The Jinx Of Interlagos

If any of you guys watched the Brazilian F1 Grand Prix last night at Interlagos Circuit, then you must be understand what am talking about here. Yeah, the circuit of Interlagos, which in English means Interlake, is located in between a lake and it’s about 1,000 m above sea level. On the qualification rounds, the weather was devastated, it was pissing down so that they have to stop the qualifying thing after the second round as the location of the race was flooded. And the worst thing that could happen was that because of its location is on the hill which very close with the cloud levels so if any accident happened, the chopper won’t be able to landed and fly anyone to the hospital, so yeah, that is why they have to stop the race.
Thankfully, on the race day last night the weather was beautiful. Was a little bit cloudy at some part, but they reckon it won’t be rain until the end of the race. But here is the thing, the circuit of Interlagos is a full of melodramatic circuit. So many things happened here that worth to be watch. Yeah, even the race was on like in the middle of the night here in Indonesia, but I refused to close my eyes, I even forgot to blink sometime! If you guys following the F1 Grand Prix like I do, then you must still remember what happened last year on the race when Massa, the homeboy driver, won the race and celebrated his victory as a World Champion? That same time, Hamilton battled Vettel for the crucial point needed to win the Championship, but seemly he couldn’t do it. However, as the result of using dry tyres on wet weather, yeah…the rain began to fall heavily on lap 69, Timo Glock who was at fifth position at that time had to slowed down at the last corner of the track because of he was struggling for grip as his dry-weather tyres slid on the wet track and allowed Vettel to take the fifth position and handed Hamilton a world championship title that was holding by Massa for a few seconds and crowned him as the youngest championship winner! What a drama!
This year’s race was even more dramatic than last year. First of all, Massa couldn’t join the race after that fatal accident that he had a couple of race ago at Hungarian Grand Prix that put him to a rest for the rest of the season. So, all of the attention went to Barrichello as a homeboy driver, which he done very well on the qualifying round by holding the pole position for the race. His teammate and my favorite driver Button, on the other hand, didn’t do it quite well as he failed to show his best performance on wet weather which was his specialty while he was actually needed only six points above Barrichello to win the championship title. But, right from the start Button benefited from carnage to jump up from his 14th grid place to ninth at the end of a dramatic first lap. It began when Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari brushed wheels with Adrian Sutil’s Force India going into the first corner, which is a critical point of the track calls Senna Ace, named after the great Brazilian driver Ayrton Senna who died on a tragic accident at San Morino circuit of Italy on 1994. Then Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull tagged Heikki Kovalainen’s McLaren on the exit, the Finn spinning and forcing Ferrari’s Giancarlo Fisichella to run on to the grass in avoidance.
Further round the lap Jarno Trulli pulled his Toyota alongside Sutil but lost control as he was squeezed over the outer curb. He tangled with the Force India, each spinning off in different directions. As Sutil speared back on to the track, he bounced right in front of Renault’s Fernando Alonso, who had nowhere to go and retired with rear suspension damage. Not surprisingly the safety car was deployed as debris all over the place was cleared up while on the sideway, Trulli confronted or even almost attacked Sutil as he blamed the man for causing the incident which according to my opinion wasn’t his fault at all. In fact, he was barely did anything wrong to my knowledge, but hey, maybe I know nothing about the race?
As if all that wasn’t dramatic enough, there was excitement in the pits as Kovalainen and Raikkonen both stopped at the end of the lap. The Ferrari driver had damaged his front wing against Webber, who had got away second behind Barrichello at the start. Kovalainen pulled away too soon from refuelling, taking his fuel hose with him. Raikkonen, right behind, then ran through a flash fire as fuel spewed from Kovalainen’s trailing fuel hose. Jokingly, the commentator mention about the iceman Raikkonen who seemed to stay cool even in the fire, hah!
When the racing resumed on the sixth lap Button launched an attack on Franco-Swiss rookie Renault driver Romain Grosjean. They ran side by side and re-passed one another a couple of times in some tense wheel-to-wheel racing, but this was the Jenson Button who won six of the first seven races and he wasn’t having any of that and soon settled the issue. Next on the list was Williams’ Kazuki Nakajima, whom he deposed on the seventh lap. Rookie Kamui Kobayashi proved tougher, but after one failed attempt in Turn One Button made is stick.
From the 35th lap he had the championship in his sights, as the pit stops ebbed and flowed. The ones that really mattered came from the 50th lap onwards. Barrichello pitted then from second place. On Lap 55 Button pitted from third. On Lap 56 Vettel pitted from third. When the dust had finally settled on the 59th lap, Webber was leading Kubica by 5.2s, with Barrichello third from Hamilton, Vettel and Button. Thus Button had 88 points; Barrichello 77, Vettel 73. The miracle had happened. Poor Webber, as the Australian driver reeled off the final laps after a superb drive that was inevitably overshadowed by the title drama, and Kubica maintained his surprise second place despite nursing an overheating engine, Hamilton came pushing up behind Barrichello after McLaren cleverly changed his strategy after the first-lap carnage, and overtook him on the 61st lap. The Brazilian, so desperate to win on his home ground, was in trouble. A tyre had punctured, and he needed to make a third pit stop two laps later. It was the final icing on Button’s cake, as he jumped up to fifth place behind Vettel.
Finally, with 89 points nobody could beat Button whatever happens in Abu Dhabi, and to rub salt into Barrichello’s wounds he dropped to third on 72 behind Vettel’s 74. All through the slowing down lap, Button sang over the radio to his delighted team: “We are the champions my friends!” And afterwards he could not stop himself. “It’s great to be sat here as the world champion, and personally I feel that I deserve it. I was the best over 16 races and that’s what world champions are. I am it. I am a world champion! And I’m going to keep saying it all night!” Honestly, I love when someone knew that he or she deserved the winning. That's my friend, what I call self confidence! Jenson Button went into the Brazilian Grand Prix looking for a miracle and he found it. It made him Britain’s 10th world champion, and marked the first time England has celebrated back-to-back drivers' titles. At the same time, his success was more than sufficient to cement the constructors’ title for Brawn, a unique and historic achievement in their first season. Sweet!
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