Patronise F1

After the all-out action of China and the tyre-based chaos of Turkey, the Spanish Grand Prix was something of a return to a pre-2011 'chess match' approach to generating some wholesome grand prix drama. While there was no last-ditch pass for the lead, or barmy multiple overtakes on every lap, there was nevertheless something absorbing about the whole race, possibly because for the second time in three races it boiled down to a straight fight over the final laps between championship leader Vettel and McLaren's Lewis Hamilton.

With every passing race of 2011, it is becoming more likely that if anyone is to contest this championship in anything approaching a bona fide title battle, it will probably be this pair of drivers. And once again they managed to prove themselves a class above anyone else in the 2011 field with a display of driving that by the end of the race left the pair of them over 30 seconds clear of their respective team mates, a lap ahead of the rest of the field, but less than a second apart from each other.

Yet in contrast to China, when Hamilton inexorably reeled Vettel in and then surged past him, this time Vettel had the car and tyre performance and the driving nous to keep the 2008 champion at bay across the final ten laps, and extend his championship lead with victory number four of this still-young season. But for his random attempt to resurrect the Crazy Frog phenomenon over the pit radio on his jubilant slowing-down lap, you'd almost believe that the baby-faced German was maturing.

Practice and Qualifying

Throughout the build-up to the race, though, it appeared that the other driver from the Red Bull Racing stable was the one with the best shot at victory in Barcelona. The Circuit de Catalunya was the scene for the start of Mark Webber's sensational mid-season purple patch last season, and for most of the weekend the Australian once again looked to have the pace to keep his prodigious team mate at bay for once.

Webber topped both of the Friday practice sessions with relative ease, ending up top of the morning times by over a second and staying on top during the afternoon session's half-hearted qualifying simulations. It was one of the most intensive Fridays of the season, as teams put their latest glut of car upgrades through their paces, but also one of the quietest in terms of action, with even renowned practice crasher Pastor Maldonado barely finding the time for a quick gravelly moment in his Williams midway through FP1.

Crucially though, Hamilton ended second overall at the end of the day in his McLaren, the merest fraction off Webber's pace, and the Woking team's car had also demonstrated plenty RBR-matching pace over their longer race simulations. Things weren't looking completely straightforward for the championship leaders.

Into Saturday we went, and after playing second fiddle to Webber on Friday, Vettel's weekend appeared to be getting worse when an engine issue in final practice left him in the garage for most of the session, impotently watching on as Webber again set a brisk pace clear of the rest of the field, with the McLarens now struggling to even assert themselves over the quick-looking Mercedes duo of Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg, never mind take the fight to the Australian.

But Vettel, ever one to seize the chance to spoil Webber's day, managed to get out for one flying run at the very end of the hour-long session, and despite it being his first flying run of the day, he promptly plonked the #1 RB7 a fraction ahead of the #2 RB7 on the timesheets, to somewhat deflate the mood permeating through the other side of the Red Bull garage.

There would be another twist to the internecine battle within the constructors champions for qualifying itself, however. Both RBRs easily made it through to Q3, and the stage was set for a traditional 2011-era single qualifying run, with the drivers that made it through to the top ten shootout again eschewing going all-out for a good grid spot in favour of consolidating as many fresh sets of soft Pirellis as they could for the race on Sunday.

The two Red Bulls went out almost line astern midway through the ten-minute session, and given their innate speed advantage over a single lap of the Barcelona track, this was clearly the fight for pole. Both drivers registered near-identical times in the first sector, and then did the same in the second sector, but Webber managed to just find an extra couple of tenths in the final corners of the lap to record his first pole position since the Belgian Grand Prix last year, benefiting from Vettel being denied the use of his KERS boost throughout his lap.

And that was that, although for a brief moment Vettel appeared to be consumed by a slightly childish moment of madness, with his engineers appearing to prep the car for a second qualifying run as soon as he returned to the pits, seemingly prepared to waste a set of softs for no reason other than to secure the intra-team bragging rights for the day.

It appeared that the German was talked out of a second run by the team after Webber suggested any second run would have broken a driver's agreement that they would only make one qualifying effort, and that minor spat may possibly have contributed to the slightly pouty atmosphere coming from both RBR drivers in the post-session press conference. And did a lack of KERS cost Vettel that two tenths of a second to Webber? "I don't know," he muttered, "Surely you can work out how much the benefit of KERS is, but I don't like to [mention] things like this." For those of you playing along at home, KERS was worth three tenths per lap this weekend.

Still, another Red Bull driver crisis was averted, and the team was left to celebrate a fifth pole from five 2011 races, well clear of Lewis Hamilton, who took third for McLaren. "We're not as quick as the Red Bulls," the McLaren man said simply, "Usually we're quite close to them in the race but they look like they've made a step forward. Nonetheless, we'll push as hard as we can..." Yes folks, it was time for another drive of his life. Elsewhere, Fernando Alonso may well have produced the qualifying lap of his life by splitting the McLarens in his somewhat recalcitrant Ferrari, leaving Jenson Button back in fifth place ahead of Vitaly Petrov's Renault.

