Button is back in it. As long as the Mclaren stays the class of the field.
He was not touched in qualifying. Which was part due to Hamilton electing to go for an older wing which was slower. And then I think Hamilton had a bit of strop about it and then tweeted the telemetry of his and Button’s laps (which was good going with a 140 character limit) even though I gather the wing choice was his.
And we again had surprise in qualifying with Koybayashi on the front row, Maldonado in 3rd, Perez in 5th and Vettel out in Q2. Then Maldonado weed on his chips by holding up Hulkenberg and got a grid penalty. But he had a cunning rouse for negating the penalty; go before everyone else. So he has a 5 grid penalty for Monza. Plus another 5 grid penalty for taking his frustrations out on Glock, making a 10 place grid drop.
But the big villain is Grosjean who has no idea of any cars around him at starts. Which is pretty fundamental in circuit motorsport. He managed to take out Hamilton, Alonso and Perez as well as himself. And compromised many others. And then this mixed the running order up.
Button was in a race of his own without being concerned with the 1st corner incident and keeping a healthy gap with very consistent lap times. He did a 1 stop and did not suffer. But he could have done a 2 stop if he wanted.
Vettel gained a lot in the first lap carnage. But then he made yet more gains by making a 2 stop work. The Red Bull was set up to assume clear running and the team gambled on a 2 stop for him where he got quite a bit of clear air.
Raikkonen did a 2 stop and got jumped by Vettel. His Renault was set up with a similar philosophy as Vettel’s Red Bull, so maybe a 1 stop should have been tried? But I am sure there are bad memories from earlier in the season.
Hulkenberg was another to gain from the 1st lap incident and then his car worked well.
Massa did better than usual. But you have to remember that Alonso, Hamilton, Grosjean and Perez were not ahead of him.
It was interesting with different cars running largely different setups where a car was either strong attacking and defending on the Kemmel straight or was strong in sector 2 and had a chance into the bus stop chicane. The choice between the two set ups were quite up in the air as there was so little practice that the cars got and they had to guess if low downforce to maximise performance in sectors 1 and 3 would be better or worse than high downforce to maximise performance in sector 2. But I don’t understand why Webber’s car was set up to maximise in sector 2 and have a short 7th gear. They knew he would have a penalty and start from 6th at best. And so be they know there would be a period where he would probably be behind slower cars. And when he was, he could not get past where it would have been easy, and had to eat his tyres a bit trying where it was hard. He lost places on the Kemmel straight the he could not gain back in sector 2, or into the bus stop with the benefit of sector 2 pace. With Alonso not scoring any points, he did make ground, but not as much ground as he could have, and he got leap-frogged by Vettel.
Schumacher looked like he might be able to steal 2nd place after the first lap mix up, but the Mercedes did not like a 1 stop. They ran a 1 stop with Rosberg too, and I am surprised that they did not split the strategy with Rosberg not having much to lose.
Both Torro Rossos were gainers with probably faster cars not running and others choosing the wrong number of pits stops. And they had a bit of a fight at one point.
Di Resta was able to grab 10th. I think he had no KERS for the whole race.
Nice that the cameras caught a bit of the ding-ding battle between the Marussias. Normally we only see them when they are getting out of the way.
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