MOTORSPORT: EUROPEAN GRAND PRIX:SEBASTIAN VETTEL secured his first win since the Malaysian Grand Prix with a textbook drive at the European Grand Prix on an afternoon when team-mate Mark Webber was lucky to escape unhurt from a major accident and Ferrari's Fernando Alonso claimed the race had been wrecked by the safety car period that followed.
Having secured pole on Saturday, Vettel made the briefest contact with Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren as the pair tussled through turn one but once the McLaren driver’s challenge was dismissed Vettel could ease to his second win of the season and up to third in the standings.
Hamilton gave up any realistic chance of fighting for the win inside 10 laps, any pressure he might have brought to bear on Vettel negated by an incident involving the safety car that entered the track following the Webber incident.
At the start Webber, second on the grid, had looked the driver most likely to take the title fight back to series leader Hamilton, the Australian sitting in third after Hamilton had taken the last two wins. But his afternoon began going wrong almost immediately, Hamilton sneaking past from third in turn one.
A rattled Webber then allowed the Ferraris of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa past. A lap later and Webber was ninth. On lap seven he opted to pit for a change of tyres and the switch, which saw him delayed with a stuck front left wheel, saw him rejoin behind backmarker Heikki Kovalainen.
Desperate to get past on lap nine, Webber tucked in behind the Finn on the approach to turn 17.
Kovalainen weaved, Webber reacted and then suddenly his Red Bull struck the Lotus, flipping into the air and landing upside down before flipping back on to its wheels and arcing into the tyre barriers.
“It was a nasty incident,” a relieved Webber said afterwards. “To start with I thought ‘Okay, he’s releasing me’ – letting me go – because obviously the pace difference (between our cars) is massive and then he started closing the door and he’s having these small movements and I thought ‘where’s he going?’ In the end the thing that surprised me was how early he braked, that’s the thing which caught me out.”
The massive crash immediately brought out the safety car and it was its intervention that allowed Vettel to ease to victory and also incurred the extreme ire of Ferrari and Fernando Alonso.
As the safety car entered the tracks from pitlane, Hamilton, second, drew alongside. As third-placed Alonso watched on Hamilton hesitated and then passed the safety car – a clear infringement of the rules.
Alonso, forced to tour again behind the safety car, dropped to ninth. Apoplectic, he was straight on to the radio demanding that Hamilton be sanctioned.
It took the stewards almost 20 laps to hand Hamilton a drive through penalty, by which time the McLaren driver had the benefit of having Kamui Kobayashi’s Sauber in third as a bulwark, holding up the traffic.
Hamilton was thus able to take his penalty and remain in second. Alonso, meanwhile, had been bottled up in the train behind Kobayashi with any chance of recovery fading as the laps went by.
“I think it was unreal, and unfair as well,” he said. “We were running well, in third after a good start. Then the safety car came out, which wasn’t too good for us, but Hamilton overtook the safety car. We were a metre off each other, and he finished second and I finished ninth.
“This was a race to finish second,” he added. “But with the safety car I would have finished where I finished, in ninth, and Hamilton (should have been) in eighth. But here, when you do the normal thing, which is respecting the rules, you finish ninth, and the one who doesn’t finishes second.”
Alonso’s sole hope of getting into the major points was the subsequent announcement that a further nine drivers, including third-placed Jenson Button and Williams’ Rubens Barrichello, fourth, would be investigated for entering the pits too quickly during the safety car period, but in the end the Spaniard only moved up to eighth, after eight of the nine were handed five-second penalties.
VALENCIA DETAILS:
LEADING FINAL POSITIONS:
1 Sebastian Vettel (Ger) Red Bull 1hr 40mins 29.571secs
2 L Hamilton (Brit) McLaren 1:40:34.613
3 J Button (Brit) McLaren 1:40:37.229
4 R Barrichello (Bra) Williams 1:40:50.198
5 R Kubica (Pol) Renault 1:40:51.693
6 A Sutil (Ger) Force India 1:40:54.739
7 K Kobayashi (Jpn) BMW Sauber 1:41:00.536,
8 S Buemi (Swi) Scuderia Toro Rosso 1:41:00.870.
9 F Alonso (Spn) Ferrari 1:41:02.380
10 P de la Rosa (Spn) BMW Sauber 1:41:11.985
11 V Petrov (Rus) Renault 1:41:12.858
12 N Rosberg (Ger) Mercedes GP 1:41:13.953
13 V Liuzzi (Ita) Force India 1:41:15.461
14 F Massa (Bra) Ferrari 1:41:16.192
15 J Alguersuari (Spa) Scuderia Toro Rosso 1:41:17.810 16 M Schumacher (Ger) Mercedes GP 1:41:18.397, 17 L di Grassi (Bra) Virgin Racing at 1 Lap, 18 Timo Glock (Ger) Virgin Racing at 2 Laps, 19 K Chandhok (Ind) HRT-F1 at 2 Laps, 20 B Senna (Bra) HRT-F1 at 2 Laps, 21 J Trulli (Ita) Lotus F1 at 4 Laps.
Not Classified: 22 N Hulkenberg (Ger) Williams 49 Laps completed, 23 H Kovalainen (Fin) Lotus F1 8 Laps completed, 24 M Webber (Aus) Red Bull 8 Laps completed
CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS: DRIVERS
1 Lewis Hamilton (Brit) McLaren 127
2 Jenson Button (Bri) McLaren 121
3 S Vettel (Ger) Red Bull 115
4 M Webber (Aus) Red Bull 103
5 F Alonso (Spn) Ferrari 96
6 R Kubica (Pol) Renault 83
7 N Rosberg (Ger) Mercedes GP 74
8 F Massa (Bra) Ferrari 67
9 M Schumacher (Ger) Mercedes GP 34
10 A Sutil (Ger) Force India 31
11 Rubens Barrichello (Bra) Williams 19
12 V Liuzzi (Ita) Force India 12
13 S Buemi (Swi) Scuderia Toro Rosso 9
14 K Kobayashi (Jpn) BMW Sauber 7
15 V Petrov (Rus) Renault 6
16 J Alguersuari (Spn) Scuderia Toro Rosso 3
17 P de la Rosa (Spa) BMW Sauber 1
18 N Hulkenberg (Ger) Williams 1
19 H Kovalainen (Fin) Lotus F1 0
20 K Chandhok (Ind) HRT-F1 0
21 Lucas di Grassi (Bra) Virgin Racing 0
22 B Senna (Bra) HRT-F1 0
23 J Trulli (Ita) Lotus F1 0
24 T Glock (Ger) Virgin Racing 0
MANUFACTURERS
1 McLaren 248pts
2 Red Bull 218
3 Ferrari 163
4 Mercedes GP 108
5 Renault 89
6 Force India 43
7 Williams 20, 8 Scuderia Toro Rosso 12, 9 BMW Sauber 8, 10 Lotus F1 0, 11 HRT-F1 0, 12 Virgin Racing 0
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