July 29th 2009 - Well if the F1 fans out there were wishing for a thrill-a-minute qualifying day for this round of the season, then they certainly got their wish.

I'll start with the strangest thing that happened during the second qualifying session. A spring broke off Rubens Barrichello's car, bounced backwards a couple of times before hitting the driver in the car following him. That driver was Felipe Massa of Ferrari who lost partial consciousness after being struck in the head by the flying debris, which led to a serious crash only a few seconds later. He was taken away by the medical team and was eventually taken by helicopter to hospital where he underwent surgery. He is currently out of his induced coma and is starting the process of what looks to be a long recovery and the full damage to his brain and left eye won’t be fully known for a little while yet.

When watching the replays it really was a freakish accident and something that is very unlikely to ever happen again. Though it was a very serious incident, it was only part of the interesting qualifying sessions which even had the drivers getting out of their cars at the end of everything not knowing where they finished. They all seemed to know their individual times but didn’t know where that put them on the grid, so it was amusing seeing the drivers asking each other what time they got so that they could figure it all out.

At the end of the day though, it was a very surprising result with ex double world champion Fernando Alonso of Renault picking up pole position, which is easily his best result in a long time. Red Bull continued their dominance with 2nd and 3rd but the rest of the results came as a bit of a surprise. Lewis Hamilton, the defending world champion, managed a 4th, his team mate got 6th, and 5th place was taken by Nico Rosberg of team Williams. That left Brawn with their worst qualifying of the season with 8th and 13th.

So with such an interesting pre-race the race itself was always going to be an exciting one.

Alonso didn’t stay in the lead for long as, after a pit stop, one of his tyres which hadn't been fitted back on correctly, came off mid lap which saw him retire from the race. The next top driver to retire was Vettel of Red Bull which, seeing as he was 2nd in the championship, will hurt his chances of pulling in Button for the world title.

By the finish line the results were not what many people would have predicted only a few races ago. Hamilton picked up his first victory of the season, which can be seen as a stunning result for the defending champion who has been struggling this season, and Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari picked up 2nd place, which is also seen as a fantastic result for the team.

So with a McLaren/Ferrari one/two, it looked a lot like the results from years past. What does it mean for the rest of the championship? It’s still too early to tell as Webber picked up 3rd place, putting him up into 2nd place in the championship and he's now less then 20 points behind Button. Button, however, only managed 7th and his team mate 10th. So anything could happen in the remaining races of the season.

We now have a 4 week break until the next round in Valencia for the European Grand Prix.