F1 Nostalgia: the 2012 Season
A look back in the past to the unpredictable 2012 season
This ’23 season has caused some strange feelings in all of us F1 fans. Like: for those who don’t support Red Bull, disappointment, tiredness, anger. For those who instead belong to that camp, joy, ecstasy, enjoyment to the max — and maybe even a little boredom, admit it.
So I thought: if this year was practically written from the first tests in Bahrain in March, reserving few surprises for us, why not implement a nice nostalgia operation and go back to the past?
It was better when it was worse, we often say here in Italy, resigned to our perennial disappointment with the present. And this proverb also fits quite well with the subject of this story: one of the most unpredictable and craziest seasons in the history of the sport. I’m talking about 2012.
We are amid the Red Bull domination of the early 2010s. Those were also years of boredom and resignation in the face of the superiority of the car, thanks to the genius of Adrian Newey and the immense talent of a young driver. It seems to be talking about the beginning of this decade, but obviously, I’m talking about Sebastian Vettel.
However, that year began with a very strange situation: seven different winners in the first seven races. Something that has never happened before. And if we see the names of those who won, we shiver at the thought of how much time has passed: Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso, Nico Rosberg, Sebastian Vettel, Pastor Maldonado (right him, exactly), Mark Webber and Lewis Hamilton. Look who among them is still on the track having fun: only El Nano and Sir Lewis. It’s amazing if you think about it.
Red Bull once again fields Vettel and Mark Webber, who will retire at the end of the following year. The McLarens are with Hamilton and Button: what’s more British than this?
And what could be more German than the Mercedes that have Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg (who is actually half-Finnish and lives in Monte Carlo)? Then there are the Ferraris of Alonso and Massa. And we also add the Lotus with the great Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean.
The cars of that year were horrendous due to the regulation, which provided for a nose lowered to 150 millimetres and with a hole in the middle.
And the Ferrari F2012 is one of the ugliest. Although it had pull-rod front suspension, i.e. an arm that works on traction and which can take very heavy loads, and although it had the exhausts going inwards, like the Red Bulls, there was a lot of uncertainty as to how it would then behave in competition.
While he was in Barcelona watching a Messi match, Alonso himself said that they would have struggled a lot in the first few races.
And it wasn’t quite like that. But let’s see this year race by race. Let’s start with the first.
We are in Australia, in Melbourne, on March 18 and the McLarens immediately show up, starting from the front row, with Grosjean of Lotus and Schumacher behind. Then the Red Bulls. Alonso, on the other hand, is 12th, while his Brazilian teammate is even 16th. And in the race we see Hamilton being overtaken by Button, who will win the grand prix. Alonso manages instead to reach at least the fifth position, more than 21 seconds from Button. It is also the first race in which the Australian Daniel Ricciardo scores points – who was as old as I am now btw.
In Malaysia, the McLarens once again start at the front with Lewis and Jenson. Grosjean hits Schumacher and sends him into a spin. Behind them, Webber, Vettel and Alonso.
But the rain — or rather, the monsoon — which hit the track and suspended the race for almost an hour, changed all the balances. The drivers reenter with the Safety Car. Alonso is fifth behind Webber, while on the front row, we have the McLarens and a young Sergio Pérez.
The Spaniard overtakes Webber and on lap 14 goes to the pits together with race leader Hamilton, who comes back third due to a mistake by his team and the traffic while he was in the pits. Checo is in front of everyone, but he stops a lap later and is passed by Alonso in turn 3. The Mexican stays behind him throughout the race, giving him no rest. The gap is getting smaller and smaller: it’s 0.5 seconds. The team tells him: “Be calm! Don’t throw this position away.”
And on lap 50 he makes a mistake: he goes long, touches the curb and almost ends up in the gravel. By now he has lost ground from Alonso and can no longer dream of the attack for victory, which instead goes to the Spaniard.
In doing so Pérez gets noticed by Ferrari, of which he was already part of the youth academy. Rumours are starting about him in Massa’s place in the next years. And who knows how the story would have gone if he had gone to the Red (not the Red Bulls heheh).
Things change in China. In front of everyone, there are Mercedes. Nico is in P1. It is the first time since 1955 that a Mercedes has started in that position.
