Year: 2012

Kimi Raikkonen has registered his maiden comeback victory with an opportunistic win in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. It’s the first win of the year for Lotus, their first since the 1987 Detroit GP. Kimi, who entertained us at home with his impatient radio banter, becomes the eighth race winner of the year on the way to collecting his 19th race win.

Fernando Alonso (Ferrari) did everything right, kept his nose clean and pocketed the 18 points for second place. Indeed, he made a late race charge and but for a hundreth of a second or so denying him access to the DRS in the last couple of laps we might have had a different winner tonight.

Somehow, Sebastian Vettel finds himself in third place, able to minimise the damage to his championship lead after starting from pit lane. It’s a remarkable result really, when you consider he had to pit for a new front wing after damaging it while overtaking slower cars early in proceedings. Things just went right for Vettel, with three Safety Car periods all working to his advantage.

You have to feel for Lewis Hamilton, who made a clean start from pole position and established a comfortable lead. That lead was manitained after a Safety Car restart following a spectacular crash between Nico Rosberg (Mercedes) and Narain Karthikeyan (HRT). But Hamilton’s McLaren could only last 19 laps, an electrical glitch forced him into retirement on lap 20.

It was a dirty day for Mark Webber. As is often the case he got a poor start and lost three places on the first lap. Later in the race he went for two separate ambitious overtaking moves, first on Maldonado, then on Felipe Massa. Contact was made both times. The race stewards judged both as racing incidents and Mark was free to race on. Now in the mid-pack Webber was stuck behind a train of Paul Di Resta (Force India), Sergio Perez (Sauber) and Romain Grosjean (Lotus). Eventually it all ended in tears when Perez tried to pass Di Resta setting off a chain of events that ended up with an innocent Webber clipping Grosjean sending both cars out of the race.

Daniel Ricciardo (Toro Rosso) had a better day for the Aussies, hanging on by six tenths from Michael Schumacher (Mercedes) to claim the final championship point on offer for P10. Ricciardo’s teammate Jean-Eric Vergne finished around 7.5 seconds behind in P12.

So there you have it, tonight’s was a race that had everything. In the end we welcomed a new winner and Red Bull need one more race, at least, to secure their third consecutive constructors’ championship.

We head off to Austin, Texas in a couple of weeks and a horrendous 4am 6am race start (AEDST). However, after tonight’s race it will be compulsory viewing.

In light of the positive drug test from Australian Moto2 rider Anthony West, Mark Webber reckons drug testing of F1 drivers should be tested too.

Webber says in bike racing many riders rely on pain killers to get them through a race weekend. “Whether it was linked to that, I’m not sure,” he said.

“Obviously it’s good they’re doing what they can to make sure everyone’s as kosher as possible but I think it’s quite difficult for that category, because you see these guys that are riding … extremely injured.”

Mark says he’s been pushing the idea of drug tests in F1, “I’ve always been championing the idea to do more of it, but the FIA have never really been that strong on it. The other drivers have never been super strong on it, so it’s never really been a huge issue.

“You know, with what’s at stake, the money involved and all that type of stuff, people do things. It’s extremely unlikely but you never say never.”