Race: Hamilton loses valuable points

By Sam Cooper
July 22 2007

Rain, chaos, crashes, red flags, today’s race had it all, Lewis Hamilton faced a mammoth task, which got bigger and bigger as the lap count went down, he received a puncture from a first corner tangle, if that wasn’t enough for the current championship leader, he spun off crucially losing time, even the red flag wasn’t enough to save Lewis from his mammoth task.

The start of the race was tenser than normal, with rain threatening the track, as they set off rain began to hit parts of the circuit. Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica clashed together, this caused Lewis Hamilton- the innocent racer- to receive a left rear puncture. Causing Lewis to lose a lot of vital time.

This would provide some great racing, as the cars reached the Dunlop curve, the rain started to fall, causing everyone to slow, the rain was falling very heavily, causing the circuit to be flooded in minutes. All the front running drivers pitted, except Kimi Räikkönen -who was caught out by the rain- missed the pit lane entry.

Suddenly cars were aquaplaning off turn one, Button, Hamilton, Sutil, Rosberg and Scott Speed crashed out at turn one, crucially Lewis didn’t suffer from any damage at his crash, and as his car was parked in a dangerous pace, he luckily managed to get a lift from a crane, and continued to race.

As the tractor-which carries the cars away from dangerous spots- was moving along the outside of turn one, when the safety car was passing by turn one, Vitantonio Liuzzi’s torro rosso spun, and narrowly missed the safety car. Meanwhile Markus Winkelhock in his uncompetitive Spyker led the race. Shortly after the race was red flagged, as turn one had turned into a giant pond.

The rain sidelined the race for ten minutes or more, the grid lined up again and the race restarted.

From there Lewis Hamilton’s massive challenge began, he was allowed to lap the field and built up a half minute lead over the rest of the field on track. Hamilton then pitted for dry tyres, while the track was still wet, because of this, Lewis lost 86 seconds, leaving his race ruined.

In the middle of the race Lewis and Felipe Massa began to exchange fastest laps. Lewis began to hunt down the other runners in front of him. Lewis did have one thing to get from this race, only two of his main rivals caught up on him, Kimi Räikkönen suffered from yet more reliability issues and retired.

From there Lewis was unable to capitalise on the ones in front of him, in the end, after another round of rain in the dying laps of the race. The Ferrari of Felipe Massa started to have some handling problems, this didn’t completely stop him, but it allowed Fernando Alonso to pass him.

Meanwhile Lewis looked to have a chance at getting a point, as Giancarlo Fisichella and Hekki Kovalainen were lapping over 2 seconds a lap slower. Lewis passed Giancarlo, but Hekki- who finished in 8th- held on, and Lewis could only get within one and a half seconds of Hekki, Lewis’s direful race was over.

What a race, it had everything. What do I think? Well done to both our drivers. Even though Fernando won, Lewis was at a class of his own. Had he not had a puncture, and therefore wouldn't have made an error on his pit stop. I think he would of won it, he was going faster than the front runners to a point.

When Lewis made his mistakes, and had the whole fields share of bad luck he still tried, he still fought on, although just about everything, that could of gone wrong, did go wrong. Lewis was the man of the race, despite what went wrong