Sunday, 21 June 2009 14:35
Sebastian Vettel utterly dominated the British Grand Prix to take the first dry-weather victory of his Formula 1 career and Red Bull Racing’s second ever 1-2 to keep his, and the team's, title hopes alive.
Having blown his chances of a victory two weeks ago in Turkey after making an error on the opening lap from pole-position, the 21-year-old German made no mistake this time and capitalised on RBR’s new-found superiority to disappear into the distance to end Jenson Button and Brawn's winning streak.
With title leader Button's difficult home weekend culminating in only sixth place, Vettel's second win of the season reduces his deficit to the Briton to 25 points.
Indeed Button's overall points lead is now slightly trimmed to 23 after Rubens Barrichello salvaged a podium for Brawn in third.
Vettel's team-mate Mark Webber's race was compromised after he failed to get past Barrichello on the opening lap and by the time he did so at the first round of pit stops, Vettel was long gone and he had to settle for his third second place of the year.
Ferrari claimed an unexpectedly strong result with Felipe Massa in fourth after the Brazilian used fuel strategy and strong race pace to climb from 11th on the grid, while Nico Rosberg took fifth for Williams for the second straight race.
Button had a largely miserable afternoon, dropping three places to ninth on the opening lap and then struggling to make any headway.
But the points leader claimed a potentially crucial two extra points after leapfrogging Jarno Trulli and Kimi Raikkonen with a late final stop.
At the start, Vettel seemed to get away solidly but nevertheless made sure Barrichello wasn’t going to attack him going into Copse by moving across to the right to cover any advances from the Brazilian.
The Ferraris, meanwhile, took advantage of the fact they were the only team left running KERS this weekend to catapult off the line.
Raikkonen in particular really hooked things up from ninth to take four cars via a daring move down the outside on the edge of the grass, slotting into fifth behind Kazuki Nakajima (Williams) through the fast right-hander.
All this was bad news for Button who, although having no problems getting away off the line, got boxed in below a slow-starting Trulli directly ahead and fell behind Raikkonen, Rosberg and Massa.
With the latter two carrying more fuel than his Brawn, it was a nightmare scenario – but he only had to wait a lap to move back up a position after Massa ran wide at Stowe.
Team-mate Barrichello needed a similar error from Vettel after failing to get past the heavier fuelled Red Bull at the start, but the race-leader was in no mood to sacrifice his big chance of keeping his title hopes alive.
The 21-year-old German was simply sensational over the first stint, invariably a second a lap faster than the Silverstone specialist, indeed the whole field.
By the end of lap two he was already 2.5s clear, three laps later it was 5.2s and that jaw-dropping margin of superiority saw him almost 11 seconds clear after 10 laps.
The sister car of Webber, meanwhile, having failed to beat Barrichello off the line, was unable to unlock the RB5’s massive undoubted advantage tucked up as he was behind the Brawn, running in its turbulent air under a second back.
He was finally released when Barrichello, now over 20s adrift of Vettel, headed for service and a switch from soft, to hard, tyres on lap 19.
This was now the Australian’s moment to push if he wasn’t have to have his already frustrating weekend wrecked even more and, although he only had a lap’s more worth of fuel to make the difference, he duly responded.
After a quick in-lap was followed by a perfect service from his RBR mechanics, he trundled down the 50mph pit lane as Barrichello put the power down coming out of Woodcote and down towards Copse.
Webber had just done enough though to establish a Red Bull 1-2 – and it really was just, as he left the elongated pit exit a hair's breath ahead of Barrichello.
He then held it together through the single-file Becketts complex and down the Hangar Straight to head off in what he probably knew was a forlorn pursuit of his team-mate.
Indeed after Vettel pitted a lap later for an equally trouble-free stop, he returned to the track with a 22s advantage over Webber and the race all but won.
And while Webber easily pulled away from Barrichello, the Brazilian was about to come under attack from the runners behind after the opening pit stops had helped shuffle the order.
As expected, Nakajima was the first to pit on lap 15 and may have assumed his error-free first stint running in fifth may have at the very least solidly kept him in the points positions.
However, the reality for the Japanese turned out to be very different.
First Raikkonen moved ahead of him after taking to the pit lane a lap later, although the former champion was then jumped in turn by both Rosberg and Trulli as the pair, along with Button, pitted together on lap 18.
