Sebastian Vettel sailed serenely to his ninth
win of the season under the night-time sky of Singapore. After converting a
commanding pole position into an early lead, none of his rivals ever looked
like troubling the German as he took another step towards what is now an inevitable
second title. Jenson Button finished second by less than two seconds come the
chequered flag thanks to a spirited late charge, but it was simply too little
too late to truly threaten Vettel. Mark Webber completed the podium in third
place, ahead of Fernando Alonso and an embattled Lewis Hamilton.
Red Bull continued their domination of this
year’s qualifying sessions by securing the front row, Vettel three tenths
faster than teammate Webber. The McLarens of Button and Hamilton occupied the
second row, the latter not helped by suffering a puncture in Q2 that limited
him to a single run in Q3, with the Ferraris of Alonso and Massa next in line
from the Mercedes drivers Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher.
As the race began, Vettel made a smooth getaway
which meant he lead the field as the twenty-four starters approached the first
sequence of corners, but Webber was once more rather slower away. He lost
places to Button and Alonso, whilst Hamilton abandoned an ambitious move up the
inside of the Australian. This meant that he in turn was also passed by Massa
and Rosberg, with Schumacher following suit on the initial run into turn 7;
Hamilton thus found himself in a lowly eighth place at the end of the first
lap. It took him just five laps to find his way back past the Mercedes twosome
into sixth place, but passing former championship adversary Massa would prove
more challenging.
Meanwhile, Vettel had already begun to speed
away from his competitors at a rate of over a second per lap. Alonso seemed
unable to either challenge Button for second or shake off Webber behind, with
Massa and Hamilton also forming an orderly queue behind the Spaniard. Webber
was able to take advantage of Alonso’s struggle for rear tyre grip as he forced
his way past into third place at turn 15 on lap 10, Alonso pitting at the end
of the lap to replace his worn super soft tyres. Massa and Hamilton did
likewise one lap later, the pair emerging from the pit-lane the same order in
which they entered.
Hamilton’s travails began as he attempted to
execute an ill-judged pass around the outside of Massa with the help of DRS at
turn 7 on lap 12. In an incident very similar to the one he experienced with
Webber twelve months ago, Hamilton turned in too soon and shed half of his
front wing on the rear of Massa’s car. Both men were thus forced to make an
additional pit-stop, the former to replace his nose and the latter to replace a
de-laminated rear-right tyre. They consequently ended up well down the field,
Hamilton even more so after being given a drive-through penalty just to add
insult to injury.
By the time the other leading cars had all made
their first stops by the end of lap 19, the order was Vettel from Button,
Alonso and Webber, the Ferrari driver having successfully ‘undercut’ the Red
Bull thanks to stopping two laps sooner. Rosberg and Schumacher held fifth and
sixth places briefly before having to stop again on laps 22 and 24
respectively, during which time they fell behind the Force Indias of Paul Di
Resta and Adrian Sutil as well as Sauber’s Sergio Perez. Rosberg wasted little
time dispatching Perez for seventh, but undid his hard work after running wide
on to an ocean of marbles at the final corner a lap later. Perez slipped back
past, but Rosberg wasn’t prepared to let the Mexican regain the place so easily
– he immediately darted to the inside, braked late and forced Perez wide at the
first corner to avoid a collision.
Schumacher was running just behind this battle,
and was clearly eager to keep up with teammate Rosberg ahead. On lap 30, he
attempted to overtake Perez’s Sauber up the inside at the rather unconventional
location of turn 8. However, the young rookie was unsighted and took his usual
line, while Schumacher out-braked himself, launching over the back of Perez’s
rear wheel and hitting the barrier with considerable force. Needless to say
that this incident marked the end of the road for the seven-time champion, but
surprisingly Perez’s car escaped any notable damage save for a punctured tyre
which he was able to have replaced without losing any positions.
