The F1 season consists of a series of races, known as Grands Prix (from French, originally meaning great prizes), held throughout the world on purpose-built circuits and public roads. The results of each race are evaluated using a points system to determine two annual World Championships, one for the drivers and one for the constructors.

The racing drivers, constructor teams, track officials, organisers, and circuits are required to be holders of valid Super Licences, the highest class of racing licence issued by the FIA.

And, Drag racing is a competition in which specially prepared automobiles or motorcycles compete, usually two at a time, to be first to cross a set finish line. The race follows a straight course from a standing start over a measured distance, most commonly ¼ mile (1,320 ft (400 m)), with a shorter 1,000 ft (300 m) for some Top Fuel dragsters and funny cars, while 660 ft (200 m) (1/8 mi) is also popular in some circles.

Electronic timing and speed sensing systems have been used to record race results since the 1960s. The faster vehicles need a parachute to slow down, an innovation credited (indirectly) to cartoonist Tom Medley.

Here’s a video comparing Formula 1 & Drag Race

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On the other hand, you might have some familiarity with NASCAR, America’s most popular motorsports series. Perhaps you’ve even attended a race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, where 143,000 people checked out the recent Sprint Cup event.

So now the opulent world of F1 arrives here for the first time with the United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas. Your curiosity is up, and you want to at least give it a look on TV Sunday.
Here are five things you need to know about F1 compared with NASCAR:

1) Formula One is a sprint; NASCAR is a marathon.
The Abu Dhabi race, F1’s last event, had 24 cars covering 190 miles over 55 laps on a 3.5-mile road course with 21 turns (right and left). The race took an hour and 45 minutes. There was one lead change.
The AAA Texas NASCAR Cup race in Fort Worth had 43 cars running 500 miles over 334 laps on a 1.5-mile, high-banked oval. All left turns. The race took 3 hours, 41 minutes and had 20 lead changes. There was time for a lunch break, channel surfing NFL games, bathroom pit stops.

ESPN’s television coverage sprawled over five hours. Formula One is neatly packaged into 2.5-hour TV windows.

NASCAR is like baseball — no clock. You race until its over. If an F1 race reaches 2 hours, it’s over. Whoever’s ahead wins.

Even the pit stops are shorter in F1, taking 3-4 seconds, while a full NASCAR stop is 13-15 seconds. And some F1 races have only one stop.

2) Do NOT miss the start of the F1 race.
NASCAR takes a bunch of warm-up laps and gets off to a rolling start. The first lap is an impressive display of thunder but is no indicator of how the day will go. Good cars routinely come up through the pack.
F1 cars begin from a dead stop. Once those five red lights in the tower turn off, it’s chaos, with cars zigzagging for position while accelerating from zero to 100 mph in a few seconds. At Abu Dhabi, co-favorite Mark Webber got off to a terrible start, was passed by four cars and was toast for the day. Two guys crashed out; several others had their fate pretty much sealed by slow starts.

3) F1 is a game of finesse; NASCAR gets physical. Stock cars are like tanks compared with the F1 jitterbugs. In NASCAR, it’s bump and grind and three wide at times.

At TMS, Brad Keselowski and Jimmie Johnson, the two championship leaders, pushed on each other’s fenders in the closing laps. At Phoenix on Sunday, drivers and crews even came to blows. After Jeff Gordon wrecked Clint Bowyer in retaliation for previous sins, Bowyer and company fought with Gordon’s crew.
It was great theater, but you’d never see that in the highbrow world of F1. You also seldom see any bumper pool; the light, aerodynamically sensitive F1 open-wheel cars just aren’t built to take it.
4) The best car vs. the winning strategy (and luck).

In Formula One, the fastest car almost always wins. At Abu Dhabi, Kimi Raikkonen passed Lewis Hamilton for the lead on lap 20. Ballgame. Qualifying up front is critical.

The longer NASCAR races have more twists and turns than a Stephen King novel. It’s not necessarily the best car that wins. It’s the car that has done best with speed, maneuvering, fuel mileage, pit stops and restarts after cautions.

At TMS, Keselowski had to try to win the race three times in the closing laps because of somebody else’s wreck or problem. Twice he skillfully beat five-time champ Johnson out of the blocks, but on the third restart, Johnson got the jump on Keselowski and pulled away to victory.
“I had to choose between wrecking him and winning the race, and it didn’t seem right to wreck him,” Keselowski said.