Elsewhere, there were standout qualifying efforts from Pastor Maldonado, who put his Williams 9th on the grid after making Q3 for the first time in his F1 career, and Heikki Kovalainen, who underlined Lotus's recent progress with 15th place, albeit by largely benefitting from problems for other drivers. Of those, Rubens Barrichello failed to escape Q1 for Williams after a gearbox issue sidelined him early on, while Nick Heidfeld would line up dead last for Renaultus after missing qualifying altogether due to a dramatic fire that consumed his car midway through Saturday practice.

At the front then, the stage appeared to be set for a Red Bull-only scrap for the win, based on the qualifying times. But their rivals knew that throughout 2011 the races had been much tighter performance-wise than qualifying, and therefore retained hope of a challenge for the win on Sunday. The start of the race, most observers felt, would be crucial.

The Race

Another glorious day of sunshine greeted the drivers on raceday in Barcelona, and after the mutterings of a dark cloud or two over the Red Bull garage at the end of qualifying, it was a big moment for Webber, as he lined up at the front of the grid and prepared himself for the task of actually leading a lap of a race for the first time in a 2011 season that had been thusfar dominated by his team mate who sat alongside him on the front row.

As it happened, he needn't have bothered planning for that, because by the time the lights went out and the 24 cars reached the first corner, Vettel was ahead of him. But more so than that, Alonso and his scarlet Ferrari was ahead of them both. The Spaniard shot like the metaphorical bullet from a gun off the line, successfully evading the wildly-swerving form of Vettel, who had actually made something of a tardy initial getaway, to slot down the narrowest of gaps on the inside of Webber and take the lead of the race, casuing the home fans to explode in a cacophony of delight.

So shocked was Webber by the sight of Random Ferrari Out Of Nowhere coming hurtling past him on the right, that he was somewhat earlier on the brakes into the first corner, allowing Vettel to make his life doubly worse by holding second place around the outside, relegating Webber to third place ahead of Hamilton and from Petrov. The Russian had moved up after Button made a start every bit as bad as Alonso's was good, slipping well down the early order. Behind Petrov came a typically quick-starting Schumacher, up from P10 at the start, his team mate Rosberg, Sebastien Buemi's Toro Rosso and Felipe Massa's Ferrari, with Button now behind all of them.

By the end of the fourth lap, Buemi had slipped behind both Massa and Button, while at the front it was already a four-horse race, as Alonso, Vettel, Webber and Hamilton eased away from the flat-footed Petrov in a tightly-packed train. The much-debated DRS overtaking zone - which took up over 800m of the pit straight for this weekend - became active on lap three, but the frontrunners found that the effect of the drag-reducing device was not quite enough to allow for any early passing, with the front four running so closely that the myriad of flappy wing action largely cancelled itself out across the pack.

With the new 2011 method of actually overtaking cars on track failing, Red Bull and Vettel attempted to gain the lead using a more traditional approach, as Vettel dived into the pits for fresh tyres on lap 9. The surprisingly early call indicated that, as with Turkey two weeks ago, the race was set to be a four-stop event. But unfortunately for the championship leader, he emerged from his stop into the traffic of the tardy duo of Massa and Button, and although he quickly scythed past the pair of them in some style on a fully-committed out lap, he didn't have the chance to make up the time on the Spaniard before Alonso pitted at the end of the next lap.

If the first stops didn't work out for Vettel in the first of the Red Bull cars, they worked out even worse for our stymied polesitter in the second one. Webber pitted on the same lap as Alonso, and emerged right out in the same traffic that his team mate had done. But while Vettel quickly passed the slowpokes, Webber struggled to repeat the trick, and he ended up losing out to the later-stopping Hamilton when the McLaren man came in for his own stop. The Australian driver's frustration grew yet another level.

All that meant was that by lap 16, Alonso was back in the lead by a fraction of a second from Vettel and Hamilton, while Webber had conspired to lose enough time to have dropped a second and a half off the back of the McLaren, and appearing to be incapable of getting much closer than that. Behind him, Button was now up to fifth, having stayed out longer on his first set of tyres, opting for a three-stop strategy in the process in the same way that he unsuccessfully did in Turkey. After the race, he described the strategic call as a "no-brainer" that he and the team had agreed on before the race, and so it turned out to be. Behind Button came Schumacher and Rosberg in the two Mercedes cars, with Petrov, Massa and Buemi completing the points-paying places as things stood.

