Fernando Alonso became the first man to win two races in 2012 at the European Grand Prix in Valencia, scoring his first home win since the 2006 Spanish Grand Prix. Starting eleventh, he was forced to navigate his way through traffic, narrowly avoiding early contact between Bruno Senna and Kamui Kobayashi as Sebastian Vettel broke free of the field to establish a twenty-second lead by the first round of stops. Vettel's lead was quashed when Heikki Kovalainen and Jean-Éric Vergne made contact, triggering the deployment of the safety car to clear debris from the circuit. Alonso found himself third at the restart and pounced on a mistake by second-placed Romain Grosjean to lead the chase against Vettel. Vettel pulled away once more, but his lead was short-lived as he lost drive and his engine shut down on lap 33. Grosjean attempted to challenge Alonso, but was forced out of the race with an alternator problem seven laps later, leaving Alonso in the lead, four seconds clear of Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Räikkönen. As the race entered the final laps, Räikkönen forced his way past Hamilton to secure second place, but Pastor Maldonado's attempts to take third place ended with Hamilton in the barrier and a broken nose for the Williams driver. Maldonado finished tenth, but was given a post-race drive-through penalty and was classified twelfth. Meanwhile, Michael Schumacher and Mark Webber had started to carve their way through the field by virtue of a late pit stop and easily picked off the minor points positions and taking advantage of the Maldonado—Hamilton collision to finish third and fourth behind Alonso and Räikkönen. It was Schumacher's first podium since the 2006 Chinese Grand Prix. Alonso's win cemented a twenty-point lead in the championship, whilst Vettel's retirement relegated him to fourth overall, twenty-six points behind Alonso.