Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull takes chequered flag at Spanish Grand Prix – Formula 1 news
Red Bull Racing driver Sebastian Vettel took the chequered flag in an exciting 66 laps of racing at the Catalunya circuit in Spain on Sunday.
The German driver finished the race with a total time of 1 hour 39 minutes and 3.301 seconds.
Qualifying set out a Red Bull 1-2 to start the race, but a slow start on part of both cars allowed Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso to lead the duo for quite some time before he gave back the position due to tyre related issues.
Many argued that the Ferrari team made a huge gamble using an extra set of option tyres during qualifying which left them handicapped during the race while the Red Bulls and the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton made full use of the soft and hard compounds as part
of their 4 pit stop strategy.
Lewis Hamilton, backed up by a recent performance upgrade that made its debut in Spain, managed to give the world champion a run for his money throughout the second half of the race. Hamilton finished 2nd, only 6 hundredths of second behind the
race winner. Jenson Button made it two McLarens on the podium with a brave drive on a 3 pit stop strategy.
Mark Webber came 4th and looked relatively crestfallen at the end of the race. He had the perfect launch pad in grid box number 1 at the start of the race but could not convert it into a race or podium finish.
Fernando Alonso, plagued by tyre wear issues, had to nurse his car to the finish line and finished fifth. Surprisingly, cars below the fifth one were lapped at least once by the Red Bull on top.
Michael Schumacher finished strongly in sixth- higher than his teammate, for once. The second Mercedes of Nico Rosberg finished seventh which was an overall good outing for them from the constructors’ championship perspective.
Nick Heidfeld, Sergio Perez and Kamui Kobayashi rounded off the top 10. The lapped cars from 6th to 10th positions had all opted for a 3 pit stop strategy which eventually indicated how tyre grip dictated proceedings on the day.
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