WANTED: 2012 F1 World Champion

Last weekend, Austin's Formula 1 race took place; a race in which Lewis Hamilton crossed the finish line in 1st position, Sebastian Vettel was 2nd and after him, Fernando Alonso in 3rd place. This race has been one of the most interesting races because Vettel could have become the world champion, but that didn't happen.

Sebastian Vettel was 10 points ahead Alonso before the race and he needed to earn 15 points more than him to become the world champion, and it looked it was going to be that way when Sebastian came 1st in the qualification and Fernando came 9th. But as Alonso predicted, the championship wasn't going to finish after that race and now I'm going to tell you why.

Alonso climbed 2 positions in the grid because Romain Grosjean and Felipe Massa (Alonso's team mate), who qualified better than him, dropped 5 places because of unscheduled changes in their cars. So Vettel would start from the 1st position, Hamilton from the 2nd one, Mark Webber (Vettel's team mate) from the 3rd one, and Alonso from the 7th one. Every one thought that Vettel was going to win the race and Alonso couldn't do anything, but that was until the race started.

At the start, Hamilton lost his position with Webber and from behind, Alonso climbed to 4th position. Everything was normal until suddenly Webber broke his alternator and his car stopped working. Workers in Red Bull Racing Team were afraid of this kind of problem to happen because they had had it all over the year and it was important to do not retire because that way Alonso gets more points and closer to Vettel. Then, Sebastian was 1st, Lewis was 2nd and Fernando was 3rd.

When this happened, Hamilton started getting closer to Vettel and he had some chances to overtake him. Meanwhile, Alonso did a pit stop, but there was a problem: a tyre got stuck and the mechanics couldn't get it out of the car! They lost too much time and everyone thought that the driver behind him, Kimi Raikkonen, was going to exit the pit in front of him. But when he did it he had exactly the same problem with the same tyre and he lost the same time Alonso did! So, luckly for him, Fernando was still 3rd.

Hamilton now was less than 1 second behind Vettel and, when there were 14 laps to go, Lewis overtook him. But Vettel thought that the race wasn't finished and kept trying to be again in the 1st position, but, at last, he couldn't do it. So the race finished and Hamilton was the winner, Vettel was 2nd and Alonso, far away from him, finished 3rd.

Now, Vettel is the leader of the championship with 273 points and Alonso is 2nd, 13 points behind. There is only one race left and if Alonso wants to be the world champion he has to get 1st to the finish line if Vettel finishes 5th or worse, 2nd if Vettel gets 8th or worse, or 3rd if Sebastian gets 10th or worse. If Vettel gets 4th or better, no matter what Fernando Alonso does, he will be the 2012 Formula 1 World Champion.

David Pender Villalvilla