McLaren's Jenson Button reignited the spark in his bid for the 2012 F1 championship by taking a dominate light's to flag victory at this afternoon's Belgian GrandPrix in SPA. Button started the race from pole position and left the field trailing following a first corner incident that whipped out his team mate Lewis Hamilton, Romain Grosjean (who appears to have caused the crash) Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, who was lucky to escape injury after Grosjean's Lotus flew over the cockpit of the Ferrari narrowly avoiding the Spaniard's head.
The incident also involved the two Sauber driver's of Kamui Kobayahsi and Sergio Perez, who had started second and and fourth for the Swiss team. Back on track Jenson managed to build a sizeable gap from the charging Force India pair of Nico Hulkenberf and Paul Di Resta with Kimi Raikkonen struggling in the Lotus.
Michael Schumacher made a fantastic start to the race getting into the top five after starting the race from 13th on the grid. RedBull's Sebastien Vettel made a great start from 10th on the grid and had a great on track battle with team mate Mark Webber to finish the race in 2nd second place picking up his first podium finish since the British GrandPrix. Webber finished the race in 6th pace.
Despite picking up his sixth podium of the season, Kimi Raikkonen admitted after the race that it had been the most difficult race of his comeback season so far, however his team sang his praises after the race. Kimi has now moved ahead of Hamilton in the driver's championship and the resulted has helped Lotus pull away from Ferrari in the battle for 3rd in the championship. So despite it being a difficult day at the office for the Enstone based team they can come away from it happy in the fact that they remain on target for this season and have continued to show that they are one of the most improved team's of 2012.
When you consider where the team were at this stage last season, where they only managed to pick up two podium's in the entire year, in 2012 they have picked up eight podium's in 12 races and Kimi has finished every race so far.
I am delighted that the next race in Italy is only a week away. It is going to be interesting to see what happens there as it too like SPA is a high speed circuit. Going into today's race Alonso had a lead of 40 point's in the championship over Mark Webber and due to his DNF today he is now 24 point's ahead of Vettel who overtakes Webber in the championship with eight races to go it is all still to play for. Kimi has now overtaken Hamilton and is now in fourth in the championship. Vette in second and Kimi in 4th are separated by just eight points.
Lotus, who are currently third in the Constructors Championship have extended their advantage over Ferrari in fourth to 8 points despite not having won a race so far this year.
This post not only sees a fantastic result for Jenson Button and McLaren but it also marks a milestone for the BJF12012 Blog as it marks my 200th post, I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has looked at my posts since I started this I absolutely love writing the blog and can't wait to bring my thought's on the next race.
BREAKING NEWS: Romain Grosjean receives one race ban
It has been announced in the last few minutes that the driver of car No. 10 Romain Grosjean has been handed a one race ban following the first corner crash during today's Belgian GrandPrix. The Lotus team have confirmed that test driver Jerome D'Ambrosio will take his place for next week's Italian GrandPrix.
Lotus have accepted the decision and will not appeal it.
In other post race news, Paster Maldonando has been given a double grid penalty for causing a crash with the Marussia of Timo Glock following the William's driver's jump start. He will be demoted 10 places on the grid in Italy.
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