And it will be Rosberg who will have the honour of winning his first race with Mercedes, which hadn’t won since Monza ’55 (we’re talking about Fangio, think about it).
He wins by taking advantage of the mistakes of the others: for example, his own team inserts a tyre badly on Schumacher, who retires. And thanks also to the excellent two-stop strategy, while his opponents, Button, Hamilton and Alonso made three.
Bad for the Ferraris: P9 Alonso and P13 Massa. All is to be redone. However, the championship situation is this: Hamilton and Button with 45 and 43 points respectively, Alonso with 37, Webber (36) and Vettel (28).
In the fourth race, in Bahrain, there is a new winner: this time it is Vettel’s Red Bull. It hasn’t happened since 1983 that there were 4 different drivers to win the first 4 races.
The German wins by a large gap on the surprise Lotus, with Raikkonen and Grosjean managing the tyres brilliantly. McLaren and Mercedes struggled a lot and Ferrari’s face was saved by Alonso’s seventh place, almost 1 minute behind Vettel. It’s a lot and the Spanish know it. He knows well that the car is not fast.
But at his home, at the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona, things go differently. Earlier in qualifying it happens that Hamilton is in P1 but suddenly stops on the track after crossing the finish line.
It’s a hoax to save on fuel since he had to finish the lap with at least one litre in the tank. Boom: he takes the penalty that puts him in the last position.
On pole: PASTOR MALDONADO in Williams. The Venezuelan is overtaken by Alonso at the first corner after the start, but the key to victory will be the second early stop: he undercuts Alonso who then becomes second.
And the Venezuelan wins! He is the first in history (and even takes the honours from President Chávez). Williams hadn’t won since Brazil in 2004 with that other wild Latino, Juan Pablo Montoya.
We are at 6 races so far. Ready for another surprise? On pole, in Monaco, we have Michael Schumacher — yep, right him — but only in theory. Since he has to serve a 5-place penalty for rear-ending Bruno Senna in Barcelona, first place goes to Webber.
The Australian starts and remains in the lead in a very tight race: think that there were only 1.3 seconds between Webber, Rosberg, Alonso and Vettel. Unfortunately, Schumi was forced to retire due to a technical problem. Alonso is now first in the championship with a 3-point lead over Vettel (76 to 73).
At the seventh race, in Canada, we have the seventh surprise. Vettel is in pole but Lewis Hamilton wins with Grosjean and Pérez on the podium (what an image!). Alonso also tries to do a one-stop race like them, but in the last laps he collapses with the tyres and while he is second, he is overtaken by the Frenchman, the Mexican and Seb.
We arrive on June 24, in Valencia. It is the European Grand Prix. Yes, this title existed and lasted until 2016, when they awarded it to Baku (don’t ask me why ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯).
Vettel is on pole, ahead of Hamilton and Grosjean. The German runs off and flies, gaining almost a second per lap on the others. Alonso is P11. He wants his comeback. He goes to the pits and manages to climb back to P7 ahead of Kimi. He also surpasses Webber and Schumacher and becomes fifth.
Then on lap 28 an incident between Jean-Éric Vergne and Heikki Kovalainen causes the Safety Car to enter. Everyone goes to the pits and McLaren makes another bad mistake with Hamilton.
Alonso is third, the SC exits and the Spaniard overtakes Grosjean. Vettel is first but the car’s alternator breaks on lap 34 and retires. The same thing happens to Grosjean on lap 41, while on lap 56 Maldonado crashes with Hamilton. It is the second victory of the year for Alonso.
With him on the podium Kimi and Schumi: the F1 of the 2000s in a photo. The grandstands turn red for joy. He is now ahead of everyone in the championship (111) with a 20-point lead over Webber (91), followed by Hamilton (88) and Vettel (85). He is dreaming of the world championship with the Cavallino.
At Silverstone, he also takes a masterful pole in Q3, while everyone is in a hurry to finish before a downpour arrives. The Spaniard is ahead of everyone for a good part of the race: only Hamilton will replace him as leader between the 15th and 19th laps.
Alonso is about to take his third victory, the second in a row, but a few laps before the end he is forced to give in to the faster pace of Webber, who is on soft tyres in his final stint. However, Fernando takes 18 points and remains in the lead of the championship.
