Lewis Hamilton orchestrated lights to chequered flag victory at the Italian Grand Prix on Sunday. He was followed by the hard charging Sergio Perez of Sauber in second and championship leader Fernando Alonso from home team, Ferrari, in third place.
The hero of the day was Sergio Perez who made a meteoric rise from 12th place on the grid to take second from Fernando Alonso with just over 10 laps to go and had started gaining on the McLaren, but did not have enough laps to put a move on the 2008 world champion.
Home heroes from Ferrari did a credible job with Massa finishing fourth, letting Alonso overtake easily – possibly due to team orders. The minimal tyre wear of Sauber once again aided their performance as Sergio was able use softer tyres to his advantage despite using Ferrari customer engines.
Kimi Raikonnen was able to hold on to fifth place in Lotus but could not do much more as he began to fall off the pace quite rapidly by the end of the race. His teammate Jerome d’ambrosio who was in the driver’s seat to replace Romain Grosjean, serving a one race ban for causing a collision in Belgium , clinched 13th place.
The Mercedes duo of Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg clinched sixth and seventh place, a decent result for a team that is suffering the most from tyre issues – apart from Force India. Staring the race in 9th place, the Sahara Force India driver Paul di Resta came in eighth while, Nico Hulkenberg retired lap 52 with a suspected mechanical problem – mainly to gain technical advantage for the next race. Kamuyi Kobayashi took ninth and Bruno Senna came in 10thplace for Williams Renault.
The biggest losers of the day were 2011 champions Red Bull who saw a double retirement from the race. Sebastian Vettel after serving a drive through penalty for pulling a dangerous move on Fernando Alonso went out with a mechanical problem on lap 48 while team mate Mark Webber was forced to retire on lap 51 for safety reasons. Narain Karthikeyan was able to garner 23rd place by the end of the race.
In the driver’s championship, Fernando Alonso still retains his lead with 179 points while Lewis Hamilton has moved up to second place with 142 points. Vettel and Webber are now in 4th and 5th place. Down the order, Sergio Perez moves up to 9th place, while Schumacher has been pushed down to 11th place. In the constructor’s championship, Red Bull is still on top with 272 points with McLaren in second with 243 and Ferrari in third with 226 points.
