Patronise F1

Whatever Sebastian Vettel, and Red Bull themselves, did to recharge themselves over the summer break, they should probably market it as a performance-boosting therapy come the end of the season. After his distinctly stodgy form just before the break, Vettel has now romped to three straight wins that have enfeebled the embryonic challenge to his title hopes that his rivals were hoping to deliver.

Of the 158 racing laps completed since everyone returned from their summer holidays, Vettel has led 142 of them. And in Singapore, he led every single one of the tours of the Marina Bay track, falling short of completing F1's first Grand Chelem since Fernando Alonso's success in the corresponding race last season by virtue of missing out on fastest lap honours by fractions of a second.

Vettel was at least given a late on-track challenge from Jenson Button. but in terms of genuine rivals on his path to victory, Vettel really was in a class of one. Whether his success this year is down to the car, his good fortune, his own driving, or a combination of them all, he is now just a single point away from the title, and is now closing in on rewriting another chunk of F1's hefty record books, which you sense that by the end of this decade might have to be renamed 'The Big Book of Sebastian Vettel'.

Practice and Qualifying

The weekend started in slightly odd fashion, with the opening Friday practice session being delayed by half an hour as track workers affected repairs to a number of kerbs around the circuit, after many of them were damaged or dislodged during support race practice sessions.

The delay, which saw large portions of kerbing removed and replaced by a less-precise painted white line in order to delineate the limits of the circuit, saw the session reduced to 60 minutes. But there were further delays to FP1 when a brake fire for Heikki Kovalainen and some further loose kerbing precipitated a pair of session stoppages.

Through the delays and the carnage, Lewis Hamilton took bragging rights for the session, coming through a head-to-head scrap with Vettel to top the timesheets by the best part of half a second. Vettel himself finished over a second clear of his team mate Mark Webber, with Fernando Alonso fourth for Ferrari.

Into the late evening FP2 session, and with the kerbing providing less issues this time around the drivers enjoyed a more productive 90 minutes. Or at least most of them did, though Jenson Button missed out on half of the session, including his scheduled run on the option tyres, when he ran down one of the Marina Bay escape roads and couldn't find reverse gear on his car.

Vettel moved clear of his rivals by the end of the session, with a performance that hinted at what was to come. The German finished two tenths of a second ahead of Alonso, with nobody else anywhere near his pace, as Hamilton fell to third and the second Ferrari of Felipe Massa took fourth. It wouldn't be the last time those two were close together this weekend, either.

Into Saturday, the FIA ensured that the kerbing repairs were fully completed overnight, and the final practice session appeared to indicate that perhaps the frontrunners were actually pretty level on performance, as Webber moved to the head of the times by a fraction of a second from Button, Vettel and Alonso. However, while Vettel had been beaten in the session, the German had simply failed to hook up a fast lap at the end on his qualifying simulation, and earlier in the session he had extended a huge lead while the drivers worked on longer fuel runs with the prime tyres.

All of which meant that Vettel was the favourite for pole position, yet again. And he duly wrapped up pole number 11 for the 2011 season in comfortable circumstances. His first run in the Q3 part of the session saw him shore up pole, having earlier topped Q1 and Q2 comfortably, and although he messed up his second Q3 run, there was no chance of anyone realistically challenging his provisional time.

Behind the serene Vettel, Webber pulled a solid lap out with his second Q3 run to improve from a somewhat dismal 5th place up to second, to cement a front row lockout for the Red Bull team and set himself up nicely for his inevitable cack start on Sunday. Button was another man who improved on his second run, moving up to third and outqualifying Hamilton for only the fourth time all season.

Hamilton himself had a slightly shoddy session. Having lost a set of super-soft tyres in Q2 when he picked up a puncture, he then got involved in an unnecessary incident with Felipe Massa at the start of Q3, nearly making contact with the Ferrari as the two jostled for track position on their outlaps. Then, a refuelling glitch meant he was unable to make a second run in Q3, and he had to settle for fourth.

Fifth and sixth were the two Ferraris, with Alonso outqualifying Massa, as is traditional. The Brazilian, though, still had the hump about Hamilton's driving. "He was trying to...I don't know. Ask him. To be in a condition to touch someone on the out lap? And do another mistake? I think he didn't use his mind again," he muttered after the session. Angry Felipe would only get angrier on Sunday.

