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| A delighted Hamilton sprays the crowd with Champagne. |
Lewis Hamilton was able to secure his first victory of the season, and McLaren's first victory since Jenson Button's in Melbourne. Hamilton's victory means that the beggining of the 2012 season has seen 7 different winners from the first 7 races, an extraordinary achievement, showing how close this season is panning out to be. The result for Hamilton means that he now tops the Driver's Championship with 88 points, Alonso just two points behind him on 86.
The last 10 laps of the 70 laps race, was filled to the brim with drama and excitement. In the early stages of the race, Hamilton was able to surpass Vettel, through the first round of stops, which the only stop planned for most of the front runners on the grid. The middle section of the race was led by Hamilton. McLaren decided to stick to their choice, and continue to run the two-stop strategy despite the Brit's lead. After Vettel pitted, Hamilton had the easy task of catching up to Alonso, and passing him on the back straight, with the help of DRS and the poor condition of Alonso's tires, and took the lead in the race, and held on comfortably to win.
Alonso, in the Ferrari, was running a one-stop strategy, a risky move, as the tires could easily not last for the entire race. This is exactly what happened to the Spaniard. With 10 laps to go, Alonso was leading, but in a dramatic end, Alonso's tires had no grip left, and his race pace dramatically fell. As a result, his challengers, Hamilton, Grosjean, Perez and Vettel, were lapping around 3 seconds faster than him. All 4 of these drivers passed the Spaniard.
Sebastian Vettel dramatically came into the pits with less than 10 laps to go in the race. This was because he looked to be going the same way as Alonso, so Red Bull made a drastic decision to pit the German and put him on fresh tires. As a result, Vettel immediately set a new fastest lap of the race, and set the fastest lap of the race overall, on the final lap. From the pit stop, Vettel fell to 5th, but was able to gain a place on struggling Alonso before the end of the race, to get into 4th. The result could have easily been a lot worse for him had the team not decided to pit.
In comparison to Alonso and Vettel, Romain Grosjean and Sergio Perez were able to make the one-stop strategy work, and were able to keep their tyres in good condition until the end of the race. Grosjean climbed all the way to second place, while Perez made a giant leap from 15th, to a podium finish, in 3rd.
Vettel's Red Bull teammate Mark Webber, went on a two-stop strategy and was able to make it work to reasonably good effect, finishing in 7th. Webber finished one place behind Rosberg in 6th - at the end of the race, Rosberg was only 3 tenths of a second behind Alonso, but was just unable to overtake the struggling Spaniard.
| Leaderboard - Final | Points | Time/Lag | Avg. mph | |
