Unlike the worries of Formula 1 folk, we watched an exciting race in Barcelona today. Red Bulls were expected to fly away and win easily after their dominant qualifying form, but Fernando Alonso and McLarens did not let this happen.[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]Start was delightful for the Spanish fans as Alonso managed to climb to the leadership from the 4th grid position. Even he started from the dirty side, he made a good use of his KERS and with a perfect timing he was the winner of the first turn. Sebastian Vettel also made a critical overtaking on his team-mate Mark Webber and took the 2nd place. While Webber fell into 3rd from pole. Another good starter was Michael Schumacher who climbed from 10th to 6th, and the disappointing starter was Jenson Button who fell down to 10th from 5th.
With the extreme tyre-wear rates of Pirellis, first pit-stop came from Vettel just in lap 10. Then other 1st place contenders pitted one by one. After the first stops, Lewis Hamilton managed to get ahead of Webber, while Button changed his strategy into a 3-stoppers.
After the 2nd stops, Vettel and Hamilton became alone in the lead, while Alonso fell to 3rd place. While these happening, Schumacher was holding his team-mate Nico Rosberg behind, and Nick Heidfeld who started as 24th was climbing up positions rapidly with his unused soft tyres from yesterday.
Till the end of the race, Hamilton kept very close to Vettel, but could not find an opening to overtake the German. So Vettel took this year's 4th victory and extended his championship lead. Button managed to take the 3rd place with his 3-stops strategy, while a disappointed Webber finished 4th and home-racer Alonso fell to 5th.
After them, Schumacher-Rosberg couple came ahead of the race's awesome climber Heidfeld. Last two point scorers were Sauber drivers, Sergo Perez and Kamui Kobayashi.
Three drivers could not finish the race. Vitantonio Luizzi and Felipe Massa retired with mechanical failures, while Heikki Kovalainen crashed into the barriers at turn 4.
Results sheet taken from Autosport.com, write-up belongs to RaceDeparment.com