5) Showcasing drivers or technology.
NASCAR emphasizes driver personalities with colorful, combustible characters like Tony Stewart and Kyle Busch and the folksy charm of Dale Earnhardt Jr. Deep down, NASCAR leaders had to be thrilled with the Bowyer vs. Gordon dust-up. You know, any publicity is good publicity, and there’s nothing like a fight.
Formula One? Brilliant engineers and technicians all trying to outfox one another for that razor-thin edge that means a world of difference. You’ll hear about telemetry, slipstreaming, wings, suspension and certainly speed-enhancing technology like KERS and DRS, which allow for much more passing.
The constructors, or team, championship seems as important to F1 as the driver title.

The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series is the highest level of NASCAR — and the most popular in the United States. However, internationally, Formula One racing is seemingly the world’s second most popular sport after soccer. Check out our side-by-side comparison created with Red Bull that pits the two racing superpowers against each other.

By – Kevin Lyttle
Source - statesman.com (49)

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In short, because it was so difficult to pass, it was mostly processional racing and the result was almost decided during Saturday qualifying. The only driver to have won from farther back was Michael Schumacher, who won his first race for Ferrari in 1996, starting from third on the grid.

Even despite changes in recent years to the series’ technical regulations to facilitate overtaking, the drivers on the front row won — usually the man who started on pole.

On Sunday, all that changed in the most fantastic way for the Spanish fans who came to watch their local hero, Fernando Alonso, drive a superb, gutsy, intelligent race in his Ferrari in the balmy, sunny weather to take the victory, despite starting only fifth on the grid.

Kimi Raikkonen of the Lotus team finished second, and Felipe Massa, in the other Ferrari, finished third after starting from the even more distant position of ninth on the grid.

Since the series’ leader, Sebastian Vettel, of the Red Bull team, who won the Spanish race last year, finished only fourth, the results tightened the battle for the drivers’ title. Vettel now leads the series with 89 points; Raikkonen is just four points behind and Alonso is third with 72 points.

It was Alonso’s second victory of the year, after he won in China last month, and the 32nd victory of his career. It was also his second victory in Barcelona, where he won driving a Renault in 2006, and his third in Spain, after he won the European Grand Prix in Valencia last year, when he started 11th on the grid.

“This is very special winning at home,” said Alonso, “and it doesn’t matter how many times you can do it and how many times you can repeat it, it is starting from zero and you have a very emotional last lap.”

On the wind-down lap after his victory, Alonso slowed to take the Spanish flag handed to him by a track marshal so he could wave it as he returned to the victory podium.

Alonso has single-handedly turned Formula One into one of the most popular spectator sports in Spain after he won the drivers’ title in 2005 and 2006 for Renault. An hour before the race on Sunday, during a parade of the drivers around the track to wave to the fans, Alonso made the unusual move of jumping off his vehicle and running up to the grandstand fence to shake hands and express his gratitude to the fans.

The fans expressed theirs during the race, acclaiming him on their feet and with their cheers each time he rose a spot up the pack.

Nico Rosberg, a German at the Mercedes team, started from pole position, with his teammate, Lewis Hamilton, in second. Vettel started third, and Raikkonen started fourth.

Rosberg got off to a perfect start, while behind him, Hamilton lost position to Vettel before the first corner. Alonso, after at first being passed by Raikkonen, passed both Raikkonen and then Hamilton by the second corner.

“We knew that to win the race we needed to pass people at the start,” Alonso said. “The start was very good, but it was very narrow and it wasn’t easy to move, and so we needed to wait for a better opportunity. It came just after Turn One, and I passed Kimi and then said, ‘Why not Hamilton, too?”’

For the first several laps the race leaders kept within a second of each other, trying to force an error. None of the drivers would make a serious mistake, and the race then became one about pit-stop strategy and, above all, which car would best preserve Pirelli’s fast-degrading tires that wear out so quickly on the abrasive track surface.

After only nine laps of the 66-lap race, Alonso was the first of the leaders to make a pit stop to change tires. After the following lap, the other leaders made a pit stop, and by the time Lap 10 was finished, Alonso had passed Vettel.

