Formula One: It’s a Red Bull one-two in Japan as Vettel wins the Japanese GP
Red Bull capped an impressive weekend in Japan with a first one two win of the season. Vettel and Weber drove with extreme finesse at the Suzuka circuit, to finish first and second at the Japanese Grand Prix.
Ther German Vettel finished a second clear of his team mate Mark Webber as Fenando Alonso grabbed the third place on the podium with McLaren’s soft tyre strategy only paying off with a fourth and fifth place finish for Hamilton and Button.
Having started the race with a new gearbox and hence a five place grid penalty looked set to finish fourth in the race and with it reigniting his chances of winning the World driver’s championship but an eventful last 10 laps saw his team mate overtake the
Brit to finish fourth and only condemn him to a fifth place finish.
There are only three races remaining in the season now and Hamilton trails the leader, Vettel by 28 points and faces a daunting task to win the championship.
After the race, Hamilton said “It's disappointing, we pushed as hard as we could and we're doing everything we can to score points, but the gearbox kind of broke during the race, I had to stay between fourth and seventh gear, so I'm thankful I at least
saw the finish.”
Button was also not happy with his team’s tyre strategy that saw him driving on hard tyre for a period much longer than necessary.
"To stay out when everyone else pitted was probably the wrong thing, maybe you should cover the people you're racing," he said.
It was a frustrating race for Hamilton as he came out of the grid all guns blazing, overtaking both Barrichello and Rosberg early in the race to move from 8th to 6th in the race.
Robert Kubica of Renault was also quick off the blocks as he took advantage of a slow start by Webber to move into the second place in the race. However, Vitaly Petrov, Felip Massa, Nico Hulkenburg and Tonio Liuzzi were off the pace early on, as they handed
the initiative to their competitors.
Webber must have anticipated a tough competition from Kubica to re-pass him but the Pole’s rare wheel came off when the race was still running with safety cars on the track.
The safety cars remained on the track for six laps and Vettel nailed the restart as he took full advantage of the break in the race.
With just three laps remaining in the race, both the Red Bulls ran a second clear of Alonso and the interest only seemed to have been in the minor place finishes.
Hamilton on his soft tyres was trailing his team mate Button, still running of hard tyres but Button drove skilfully to see off the challenge from Hamilton and finish fourth in the race.
Hamilton had to pit in the 22nd lap of the race because of his team’s bizarre race strategy, while Vettel and Alonso pitted two laps later.
Hamilton had to pit his car at the end of 22 laps, while Vettel and Alonos only pitted two laps later while Webber pitted after three. Button, who was still running on soft tyres was left out leading the race but had no chance of building the gap before
pitting to maintain the lead.
Button pitted at the end of 38th lap and Hamilton was left chasing Alonso for a podium finish but a gearbox mal function prevented him doing so as he lost 3rd gear in his gearbox and even Button overtook his team mate after coming out
of the pits.
With a little more than 4 laps remaining the leading places in the race were settled as Vettel build a second’s lead over Webber and Alonso stood no chance of catching Webber in second place and so didn’t Hamilton of finishing 4th.
Nico Rosburg also suffered a car malfunction on his Mercedes as he crashed out on one of the curves, while home boy Kobayashi delighted the home crowd with a series of magnificent manoeuvres and over takings to take his Sauber to a seventh place finish just
one spot behind Michael Schumacher.
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