Australian Mark Webber took his maiden win in the German Grand Prix converting his first every pole position. Webber took the win despite colliding with Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren and the Brawn of Rubens Barrichello after getting bogged down off the start line resulting in him receiving a drive-through penalty. Webber’s team mate Sebastian Vettel finished in second place after starting from fourth while the Brawn’s of Jenson Button and Barrichello ended up 5th and 6th places respectively. Felipe Massa brought his Ferrari home in third place ahead of Williams’ Nico Rosberg in fourth. Fernando Alonso and Heikki Kovalainen rounded out the points scorers. It definitely seems like Red Bull have stolen the advantage away from Brawn as the Brackley based team are falling off the pace as Red Bull racing claimed their third 1-2 of the season. Jenson Button’s championship lead has been cut to just 21 points with race winner Webber only a further 1.5 points behind Vettel while Jenson’s team mate Barrichello is a further 1.5 points adrift. Red Bull have cut Brawn’s advantage to just 19.5 points in the constructors championship. So we might be on for a good second half of the season after all if Red Bull can hold their advantage for the next few races. I would love to see Webber win the world drivers title as much as I would Jenson, hopefully Mark can go from strength to strength so we can have a battle between the old guard of F1 at the season climax, showing the young guns the way home!
The English national cricket team managed to salvage a draw in the first Ashes test by the skin of their teeth. As the remainder of the top order batsmen fell Paul Collingwood stood tall to bat more than five hours, facing 245 deliveries and knocking up 74 runs to give the Englishmen hope of salvaging a draw. It came down to James Anderson and Monty Panesar to make a last wicket stand to save the test. And I am very happy to say that Monty did well to survive 35 deliveries even hitting a four in the process. England largely have Mr Dependable Paul Collingwood to thank for salvaging a draw while the other top order batsmen fell for a total of 72; two less than Collingwood made single handed! Onto the second test on Thursday at Lords, let’s hope that “escape will spur England on” as Andrew Strauss said in a post test interview!
