The race has just ended and it was a fantastic one to watch. The McLaren team led by Ron Dennis had put in a tremendous amount of effort to bring their cars up to be on par with the Ferraris (winner of the Melbourne race just three weekends ago)... and it had really paid off for them with 2-time defending world champion Fernando Alonso coming in 1st and rookie Lewis Hamilton in 2nd.
I also see that Hamilton will be a big player in F1 in the years to come after seeing how he expertly edged his way from 4th on the grid to be ahead of both Raikkonen (3rd on grid) and Massa (pole on grid)... and subsequently defended his provisional 2nd place spot in the race while allowing his teammate Alonso to widen his time gap with the Ferraris prior to the first round of pit stops.
It also seemed that the Ferrari team was caught speechless with the tide being in favor or McLaren. Massa who ended in 5th too didn't make it any better for the team. He seemed to have lost the spirit to earn back the 3rd place spot that he lost after losing control of his car in an attempt to overtake Hamilton (a few laps before the first pit stops) coming out of a turn and ended up driving over the curb and some grass.
The next few paragraphs... comes in spurts and may not connect with one another.
Nick Heidfeld of BMW Sauber (probably the longest serving driver in the Petronas sponsored team) - he did a good job finishing in 4th for the second race in a row.
Nico Rosberg had once again become a victim to the Williams' car unreliability that he is now rather familiar with. That's really unfortunate since things were really looking good for him. He could have earned some points if the car hadn't died in the last leg of the race.
Ever notice that world champions have a tradition after winning a race? The legendary Michael Schumacher will jump and punch the air on the podium. Fernando Alonso has a more amusing quirk - he does a silly little jig (and it is a different jig for each race won) on top of his car after he climbs out of the cockpit in the parking area next to the designated podium area.
Did anyone notice that there are a lot of British drivers in the line up this year followed by the Germans?
One last thing... it is beginning to look a lot like we are going back into the days of Ferrari vs McLaren. A neck and neck fight to the end - or will it? As Murray Walker once said - The opposite of F1 is "if".
p/s: If you want to look for a laugh... google up Murray Walker quotes and read them... he is famous for spitting out words with enthusiasm and quite often stating the obvious or plain old goofing things up.
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