By Lap 13, Alonso had passed Rosberg and was the virtual leader of the race, since the car ahead of them at that point had not made a pit stop. Alonso steadily increased his control of the race from then on, but he said it was not until after the fourth pit stop that he really felt he was certain to win, with just 16 laps left — and the crowd on its feet cheering.

“After the last pit stop, when I found myself in front of Kimi by eight or nine seconds and my tires were two or three laps fresher, I realized the race was in our pocket if I didn’t make a mistake,” he said.

It was after Lap 13, when Alonso passed him that Rosberg’s race began to decline, as he dropped position after position as his Mercedes wore out its tires.

Rosberg finished the race in only sixth position, and Hamilton, after starting second, finished only 12th.

“It was an experience that I don’t really want to go through again,” said Hamilton. “I had no grip, I couldn’t push, and if I did, the tire just went off immediately.”

The race had the most pit stops this season for tire changes as a majority of the drivers made four pit stops, compared with a two-stop average.

The tire wear and the resulting pit stops were what ensured the fans in Barcelona one of the most interesting races in the track’s history.

“It has historically been difficult to overtake here and starting on the first row was half the race, and now whatever car keeps the tires alive will win the race or finish on the podium,” Alonso said.

Source - www.nytimes.com

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The race was canceled in 2011 due to protests and ensuing police crackdowns, but Sebastian Vettel has won both races since the its reinstatement. This weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix, then, would be something of a grudge match between these two repeat champions in front-running cars@mdash;with a grid full of challengers eager to upset them both.

Saturday’s qualifying session put Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg on pole for the second time in his career, with defending champion Sebastian Vettel beside him in second. Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso would have been joined on the second row by Lewis Hamilton, but the Mercedes driver was demoted to ninth on the grid due to an unscheduled gearbox change. Instead Alonso was joined by his wingman Felipe Massa, as Force India’s Paul di Resta and Adrian Sutil were bumped up, followed by Mark Webber (Red Bull) who was penalized from last race by two grid positions. Kimi Raikkonen (Lotus) and Jenson Button (McLaren) followed with their respective teammates Romain Grosjean and Sergio Perez in tow as the rest of the grid was filled by the backmarkers.

Off the line early on Sunday, Alonso rocketed past Vettel, only for the reigning champ to regain position. After repeated attempts, Vettel took the lead from Rosberg as Alonso followed.

Sutil dropped down to last place with a punctured tire following a collision with Massa that left the Ferrari’s front wing damaged. But that didn’t stop the Brazilian from pushing Rosberg. The Lotus duo had a good start, jumping up to seventh and eighth, but were still behind the McLarens.

By lap 7 it was evident that Alonso’s DRS rear wing was stuck, and despite efforts to repair it, he’d have to do without it the entire race and suffer the drop in position from repeated pit stops. With all that action occupying his rivals, though, Vettel built a lead that grew to five seconds by lap 8.

Vettel pitted from the front on lap 11, and posted blistering laps on his way back up, reclaiming his lead four laps later from Raikkonen, who was holding on to his tires and losing pace in the process.

Jean-Eric Vergne became the only retirement when he was wheeled into the Toro Rosso garage on lap 18. Meanwhile, Rosberg’s qualifying form quickly disintegrated as both Button and Grosjean passed to drop the Benz down to fifth barely more than a third of the way through the race.

By Vettel’s second pit stop, his lead was so wide that he rejoined the track still in the number one position, a feat he would repeat after his third and final stop as well. Behind him, Grosjean, Di Resta and Raikkonen were locked in a heated battle for second. And with no team orders to interfere, the McLaren duo of Button and Perez continued dicing it all the way through.

Rejoining from pit lane on lap 39, Webber swiped the back of Rosberg’s car in a move that was still under investigation as we went to press. Webber would get his just deserts, however, when Grosjean would pass him into turn 1 on lap 43. Rosberg would pass Button in the same spot just seconds later, and Hamilton would do so to Button two laps after that. Button’s bad day continued in the ensuing laps as Perez and Alonso would pass him too, only for the latter’s malfunctioning DRS to hand the place back.

The results put Vettel in an even better position to defend his title with 77 points to Raikkonen’s 67. Hamilton trails in third with 50 points to Alonso’s 47. The combined scores leave Red Bull firmly in the lead to defend its constructors’ title as well, with 109 points to Lotus’ 93 and Ferrari’s 77. The battle resumes three weeks from today in Spain.

