A very chaotic European Grand Prix for us this season.
Things were pretty calm from the beginning of the race until lap 14 when Red Bull's Mark Webber collided with Lotus Racing's Heikki Kovalainen. Webber was approaching a turn from the long straight and caught up to Kovalainen very quickly. As Webber was in the slipstream behind the Lotus, also known as drafting for those who've seen Days of Thunder, he rapidly closed the distance between the Lotus and both cars attempted to move out of the way, but Mark hit the back of the Lotus and went up in the air flying, flipping backwards and finally landing right side up.
Mark came out of the crash without a scratch and walked away fine. The race ended early and took him completely out of the points for the championship, hurting Red Bull for the constructor points as well when they were in the contention for a first and second position for Vettel and Webber.
While this crash occured, the safety car came out and caused a whole new set of problems for the rest of the grid, incuring a drive through penalty for Lewis Hamilton of McLaren Mercedes. Hamiltons penalty looked like it was going to push him back to third, but due to his distance between Kamui Kobayashi of BMW Sauber he was able to remain in second position. This severely upset Fernando Alonso of Ferrari who remains to be very critical of the penalty, saying it wasn't severe enough.
Following the end of the race, 9 other cars came under investigation for not lining up behind the safety car in a timely manner, and incured a five position penalty added to their finishing position, moving some out of the points and some others back in.
KO