Vettel Wins Indian GP With A Lights To Flag Drive!

World Champion, Sebastian Vettel, has won the inaugural Indian Grand Prix with a stunning lights to flag drive as he led every lap of the race as Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa had another coming together, this time resulting in a controversial penalty for the Brazilian.

McLaren’s Jenson Button came home 2nd further enforcing his place behind Vettel in the Championship standings as Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso came home 3rd just ahead of Mark Webber who had another disappointing drive slipping from 2nd on the grid to finish 4th.

The start was a chaotic melee as drivers further down the grid struggled to find grip on the hugely dusty circuit as Kamui Kobayashi, Jarno Trulli and Rubens Barrichello were some of the many drivers slipping and sliding into each other at Turn 1 and beyond. This then led to Kobayashi stopping on the track as Barrichello and Glock all flew into the pits for new nose cones and tyres. On Lap 4, Timo Glock succumbed to damage on the front wing after collisions on the first lap.

The two Toro Rosso’s had a difficult start to the race dropping from 9th and 10th to 11th and 12th and on Lap 9 the Toro Rosso surge began as Jaime Alguersuari passed Bruno Senna for P10 and Sebastien Buemi followed shortly after as Bruno Senna started complaining about KERs problems which the team discovered and announced a reset might correct the issue.

On Lap 12, Jenson Button started setting fastest laps after fastest laps as he began catching the World Champion, however the ebb and flow affect meant that Vettel soon was improving and starting to edge away from Button. Behind them the two Ferrari’s were just behind the Red Bull of Mark Webber and behind them was Lewis Hamilton who lost a place at the start.

Pastor Maldonado had an engine failure on Friday, and on Lap 14 the weekend took another nasty turn as he suffered a gearbox problem which forced the Williams to retire. Maldonado was one of the many drivers to be involved in the Lap 1 incident after receiving a huge whack from team-mate Rubens Barrichello as he out broke himself and lost his front wing heading into Turn 1.

The first pit stops of the front runners was around Lap 17 when Webber, Alonso and Hamilton all decided it was time ditch the tyres they started the race on and receive some new Soft tyres and Button thought the same as a lap later he also stormed into the pits for new tyres. He was then also followed a lap later by the leader and World Champion Sebastian Vettel who rejoined the race in the lead and continued his dominant racing.

On Lap 25, a new chapter in the Hamilton Vs Massa saga was opened when Lewis Hamilton stuck his McLaren up the inside of the Ferrari heading into Turn 5 and the inevitable happened when the two came together. Hamilton raised his hand in disbelief as the Ferrari trundled off into the gravel as the eyes of the F1 fraternity turned to the FIA as they inevitably decided to investigate the collision. Understandably, many thought Hamilton was bound to be given a drive-thru penalty, however in utter disbelief the FIA Stewards (headed by Johnny Hebert) decided to penalize the Ferrari of Felipe Massa for turning in on the McLaren, a decision that started a cascade of various opinions on whether the FIA had made the right or wrong decision. Naturally many British fans will back Hamilton and many Brazilian fans will back Massa, but the overall decision in my opinion was that Hamilton put his car in a position that was nowhere near a passing corner and the inevitable happened. Maybe it should’ve been regarded as a racing incident and forgotten about? But Massa certainly shouldn’t have received a penalty as he had absolutely nowhere to go, and he took the racing line. Whether he took the racing line intentionally to collide with Hamilton is something we may never know.

Whilst the handbag fight between Hamilton and Massa was going on, Sebastien Buemi’s highly competitive race was run as he retired with an unfortunate engine failure, adding to the growing list of retirements. And if Massa’s race couldn’t have got any worse, he struck the kerb hard again and broke his suspension very reminiscent of his error in Qualifying. With the wheel hanging on by the bits of suspension that wasn’t damaged and the tethers keeping the tyre connected to the car in case of a big accident, the Ferrari slumbered to a halt on the side of circuit. Massa was seen walking away from his Ferrari with the body language speaking louder than the cars racing around the circuit with an obvious belief that he had been wrongly penalized by the FIA.

As the race drew to a close, the drivers remaining on the circuit all started pitting for the other type of tyre compound, the Harder (and less sought after) tyre. Jenson Button gave the fans hope of catching Vettel after his pit stop, however Vettel soon found his feet after his stop and started aiming for the Grand Slam of pole, leading every race lap and the fastest lap. And that Grand Slam was achieved as he crossed the line +8.4 seconds ahead of Jenson Button in a race that didn’t deliver the excitement that was billed. Hopefully next years race will have a cleaner track that will lure the drivers into passing more confidently without the fear of getting engulfed in dust and dirt!

Classification:

Classified:

Pos  Driver        Team                       Time
 1.  Vettel        Red Bull-Renault           1h30:35.002
 2.  Button        McLaren-Mercedes           +     8.433
 3.  Alonso        Ferrari                    +    24.301
 4.  Webber        Red Bull-Renault           +    25.529
 5.  Schumacher    Mercedes                   +  1:05.421
 6.  Rosberg       Mercedes                   +  1:06.851
 7.  Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes           +  1:24.183
 8.  Alguersuari   Toro Rosso-Ferrari         +     1 lap
 9.  Sutil         Force India-Mercedes       +     1 lap
10.  Perez         Sauber-Ferrari             +     1 lap
11.  Petrov        Renault                    +     1 lap
12.  Senna         Renault                    +     1 lap
13.  Di Resta      Force India-Mercedes       +     1 lap
14.  Kovalainen    Lotus-Renault              +    2 laps
15.  Barrichello   Williams-Cosworth          +    2 laps
16.  D'Ambrosio    Virgin-Cosworth            +    2 laps
17.  Karthikeyan   HRT-Cosworth               +    3 laps
18.  Ricciardo     HRT-Cosworth               +    3 laps
19.  Trulli        Lotus-Renault              +    4 laps

Fastest lap: Vettel, 1:27.457

Not classified/retirements:

Driver        Team                         On lap
Massa         Ferrari                      33
Buemi         Toro Rosso-Ferrari           25
Maldonado     Williams-Cosworth            13
Glock         Virgin-Cosworth              3
Kobayashi     Sauber-Ferrari               1