Source - roadandtrack.com

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Then came those Pirellis – every single driver and team representative interview touches on how important it is to understand the tires and manage their degradation. Two races in, though, it seems no team has any clue yet how to make the race-weekend compounds work predictably.

The only thing predictable about the soft compound tires that Pirelli brought to China was that they would last for six laps, and that led to an odd qualifying session with drivers reluctant to leave the pits or even set a time.

It also led to the first pole position for an Englishman in a Mercedes-Benz since Stirling Moss did it in 1955.

Knowing how tender the tires were and how much they’d affect strategy, drivers were reluctant to do a single lap more than necessary in order to get a good grid position. That meant the first qualifying segments went as long as five minutes before anyone did a lap. When it was all over, Lewis Hamilton took his first pole for Mercedes-AMG Petronas, followed by Kimi Räikkönen in the Lotus, Fernando Alonso in the Ferrari, Nico Rosberg in the second Mercedes, Felipe Massa in the second Ferrari, Romain Grosjean in the second Lotus, Daniel Ricciardo doing a smash-up job in the Toro Rosso to secure seventh, Jenson Button in the first McLaren in eighth, Vettel in ninth and Nico Hülkenberg in the Sauber in tenth. Button did the slowest lap he could just to set a time so that he could get in front of Vettel and Hülkenberg, who didn’t even go out in Q3.

Let’s take a minute for Mark Webber. No one would have supposed his weekend in China could go that much worse than the one in Malaysia, but we’d say it did. Not only did he run out of fuel in qualifying due to a fuel refiller issue, didn’t have enough to submit to the stewards so he was disqualified from the session and opted to start the race from pit lane. After running just one lap of the race and then pitting to get rid of the soft compound tire, he was making his way through the pack when he tried an atrocious come-from-way-behind pass on Jean-Eric Vergne – who would have been racing for position – on Lap 18 and lost his wing when Vergne unsurprisingly turned in on him, then while limping back to the pits his right rear tire came off because it hadn’t been affixed properly when he pitted. He was given a three-place penalty for the Vergne accident, to be served at the next GP. His season has been so regrettable so far that there are rumors he has already signed a five-year deal to race Porsche sports cars starting next year. All we know for sure right now is that his bad luck demons are as strong as ever.

From the lights Lewis Hamilton made his usual great start while Räikkönen made an unusually poor one. His team apologized to him after the race but we don’t know what happened; the result was that he got passed by both Alonso and Massa before turn one and only just managed to keep Rosberg behind him. He wouldn’t have to worry about Rosberg for long, though, last year’s Chinese GP winner retired on Lap 23 after making three pit stops to investigate mechanical issues. He’s becoming the Mark Webber of Mercedes.

The opening laps had Hamilton being pursued by the Ferraris and the Lotus, while further back in the pack Force India’s Paul di Resta plowed into his teammate Adrian Sutil. It wasn’t the last incident Sutil would have: on Lap 7 Sauber rookie Esteban Guiterrez was racing McLaren’s Sergio Perez down to the hairpin at Turn 14 and forgot to pay attention to the driver in front of him, which happened to be Sutil. Gutierrez plowed into the back of the Force India, the Sauber was done immediately, Sutil limped back to the pits with a mangled rear wing, followed by an engine fire, followed by retirement. Gutierrez was hit with a five-place grid penalty for next week’s Bahrain GP.

Alonso got past Hamilton on Lap 4, but the leaders started on the soft compound and were in the pits by Lap 7. That put Hülkenberg in the lead, followed by Vettel and Button, the three drivers in the top ten that started on the medium compound tire. Whereas every other driver would stop three times, Button, perhaps the smoothest driver on the grid, managed to do a two-stopper and got his McLaren home in fifth place. It isn’t where anyone expects the Woking team to be finishing, but considering the issues with the MP4-28 it’s a solid result. His teammate is still getting used to life at the front, Perez using some creative blocking moves to try and keep drivers behind him and getting into an incident with Räikkönen that rearranged the nose of the Lotus. Perez would finish in 11th, and was told to “toughen up” by team principal Martin Whitmarsh.

