Another strategy driven race, this time it was Ferrari and Fernando Alonso who surprised many with a four-stop race which allowed them to push the tyres to their limits and comfortably hold-off the three-stopping Lotus of Kimi Raikkonen.

A masterful victory from Fernando Alonso kept him out of the strategic battles going on behind and, at points in the race, around him. Taking the projected approach to the race of a three-stopper after starting on the soft tyre compound, the Ferrari driver took control of the race after coming out ahead of pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton in the first round of pit stops.

With the Italian Grand Prix run, the European leg of the Formula One calendar closes for 2012. Europe produced mixed fortunes for the drivers, with McLaren perhaps happy to see the back of it despite winning the last three race. In fact, this year’s unofficial European Championships standings make interesting reading as while World Championship leader Fernando Alonso is unsurprisingly crowned champion, his nearest challenger by some distance is Kimi Raikkonen.

After an eventful qualifying session, the sun shone down on the Hockenheimring and settled down into reordering a grid that had been shuffled up by Saturday’s changing conditions. Fernando Alonso led away from pole and was barely troubled, except by Lewis Hamilton and he was only unlapping himself…

Changeable weather conditions always seem to produce exciting qualifying sessions and Hockenheim qualifying was to prove no exception. Oddly, a different tyre type was needed in each session with mediums in Q1, intermediates in Q2 and full wets in Q3 as the track became progressively wetter. Once again it was Jean-Eric Vergne who fell foul of the first cut-off, failing to progress beyond the first session for the sixth time this season, just five hundredth’s of a second behind Michael Schumacher in 17th…

After all the rain for the first two days, Silverstone produced a dry race against most expectations. It probably meant a few too many wet set-ups but it did throw up one novelty – the ten Q3 runners having a free choice of starting tyre. It’s a situation that some believe should always happen. As it was, with all twenty-four drivers armed with a plenty of unused slick tyres it meant a bit more variety in tyre strategy than may have otherwise occurred, although two-stopping was pretty much standard practice…