Despite the fact that his attempt to leapfrog the Ferrari with his first stop failed, that didn't deter Vettel and Red Bull from trying again at the end of lap 18 as the reigning champion came in for his second of four stops. Decisively, this time he emerged in clear air, and he made it count in the brief time he had before Alonso reacted next time around with his own second stop, to effectively take the lead of the race. He officially took the lead when Hamilton stopped for a second time on lap 23, though the McLaren driver also managed to leapfrog his old B.F.F. Alonso after managing to grind out a few extra laps on his second set of Pirellis.

Vettel, then, led by 4.2 seconds from Hamilton at the end of lap 25, with Alonso and Webber now a further four seconds back and slowly falling out of contention for the race win as the Spaniard held up the Australian. That duo were now more concerned with trying to defend third place from the three-stopping form of Button, who was lurking just eight seconds behind them in fifth. While Vettel now had the lead of another grand prix though, his long-term chances of holding it didn't look particularly great, as Hamilton used his fresher tyres to cut into the gap to the leader with every passing lap, and by lap 30 the gap was down to 2.2 seconds.

Alonso and Webber made their third stops, with both being forced to switch to the uncompetitive hard Pirelli tyre given that they now had no more fresh sets of softs available to them. Frustratingly for Webber, Alonso managed to maintain his position ahead of the Red Bull thanks to being released fractionally ahead of the Australian by the slightly tardy Ferrari pit crew. Button, who had briefly inherited third, then made his own second stop, but was able to take on his final set of options for this penultimate stint, which gave him a decisive advantage over his podium-chasing rivals. He began to reel in the pair of squabbling cars ahead of him with unrelenting ease and within a handful of laps, Button had swept past them both to claim the final podium place.

The third stops for the two leaders came and went, with both resuming on their own final set of option tyres that they had conserved from qualifying, and although Vettel retained the lead from Hamilton by a couple of seconds, Hamilton again began to close the gap all over again. By now, Vettel was beginning to experience some renewed issues with his reassuringly unreliable KERS unit, and from now until the end of the race he would only have intermittent use of his extra boost.

Webber finally got a bit of happy news as he and Alonso made their own final stops, as he finally managed to jump the Spaniard. He had managed to momentarily get past the Ferrari a few laps earlier before Button had come carving past, but he ran too deep after he made the move, and Alonso was able to breeze back past. But when Alonso was in for his final stop on lap 40, Webber stayed out and took advantage of the clear air and the quirk that the rubbered-in hard tyres were actually quicker than the fresh ones to finally leapfrog the Spaniard for fourth.

At the front, the battle between Vettel and Hamilton was continuing at a frenetic pace, with the duo already having lapped everyone up to seventh place Nico Rosberg by lap 46, while the gap between them remained just 1.1 seconds. They made their final stops within a lap of each other, with Hamilton again unable to manufacture a pit lane-inspired pass despite having an extra tour of the track on the softer compound compared to the start of Vettel's hard stint.

On lap 50, Vettel led by 1.9 seconds from the ever-present Hamilton, with Button, now also having completed his third and final stop, some 30.4 seconds down the road, but relatively comfortable in third place from Webber, five seconds further down the road. Alonso had now dropped to fifth, was finding no pace at all from his own hard tyres and would be lapped before the end of the race, but he was comfortably ahead of the two Mercedes cars of Schumacher and Rosberg, while Massa, despite a silly spin on lap 39, was still 8th from the temporarily elevated Force India of Paul di Resta and Heidfeld's Renault, who was now scything through the field on his perfectly pristine sets of Pirelli softs that he had saved by failing to take part in qualifying.

The stage was then set for a climactic scrap between Vettel and Hamilton for the win, with the McLaren driver quickly easing up to the back of the German before he hit the inevitible dirty air off the back of the Red Bull, and then remained constant in Vettel's wheeltracks, hoping for an error from the youthful champion ahead of him over the final ten laps. He managed to get a decent run down the pit straight at the start of lap 56, but as with earlier in the race, he found the DRS zone to not quite be enough of a helping hand to lug his car up and alongside the RB7 ahead of him.

As it turned out, that was his best, and arguably his only chance. Even if Hamilton was then sitting back and preparing himself for a do-or-die lunge right at the last, Vettel was helped out when he managed to pick up a tow from a handy bit of lapped traffic on both of the final two laps to leave the McLaren man frustrated, and the man who had won three of the first four races of the 2011 season made it four from five by the narrowest of margins from his closest championship rival to extend his already-omionous early season lead out to 41 points.

Button ended up taking a comfortable third in the second McLaren, securing his second podium of the season and vindicating his three-stop strategy after the same tactic had failed so badly in Turkey. Admittedly, he was helped by the fact that Webber and Alonso, who finished fourth and fifth behind him, had been forced to run two stints of their four-stop strategies on the harder tyre, but he will still likely take plenty of heart from this result, and he seemed to have changed his tune on the tyre-based "sitting duck" overtaking he had criticised after Turkey. "I really enjoyed getting past Mark and Fernando in one lap," he grinned after the race, seemingly missing the irony entirely.