After those first pit stops there were two threads playing out: Alonso casually walking away with the race and Vettel’s backwards tire strategy. Räikkönen and Hamilton didn’t get into any troubles and essentially maintained second and third position throughout, having got their soft tire usage out of the way first. Vettel saved his soft stint for his last pit stop and the final five laps of the race. Coming out in sixth position on a new set of fast tires, he passed the two drivers between himself and Hamilton within a half a lap. He then had four laps to catch the Mercedes, and did it – he was taking a second out of Hamilton in every single sector, and by the last half of the last lap was pulling up on Hamilton’s gearbox. If it hadn’t been for traffic and a couple of Vettel mistakes – or if he had had another lap – he would have passed the Mercedes.

In front, Alonso owned it, setting the fastest lap of the race with just a few laps to go. Eleven seconds ahead of Räikkönen by this point, when his race engineer told him he didn’t need to push he responded, “I’m not pushing.” He took the checkered flag, followed by Räikkönen, Hamilton, Vettel, Button, Massa, Ricciardo with a sterling drive, di Resta, Grosjean and Hülkenberg.

Alonso’s 31st win puts him even with Nigel Mansell on the all-time list, and the 25 points – a welcome turnaround after his quick retirement from Malaysia – gets him into third place in the Driver’s Championship with 43 points behind Vettel (52) and Räikkönen (49). Speaking of Räikkönen, Mr. Consistent has finished 20 straight races in the points. The last time he didn’t score: the 2012 Chinese Grand Prix.

In the Constructor’s Championship it’s still Infiniti Red Bull at the top with 78 points, followed by Ferrari with 73 and Lotus with 60. Those numbers will change in just one week after the teams have made their stand in next Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix. We’ll see you then.

Source - autoblog.com

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The race was marked by controversy surrounding team orders issued by the Red Bull and Mercedes teams, with Vettel passing his team-mate Mark Webber to win against an order from his team to hold position,[4] and Lewis Hamilton retaining third place in front of Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg on orders from team principal Ross Brawn.

Formula One world champion Sebastian Vettel stormed to victory in a thrilling Malaysian Grand Prix on Sunday, leading a Red Bull one-two ahead of team mate Mark Webber in a race packed with intrigue, incident and plenty of bad blood. The Mercedes duo of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg crossed the line in unison 12 seconds behind Vettel, while last year’s winner Fernando Alonso crashed out on the second lap when his damaged front wing buckled under the Ferrari’s chassis.

The cars started the race on intermediate tyres following a heavy downpour in the mid-afternoon but the main talking point will be the disharmony between the drivers of the leading four cars with both Webber and Rosberg feeling let down by their teams. Webber moved up from fifth on the grid to first after the second round of pitstops and finally gave up the lead to Vettel, who had demanded his team mate be moved aside by his team, on the 44th of the 56-lap race.

Rosberg also had the pace to get past Hamilton late in the race but team principal Ross Brawn told the German to stay behind the 2008 world champion and make sure they finished rather than race each other. Ferrari’s Felipe Massa came home in a distant fifth place with the Lotus duo Romain Grosjean and Kimi Raikkonen, winner in Melbourne a week ago, taking the sixth and seventh spots.

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It was a strategic win for the Lotus team whose driver made just two pit stops while his closest rivals came in three times.

Fernando Alonso took second after making an early second stop to jump ahead of early leader Sebastian Vettel. Alonso gave chase of Raikkonen in the closing stages of the race but was unable to catch the Lotus.

Nor could Vettel, who took pole position in emphatic fashion earlier today, do anything to catch the Ferrari at the end of the race. It was a disappointing Grand Prix for Red Bull who locked out the front row of the grid but saw their cars come home third and sixth, Mark Webber losing several places at the start.

Felipe Massa kept Alonso behind at the start but was out-fumbled by his team mate in the pits and lost time behind Adrian Sutil later.

The Force India driver led several laps after starting the race on medium tyres. But he struggled for pace on the super-softs at the end of the race and came home seventh just ahead of team mate Paul di Resta.

Lewis Hamilton tried to do a two-stop strategy but had to convert to three after locking his tyres while battling with Alonso and needing an early second stop. Team mate Nico Rosberg retired with a technical problem.

Jenson Button and Romain Grosjean rounded out the points scorers, the latter making a poor start and struggling with his tyres late in the race. Sergio Perez was just outside the points on his McLaren debut after starting 15th.

Source - f1fanatic.co.uk

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The 27-year-old Vodafone McLaren Mercedes star from Hertfordshire was leading an eventful, crazy, rain-hit race when he was clipped by Nico Hulkenberg’s car.

