Drivers love the track at Spa: "it's a REAL track," you hear them say, by which I guess they mean it's a good one for adventures in overtaking. Kimi Raikkonen in advance of the day called it the greatest circuit in the world, and his Lotus team-mate Romain Grosjean says it's "a superb rollercoaster." Kimi wound up with a crushing early retirement due to brake failure caused by a blocked cooling duct (just as he was overtaking Massa. A lesser driver could have made a sublime clusterfuck out of that, but he swerved his machine to safety without incident). Grosjean, on the other hand, started seventh and finished eighth, but just keeping all four tyres on the ground and not decimating his neighbors counts as a cheering improvement in Belgium for my favorite mad Frenchman.
Lewis Hamilton in his Mercedes took pole again, as is his wont these days, but the ease with which Vettel's Red Bull slid past him in turn one was almost eerie. ("There was no defending, really," Hamilton said. "I just had to watch him glide by.") After that, Seb's race was like old times, back in the days when he could be counted on to shoot out miles ahead of everyone else, reveling in clean air and the clear zen of driving free of challenge, alone in his race except while joyriding past back-markers on his way to the podium. It was one of those races. You forgot he was even driving because the camera never watched him. Winning by a landslide may feel great from the cockpit, but it's not exciting viewing for your television audience. And, in fact, it became an apparent enough rout that it wasn't two minutes after he pulled away his team boss Christian Horner gave him the old paternal "relax and save your tyres" advice, which he traditionally offers far later in the proceedings. (And, incidentally, which Vettel rarely follows.)
Despite Seb's return to a blissful state of oneness with his auto and his easy podium ascent, you might say the race belonged not to him, but to two others. Fernando Alonso, first of all, that delightfully cool-headed Spaniard (I will never forget last year's Spa: after Grosjean's car flew over his bonnet and forced him into retirement, he emerged shaking his head as if admonishing the French boy for kicking a football through his window), who slotted in ninth at the start but threaded his way with fierce determination into a solid second-place and kept hold of it with grace and ease.
The other real superstar of the day was the man who's been on every tongue lately as a probable surrogate for Mark Webber after he strings up his garish red-and-blue racing gloves next year to step into an impossibly sleek Porsche and drive into glory at Le Mans. Daniel Ricciardo, long-time Torro Rosso pilot, is a front-runner in the race and his performance at Spa has to have upped his chances. Stumbling in "quali" and starting from a discouraging 19th place, he made his way forward into the points to finish tenth behind Adrian Sutil's Force India.
Meanwhile, the word on the street is that Webber's replacement will be announced sometime at or after Monza.
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