Would someone be so kind to give me a quick summary of events? I'm fresh back from Corfu, only caught last few laps.
Certainly good sire
Start: Webber launched like a grandma and everyone overtook him, by the first corner he was down to 6th or thereabouts. The first lap was marked by the entire half of the pack missing the breaking point (or more specifically, not taking the wet track into account) into the chicanes. Alonso was further back and saw everyone skidding so he braked earlier and did the corner correctly. He was all set to go from 10th to the top 5, when Barrichello came barrelling down the circuit in a very newbie way for his 300th Grand Prix, missing the corner too and plowing into Mr Eyebrows' Ferrari, spinning him around but not doing much damage. Barrichello out. Alonso pitted for inters, but the track dried out and this gamble didn't pay off. He pitted later on again for slicks.
Kubica was up to 2nd at one point now, but Button and Vettel overtook him nicely and he was down to 4th while Jensen and Seb fought for 2nd. Hamilton in the meantime sped away from the battling cars because he knew there could be showers later on and if he made a mistake he'd have that safety buffer (and this actually paid off when in the later rain he ran wide and took a short trip through the gravel). In the meantime, both Schumacher and Petrov were overtaking the whole world.
Then the accident everyone will remember this GP for... the damn fool Vettel (read this in James May voice) was following Button way too close for his aero to work properly, and at then spun ? la Istambul, hitting the McLaren spectacularly with his nose cone, puncturing his side pod and the radiator in an unbelievable way, white vapour steaming out. Vettel pitted for a new nose, Button out. Kubica went back to 2nd with this, led by Hamilton and followed by Webber. Massa was sitting on 4th, Alonso was trying to make his way up the pack of slower cars overtaking furiously and with reckless success. The race sort of calmed down with some minor chatter between pilots and engineers about if and when rain would come back.
Then Vettel managed to puncture his rear tire and destroy the Force India's front wing, battling with Liuzzi for some points. At this point I was wishing Vettel would just retire to prevent any more carnage.
Couple laps later some weak showers started to fall but began to pick up on intensity, at which point many teams pitted for inters, some people with nothing to lose gambled on the full wet tyres (this is when Hamilton ran wide with slicks, but the time gap he had created prevented Kubica from taking the lead). Kubica was too distracted adjusting his steering wheel's knobs (or so he claimed in the post race press conference) and missed his entry point to his pit, locking up the tyres and sliding into a couple of mechanics, delaying his pitstop a lot and losing 2nd place to Webber in the process; Alonso's downhill weekend ended with a stupid mistake, running wide on to the artificial grass, losing all grip and hitting the wall which caused his retirement and a safety car. Everyone was hoping for some exciting last 4 laps under the rain after the SC went in, but overall the positions remained the same, with the exception of a late overtake from Rosberg on Schumi, which must have been caught with his pants down or something. Very unusual from him to let someone overtake like that.
Hamilton takes the win in a very controlled race from his part, lucky Webber gets 2nd, unlucky Kubica 3rd, Massa 4th (very uneventful race from him), Sutil, Rosberg, Schumacher, Kobayashi (good drive again, the force is strong with this one), Petrov (from 23rd to 9th, excellent), and Liuzzi are the top 10.
Hamilton goes up to the lead of the championship again, Webber remains second, Alonso's chances grow ever thinner scoring 0.
RBR leads McLaren by 1 point, and Ferrari 79 behind McL.
Great race although as a Ferrari fan it wasn't the best result. But the lack of F1 for 3 weeks and then a very eventful race makes me happy all the same.
Trivia: Since 1999, it's always been a Ferrari or McLaren to win at Spa
Mini rant: I'm still annoyed at the officials popping up at every single incident and saying they're gonna investigate them after the race. It's more like they want to remind us they're there. As far as I'm concerned, only the Vettel-Button was worthy of investigation, and then again, they gave the wrong penalty for it. Vettel lost only 3 seconds to Liuzzi with the drive through cos Spa's pits are very un-penalizing, it should have been a 10 sec stop&go.