As for the rest of the drivers in the top ten shootout, you'd have barely noticed that they were there. Of the two Mercedes and Force India drivers that formed up the rest of the Q3, only one - Nico Rosberg - bothered to set a time, with Michael Schumacher, Adrian Sutil and Paul di Resta all deciding, with fair reason, that it was better to save tyres for raceday than wasting effort qualifying at the tail end of the top ten anyway.

The decision made for a slightly naff Q3 overall, though there was at least entertainment earlier on in the session. Kamui Kobayashi found the wall at the Singapore Sling, having launched himself off the awkward kerbing in a spectacularly optimistic choice of line into the turn. Meanwhile, Renault continued their attempts to be unofficially renamed 'Team Hapless', as firstly Vitaly Petrov was eliminated in Q1, and then Bruno Senna only managed 15th in Q2.

The Race

Prior to the start of the weekend, a number of panicky weather reports had forecast rainstorms across all three days in Singapore, leading to some concerns about the safety of driving Formula One cars in the rain, in the darkness. But after a dry and clear first two days, the rain showers also stayed away for the race itself, as Vettel lined the 24 cars up for the start of the race. Of the non-runners from Q3, only di Resta chose to take the prime soft tyre from the start, with Schumacher and Sutil option for the same super-soft compound that the rest of the top ten were running.

From his two previous pole positions in Spa and Monza, Vettel had quickly lost the lead of the race on the opening lap. But he had no such issues this time around, making a steady getaway to immediately take the lead into turn one. Alas for Webber, though, his 2011 start record continued to be as unimpressive as they come, with the Australian driver again bogging down off the start and getting swamped on the run to turn one. Although he was able to fend off Hamilton's attack, forcing the McLaren to cede into the first corner and losing Hamilton a hatful of places in the process, he dropped behind both Button and Alonso.

The drivers negotiated their way around the first lap in relatively processional style, jockeying for position but failing to really get any early telling moves done, in what would become the theme of most of the race. But up front, Vettel was gone. By the end of the first lap he held a 2.5 second lead over Button, with Alonso, Webber, Massa and Rosberg - who short-cut the first corner but avoided any penalty when he promptly lost the places he stood to gain - Schumacher, Hamilton, Sutil and di Resta trailing in his wake. And the German took that early advantage and ran with it, hammering in some impressive early laps on heavy fuel, so that by lap 5 the lead was already over 7 seconds.

If the field behind him was processional for the most part in the early stages, Hamilton at least provided some entertainment - as he was destined to all afternoon. Finding himself stuck behind Schumacher's lumbering Mercedes early on, just two weeks after he had spent half the Italian Grand Prix impotently trying to pass the swerving German, Hamilton managed to dispatch the seven-time champion without too many issues this time around. On lap 4, Schumacher got sideways exiting turn 5, just as they approached the infamous DRS zone, and Hamilton comfortably swept past down into turn 7. One lap later, at the same point, he was past the sister Mercedes of Rosberg with a similar level of comfort. Huzzah for DRS.

And then, inevitably, he reached the stalemate of the front train of cars. While Vettel continued to scorch away by a second a lap, the rest of the top cars remained stoically in the order in which they found themselves in at the end of the first lap. Button was able to extend a comfortable lead over third placed Alonso, while Webber now found himself paying for his slow start by spending the first laps stuck behind the Spaniard's calamitously slow Ferrari, and Hamilton quickly caught up to the back of Massa's Ferrari but could do little about passing it now the car performances were more evenly matched.

The first pit stop window for the drivers starting on the grippy-but-useless super-softs was kicked off at the end of lap 9 by Rosberg, with the Mercedes once again proving to be plenty hungry when it came to tyre rubber. Also struggling was Alonso, and on lap 10 Webber had a run on him down the outside into turn 14, Alonso defending but running too deep into the corner on his chronic tyres and allowing the Red Bull man to complete the switchback move on the exit of the corner to grab third place. Emasculated by his lack of grip, Alonso immediately pitted in an obvious, but ultimately successful effort to use the Pirelli 'undercut' to retake the place.

