Button's Race, Seb's Season - A review of Vettel's Championship winning race

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Home » F1 Blog » October 17 2011 at 9:44 | posted by Stuart McCann | What do you think? Add a comment here
Photo: Button's Race, Seb's Season - A review of Vettel's Championship winning race

Button's Race, Seb's Season

The wonderful Suzuka circuit was the scene of Sebastian Vettel's second consecutive championship victory today. Suzuka has been the scene of many historic championship showdowns over the years and the fast, sweeping, narrow nature of the circuit with its small run-off areas have lent itself to more than its fair share of drama. This year, the drama came in the form of a tense, closely matched race in which the five world champions in the field finished within the top six spots.

The weekend started well for McLaren, with Button heading each of the practice sessions at a track where the Red Bulls looked set to be dominant. As ever, it was Vettel who prevailed in qualifying, by a meagre nine-thousandths of a second from Button, with Hamilton one spot further back in third, having been mugged of his last lap run by Webber and Schumacher passing him during qualifying.

When the lights went out, Vettel got an average getaway and had to defend frantically against the fast starting Button, forcing him very firmly over to the grass on the run down to the blisteringly fast first corner, forcing the Englishman to lift off and allowing Hamilton to drive around the outside of his team mate in the process. The stewards investigated, but decided no further action needed to be taken. The field was very well behaved over those first few laps with things seemingly settling down into a rhythm very quickly.

Tyres looked to be the watch word from lap nine, when Hamilton suffered a puncture. Vettel's tyres fell away the next lap causing him to pit, with Button, Alonso and Webber pitting a further lap later. Just before the pit stops, Alonso was flying – having shown no sign of any decent pace all weekend. After the first round of stops, the leaders all bunched up together. Having been quite well spread out beforehand, the top four were now covered by just over five seconds.

Further down the field, Schumacher was having a decent run in seventh place. Rosberg, in the sister Merc, had started from 23rd on the grid after a hydraulic failure in qualifying.  He seemed to be struggling to make any progress, finding himself only up to seventeenth place on lap eighteen. Closer to the front, Hamilton somehow managed to use up all the useful grip from his tyres within a few laps of them being fitted, whilst the ever silky smooth Button began to close up on the leader – tenth by tenth, lap by lap.

Vettel pitted on lap 20, while Button stayed out for another lap and managed to buck the usual trend by undercutting the undercut that Vettel's newer tyres would normally have given him. Meanwhile, Hamilton and Massa had yet another coming together on the run into the chicane as Massa attempted to pass him – they exchanged some bodywork just before Hamilton pitted. That bodywork caused a Safety Car period to allow the marshals to retrieve it.

At the restart, Button, having bunched the pack up, had a good getaway escaping from Vettel just enough to keep out of the one second DRS window. Over the following laps he managed to eke out a couple of seconds of advantage. Vettel pitted on lap 33 having been around three seconds back from Button, who pitted three laps later. When Alonso pitted one lap later, he emerged in front of Vettel, who found himself in fourth place due to Schumacher leading the race, having pitted during the Safety Car period.

Vettel was clearly feeling racy and had a bit of a stab at passing Alonso, closing onto the back of him and trying to pass into the first corner. Alonso slammed the door shut. They were nose to tail until the end of the race and it looked for a while as though Vettel would persist with his attack, but Red Bull politely requested that he hang back and collect the title safely, all the while Button was looking serene at the front of the field.

Alonso ended Button's period of serenity abruptly when he started taking big chunks out of his lead five laps from the end. Button looked momentarily powerless and allowed the ever-formidable Spaniard to close to just over a second behind him before opening the taps and pulling out a lead again, crossing the line for his third victory of the season and setting the fastest lap on the penultimate lap. Vettel finished in third place ahead of Webber, Hamilton and Schumacher and in so doing, gathered the necessary point to tie up the title for this year.

Vettel and Red Bull have achieved a level of dominance this year, comparable to that of the Schumacher-Ferrari era and few would claim that Vettel's title is not deserved – I'm a little surprised it happened this late in the season. He has been simply superb; blindingly fast, intelligent and practically error-free. Not only that, but he's a likeable chap with some personality and is good for the sport. A great world champion, whom history may well go on to view as one of the very best.

Stuart McCann is from IntentsGP.com:  Silverstone 2012 Camping is now on sale!

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