For the first time in the history of Formula 1, the Venezuelan anthem was heard at the end of a race, this event was due to Pastor Maldonado's victory in the Spanish GP.
The Williams driver started at the front and after an initial setback he only had to control the race until the end to have the pleasure to taste the champagne at the top of the podium. Maldonado came under enormous pressure from the Spanish driver, Fernando Alonso, who soon attacked first place in order to isolate himself at the front of the championship, but the Venezuelan driver managed to be exemplary by impeccably defending his position in the final laps of the competition.
“It's a fantastic day, unbelievable for both me and the team. We've been working hard for the past year and now we're finally here. It was a difficult race but I'm happy because the car was competitive from the first lap”, said Pastor Maldonado.
Who also had reasons to celebrate was Frank Williams (in the image below center), who has not seen his team triumph since the Brazilian Grand Prix, in 2004. It was the ideal gift for F. Williams, who celebrated his 70th birthday this Saturday.
But if you think that the Spanish GP was just that, then think twice… There was action everywhere and one of the big cases happened during lap 13, when Michael Schumacher collided with Bruno Senna and the two were forced to retire. In the end, Schumacher and Senna exchanged heated accusations , with the German not looking good in the photograph when he called the Brazilian pilot “idiot”. However, the stewards found the German driver guilty and decided to punish him with the loss of five places on the grid at the next Monaco GP.
See how it all happened:
There were also other spicy situations, such as the case of Fernando Alonso and Charles Pic . Charles Pic's hesitation before the Spaniard entered the “boxes” led him to lose fundamental time in the race for victory. Charles Pic, from Marussia, was eventually punished with a pit stop for having taken too long to let Fernando Alonso's Ferrari pass.
Raikkonen was another protagonist , but in this case, he was not the only one to blame. Despite finishing in third place, this result came to the Finnish rider little by little… “I'm a little disappointed. If we had done everything correctly in the first part of the race, we could have finished first,” said Raikkonen.
Lotus' strategy was a fiasco, and after Raikkonen stopped for the third time in the pits (with less than twenty laps to go) the team even told him, over the radio, that the two in front (Maldonado and Alonso) were still they were going to stop a fourth time. Obviously, that didn't come to pass and Raikkonen despite having a great pace in the final stage of the race, never managed to catch up with his opponents again. Lotus strategists had a bad time claiming the race leaders' fourth stop, when anyone could predict that wouldn't happen...
The last case, but no less ridiculous, happened after the test ended. One fire in the pits Williams left everyone with their mouths open without knowing what to do. Maybe… Before the firefighters arrived at the scene, some mechanics had to wear masks to protect themselves from the smoke, and there were even two people visiting the nearest hospital, one of them suffering light burns and the other breaking an arm due to a fall into the confusion.
And so it was another Formula 1 Grand Prix…
Text: Tiago Luís