Scuderia Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso victory won the German Grand Prix on Sunday as the legendary team its second one-two of the 2010 World Championship season. Sebastian Vettel’s drove his Red Bull machine to a safe and sound third place finish.
Lewis Hamilton’s fourth place run netted him to 157 points ahead of McLaren teammate Jenson Button, who now has 143 points after a fifth place finish. Red Bull’s Mark Webber was sixth after a race in which he was held back by an engine problem. He and Vettel are now joint third with 136 points, as Alonso closed up on 123 and Massa climbed to 85.
Vettel nudged Alonso towards the pit wall at the start, but Massa deftly moved around the outside to take the lead - which he held until the 49th lap, when he slowed - deliberately it seemed to the spectator - exiting the hairpin, allowing Alonso to overtake. The previous lap the two Ferraris had been eight-tenths of a second apart, with Vettel 5.1s back. As Alonso sped home to win, Massa let Vettel close in but always had things under control to take second place, a year to the day since his accident in qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Hamilton didn’t have the pace to hold on to the three leaders, but kept Button behind him as Webber struggled with his oil consumption problem to stay in the damage limitation game.
Behind the fray, there was a big fight in the midfield for the lower points. Robert Kubica took his Renault to a lapped seventh place ahead of the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher, with Renault’s Vitaly Petrov putting in a strong performance to take the final point in 10th place.
BMW Sauber’s Pedro de la Rosa ran most of the race on a set of prime Bridgestone tyres and finally switched to options on the 51st of the 67 laps, dropping from seventh to 14th. Then Heikki Kovalainen closed the door while being lapped, necessitating another stop for a new front wing. The Lotus driver retired, joining team mate Jarno Trulli who’d stopped earlier.
Kamui Kobayashi took 11th in the other BMW Sauber, ahead of the dueling Williams of Rubens Barrichello and Nico Hulkenberg which both lost out in a first-lap melee when the two Force Indias and the two Toro Rossos all got together. Toro Rosso’s Sebastien Buemi lost his rear wing and had to quit, but Jaime Alguersuari recovered to take 15th ahead of Liuzzi and Sutil, the latter using three sets of tyres.
Timo Glock and Virgin emerged as the winner of the new teams’ race, from Bruno Senna’s HRT, as Lucas di Grassi spun and had to retire after leading his Virgin team mate, and HRT’s Sakon Yamamoto also failed to go the distance.
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