Jenson Button claimed his first pole position for McLaren with an amazing lap around Spa-Francorchamps. The 32-year-old shared the front row with Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi after the Japanese driver’s best-ever qualifying performance. Button never looked back as he won ahead of Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel and the Lotus of Kimi Raikkonen.
The Grand Prix started with a frightening first-corner pile-up which involved the Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso, McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton and Sauber driver Kobayashi. The crash was caused by the flying Lotus of Romain Grosjean, who collided with Hamilton, pushing him into the front pack. Grosjean’s Lotus narrowly missed Alonso's head. The French man will miss the Italian Grand Prix after being given a 1 race suspension for causing the crash.
Raikkonen managed to avoid the first corner crash and was able to fight with Vettel and Mercedes driver Michael Schumacher. One of the highlights of the race was when Kimi made an astoundingly brave pass into the 180 mph corner or Eau Rouge. Meanwhile Button was cool and calm in-front in what would be his best race of this season.
Button is now looking to win the title after this dominant victory at Spa-Francorchamps. He commented after the race “I obviously have a style where it’s quite difficult to find a car that works for me in qualifying, but when it does we can get pole position.”
Pastor Maldonado gas demoted from third on the grid to sixth after blocking others cars in qualifying. Things went from bad to worse as he jumped the start, this earned the Venezuelan a 5 place grid penalty for Monza, which he promptly doubled by causing a collision with Marussia’s Timo Glock. Maldonado is now the bad boy F1, picking up penalties in almost every Grand Prix this season.
Michael Schumacher was awarded an honorary citizenship of Spa ahead after his 300th Grand Prix this weekend. The Mercedes driver who is a seven-time world champion lies second on the all-time list of F1 starts to former Ferrari team-mate Rubens Barrichello, who participated in 322 races.
The next race is in one week and will be held in Italy, Monza. Romain Grosjean will be replaced but as yet it is not sure who by.
