Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel Too Fast to Catch in Formula One Italian Grand Prix at Monza

Sebastian Vettel got his first win at Monza in 2008 driving for Toro Rosso, a team which had never won a race. He got his 18th career win here—his eighth of the season—for Red Bull, a team which seems to always win races.

With one-third of the season yet to go, Vettel all but wrapped up his second consecutive World Driver’s Championship with a win in the Formula One Italian Grand Prix; a podium finish at Singapore seals the deal.

The race was yet another display of what happens when the best driver has the best car. Vettel won the pole (his tenth,) but lost the lead at the start when Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso made a courageous, slightly crazy charge up the inside, passing McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton and Vettel too.

After a safety car and a restart, Vettel took the lead back with an equally brave and crazy move around the outside of the Curva Grande.

Once past, Vettel opened up a huge lead immediately, and maintained it for the rest of the race, setting a new fast lap every so often just to show he could.

The 24-year-old German driver was ten seconds ahead of his nearest rival at the end; likely the margin could have been much longer had he wanted to push it.

The secret of his success? “I love racing,” he told the post-race press conference on SPEED-TV.

“We enjoy racing as a team altogether every weekend. You can see the passion and it is great. You can feel the challenge. We want to make sure that we have a very good weekend and we squeeze everything out of ourselves.”

The Red Bull RB7 is definitely the best car on the grid; not the fastest, but the slipperiest for the downforce it makes, and the best in high-speed corners. But Vettel’s success isn’t all due to the car; if it were, his teammate Mark Webber would have more than three poles, and would have a win or two.

If it were just the car, Webber wouldn’t be fourth in the standings, 117 points behind his teammate.

Vettel’s success is a rare combination of the best F1 designer (Adrian Newey,) the best team (Red Bull makes few strategy errors, and did a four-tire pit stop in 2.9 seconds Sunday,) and the best driver on the grid.

Some have said Vettel was only good when he was out in front alone; his bravura pass of Alonso showed that the lad certainly knows how to take the lead away from another driver (and there are few drivers more determined not to lose the lead than a Ferrari driver at Monza.)

Vettel also knows how to save the car once he is in front—he got 20 laps out of a set of soft tires at Monza, and his last lap on worn tires was as fast as everybody else’s on fresh rubber.

It’s not like Vettel isn’t facing serious competition: for most of the race, Vettel was being chased by four championship-winning drivers; rather, he was motoring around the track ahead of four former World Champions. None of them got close enough to call it “chasing.”

Is Sebastian Vettel at Red Bull the next Schumacher at Ferrari? Will we see another era where one driver and team dominates the sport so completely, the competition’s only hope is that the driver will get bored and retire?

Alonso unseated Schumacher; Hamilton unseated Alonso; Button unseated Hamilton. At Monza Sunday, Vettel beat all of them at once—easily.

Alonzo’s Charge, Liuzzi’s Wreck, Vettel’s Domination

Monza is the domain of Ferrari, and Fernando Alonzo had to assuage the guilt of only qualifying fourth; he did so with the best and bravest start of the season.

While Vettel and Lewis Hamilton raced wheel-to-wheel towards the first chicane, Alonso charged from the second row, inside both drivers, just nipping the grass as he forced his way ahead of his rivals in a pass-or-disaster maneuver.

The fans exploded with joy, but Alonzo’s exertions came to nothing; behind him, Vitantonio Liuzzi pushed his HRT inside of three rows of competitors. He came together with Heikki Kovalainen and bounced sideways, shooting across the grass, completely missing the chicane, and slamming into the Renault of Vitaly Petrov.

The ensuing pileup caught Nico Rosberg—all three ended up out of the race. Kobayashi and D’Ambrosio had to pit for repairs and both eventually withdrew. (Liuzzi was penalized five grid positions, to be served at the Singapore Grand Prix.)

After the safety crew cleaned up the debris, the race restarted single file. Vettel immediately began hounding Alonso, while Schumacher, who had gone from eighth to fourth with his own amazing start, began harrying Hamilton for third.

A lap later Webber, fifth, collided with the Ferrari of Felipe Massa in the first chicane; the Red Bull’s front wing folded under, ruining its aerodynamics. Webber, normally savvy, ignored the damage and went too hot into Parabolica. With no front downforce and too much speed, his brakes were useless. After he slammed the wall, his whole car was useless.

Meanwhile Vettel made his banzai move around the outside of Alo0nso in Curva Grande and inside through the second chicane to take the lead.

For the next several laps fans were treated to the spectacle of the old guard, Michael Schumacher, battling the young rival, Lewis Hamilton. Hamilton’s McLaren was better under braking but the Mercedes had top end, and a driver who wasn’t shy about making his car wide.

Hamilton worked his way past on lap 13, but Schumacher took the position back later in the lap. Button got by on lap 16, when Hamilton made a strong move and had to back out; Button never slowed, and squeezed past both drivers.

Over the next four laps the leaders pitted; Lewis Hamilton rejoined the race in sixth, right behind Michael Schumacher’s Mercedes. Hamilton went at it for three laps, while the seven-time champion increasingly probed the limits of the “one-move” rule.

Finally team principal Ross brawn got on the radio and told Schumacher twice to leave room when he turned in. On lap 27 Hamilton made the pass in Ascari corner, with a little cooperation from the Mercedes driver who didn’t slam the door this time, this avoiding a certain penalty, as McLaren had made the stewards aware of the situation.

Fernando Alonso switched to the harder Prime tire on the next round of pit stops, and the Ferrari struggled for grip as it has with the Prime tire all year. On lap 36 Jenson Button left the pits and immediately forced his McLaren past the Ferrari.

Alonso slowly slid backwards for the next 17 laps while Lewis Hamilton pushed harder and harder, setting fastest lap twice in his quest to overtake the Ferrari. The McLaren driver caught up on the final lap, but he had no time to set up a pass and had to settle for fourth.

Michael Schumacher finished fifth, his third top-five finish of the season. Felipe Massa brought the other Ferrari home in sixth.

Vettel’s WDC All But Assured

With 112 points more than his nearest rival and six races left, it seems certain that Sebastian Vettel will win the World Driver’s Championship again; 14 points puts him out of reach of the rest. The young German could finish eighth in the rest of the races and win the championship easily.

Vettel has had his road smoothed by the competitiveness of the rest of the cars; while none can touch the Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari are fast enough to keep swapping second.

Webber, Button, Hamilton, and Alonso have all stood on the middle step of the podium, each preventing the other from amassing enough points to challenge the Red Bull leader.

Red Bull is pretty much guaranteed the Constructor’s Championship too, with a 125-point lead over McLaren. If Sebastian Vettel continues his winning ways, Red Bull could take the crown even if Mark Webber didn’t finish another race. That would give red Bull its second consecutive Constructer’s Championship—a long way from Ferrari’s 16, but Vettel is young.

Formula One races under the lights at Singapore next; the Singapore Grand Prix starts at 8 a.m. ET (8 p.m. local) on September 25. Ticket and Travel information is available at the official Formula1.com website.

The race will air on SPEED TV in the United States.

Driver’s Championship				Constructor’s Championship
1	Sebastian Vettel	284		1	RBR-Renault	451
2	Fernando Alonso	172		2	McLaren-Mercedes	325
3	Jenson Button	167		3	Ferrari	254
4	Mark Webber	167		4	Mercedes	108
5	Lewis Hamilton	158		5	Renault	70