Sebastian Vettel delivered Red Bull Racing’s first Formula 1 victory with a wet-weather masterclass in China, leading team-mate Mark Webber home in a sensational 1-2 for the Milton Keynes-based squad.
Having ended Jenson Button and Brawn GP’s dominant start to the season in qualifying with RBR’s first pole and a third, the pair proved too strong for the championship-leading combination in treacherous Shanghai conditions and denied them a hat-trick of wins.Vettel, not for the first time in the wet, stole the show with a flawless performance that was a carbon-copy of his metronomic drive to victory in the rain at Monza for Red Bull’s junior team Toro Rosso last September.
The Brawn BGP001 was no match for the RB5 in the conditions and Button finished a distant third ahead of team-mate Rubens Barrichello – the Briton nevertheless increasing his early points lead to six over the Brazilian.With standing water all around the circuit and rain still falling, a safety car start was declared and the Mercedes led the field around for the first seven laps.
The long caution period was bad news for the lighter-fuelled drivers, giving them ever less scope to make an aggressive strategy work.Fernando Alonso and Nico Rosberg elected to cut their losses and refuel under the safety car, at the price of falling to the back of the field.
The Red Bulls stuck to their original plan and duly led away from the Brawns once the race got underway in anger, Vettel building an immediate 2.4s cushion over Webber.Most of the action in the early laps came from the busy queue of cars that had formed up behind a struggling Jarno Trulli, who was all at sea in the conditions and began to tumble down the order.
Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen enjoyed a long duel, trading places several times (in between a brief spin from Lewis), but the man making the most impressive progress was Sebastien Buemi.The Toro Rosso rookie passed Raikkonen and Trulli with the confidence of a seasoned winner, snatching fifth place from the Toyota on lap 13.
In the meantime the two Brawns had exchanged places, Button capitalising on a mistake from Barrichello in turn 11 to take over third place.Webber was the first of the Red Bulls to pit at the end of lap 14, with Vettel following suit the following lap and relinquishing a 13.6s lead over Button.
By this time the rain had began to fall more heavily again, and on lap 19 the safety car was deployed once again, prompting the Brawns to make an immediate beeline for the pits.It worked out well for Button, who rejoined in between the two Red Bulls, but Barrichello slipped behind Hamilton and the two Ferraris.
The Maranello contingent was reduced to a single car when Massa’s F60 lost drive on the back straight and crawled to a halt, condemning last year’s championship runner-up to his third successive non-score.Meanwhile there had been a scare for leader Vettel when he was hit from behind by Buemi as they made their way through the murk – in an uncanny echo of the German’s own blunder while driving for STR in the wet 2007 Fuji race when he crashed into Webber.
Fortunately for Vettel (and Buemi’s own standing within the Red Bull stable), the only damage done was a broken front wing on the Swiss driver’s Toro Rosso, which was swiftly replaced at his pit stop.Vettel proved his car was unscathed by storming away at the restart, pulling out a 4.3s cushion over Button on the first flying lap and steadily increasing it until he had 10s in hand by lap 28.
Webber was hot on Button’s heels and pounced on a mistake from the Briton under braking for the turn 14 hairpin to reclaim second – only to return the favour a couple of laps later when he got caught out by a puddle on the turn-in to the final corner.As if irritated by that slip-up, Webber snatched the place straight back on the very next lap with an audacious move around the outside of the fast turn seven, restoring a Red Bull 1-2.
Vettel had taken full advantage of his team-mate’s antics with Button to cement his advantage, and while Webber matched his pace once he was clear of Button, he was 17.5s adrift when Sebastian pitted for the second time on lap 37.When Vettel rejoined directly behind Button, who still had to make his final stop, it was clear he had the race by the throat.
But such was his superior pace that he swept past the Brawn anyway on lap 41, getting a run along the back straight and outbraking it into the hairpin with clinical precision.Button pitted soon afterwards, clearing the way for Red Bull’s breakthrough 1-2 and relegating the championship leader to the bottom rung of the podium for the first time this year.
Barrichello moved back up to fourth to continue the team symmetry, withstanding a late challenge from Heikki Kovalainen, who finally got on the scoreboard after failing to complete a lap in the first two races.It was a sure-footed performance from the Finn, in contrast to team-mate Hamilton who provided plenty of entertainment as he mixed bold passing moves with a seemingly equal number of off-course excursions.
The world champion ran as high as fourth in the race’s middle stages prior to his only pit stop, but thereafter his progress was stymied by excessive tyre wear (which only worsened with each new off) and he slipped to an eventual sixth.Timo Glock likewise had a scrappy afternoon but kept plugging away and was rewarded with seventh.
The Toyota driver charged up the order early on after starting from the pit lane, but tangled with Nick Heidfeld’s BMW, damaged his front wing and had several other minor indiscretions.Buemi deservedly took the final point after his most impressive F1 performance to date, but might have done better still but for unlucky timing with the second safety car period.
Another to shine in the abject conditions was Sutil, who came within half a dozen laps of giving Force India its best ever result after using canny strategy and his own wet-weather talents to climb to sixth place.But, as in the Monaco rain last year when he was set for fourth until being rammed by Raikkonen’s Ferrari, there was late heartbreak for Sutil when he aquaplaned on a puddle at the turn five kink and slammed into the barrier.
Ferrari’s nightmare 2009 season plumbed new depths, with reliability problems resurfacing to cause Massa’s demise and Raikkonen finishing slipping down to 10th.Having failed to score a single point in the first three races, the reigning world champion team has now had its worst start to a season since 1981.
Chinese GP result - 56 laps
1. VETTEL Red Bull 1hr57m43.485s
2. WEBBER Red Bull +10.9s
3. BUTTON Brawn +44.9s
4. BARRICHELLO Brawn +1m03.7s
5. KOVALAINEN McLaren +1m05.1s
6. HAMILTON McLaren +1m11.8s
7. GLOCK Toyota +1m14.4s
8. BUEMI Toro Rosso +1m16.4s
9. ALONSO Renault +1m24.3s
10. RAIKKONEN Ferrari +1m31.7s
11. BOURDAIS Toro Rosso +1m34.1s
12. HEIDFELD BMW +1m35.8s
13. KUBICA BMW +1m46.8s
14. FISICHELLA Force India +1 lap
15. ROSBERG Williams +1 lap
16. PIQUET Renault +2 laps
R. SUTIL Force India +6 laps
R. NAKAJIMA Williams +13 laps
R. MASSA Ferrari +34 laps
R. TRULLI Toyota +38 laps
Fastest lap: BARRICHELLO 1m52.592s
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