2012 grand prix season

Of course one of the things I would have blogged about while I was too busy was the completion of this year’s Grand Prix season.

The season ended in Brazil, obviously, and it was a cracking race.  It had just about everything - a bit of rain to throw the cards in the air, plenty of drama and loads of overtaking.  It was a race that probably summed up the season as a whole.

And what a season it’s been - I’m not sure I’ve seen a season before where to many teams and drivers were genuinely in with a shout at the title for so long.  Even at the end it went down to the wire between Alonso and Vettel.

If I'm totally honest I think I would have preferred Alonso to take it.  The mark of the truly great driver is to drive “beyond” the car, which is to say, to achieve more than the car is worth on paper.  This year's Ferrari was clearly not as good as the others, yet Alonso kept getting good results and kept putting it on the podium.

Of course it would be wrong to say he was robbed by the couple of occasions he was caught up in accidents.  Vettel also had a couple of races where he was in other people’s accidents or caused trouble by others that meant he didn’t get the points.

And of course that’s the nature of motor racing - it’s not just about the quality of the driver, it’s about the quality of the car and the entire team.  You could easily (and fairly rightly) say that McLaren threw it away - they had the fastest car at the start and dominated races at the start and end, but through lots of mechanical failures and “finger trouble” they put themselves out of the competition.  To finish first, first you must finish.

So on to next year.  I had originally thought we would potentially be going to the British Grand Prix next year, but it sounds like not.  Instead, the thought is we’ll go to a foreign race in a couple of years.  My sister wants to go to Singapore, but I don’t fancy that at all.  I think somewhere like Austin would be much better - I mean, I’d rather go on holiday to Texas than Singapore, but also the race would be much better.

There may be a downside to this - next year the rules are basically the same so I’m expecting another super-close season, but the year after there’s loads of changes.  The turbos come in and I believe there are some changes in terms of fuel limits and hence size of the cars.  Traditionally big rules changes mean one team dominates as they get things “just right” - stability allows others to copy them and so you get better, closer seasons.

Anyway, hopefully next year will be as good as this year.  The only downside this year has been the bloody BBC not showing all the races live on TV.