Sebastian Vettel was a cut above the competition in a dominant Japanese Grand Prix victory...
Given enough time and stable rules, the F1 grid has a tendency to even out. Performance levels off and teams eventually line-up two-by-two. The car that’s good at one track is good at every track. This season, thankfully, has been spared from any such ennui. New rules, a testing ban, and a limit on wind tunnel use have provided a better spectacle. Five drivers and four teams have won in the last seven races, factors as diverse as the smoothness of the tarmac and the shape of the clouds are making a big difference. One week you’re up; the next week you’re down. At Suzuka, Sebastian Vettel was definitely up.
In the end his margin of victory over Jarno Trulli was a slim 4.8seconds. Twenty minutes earlier it had been up to half a minute, despite the fact Vettel was coasting. But that was before the spectacular end to Jaime Alguersuari’s race brought out the safety car. Until then the biggest danger to Seb’s lead was Seb. Race engineer Guillaume Rocquelin occasionally suggesting over the radio that his young charge might want to slow down a bit and look after his tyres; you don’t get a bigger trophy for lapping the field. It was good advice, as Vettel acknowledged afterwards: “After we fitted the soft tyres for the last stint, I wanted to have a little bit of fun. I did one very quick lap, but then my engineer came on the radio and said “watch your tyres, there might be a safety car or something. Two laps later there was the safety car!”
The start, forever in the shadow of Prost vs Senna, was orderly. Unlike his start from the dusty side in Singapore, Vettel got away well from pole. Trulli’s Toyota was some way back, but in truth the threat was always likely to come from Lewis Hamilton’s KERS-equipped McLaren rocket sled. Hamilton passed Trulli, but the run to the first corner is short at Suzuka, and he couldn’t quite nose in front of Vettel. He had to tuck in. That was the nearest anyone got to the RB5 all day.
"We were pretty confident of defending the start but it was closer than I thought it would be." said Vettel.
As Vettel built his lead, a series of scraps developed behind. The five grid penalties imposed yesterday had shaken everything up, putting fast two-stopping cars down the field among the lumbering endurance racers. Heikki Kovalainen and Adrian Sutil got passed Robert Kubica’s BMW oil tanker, Liuzzi got a flyer from the back and the two Brawns made ground also. Of those it was Sutil and Kovalainen who fought the closest battle. Sutil had the lightest fuel load of anyone, and needed to pass Heikki.
They were nose to tail in the early exchanges; Sutil made his move at the hairpin on lap 14, it had all the style and grace of a wild, desperate lunge, but it looked like he’d made it stick. Heikki felt otherwise and the pair collided, spinning Sutil back down the field. Jenson Button used it as an opportunity to pass Kovalainen also, and set about chasing down Rubens Barrichello who was tucked up behind Kimi Räikkönen.
Elsewhere, Sébastien Buemi retired his Toro Rosso with clutch issues.
Hamilton was the first of the front-runners to pit; coming in on Lap 15. Trulli followed two laps later, and Vettel two after that. They all held station, but with the advantage of seeing Hamilton’s fuel load, Toyota were able to give Trulli a little bit more, with the intention of snatching second position at the final pitstop. Hamilton was advised by his pitwall that he needed to build up an advantage of at least three seconds over Trulli to safeguard his position. But try as he did, Trulli wouldn’t be shaken off.
Nico Rosberg in the Williams briefly held second. It looked like he was on the same one-stop strategy as his team-mate, but instead he simply ran a long first stint and pitted on Lap 23. He emerged in ninth position which, when everything shook out, elevated him to fourth. There would be significance to that later on.
Hamilton came in again of Lap 38, his stop was clean but he appeared to struggle leaving the pits. It later transpired a problem with his KERS meant he coasted for 100metres before getting power back. It cost him a second. Trulli was now going hell-for-leather. He made a perfect stop one lap later and emerged comfortably ahead of Hamilton. He might have made it stick even without Hamilton’s problems.
And then the race settled down. Fisichella and Kovalainen had a great tussle down the field, but at the front everything was stable. Rosberg in fourth was slightly out of sequence with the rest of the field and still had a second stop to make. If that stop brought him out behind Barrichello and Button, running in seventh and eighth, then it would be enough to give Brawn the Constructor’s Championship with two races remaining.
But things soon changed. The fearsome 130R, challenger to the mighty Eau Rouge of the title of best corner in motor racing, would devour its only victim of the weekend. Jaime Alguersuari came through flat out and snapped into the barriers. It wasn’t the usual 130R trajectory, suggesting something had gone wrong with the car, but as yet it hasn’t been pieced back together sufficiently to ascertain. The high energy impact snapped off a wheel, scattered debris across the circuit and left the Toro Rosso beached just off the racing line. The safety car was deployed, as Jaime walked away waving to the crowd. He was persuaded to lie down and travel back to the paddock in an ambulance: walk away from the 130R and the medical team will want to take a look at you. Or ask you to pick them a horse.
Vettel was comfortable at the restart. Romain Grosjean, a lap down, was tucked in behind himself and Trulli. The Italian would have been more worried about Hamilton behind, but the McLaren man was still having KERS issues and was more concerned about keeping Räikkönen off the podium. As it transpired they all got away in line astern and ran to the finish without incident.
Vettel took top spot, with Trulli and Hamilton joining him on the podium. Räikkönen finished fourth and Rosberg fifth. The safety car had fell at the right time for the latter, who had only lost one place after his late pit stop. With Nick Heidfled in sixth position, ahead of the Brawns, it means the Constructors’ Championship is still alive – although only barely. Brawn go into the last two races needing one point to make it absolutely safe. As for the Drivers’ Championship; once again Button saw his lead cut, but following Barrichello over the line means he has a 14-point advantage. Vettel kept his title hopes alive and is now just two points behind the Brazilian.
And finally a word about Mark Webber. Vettel wasn’t the fastest man in Suzuka; that distinction went to his team-mate, though it will be little consolation for what team principal Christian Horner described as “A weekend from Hell.” Starting from the pitlane after changing his chassis, Webber would pit again after both the first and second laps, and once more a few laps later. Problems with his cockpit surround eventually calling for the use of the trusty role of gaffer tape. He gathered useful testing data but his race was over before it began.
Comments
Add a comment