As the field cycled through their first stops, the race enjoyed a few laps of action-packed excitement, as many of the frontrunners emerged from their stops into prime-tyred traffic, still looking to stretch out their first stints on the slower rubber. While much of the action was inconsequential, it at least gave everyone something to gawp at for a bit. There was one significant move during the overlap, however, and it came after Hamilton failed to jump Massa in a straight pit stop race at the end of lap 11. The McLaren man had a half-hearted attempt to pass the Brazilian around the outside of turn 7 as he worked out the limits of his cold tyres, but the move was never really on, and as Hamilton tried to slot back behind the Ferrari, contact was made.

The touch between the cars was minor, even compared to Hamilton's clash with Webber at the same corner last year, but the damage to both of their races was immediately obvious. The McLaren man lost the left half of his front wing, while Massa's right rear tyre was punctured. Both drivers recovered to the pits, Massa coming in immediately and dropping as low as 20th, while Hamilton struggled on for another lap before pitting for a new nose cone and a set of prime tyres. He would be back in a short time later as the stewards predictably awarded Hamilton for his 437th bit of in-race contact for the season with his 437th drive-through penalty.

While all that was going on, the rest of the field slowly cycled through their own first stops, with di Resta the man who stayed out longest of the drivers who had started on the prime tyres as he remained out until lap 19 - entertaining himself with a brief scrap with the super-soft-shod Alonso for a time - before switching to the super-softs. By lap 20, Vettel's lead was a still-dominant 13.4 seconds, with Button having resumed after his own stop in second, now some 17 seconds down the road from Alonso, who was once again being shadowed by Webber after undercutting his way back past the Red Bull.

The contact between Hamilton and Massa elevated Rosberg to the dizzy heights of 5th, from Schumacher, Sutil and di Resta, while Perez and the Williams of Pastor Maldonado had now crept into the points. Further down the field, the recovery drives of Massa and Hamilton had begun. By the 20th tour, Massa was up to 12th place, while Hamilton - who had dropped to 19th after his drive-through - was already up to 15th place. Having been given a quick pep talk from the team over the pit radio, who affirmed that despite the evidence, good points were still possible, he breezed past Kobayashi's Sauber on lap 21 to move up to 14th.

Shortly after, with the super-softs again falling apart on the Mercedes and Ferrari cars, the second pit stop window was opened, allowing the lack of on-track action to be ignored in favour of watching cars change tyres in the pit lane. Alonso's stop became necessary at the end of lap 25 after Webber had cruised up to the back of him all over again, the Ferrari again destroying its rear Pirellis, as the Spaniard tried to make the undercut work for him all over again to stay ahead of Webber's palpably faster Red Bull. He would again be successful, assisted when Webber was forced to make his stop when the safety car was deployed.

The silver Mercedes was called for after Schumacher somewhat uncomfortably exited the stage. The two Mercedes drivers, having made their second stops, had found themselves in a scrap on track with Perez. On lap 29, Rosberg ran too deep into the final corner, and allowed Perez to get ahead of him, but the German hit back and heavy-handedly grabbed the place back into the first turn. With Perez compromised, Schumacher decided to have a go for 8th place, only to completely misjudge the braking point for turn 8, and he was launched over the top of the Sauber, landing back on the track with a bump and proceeding to impact with the barriers.

Schumacher was unhurt, while Perez was forced to pit to replace a punctured tyre, and the German would receive a post-race reprimand for his clumsiness. With debris all over the track, the safety car was needed, and the rest of the frontrunners made their own second stops immediately. As the field circulated around, Vettel retained the lead, and had the lapped traffic of Jarno Trulli's Lotus and Daniel Ricciardo's HRT in between himself and Button, while Alonso had retained third from Webber, with di Resta's strategy working out brilliantly to put him 5th, assisted when team mate Sutil ceded to him after some team order mutterings in the background. Meanwhile, Hamilton's recovery saw him now up to 9th, having passed a whole bunch of cars - including, somewhat amusingly, Massa on lap 25 - and was now right with the rest of the point scorers as the field contracted up behind the safety car.