The German driver tried to pass Hamilton at Turn One on a slippery track but his Force India hit Hamilton, forcing the McLaren man to retire from the final F1 race of the season with damage to his car. The collision after 54 laps handed Hamilton’s McLaren teammate Jenson Button the lead ahead of Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari.

In an incident-packed, rain-affected race, Vettel fought back to finish sixth after dropping to last on lap one following a collision. His rival Fernando Alonso of Ferrari finished second, meaning he needed Vettel to be lower than seventh.
McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton had led at lap 54 until he was hit by Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg.

The German was trying to pass Hamilton for the lead with 27 laps to go but lost control on the slippery track and slid into the side of Hamilton’s car. Hulkenberg, driving the race of his career up to that point, was given a drive-through penalty and finished fifth, behind Alonso’s team-mate Felipe Massa in third and Red Bull’s Mark Webber in fourth.

Vettel becomes the youngest driver in history to win three world titles – at six years younger than Ayrton Senna. He is only the third driver to win three in succession.

“It is difficult to imagine what goes through my head now even for myself,” Vettel said. “I am full of adrenaline and if you poke me now I wouldn’t feel it.

The Brazilian Grand Prix certainly is a special occasion on the motorsport calendar not least because of the Senna era and the fanatic fans turning Sao Paulo at Interlagos into a festival and carnival atmosphere for the F1 weekend.

F1 Corporate offers a variety of services in Sao Paulo and we strongly suggest an onward trip to Rio de Janiero. Stay in luxurious hotels, enjoy premium corporate hospitality or great grandstand value packages. The Brazilian city of Sao Paulo is a prime example of a Formula One hosting city offering a large number or great bars and restaurants to entertain you.

This year we will once again see the established and much loved Brazilian Formula One driver Felipe Massa racing and being truly supported by their fans back in their home country.

Be there and join the F1 Corporate travel group in Interlagos. Fully hosted from airport arrival to departure we ensure you are well guided in this 20 million people city.

Click to Download – Brazilian F1 GP 2012 Wallpapers

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Lewis Hamilton claimed the victory and Red Bull clinched the constructors title but the biggest winner at the U.S. Grand Prix was Formula One with commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone immediately calling for more races in America.

“The future of F1 in the USA? I think we’ll finish with three races here within the next three years,” a beaming Ecclestone told reporters. “The race was fantastic wasn’t it? Really was a super race.

“If you tried to plan this, to have the (title) race finish in Brazil, you couldn’t have done a better job.

“Everybody is very happy here. The governor’s happy, they’re all happy. You feel good when you’ve done something that works.”

On a busy sporting Sunday with a full slate of National Football League action and NASCAR crowning their champion in Florida, the U.S. Grand Prix held its own, delivering gripping drama as Formula One made a rousing return to America following a five-year absence.

Circuit of the Americas, the United States’s only purpose-built F1 track carved spectacularly out of the south Texas scrublands at a cost of $400 million, provided a magnificent stage as McLaren’s Hamilton out-raced championship contenders Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso for the win.

A capacity crowd of almost 120,000 flooded into Formula One’s newest venue on a sun-splashed day to cap off weekend of partying that had attracted jet-setters and A-listers along with the political and business elite to the quirky Texas capital.

Among those spotted roaming the paddock were Mexico president Felipe Calderon, Texas governor Rick Perry, movie mogul George Lucas, celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay and director Ron Howard, who is about to release a Formula One-themed movie.

Conspicuously absent was Austin’s most famous sportsman, disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, who kept a low profile with world’s media at his doorstep.

NEW ERA

Although all conceded there was much work to be done before the series can claim a firm foothold in the U.S., many hailed Sunday’s race as the start of a new era for Formula One in a market it is determined to conquer.

“I think they have done a great job here. The track is fantastic.” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said.

“I think we saw a great race today and the enthusiasm from the fans and the public and the town has been tremendous. It looks like Formula One has been a big hit here in Texas.

“We just have to make sure we continue to put on a good show. You can see the enthusiasm there is for Formula One it would be great at some point to have another race in the States, which is obviously under discussion.”

Formula One teams up and down the Austin paddock could not hide their delight at being back in the U.S., while Ecclestone found a new-found enthusiasm for a market he had once dismissed.

It seems almost certain that more U.S. races will find their way onto the calendar.