It’s the middle of the season. Race 10: Hockenheim (I miss this old-fashioned forest track in Baden-Württemberg). Alonso takes a monstrous pole position on the flooded track after another downpour, also complaining about the danger due to the very poor grip of the tyres, but manages to set the fastest lap with coolness and steady nerves: the key to memorizing the spots on the track with less water.
In the race, he always stays in front. Nothing doing for the others: Button tries to grab him, and six laps from the end he is 1 second behind but his pace falls and is overtaken by Vettel with an incorrect manoeuvre. The German goes off with all four tires and gets a 20-second penalty. Alonso instead wins for the third time. But he doesn’t know that it will be his last victory of the year, unfortunately.
At the last race before the summer break, at the Hungaroring in Budapest, we have another winner: Sir Lewis Hamilton ahead of Raikkonen and Grosjean. It’s a bitter weekend for championship leader Alonso, who finishes fifth 30 seconds behind Lewis and 3 points behind Vettel.
In early September we go to the historic Spa. It is Schumacher’s 300th race, where he made his debut in ’91 and won for the first time the following year. He also has a special helmet that clashes a lot with the melancholic 7th place.
On pole position, there are Button, Kobayashi and Maldonado. As soon as we set off, Grosjean causes a very bad accident by slipping on Hamilton’s right front tyre, which slams into the guardrail. The Frenchman, on the other hand, jumps in the air, touches Alonso’s helmet — who is saved by a miracle in an era where there is no roll bar or HALO — and strikes Pérez, Kobayashi and Maldonado. Alonso and Hamilton retire. Grosjean is rightly disqualified for the next race and fined 50,000 euros.
The race is won by Button with Seb and Kimi on the podium. Alonso, on the other hand, is calm because he thinks the most formidable opponent is Hamilton (47 points behind), but he doesn’t see that Vettel has earned 24 points over him. It’s a misreading that will backfire to some extent.
In Monza, he starts from the 10th position just when he could have seriously taken pole position. His dreams were shattered because of a trivial rear anti-roll bar nut that popped off.
On the pole are the two McLarens of Hamilton and Button. The blonde Brit is overtaken by Massa who started in P3. Alonso, however, manages to overtake Kobayashi, Raikkonen and Schumacher in the first laps to mark Vettel, who sends the Spaniard into the grass and is penalized with a drive-through penalty. Button retires on lap 33 with a problem with the fuel draft. Then there is also the double withdrawal of the Red Bulls due to alternator failure (once again).
Alonso then manages to get to third place, gaining another points lead. It feels like a victory: he celebrates with the red tide below him and grabs the TV’s camera in happiness.
However, Vettel’s month of victories begins. In a row: Singapore, Japan, Korea and India. That’s a lot of heavy points. The situation is reversed: in four races between September and October, Seb finds himself first with a 13-point lead over Fernando.
In Singapore, Hamilton starts in P1 but has to retire after 23 laps due to a broken gearbox. Once again the reliability of McLaren is lacking, which is very strong in qualifying this year but which does not hold up in the race, together with the blunders of the team. Massa, on the other hand, falls to last position after a puncture but climbs back to P8.
In the meantime, the history of F1 changes forever with the news of Hamilton’s engagement in Mercedes in 2013 for 75 million euros and with the communication dated 4 October by Schumacher, announcing his second and definitive retirement from racing.
It is the end of one era and the beginning of another, but few know it, above all because the Silver Arrows were not competitive at the time, before the 2014 rule change.
In Japan, Vettel gets a reprimand for impeding Alonso at the end of Q3. He says he did it because he was respecting the yellow flags displayed after Raikkonen went off the track.
The fact is that he starts on pole, with his Spanish rival sixth, and wins thanks also to Adrian Newey’s magical double DRS that had already been mounted in Singapore. Behind him are Massa and the home hero Kobayashi.
In Korea, the Spaniard manages to reach at least the podium, with a P3 but 13 seconds behind Vettel, who wins his 25th race and equals the record of the legendary Jim Clark and Niki Lauda. Alonso is now second in the championship by 6 points. He still believes it. He doesn’t give up.
