Let's Talk Sport: Raikkonen Wins In Abu Dhabi!

Alonso (left) & Raikkonen (right) having a drink of rose water,
NOT champagne!

2007 World champion, Kimi Raikkonen (Fin) wins his first race since returning to Formula 1 at the start of the year.

It was Raikkonen's first win in Formula 1 since his last victory in the 2009 Belgium Grand Prix with Ferrari. Raikkonen's victory gives his team, Lotus their first Grand Prix victory since 1987. 25 years ago!

Future Mercedes driver, Lewis Hamilton (GB) started the race in pole and controlled the race quite very well. But a repeat of the Singapore Grand Prix back in September put Hamilton out of the race. This time the car had a problem with it's power as Hamilton stopped the car at turn 14 on the 20th lap.

Hamilton walked back into the pits and shaked hands with his engineers and McLaren's team principal, Martin Whitmarsh as Hamilton tried to forget about it and move on. He may as well make the most out of his McLaren now before he moves to Mercedes at the end of the year.

Before Hamilton's exit on lap 20. Hamilton's future team mate, Nico Rosberg (Ger) smashed into the back of HRT's Narain Karthikeyan (Ind) on lap 14 as Rosberg flew over Karthikeyan and went into the barrier. Fortunately Rosberg and Karthikeyan shaked hands after the incident.

With the safety car coming out for the second time of the race it helped the World champion, Sebastian Vettel get back into the race. Vettel had a very close shave during the safety car period. Daniel Ricciardo (Aus) braked on the straight which forced Vettel to nearly crash into the barrier, which would of ended his race.

With Hamilton out the race Raikkonen took over the top spot.

The highlight of the race has got to be Raikkonen's team radio with his engineer. There was two hilarious radio discussions between them. The first one was when the engineer told Raikkonen to keep an eye on his four tyres, Raikkonen replied "Yes yes I know what I am doing!". Then later on in the race his engineer tells him what is going on, Raikkonen says "You don't have to tell me what's going on every 5 seconds!". The engineer accepts that and says "ok". Classic Raikkonen.

Alonso stole Pastor Maldonado's (Ven) position straight after Hamilton's retirement, which put the Spaniard to second positon.

Vettel was progressing well by overtaking the HRT's, Caterhams, Marussias and so on from the back of the field. Vettel was performing exactly like Michael Schumacher (Ger) did when he was World champion.

Vettel got all the way to second position when the Lotus', Ferraris and the McLaren went for their pit stops. It looked like Vettel was going to carry on with the race without another pit stop in which he would reach the chequered flag before his title rival, Alonso would finish. But at lap 37 Vettel went for another pit stop. The pit stop went well for Vettel as he rejoined the race in fourth position behind Jenson Button (GB).

On lap 39 there was another incident. This time between Romain Grosjean (Fra), Sergio Perez (Mex) and Mark Webber (Aus). The incident put Grosjean and Webber out of the race but Perez was able to carry on and go for a 10 second penalty stop for his responsibility in the incident. Perez finished the race in 15th place. The incident brought out the safety car yet again. The safety car helped Vettel catch up with Button, Alonso and Raikkonen.

Over ten laps to go until the end of the desert race. Vettel overtook Button to get into podium finish after starting the race at the back of the grid. Vettel just needed to get past Alonso to increase his lead at the top of the table.

Alonso was slowly catching Raikkonen on the very few last laps of a spectacular race. But Raikkonen's experience in F1 was good enough to win him his first race in three years. Alonso finished runner up in the race after starting 7th on the grid and Vettel just didn't have enough laps to overtake the 2005 and 2006 World champion.

But with a brilliant drive from last position on the grid Vettel will be very happy being 10 points ahead of Alonso.

Unstoppable Vettel at the moment

Raikkonen's victory keeps him in third place in the championship with 198 points.

After the podium celebration with Raikkonen, Alonso and Vettel. David Coulthard was the special guest to interview the drivers in this Grand Prix. There was some bad language from Raikkonen and Vettel by saying s**t word on daytime T.V. making DC feel very awkward. But you got to love Raikkonen!

With Webber going out of the race, Red Bull will have to wait another two weeks to seal their 3rd constructors championship in a row.

Just two more Grand Prixs to go until the end of the 2012 season. Its a debut for the Austin circuit in Texas, America in two weeks time on the 16th to the 18th November.