Sebastian Vettel Wins European Grand Prix, Extends Lead

Unstoppable Vettel

Reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull once again proved their dominance by winning the European GP at Valencia. Vettel, after losing the Canadian Grand Prix on the last lap to Jenson Button drove a smooth race and extended his and his team’s leads in the driver’s and constructor’s championships respectively. Vettel now has a 77 point lead in the Championship race, which is more than the points total of three races put together, which is an incredible achievement considering that only 8 races are over in the F1 calendar.

Sebastian had a good start and in the initial stage of the race had a three second lead from his closest rival Webber. He made sure his lead stuck to the very end and also registered the fastest lap before winning the race by almost 11 seconds. Vettel drove a straight forward race, taking the win by leading from start to finish, but this was not the case for the others on the podium as Webber and Fernando changed positions couple of times and Alonso finished second ahead of Webber ultimately, much to the delight of the Spanish fans.

In the final round of pit stops Fernando just got his Ferrari to come ahead of the Red Bull and from then onward he hold onto second place. Webber however, attacked the Spaniard vigorously but was hit by a gearbox problem four laps before the race ends. McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton was fourth ahead of the Ferrari of Felipe Massa. Massa tried hard to grab the podium but was unable to do so. Hamilton didn’t have a good start and lost places initially when Massa and Alonso got ahead of him. Hamilton however, made up for one lost place but couldn’t do anything apart from that.

Button drove his McLaren home at 6^th place. He was not able to gain any places however, he tried something different but struggled to keep the pace going. He also experienced KERS problem and because of that was unable to challenge the leaders. Nico Rosberg drove a straight forward race and finished on 7^th place. He was on the three pit stops strategy and did rub his tyres with the Torro Rosso of Jaime Alguersuari in the middle.

Alguersuari drove a brilliant race both technically and strategically as he made two pit stops and finished on 8^th ahead of the Force India of Adrian Sutil. Alguersuari started the race the form P18 and make up 10 places in the race in the concluding stages. He kept the fast and monstrous Force India of Adrian Sutil at bay till the very last, thus grabbing some useful and handy points for his team. Alguersuari’s teammate Buemi was further down the order at 13^th place ahead of the other Force India of Paul Di Resta.

Nick Heidfeld was the only points scorer for Renault and finished the race on 10^th place ahead of the Sauber of Sergio Perez who drove brilliantly with a one stop strategy and just missed out on points. Petrov, Kobayashi, Michael Schumacher and Maldonado didn’t have a good race and were further down the order on 15, 16, 17 and 18^th places respectively. Schumacher and Petrov had an accident during the first round of pit stops and lost plenty of ground due to that, thus finishing well outside the points bracket.

Trulli, Glock, Jerome, Liuzzi and Narain completed the race finishers on 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 and 24^th places respectively. The important and the interesting thing to be noted from the race is all the race starters i.e. 24 drivers completed the race which is a unique thing in such a technical and demanding circuit.

European GP race classifications

Pos  Driver        Team
 1.  Vettel        Red Bull-Renault
 2.  Alonso        Ferrari
 3.  Webber        Red Bull-Renault
 4.  Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes
 5.  Massa         Ferrari
 6.  Button        McLaren-Mercedes
 7.  Rosberg       Mercedes
 8.  Alguersuari   Toro Rosso-Ferrari
 9.  Sutil         Force India-Mercedes
10.  Heidfeld      Renault
11.  Perez         Sauber-Ferrari
12.  Barrichello   Williams-Cosworth
13.  Buemi         Toro Rosso-Ferrari
14.  Di Resta      Force India-Mercedes
15.  Petrov        Renault
16.  Kobayashi     Sauber-Ferrari
17.  Schumacher    Mercedes
18.  Maldonado     Williams-Cosworth
19.  Kovalainen    Lotus-Renault
20.  Trulli        Lotus-Renault
21.  Glock         Virgin-Cosworth
22.  D'Ambrosio    Virgin-Cosworth
23.  Liuzzi        HRT-Cosworth
24.  Karthikeyan   HRT-Cosworth

Fastest lap: Vettel, 1:41.852