Singapore Grand Prix

So here we are at the race which has caused much controversary of late with the allegations that Renault forced Nelson Piquet Junior to crash at last years race (2008) so Alonso could win. The resultant FIA Council meeting concluded that Flavio Briatorre would be excluded from any involvement with events controlled by the FIA for life and Pat Simonds for 5 years.

Nelson Piquet was however given immunity as he was the one who offered the information to the FIA. I still find the saga difficult to accept within the sport I love and feel Nelson should have a penalty. He was the one that crashed the car at the perfect moment to allow Alonso, who had just pitted, to go on and win the race after the Safety Car period.

As if F1 hasn't had enough controversy over the past 2 seasons we are then faced with what has been called the worst act of its type in sporting history. Let us all hope we can finish the 2009 season off without any other controversy and that we can get back to the sport and start again with a clean sheet in 2010.

Back to F1. The teams came to Singapore with the 2009 World Champion in the balance. Battle was once more joined between, Red Bull and Brawn. Quali 1 saw a change for the first 5 drop outs as we saw Heidfeld, Liuzzi, Grosjean, and Alguersauri and the luckless Fizzi who just can't get to grips with the Ferrari. It is sad but Fizzi simply hasn't got there yet and doesn't seem to be any nearer.

Quali 2 came as a disaster for Jenson who finished 11th and not happy with his lot as once again he was outpaced by Rubens. The same luck applied to Kimi who coudn't get the Ferrari set up so both Ferrari's failed to get into Quali 1. So we lost Jarno who was again outpaced by Timo in his flying Toyota, Buemi, Adrian Sutil, Jenson and Kimi.

Into Quali 3 and without doubt Lewis was the star of the day. He launched his Mclaren into pole with a lap untouched by anyone else. His nearest challenger was the usual Sebastian Vettel who finished in P2. Nico was flying and put his Williams into P3 closely followed by Mark Webber. Alonso followed Mark and Timo (Glock) in his Toyota just pipped Robert (Kubica) and to finish off it was Heikki, Rubens and Kazuki.

Into race day and Lewis remained hot favourite and from the flag he was never really headed apart from pit stops. Timo drove a hero's race into second and he really had the Toyota humming and the same applied to Nico until he came out of the pits and crossed the dreaded White line. As is normal with this offence it brings an automatic drive through and put him back down to 11th.

The title contenders were basically locked together finishing in line astern with Sebastian (4), Rubens (5) and Jenson (6). This result tightened the championship and they went to Brazil with all 3 still in the fight albeit Jenson still has the edge.

So after returning to the scene of the Renault debacle last year all went off without a hitch, off to Japan.