Paul di Resta gets his first point....

... in his first race. Not bad, huh?

He had a fairly solid race, and looks a good driver for the future. OK, he benefited from the Sauber DQ today, but he deserves credit for easily keeping up with Sutil. Sergio Perez looks decent, too, despite his back wing being dodgy.

We only saw Maldonado for 9 laps today, and it's early days, but really, what were Williams thinking replacing Hulkenberg with him?!

Any other drivers really stand out for you today?

Perez stood out for me. An excellent show of tyre management with only one pit stop. Petrov was solid, Hamilton handled his broken floor well and Vettel showed the speed of the Red Bull without even having KERS on his car.

Petrov is worth a mention...don't know how quick the actual car is. But he got it up there nevertheless

Perez did very well considering it was his first start, getting through the race with just one tyre change is impressive. Di Resta was solid if unspectacular, and Petrov drove very nicely to get third.

The top two were a cut above the field, and it seemed to me that before his problems Hamilton was more or less able to keep up with Vettel once his tyres had heated, but he lost upto two seconds a lap for the first couple of laps each time. Of course Vettel may have been cruising round slightly... He was certainly impressive throughout and produced a nice move to overtake Button. Hamilton managed his damaged car well and should be delighted with second place.

Mixed bag for Alonso and Button. Alonso had a poor start and recovered pretty well, without producing anything particularly outstanding. Button had a dodgy start and struggled to pass Massa which landed him a penalty. His race pace was good though and he produced some nice moves to battle back to sixth.

Disapointments were Webber, well off the pace (Hamilton was much quicker than him), Massa who looked really slow out on track, and Barichello who had a bit of a mare.

Another interesting point is that the "n°1" drivers from the top three teams (RBR, Ferrari and McLaren) seem much quicker than their teammates, Webber and Button finished four places below their teammates, while Massa finished five places lower than Alonso (though he picked up a couple of places when the Saubers were DQed).

Kobayashi must surely be catching the attention of the 'bigger' teams now mustn't he?

Gregers wrote:Kobayashi must surely be catching the attention of the 'bigger' teams now mustn't he?

Question is though, does he have the cash behind him? Look at what a lack of it does for the likes of Hulkenberg. I'm assuming that's the only reason Williams got rid.

A lot of these guys tend to get in on how much sponsorship they have rather than actual talent these days, but it's nice to see Sauber bucking the trend; looks like it could be a solid line-up he's got.

Paul Di Resta did well, probably more than was expected of him at this stage of his F1 career, obviously gaining a point is the icing on the cake even if it came through others' misfortune.

Sergio Perez looked excellent, think Jenson's got a new rival in the 'tyre management' stakes! He must be absolutely gutted with the disqualification but it bodes well for the future. Hopefully Kobayashi will be more like his old self soon, but it's understandable that his mind might be elsewhere just now.

Rubens had one of those days where he looks like he has no idea of the concept of a Formula 1 car or racing in general! When it goes wrong for him it's never just one thing, it's usually a spectacular series of unfortunate events! I have to admit that even though I'm a huge Rubens fan, it is kind of fun to watch him trying to recover from a mistake or catch up with a pack, you can almost see the red mist descend and you can imagine him belting around the track whooping and hollering as he attempts to rectify the situation

It was nice to see Di Resta score some points, i'm sure he (and me for that matter) would have preferred to do so based soley on his merit rather than the misforunte of others.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see more of a "killer instinct" in button as well, last season he seemed far too gentlemanly and this i felt contributed to his lacklustre performance. I hope we see more of this, this season as well.