Fernando Alonso proved, once again, in Germany, just how good he is. The answer to that is extremely good and, arguably, the best. Some have never doubted that the spaniard was the best, but many are just realising that Alonso is achieving feats well above and beyond the capabilities of his Ferrari. Last year, and now this year as well, Fernando outclassed his team mate, Filipe Massa, proving that he is squeezing so much more out of his prancing horse than the brazilian.Alonso was faultless all weekend. He took pole position in changeable conditions on Saturday, held the lead after the start, protected his tyres and kept Vettel at a comfortable distance for the whole race. Alonso takes his tally to three race wins and its crystal clear that he is taking the bull by the horns, so to speak.
The real drama came on the penultimate lap of the race when, after storming up behind Jenson Button, Vettel attempted a pass on one of the hairpins. Sebastian took the outside line around the corner and then clearly took to the runoff area, on the exit of the corner, to get traction to pull away past Jenson. I don't think anybody is in any doubt as to whether Vettel was in the wrong by using the runoff area to take Button. However, the punishment was arguably too harsh.
The move certainly wasn't malicious and if there had been more laps and more time then it may have been the case that Sebastian would have been told to yield the position. I think a fair punishment would have been for the positions to have been swapped, Vettel for Button. Therefore, I think that to penalise Vettel with an added 20 secs, which resulted in him being bumped down to 5th, was wrong and put an unfortunate downer on the whole result. Lets hope that in future the FIA make more responsible decisions, regarding trivial incidents like this.
