Myrvold wrote:Well, you cannot blame this on Virgin, but on DiGrassi and Buemi. Glock looked to be set for a good finish here.
Glock was potentially on for an excellent finishing position, as he was running 12th at the time, and was at least on Heikki's pace, if not slightly better. That wasn't the first time that Buemi hit someone else either, having clipped Trulli quite hard earlier in the race, so it wasn't too surprising that he ended up binning it in the end.
Sutil, too, had a very up and down day - ok, he passed the Sauber's countless times, but couldn't make it stick as he would end up throwing away his position soon afterwards. He tried some very clumsy moves - such as his lunge up the inside of Button, which could have so easily gone wrong had Button not spotted him in time - and, again, it was no great surprise that he ended up hitting Kobayashi and taking himself out (although it was surprising that Kobayashi was able to continue at full speed despite the impact).
All in all, it took a long time to get going, but once it did, there were quite a few unexpected twists along the way. That engine failure for Vettel might not just hurt him here, but in the final two races as well, depending on whether he has to take a fresh engine and the ten place penalty that goes with it. At the very least, he is now badly on the back foot - in theory, if Vettel was to win the final two races, but Alonso finished third twice, it would still be possible for Alonso to win the title (depending heavily on what happened to Webber, of course).
Brundle did make a good point, though, about how costly Webber's mistake was - had he finished in the top 4 (achievable because Schumacher was quite some way back at the end), he would still be leading (just) the championship, and he would have been more then one race win clear of Vettel. That, surely, would have forced Red Bull to throw everything at Webber to secure the title, because it would be hard for Vettel to make up that sort of deficit. It was a shame that in the process Webber had to take Rosberg out, as he could well have shaken things up even further (I agree that a win for Rosberg was not entirely out of the question, although Alonso's tyre management, which meant that he was several seconds a lap faster then everybody at the end, might have got him ahead at the end).