In India, Fernando gets second place and the gap between them reaches 13 points.
We are now at the end of this world championship. It’s the third last race: Abu Dhabi. The two title contenders tease each other. Alonso says Lewis is the best, while Seb only wins thanks to Newey’s car.
Seb for his part replies by saying that Hamilton is much faster than Alonso. And the third who enjoys between the two litigants is not Lewis, but the legendary Kimi Raikkonen. He has just returned to Formula after two years between rallies and NASCAR.
However, the poleman of the race was Lewis, who is forced to retire on lap 19 due to a fuel draft problem — the same as Button a few races earlier. Raikkonen becomes the leader after starting fourth, while Alonso climbs up to P2 starting sixth.
Vettel, on the other hand, starts last because at the end of qualifying it turns out that he only had 800 millilitres of fuel and not the expected litre, so he had a very light car. Finally, he climbed up to third place, which according to Alonso was only “a matter of luck”.
Penultimate race: Circuit of the Americas in Texas. Vettel is on pole but Lewis wins with a beautiful race after starting fourth. Alonso starts seventh, and into the first corner, he is already fourth behind Lewis. Then he overtakes Webber two laps later. The Australian is forced to retire again due to the cursed alternator. Hamilton instead stays behind Vettel for the whole race and on lap 41 he overtakes the German and becomes the leader.
Everything is decided in the last race, once again, always there: in Brazil, at Interlagos. It’s the sixth time in eight years. It feels like a tradition. It’s a beautiful track that offers surprises, as Massa is well aware.
The calculations are then made: Alonso would become world champion with Ferrari if he wins the race and Vettel is from fifth position or lower; if he finishes second and Vettel is eighth or lower; if he finishes third and Seb is tenth or out of points.
The Spaniard knows he’s not the favourite: he knows his car isn’t any better, but he can count on the team’s help, the expected rain in the race, the hard tyres that help the F2012 and the support of his teammate Massa who knows how to make masterpieces in his home race. Vettel, on the other hand, knows that he has the decisive car but that it is also terribly imperfect due to that alternator issue.
The starting grid of the grand prix is: the McLarens of Hamilton (who flew on Quali) and Button, the two Red Bulls of Webber and Vettel. Alonso is only in P7 but at the start, he climbs up to third place.
Vettel, on the other hand, gets stuck in the middle of the group and collides with Bruno Senna, spinning and falling to the last position. Alonso also makes a mistake and loses his position to Hülkenberg. Button instead takes the leadership of the race.
In the meantime, Seb does his job and comes back. He climbs up to sixth place. Meanwhile it rains, it rains a lot. On lap 25 everyone decides to put on intermediate wet tyres, except for Hülkenberg — who is first — and Button who want to continue with slicks.
Nico gives the position to Lewis but on lap 54 he tries again. He wants to regain the first position and tries to overtake at the end of the finish straight but loses control and crashes into Lewis, breaking his rear right suspension. He also gets a drive-through penalty. Now Alonso and Massa are P2 and P3.
Vettel, on the other hand, after the pitstop had dropped down to the lower positions but had managed to come back to P6 again. It’s the last two laps.
The entry of a Safety Car is decided following the crash involving Paul di Resta. The grand prix ends with the SC and puts an end to this painful and crazy season. Sebastian Vettel is World Champion for the third time with his three points clear of Alonso, finishing sixth at the end of the race, which was won by Jenson Button ahead of the two Ferraris.
The image that best describes it is Alonso’s gaze lost in the void with the rain surrounding him. He has his wet visor raised, you can see his fixed eyes that seem to want to grab something.
It is the title that has flown away. Or, as he stated years later, he was simply watching Massa who couldn’t stop crying. He was trying to be close to him so, he was his friend, but didn’t know what to do probably.
Despite the real meaning behind it, this image is more powerful than any inference and theoretical reasoning about “what would have happened if…”.
It sums it all up: the 2012 season, Alonso’s career at Ferrari, and his career in general, if you look at what will happen during the 2010s. Nando himself still regrets that year a lot now, as well as his first championship in Ferrari in 2010.
But that is another story, which is worth telling…
Infos from: “The Great Book of Formula 1” by Luca dal Monte and Umberto Zapelloni.