The restart was on lap 34, with Vettel jumping into an immediate lead as Button battled with the traffic in his way. Such was the McLaren driver's disadvantage that Vettel already led by 4 seconds at the restart, and extended that advantage by a full five seconds on the first lap. Meanwhile, having got tired of being undercut constantly by Alonso, Webber decided to take matters into his own hands, and completed a sensational pass on the Ferrari driver down into the Singapore Sling chicane, catching the Spaniard completely napping with a decisive slice up his inside in one of the few non-DRS moves of the evening.

From there on, the front four remained statically lapping for the next phase of the race, and attention turned to Hamilton's recovery. The McLaren man passed Perez shortly after the restart for 8th, and he then set about a DRS-assisted run through the rest of the lower points scorers, the overtaking boost proving to be a surprisingly major assistant for drivers at the Marina Bay track. On lap 37 he tore past Sutil's Force India, and he then coasted past Rosberg and di Resta on consecutive laps at the same place to secure fifth place. Again, huzzah for DRS.

By now, Vettel had cleared off 12.5 seconds up the road from Button, and attention turned to tyre strategy. With the frontrunners having taken prime tyres at their most recent stops, an extra change of tyres was not technically needed, and for a few laps it seemed as though the race might become a tyre-management exercise, with Button and McLaren gambling on not needing to make another stop and assuming that Vettel would not be able to extend the requisite gap to make his own final stop and still rejoin in the lead. To cover that strategy, the leader dropped off his pace as the race entered the final third to conserve his own Pirellis.

But, as it turned out, nobody really thought that tactic was going to work, and slowly but surely a third pit stop window opened, with Webber the first to make the switch to a final set of soft Pirellis at the end of lap 47. That temporarily dropped the Australian down to fifth place, but he soon breezed past Hamilton for fourth, with the McLaren's tyre now shot. Both McLarens duly made their stops, with Button taking super-softs against Hamilton's softs, and that then saw Alonso make his own third stop, and allowed Vettel to make a relatively risk-free stop, despite a minor moment of concern when the Lotus of Heikki Kovalainen was nearly released into his path in the pit lane.

So with ten laps to go, Vettel maintained a 12 second lead over Button, with Webber now comfortable in third and Alonso clear of the rest in fourth. Hamilton emerged after his stop in 8th place, and was forced to complete another tension-free DRS-assisted cruise past the two-stopping trio of di Resta, Rosberg and Sutil. As the McLaren recovered to fifth place, the top five positions on the track looked set for the final cruise to the finish of this overly-lengthy race.

But suddenly, and without prior reason, Button suddenly exploded into life, reeling off a string of super-fast laps to scythe into the lead of Vettel. On lap 54 it was down to 9.6 seconds, then 8.6 seconds on lap 55, 6.5 seconds on lap 57, all the way down to 3.7 seconds by lap 59. But the McLaren man's sudden burst of speed reckoned without the impact of backmarkers, and he lost crucial time just when he didn't need it negotiating the scrapping pair of Maldonado and Barrichello in their Williams cars, giving Vettel the breathing room that he needed.

Could Button have really challenged the man who has dominated so much of the race, or was Vettel still in control? The reaction after the race was largely in the 'no' camp. "Jenson pushed but I'm sure Seb could've responded if he needed to," RBR team boss Christian Horner grinned, while Vettel added: "Towards the end I faced five cars with lots of groups, so it was not that big a margin but I was in control." Button, meanwhile said that he had enjoyed his stint of qualifying laps, but suggested that despite the close final gap, the win was beyond him. "Overall our pace was good today," he mused, "But we cannot challenge Seb and Red Bull."

Still, it was win number nine for Vettel, and Button's last stint cameo at least gave the illusion that he had been made to work for it, even if nothing could be further from the truth. Webber came home in third, keeping up his push for second in the standings even if he was once again left frustrated by a poor start and forced into another race-long recovery drive, while Alonso took a lonely fourth having struggled with his tyres all race.

