Vettel drove more smoothly than his opponents on a very hot track, saving his tires better than the rest, crossing the finish line nearly 11 seconds ahead of second-place Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari.
Vettel looked to be relaxed throughout the race, managing the gap and turning in a fast lap near the end just to show how much more had.
Vettel extracted every bit of performance from his Red Bull RB7, balancing between speed and conservation, driving gently, positioning the car perfectly in each turn to maximize pace while minimizing tire wear. He told the post-race press conference on BBC that the challenge of driving the car perfectly made this his most satisfying victory of the season.
“Maybe from the outside it looked like a boring race—but I tell you, I enjoyed it so much. When it is between you and the car every single lap—pushing hard but judging the tires, trying to foresee the strategy, and every single lap between you and the car.
“The team has done a phenomenal job preparing the car. This track is not made for us 100 percent, with no real fast corners. Still we manage to put everything together and were faultless this weekend.”
The win gives Vettel a 77-point lead in the Driver’s Championship with 186 points compared to Mark Webber and Jenson Button who are tied at 109.
Three-Car Race
The real race of the day was the contest between Webber and Alonso.
The two were evenly matched. Webber was faster at the start of stints, while Alonso ran a few laps longer, hoping to shorten the final stint on hard tires—Ferrari has been performing poorly on the hards.
“It was a good race with Fernando—I think it was probably my best race of the year,” Webber told the post-race press conference. “I was very happy with how the race was going until the last stop, and it was my fault, basically—it’s not the team’s.
“It wasn’t really known how the medium tire would perform on the out-lap. For sure it’s not as good as the soft, but is it better than an old soft? That was the risk that I decided to take and I lost out.”
Webber suffered gearbox problems late in the race, but the Red Bull driver couldn’t have caught the Ferrari in any case.
Tire Wear Hinders McLaren
Rear tire wear kept Lewis Hamilton from ever really being a factor, while Jenson Button, who was making better use of his tires, had his KERS system overheat, costing him half-a-second per lap.
Hamilton finished fourth, 46 seconds arrears, followed by Felipe Massa’s Ferrari 5.5 seconds further back, with Jenson Button 8.3 seconds behind Massa.
Hamilton was frustrated by his inability to compete. After his first pit stop, he pushed too hard; on lap 28, his crew radioed to him: “Our rear tire temperatures a very hot.” Hamilton replied, “I can’t go any slower.”
Ten laps later, the team needed Hamilton to turn fast laps before his final stop, telling their driver, “We need to up our pace if we can for the next few laps.” Lewis replied, “I can’t go any faster.” He had cooked his tires and was doomed to drop back.
“Good result compared to the last race,” Hamilton joked to a BBC reporter after the race. (Hamilton collided with his teammate in the Canadian Grand Prix and failed to finish.)
“It seems that we’ve taken a step backwards this weekend in terms of performance—or the others have taken a step forward again,” he continued more seriously. “I think we are quite a bit down in downforce. We’ve not made an upgrade for several weeks now we’ve upgraded the front wing, but rear downforce—we’ve really been struggling with that.”
His teammate Jenson Button said the same thing.
“We need some goods upgrades we’ve got to put our heads down and improve the car the package aerodynamically. I think we need an improvement for Silverstone because we are not moving forward and that’s what we need to be concentrating on.”
Formula One heads to the UK for its next race, the British Grand Prix at Silverstone on July 10. Tickets are available through the formula1.com Tickets and Travel webpage.
