing internecine scrap for position, with Webber marauding over the back of Vettel and the German having to block - stoutly, but fairly - on more than one occasion.

For the team that still remembered their drivers coming together in such infamous fashion in Turkey last year, it all got a bit too much. "Mark, maintain the gap," the call came to the Australian from the pit wall. Not what a driver wants to hear, particularly one that was sniffing the chance to beat his team mate to the chequered flag for the first time all year. Still, if fans were concerned that they were being denied a fight to the line by some sort of evil (if now legal) team orders, they were happy to hear that Webber was having none of it. "The team radioed me about four times, asking that I maintain the gap to Seb," he explained later, "But I wasn't happy with that because you should never give up in Formula 1, so I continued to push."

And push he did. After Alonso saluted the crowd to take the victory, attention turned to the scrap taking place some 15 seconds down the road. But Vettel was able to hold off his rival and maintain his run of never finishing outside the top two in races this season. "I tried to hold position," the German said after the race, "I was struggling, Mark was faster and then there was the chequered flag." It was a result that perversely meant that despite being beaten by Alonso, Vettel will head to the next race having extended his championship lead to some 80 points. 

With that fight over, the focus was now on the bonkers finale to the Hamilton/Massa scrap. Approaching the Club complex for the final time, Massa got a run on Hamilton around the outside. Hamilton refused to yield, Massa turned in, and sidepod met tyre in predictable fashion as bits of Massa's Ferrari went flying, but the Brazilian managed to get ahead. But Hamilton wasn't done, and as Massa ran wide into the final corner, he dived for the inside. Side-by-side through the final part of Club is not advised, and Massa ended up taking to the run-off to avoid further contact, leaving Hamilton to grab fourth at the line, to the delight of the British fans.

"That's as close as it is going to get. It was crazy," Hamilton gushed. Even Massa, who angrily called for Hamilton to be penalised after their contact in Monaco, was sanguine afterwards when asked if he had enjoyed the fight. "Well no because I finished behind him but for you guys I think it was nice..." he replied. And he was right.

Behind the squabbling duo came Nico Rosberg for Mercedes, completing his recovery drive well, but ending over a minute behind the leader. Perez followed him home in 7th after their late race battle, while Nick Heidfeld came through to 8th for Renault despite the team's lack of pace all weekend long as the off-throttle ban hit them hard. Schumacher came back from his stop-go to take 9th, while Jaime Alguersuari scored points for the third race in a row with 10th, to give Toro Rosso something to cheer after their miserable qualifying performance.

Outside the points came Sutil, who dropped back in the closing stages after running in the top ten for most of the afternoon, ahead of the second Renault of Vitaly Petrov and the Williams pair of Rubens Barrichello and Pastor Maldonado. Qualifying hero Paul di Resta came home 15th, his race ruined when his team botched a stop by bringing out tyres allocated to Adrian Sutil by mistake, delaying him as they faffed to find the right Pirellis. He went on to make contact with Sebastien Buemi's Toro Rosso in a clumsy move to add insult to injury.

The only other cars to make the finish were the Virgins and the HRTs, with Ricciardo last of all to cross the line, nearly a lap behind his team mate. Still, given the conditions, he will be let off a weak performance this week, and has plenty more time to prove his worth in 2011. Aside from Button's retirement, also dropping out were Buemi, after picking up a puncture from that contact with di Resta, Kobayashi, who suffered engine dramas after making a stop-go of his own for some unsafe release in the first round of pit stops, and the two Lotus drivers, who dropped out early on.

But at the head of the field, it was Alonso who made the headlines, giving Ferrari a very happy 60th anniversary of their first GP win, and offering at least a glimmer of hope that they are still in the title race, no matter what the statistics may be telling them.

Driver of the Race

Fernando Alonso - With this sort of rampant prize-giving to the impressively-eyebrowed one, you might almost start to wonder whether The Elbow has started to write these reviews. But while Alonso was unconvincing throughout the first half of the race, towards the end of the second stint everything seemed to click, and he equalled Sir Jackie Stewart's record of 27 GP wins, to tie for 5th in the all-time winners list, with a drive that the great Scotsman would have been proud of. Although the lead was gifted to him by some dodgy pit lane servicing, there was no way Vettel would have resisted the Spaniard at Silverstone. How much was down to the Ferrari team's temporary boost from the brief off-throttle ban remains to be seen, but as a standalone drive, Alonso's was mercurial.

Moment of the Race

Lap 52 - Hamilton and Massa at play in the final few corners was just the tonic that the home fans needed after a relatively witless race for the trio of British favourites. It was less a dicey single-seater scrap and more an all-out touring car bashfest at times, but both drivers seemed to enjoy themselves, the fans were entertained, and the stewards didn't feel the need to get involved even for a moment. All very strange.

Quote of the Race

"Mark, maintain the gap." - Not quite as catchy as 'Fernando is faster than you', but something to prick the ire of the anti-team orders lobby all the same. Not that it really was a team order in the strictest sense, more the sort of 'cool your jets' message teams give their drivers all the time. And not as if Webber actually paid any attention to it...

Patronise F1's British GP Index

Race Preview - British Grand Prix

Minute-by-minute reports:
Free Practice 1
Free Practice 2
Free Practice 3
British GP Qualifying
British GP Race

Session reports:
FP1 - Webber top in damp first practice at Silvy
FP2 - Massa finishes ahead after disrupted FP2
FP3 - Vettel defies ban to top final practice
Qualifying - Webber knocks Vettel off Silvy perch
Race - Brilliant Alonso flies to first win of 2011

Post-race coverage:
Five talking points from the British GP
Fifth Column - Britain

The Results

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