This was because the ensuing Safety Car prompted
everybody who hadn’t stopped in the last five or so laps to do so again whilst
the pack was slowed up, including Vettel, Button, Webber, the two Force Indias
and Rosberg. The Safety Car remained on track for three laps, though
unfortunately for Vettel’s pursuers, several backmarkers lay between the race
leader and the chasing pack. This allowed Vettel to build up his advantage over
Button once more as the Safety Car retired to the pits, though Webber was now
right on the tail of third-placed Alonso. Benefitting from fresher tyres,
Webber was able to take back the final podium place at the notorious turn 10 on
lap 34, but lacked the pace to close the gap to Button ahead.
In the meantime, a train of cars had formed from
fifth-placed Di Resta all the way back to Hamilton, who had by now recovered to
ninth. The former champion’s impressive comeback continued as he was able to
make his way to the head of the group in the space of just five laps, but by
this time he had lost considerable ground to Alonso in fourth. He would have to
repeat his hard work some laps later after making his fifth and final pit-stop
of the evening, as the cars he had just passed were all on two-stop strategies
and were hence not counting on replacing their tyres again for the remainder of
the race.
The order of the top four never particularly
seemed as if would change after Webber moved into third until Button suddenly
found a late turn of speed with around ten laps to go. He was able to cut the
deficit to Vettel from a peak of over fifteen seconds to around half that with
five laps to go and less than four seconds with three laps to go. Those who
were hoping for a repeat of the final lap of the Canadian Grand Prix however
would be apparently denied due to back-marking traffic that cost the McLaren
driver dearly, but in reality it seemed nobody was ever truly in the position
to deny Vettel a deserved nineteenth career victory.
Button’s second place and Webber’s third place
marked both men’s eighth visit to the podium this year, the former moving ahead
of Alonso in the championship standings after the Ferrari number one could do
no more than fourth place. Hamilton lost further ground in the battle for championship
runner-up by finishing behind his rivals in fifth, ahead of fellow Brit Di
Resta who drove excellently to a creditable sixth place. Rosberg came home
seventh in rather a weekend to forget for Mercedes, ahead of compatriot Sutil
who further consolidated Force India’s sixth place in the constructors’
standings with eighth place.
Massa trailed home in ninth after an eventful
afternoon, one place ahead Perez whose recent test for Ferrari as part of the
team’s young driver programme has confirmed him as a possible successor of the
Brazilian’s alongside Alonso at the famed Italian squad in 2013. Pastor
Maldonado just missed out on a points-finish in eleventh place, with his
Williams teammate Rubens Barrichello coming home thirteenth behind Toro Rosso’s
Sebastien Buemi and ahead of Kamui Kobayashi in the second Sauber, who
eventually wound up fourteenth after being awarded a drive-through penalty for
ignoring blue flags.
In a wretched weekend for the Renault team,
Bruno Senna finished a disappointing fifteenth, though this was still enough to
beat more experienced teammate Vitaly Petrov who somewhat embarrassingly
finished behind the Lotus of Heikki Kovalainen in seventeenth. Jerome
D’Ambrosio crossed the line for Virgin in eighteenth, with the finishers being
rounded off the by the Hispania duo of Daniel Ricciardo and Vitantonio Liuzzi.
Joining Schumacher in the list of retirees was the other Lotus of Jarno Trulli,
who succumbed to gearbox failure, while Jaime Alguersauri and Timo Glock both
suffered near-identical encounters with the barriers at turn 18 that brought an
abrupt end to both of their races.
Vettel is now in need of just one point to
clinch the championship, with Jenson Button now the only man who can
mathematically stop him. He would however have to win all five of the remaining
races with Vettel failing to score a single point, making such an outcome
hardly a punter’s delight – although one bookmaker is still offering odds of
569 to 1 if you’re feeling particularly optimistic. The only thing that Button,
Alonso, Hamilton and Webber now have about which to be optimistic are their
chances of taking second place in the championship, which should provide some
useful momentum headed into 2012. It will take more than momentum if any of
them are planning to prevent Vettel from taking a third consecutive title,
mind.
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