First Formula One Night Race - Alonso Wins !!

Wow, it was the most dramatic ( if not historical ) Night Race for the F1 Grand Prix.

Winner Alonso, driving for team Renault, started in last place ( 15th position ), because the day before during the Preliminary Qualifying Race, his car sprang a leak. He drove extremely well and deserves the win.

But it was a complicated and exciting Final. Team Ferrari started with Massa in the lead position.

But very early in the Final, Piquet of Renault crashed his car, causing the Safety Car ( MacLaren Mercedes ) to rule the circuit and several other teams jumped into the pit-stop opportunity, leaving a couple others out but needing to pit-stop. These two cars were low on fuel ( their starting strategy ), so they had to make pit-stops during the Safety Car round, which earned them penalty 10 seconds stop time.

That threw the strategies of all teams into total chaos.

Then Massa made his pit-stop and some screw-up caused him to pull away from the pit-stop team servicing his car, drive over one of his mechanics, and leave with the fuel nozzle still attached !!. He narrowly missed another car on the main circuit, while doing so. From 1st position, he fell to 15th.

Later in the race, another crash ( car of Team *something* India ) because of wet surface at a corner, brought the Safety Car out again. Not entirely that driver's fault, but because other cars had bunched up due to one car getting into a bit of a problem at the corner.

Finally, the remaining Ferrari car crashed against the side wall and Team Ferrari was out of the race. Because of this crash, the Japanese driver moved up from 9th to 8th place, and that earned him a Grand Prix point ( awarded to top 8 only ).

Now drinking red wine in celebration of the race.