Best of the rest?

Michael vs Kobayashi
By Spartan202
July 11 2011

The new Silverstone layout was looking to be a good turning point for our team during free practice. We had Michael close to the top 5 in wet / damp conditions and Nico close by. 

Saturday proved to be a different story. Nico found himself on the 5th spot during Q2 which looked promising, Michael however did not manage to get a good run and missed Q3. Their final grid postions were P9 for Nico which felt like he could have managed better and once again a disappointing P12 for Schumacher.

The team pinned it's chances on a wet race on Sunday which wasn't going to happen. At the start Nico fell from P9 down to P12 and had to battle his way up to satsifying P6 which saw him struggle during the first run on the intermediate rubber. Michael however did a fantastic start up to P9 from P12 only to lose it all when he hit Kobayashi and as a result had to pit to change the broken front wing.

MGP took a slight risk and swapped his tyres to slicks during this stop and Michael was quickly posting fastest laps and re-gaining positions but later the unavoidable occured. A "stop & go" penalty was imposed as he had caused Kobayashi to spin. From then onwards it was an uphill battle up to P10 which was the best he could achieve given the circumstances. Was the penalty too harsh? It is certainly debatable, I do believe a drive through would have been enough but the stewards seemed to think differently.

MGP driver standings after Silverstone:

Nico stands at P6 with 40 points

Michael is at P9 with 28pts.