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The moment Kimi Raikkonen had been waiting for finally arrived at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. It saw the Lotus driver storm to victory, to secure his first Grand Prix win since he returned to Formula 1 at this season’s opening round, at the Australian Grand Prix. The triumph which Raikkonen has been working towards all year finally came to pass at Yas Marina Circuit in the United Arab Emirites.

The Finnish driver has had an up and down relationship with Formula One. He has experienced the triumph of winning the World Drivers’ Championship, while racing with Ferrari in 2007, only to leave Formula 1 in 2009. He would eventually become a World Rally Championship driver. However, he returned to F1 as part of the Lotus team at the start of the year and has been saying how he was going to win another Grand Prix victory. It finally arrived with style on Sunday.

However, to begin with, it appeared to be different. Lewis Hamilton set off from an impressively won pole position. He was leading the Finn by half a second before he was beset by a fuel pump malfunction on the 20th lap and had to retire. Raikkonen then overtake Hamilton into first place, followed by Fernando Alonso, the driver whom ironically had replaced Raikkonen at Ferrari. But the Finn got retribution by going on to win the race. Alonso ended up finishing second, ahead of his rival at the head of the leader board, Sebastian Vettel. The German Red Bull driver had been forced to begin the race from the pit lane, after being disqualified despite finishing third in qualification, for having insufficient fuel left in his tank.Vettel suffered a few mishaps as he fought his way up from the pit lane. He collided with the Williams driver Bruno Senna, damaging his front wing in the process. He then went into the pits to have his wing and tyres replaced.

The race witnessed a collision on the ninth lap, which saw Mercede’s Nico Rosberg fly his car over Narain Karthikeyan’s HRT, but fortunately the drivers were not injured.

There was another collision on the 39th lap involving Vettel’s team mate Mark Webber, Raikkonen’s team mate Romain Grosjean and Sergio Perez, with Sauber.

The race was restarted on the 42nd lap. The aforementioned incident with the three drivers in front left the way clear for Vettel to move into a battle with Jenson Button for third place. The Red Bull racer finished in front to the British McLaren driver, who came in fourth. Pastor Maldonado with Williams was fifth, while sixth place was taken by Kamui Kobayashi with Sauber. The conclusion of the 2012 Formula 1 Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix now sees Sebastian Vettel 10 points ahead of Fernando Alonso, on top of the standings.

We are now down to the wire of the 2012 Grand Prix season. It is on to the penultimate meet of the year, the US Grand Prix in Austin Texas in two weeks time.