Plans to put a race in New Jersey next year were postponed when local organizers said they could not be ready in time but Ecclestone remained confident that the event will find a place on the 2014 schedule while tossing out Los Angeles as another serious possibility.

“It’s been a great weekend, the fans have been amazing this weekend,” said Hamilton, who also won the last F1 race staged in the United States in 2007.

“The warm welcome we’ve had has been fantastic and I think this is probably one of the best, if not the best grand prix we’ve had all year.

Source - reuters.com

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For the first 19 laps it seemed like Lewis Hamilton’s race, even after an early safety car between Laps Nine and 14 after Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg flew spectacularly over the rear of Narain Karthikeyan’s HRT on Lap Nine as the Indian was slowing with hydraulic problems. Hamilton soon pulled away again at the restart, and was 3.4s ahead of fast-starting Raikkonen when his McLaren lost power and he pulled off at Turn 14 on the 20th lap.

The first safety car helped Vettel to recover from his pit-lane start and a brush with Williams’ Bruno Senna which damaged his front wing. There was an unusual moment when Daniel Ricciardo seemed to brake suddenly whilst behind the safety car and in avoiding his Red Bull stable mate, Vettel further damaged his wing on a DRS marker board by the side of the track. A subsequent early pit stop for used soft tyres and a new nose and wing on the 13th lap dropped him back again.

At that stage the focus was on the way Raikkonen pulled away as Alonso put increasing pressure on Williams’ Pastor Maldonado for second place as Red Bull’s Mark Webber and McLaren’s Jenson Button gave chase. Vettel was 12th.

Maldonado succumbed to Alonso on Lap 21, but on the 23rd lap Webber was involved in an incident when trying to pass Maldonado which saw the Red Bull half spin and lose places to Button, Ferrari’s Felipe Massa and Sauber’s Sergio Perez. Three laps later Webber had an incident with Massa, which saw the Brazilian spin.

By the time the pit stops had been made, from the 27th to the 31st laps, Raikkonen was only 1.4s clear of Vettel, and it had now became a matter of whether he could get through the remaining 23 laps on the same rubber as Alonso and Button battled in his wake.

The answer was that he couldn’t, but a superbly timed stop on the 37th lap saw him take a set of fresh softs and drop only to fourth, crucially keeping ahead of a frenetic battle between Grosjean (who had been hit early on by Rosberg), Paul di Resta (who had been involved in a first-corner collision with Force India team mate Nico Hulkenberg and Senna), a recovering Perez and Webber.

Di Resta and Grosjean had both had to pit on the first lap, and now the Scot found a way by the Frenchman on the 38th lap, but as Perez attempted to pass both of them he hit Grosjean and spun, and Webber was left with nowhere to go. The safety car was deployed again from Laps 38 to 42 as the wreckage of Grosjean’s and Webber’s cars was cleared away, and Perez was subsequently given a 10s stop and go penalty.

In the closing laps Raikkonen controlled things perfectly, as Alonso launched a massive challenge for the victory with a flurry of fastest laps which reduced the gap from 3.2s on the 46th lap to 0.8s by the finish. Vettel went from being 29.8s down on Raikkonen to just 3.3s thanks to the second safety car deployment, after which he hounded Button until he was able to slip by on the 52nd lap before slashing the deficit to his two title rivals.

Button took a lonely fourth, with Maldonado surviving all his dramas to bring home 10 crucial points for Williams as Kamui Kobayashi made the best of a relatively quiet race to take sixth for Sauber. Massa was seventh, chased hard by Senna and Di Resta, as Ricciardo took the final point for Toro Rosso after overhauling team mate Jean-Eric Vergne. The Frenchman was also overtaken by Mercedes’ Michael Schumacher, whose chance of points was ended late on by a right-rear puncture.

Heikki Kovalainen had a strong run for Caterham to 13th ahead of Marussia’s Timo Glock, who just fended off Perez by two-tenths of a second by the flag, with Vitaly Petrov taking 16th for Caterham ahead of HRT survivor Pedro de la Rosa.

The result leaves Vettel 10 points ahead of Alonso, 255 to 245, with Raikkonen retaining third with 198. In the constructors’ stakes, Red Bull have 422 points from Ferrari on 340, McLaren on 318 and Lotus on 288.

Click to Download – Abu Dhabi F1 GP 2012 Wallpapers

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