Hamilton took fifth in what was a spirited recovery drive of his own, even if the reasons for the recovery had been entirely self-inflicted. After the race, he and Massa clashed in the post-race interview 'driver pen' area, Massa sarcastically shouting "Well done!" at his former championship rival and again questioning Hamilton's driving style. The McLaren man, for his part, was quiet and sullen, and is still yet to really fully discuss the clash with Massa.

Paul di Resta was delighted with 6th, hailing it as his best race to date in the sport. He beat Rosberg's Mercedes to the flag, as well as team mate Sutil, as the Force India squad secured a strong double points finish that elevates them clear of Sauber in the fight for 6th place in the constructors standings. The angry form of Massa finished 9th, his race further compromised by a naff tyre strategy by Ferrari which forced him into an extra stop for the soft tyres, with Perez completing the points scorers despite his mid-race cameo as Schumacher's launch pad.

Both Williams drivers flirted with the points throughout the race, but ended up point-free once again, with Maldonado taking 11th and Barrichello 13th, the pair sandwiching Sebastien Buemi's Toro Rosso in the final result, while the spectacular Kobayashi found life tough at the Marina Bay track, and he could only manage 14th, one place ahead of Senna in the first of the Team Hapless cars.

There was joy for Team Lotus, as Kovalainen beat Vitaly Petrov's Group Lotus-backed Renault to the chequered flag, while Virgin's Jerome d'Ambrosio and the HRT duo of Daniel Ricciardo and Tonio Liuzzi completing the finishers, Web 2.0 making up a lap on his team mate thanks to the safety car after he pranged the wall on the first lap and dropped back for repairs, to eventually beat him to the line.

Despite the tight confines of the track, the retirement count was not particularly big. Aside from Schumacher's crash, Jarno Trulli retired his Lotus with the team's old enemy 'gearbox failure', while both Virgin's Timo Glock and Toro Rosso's Jaime Alguersuari crashed into the barriers at turn 17 in separate accidents and retired on the spot.

Just a couple of hours after the end of the race, the rain storms finally arrived in Singapore, but it was far too late for it to ruin Vettel's parade. With his lead now 124 points over his only remaining mathematical rival Button, a single point next time out in Japan will seal him another slice of F1 history and crown him the world's youngest-ever double world champion. "With the races we had so far, it should not be a problem. But it is over when it is over, and this one has to wait to be closed first," he smiled after the race, insisting that there is still work to be done to secure the championship.

Nobody, literally nobody, believed him.

Driver of the Race

Sebastian Vettel - Too obvious? Yes, probably. But when a driver comes within a quarter of a second of securing a Grand Chelem, it would seem unnecessarily contradictory to try and crowbar someone else into this award. From the very start of qualifying to the very end of the race, Vettel never really looked like being troubled on his way to yet another win. His pace at times was just frightening, and in many ways, it was almost a shame that a drive of such apparently effortless imperiousness didn't actually net him the title.

Moment of the Race

Lap 13 - In terms of the overall race result, the Hamilton/Massa clash was much of a muchness, but in a race with precious few flashpoints, it at least allowed for some pretty feisty post-race headlines. Though Massa's reaction to the clash was as hilarious as it was over-the-top, Hamilton nevertheless once again found himself making completely unnecessary and frankly rather daft contact with a rival car. His drive through the field after that was impressive, if slightly DRS-assisted, but as good as that was, the fact was that he shouldn't have had to do it.

Quote of the Race

"I think he is not learning. I tried to speak to him after we wait, but he didn't listen to me. I called him two times, but he didn't listen to me, he [walked] past me. He didn't even look to me. I called him to speak, but when I show him, I said, 'very good job, well done'. Like that you will win many championships!" - Felipe Massa in the midst of his diva-style meltdown after successfully becoming another victim of Lewis 'I'm a racer, me' Hamilton.

Patronise F1's Singapore GP Coverage

Race Preview - Singapore Grand Prix

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

Session reports:
FP1 - Hamilton leads disrupted Singapore FP1
FP2 - Vettel moves ahead in second practice
FP3 - Webber heads super-tight final practice
Qualifying - Vettel anti-climaxes to net Singapore pole
Race - Vettel on brink of history after win No.9

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

The Results

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The 'bunny ears' caption is the funniest ever Had me rolling on the floor

YH , September 27, 2011

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