So with the Williams man now leading that pack on the track, ahead of Trulli, Raikkonen, Button, the unfortunate Nakajima suddenly found himself out of the points.
Indeed he eventually would run ninth as Massa, not having let his second-lap slip fluster him, had stealthily kept the cars ahead in sight and then produced his ace card – a heavier fuel load courtesy of only having qualifyed 11th – to turn his weekend around.
Suddenly showing more of the kind of speed that Ferrari had been searching for all weekend, the Brazilian moved up to second on the road while the cars ahead peeled off into the pits and, after heading for the pit lane himself on lap 23, re-emerged behind Rosberg in fifth.
With Webber now joining the dominant Vettel in the distance, the battle for the final podium position turned out to be the race’s most intriguing tussle.
Barrichello seemed to be struggling even more on the harder compound and increasingly fell into the clutches of both Rosberg and Massa.
The Brawn driver's lack of pace duly backed the Williams into the Ferrari, meaning the trio ran within two seconds of each other for much of the second stint.
And, with overtaking so difficult at Silverstone, the fight looked set to be decided by the timing of their second stops.
Indeed Massa’s race engineer Rob Smedley told his driver over the radio that all he had to do was keep within two and a half seconds of the Williams to claim fourth, Ferrari expecting Rosberg to stop earlier.
That's exactly how it would play out.
With Rosberg first in for fuel on lap 44 Massa successfully moved ahead by pitting a lap later, the Ferrari ace now left to hope that he could even claim a first podium of the year by taking another place from his compatriot in the Brawn.
Barrichello, however, would run two laps longer and actually comfortably re-emerged from his stop with his third place secured.
Had the order stayed the way it was at the time, this would have been enough for Barrichello to claw a handy five points back on Button in the title chase.
However, Brawn's second stint strategy would play to the points leader's advantage as well.
Having at one stage even looked in a danger of dropping out of the points such was his problems with grip – the Brawn struggling to warm its tyres in the cool conditions – Button stayed out four and six laps respectively longer than Trulli and Raikkonen to move back up to the sixth place he had started in.
Indeed frustratingly for the points leader his car suddenly came alive on his final new set of new soft tyres, yet despite catching Massa and Rosberg at a fast rate of knots he ran out of laps and had to settle for three points.
Trulli and Raikkonen’s topsy-turvy afternoons eventually ended with seventh and eighth places respectively, the latter Ferrari just holding off the other Toyota of Timo Glock.
While Red Bull’s dominance largely made for a processional afternoon at the front, there were some excitingly combative duels towards the back of the field involving several of the sport’s biggest name drivers and their struggling teams.
Central to many of the battles were former two-time champion Fernando Alonso (the Renault driver having made a disastrous start from 10th) and reigning title winner Lewis Hamilton.
But while their wheel-to-wheel battles may have been fun, the former British GP winners will take little encouragement from their weekends.
Indeed, for grim statistical reading, Alonso’s 14th place represented the Spaniard’s worst race classification since he finished 16th in a Minardi at Silverstone in his 2001 debut year, while Hamilton's notched up the worst result of his 43-race career with 16th.
Home hero Hamilton tried everything he could to make up for McLaren's shocking lack of downforce, pulling off impressive moves on BMW's Nick Heidfeld at Maggotts and Alonso at Copse during the afternoon, but a later spin at Vale more aptly summed up his dismal home race weekend.
British Grand Prix result - 60 laps
1. VETTEL Red Bull
2. WEBBER Red Bull +15.1s
3. BARRICHELLO Brawn +41.1s
4. MASSA Ferrari +45.0s
5. ROSBERG Williams +45.9s
6. BUTTON Brawn +46.2s
7. TRULLI Toyota +68.3s
8. RAIKKONEN Ferrari +69.6s
9. GLOCK Toyota +69.8s
10. FISICHELLA Force India +71.5s
11. NAKAJIMA Williams +74.0s
12. PIQUET Renault +1 lap
13. KUBICA BMW +1 lap
14. ALONSO Renault +1 lap
15. HEIDFELD BMW +1 lap
16. HAMILTON McLaren +1 lap
17. SUTIL Force India +1 lap
18. BUEMI Toro Rosso +1 lap
R. BOURDAIS Toro Rosso +23 laps
R. KOVALAINEN McLaren +24 laps
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