Behind Webber and Alonso came the two Mercedes cars, with Schumacher seemingly rediscovering some of that "big joy" he had lost in Turkey by beating his team mate to the line for the second time in 2011 so far. Rosberg, for his part, spent the whole race impotently staring at his team mate's rear wing, and afterwards blamed a broken DRS wing for his inability to get past, though the younger German might question how he once again qualified a solid distance ahead of his team mate on the grid, and not for the first time managed to conspire to be behind him by the end of lap 1.

Rounding out the points-paying places were Heidfeld, who provided the late-race action as he tore through the field to take eighth, ending up just a couple of laps short of probably passing the sitting duck hard-tyred Mercedes duo as well, while Sergio Perez and Kamui Kobayashi took ninth and tenth for Sauber, the latter recovering from a first lap puncture with a clever strategic call to switch to the hard tyres for the first stint when he replaced that damaged tyre.

Petrov slipped back to eleventh despite his strong qualifying, in a disappointing outing for the inconsistent Russian, while Force India's tactic of qualifying on hard tyres to give them more softs for the race didn't pay off with points, as di Resta and the legally-pressured Adrian Sutil finished 12th and 13th respectively. Having been in the points for much of the race, Buemi lost out as the drivers who had conserved soft tyres for the end came storming through, and the Swiss driver ended 14th, one spot ahead of Pastor Maldonado who managed to casually drive into the side of him on the final lap.

Jaime Alguersuari took a completely anonymous 16th, from Rubens Barrichello, while Jarno Trulli was 18th for Lotus, dropping back late on with an exhaust issue. The two Virgin cars of Timo Glock and Jerome d'Ambrosio, and Narain Karthikeyan's HRT completed another bumper set of classified runners, with 21 cars making the chequered flag.

Those that didn't comprised of Massa, whose feeble afternoon came to an end with gearbox failure, shortly after he had been passed by the charging Heidfeld and Perez as he limped around on the hard Pirellis, Heikki Kovalainen, who crashed his Lotus at turn four towards the end of the race and caused Hamilton, Button and Webber to pick up reprimands from the stewards when they were adjudged to have not slowed down enough in the resulting yellow flag zone, and Tonio Liuzzi, whose HRT car broke down.

With the teams now heading for the tight confines of Monte Carlo this weekend then, Vettel knows that he will still have a relatively comfortable championship lead at the end of that race even if he crashes into Monaco's infamous barriers. But Hamilton will take confidence in his chances for the season despite his 41-point deficit to the German, after proving that his McLaren is almost a complete match for Vettel's Red Bull.

Keep calm and carry on, because there's a championship battle a-brewing.

Driver of the Race

Fernando Alonso - While Vettel's performance was controlled and tidy, and Hamilton's drive was as pugnacious as they come, they were achieved in cars that were clearly the class of the field. But for the first 18 laps of the race they were both kept at bay by the Spaniard and his ultimately useless Ferrari. Without meaning to wax lyrical too much, lest the accusation that this award has been fixed by The Elbow might rear its ugly head, Alonso's start was a thing of devastating beauty, and his first two stints were a model of calm under pressure, albeit pressure at a track where genuine passing chances were at a premium. If Ferrari cannot get their car properly sorted, and this year's championship does end up being contested solely by Vettel and Hamilton, Alonso provided amble evidence in Spain that his presence in the title race would be sorely missed.

Moment of the Race

Lap 56 - On the run down to turn one, Lewis Hamilton had his only sniff for the lead, which Vettel defended without any real issue. Although it looked like the German would struggle to hold onto the win given how close Hamilton was getting with still ten laps to run, the McLaren man would never get close to another sniff. With the Red Bull getting some astounding traction through the final corner at Barcelona, and the relatively-new chicane prior to that turn failing to allow cars to run close to each other through it, even the benefits of having full use of his KERS and the longest DRS zone in the season so far couldn't get Hamilton alongside his rival.

Quote of the Race

"That was crazy, crazy man, you were coming, coming, coming." - Vettel's comment to Hamilton after the race, which caused the Patronise F1 dirty joke machine to explode in a shower of double-entendres.

Patronise F1's Spanish GP Coverage

Race Preview - Spanish Grand Prix

Minute-by-minute reports:
Free Practice 1
Free Practice 2
Free Practice 3
Spanish GP Qualifying
Spanish GP Race

Session reports:
FP1 - Webber dominates first Spanish practice
FP2 - Webber completes Friday practice double
FP3 - Vettel nicks FP3 top spot at the last
Qualifying - Webber on pole as no KERS costs Vettel
Race - Vettel fends off Hamilton for Spanish win

Post-race coverage:
Five talking points from the Spanish GP
Fifth Column - Spain

The Results

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