Well Spa didn’t disappoint, it had excitement, safety cars, crashes, punctures, debris, overtaking and a winner other than Schumacher!!! Which, lets be honest had to happen sooner rather than later. The weather stayed nice for the race — the weather predictions were right for once and the race was dry, compared to the unpredictable nature of qualifying yesterday! Schumacher lost ground at the start of the race whilst his bridgestone tyres tried to get up to temperature, falling back from 2nd and for a time was running 6th. He was even overtaken by Coulthard, Raikonnen and Montoya!
The Renaults made their usual fast starts and were 1-2 heading into the first corner – but a coming together at the top of the hill brought the first of three safety cars. The consetina effect that happens and the entire pack trying to squeeze into a gap caused chaos, but nothing as bad as the 1998 wipeout of the field. Barrichello had a coming together with Webber and had to have his rear wing changed, so it was somewhat impressive that he managed to get from last place into third, where he finished. It was a solid drive by the Brazilian!
Debris from the multiple coming togethers meant that carbon fibre was strewn all over the circuit and caused a lot of rear punctures for the Michelin runners. Including Mr. Button who was lucky not to land up in a barrier – instead he used a poor unfortunate minardi as his impact point when his tyre blew out!!!
Schumacher managed to recover his lost places and ended up in second place — ahead by two points of his teammate and championship rival Barrichello — which meant that he secured his seventh championship at a track where he made his F1 debut and a year later took his maiden win. There’s only a few more records he needs to see tumble before he eventually retires – whenever that is, hopefully no where in the near future!
The leader of the race changed multiple times with the McLaren driven by Raikonnen taking the winning spoils and ending McLaren’s 27 race drought!
With this race being a stark contrast to the procession of two weeks ago – lets hope Spa remains on the formula one calendar for good this time! If you really want to get rid of race tracks, take a look at the dull and boring ones that don’t offer us this kind of excitement! It’s good to see Spa back where it should be! 
