» 2012 Indian GP: Vettel claims dominant win

The back half of the 2012 Formula 1 World Championship is beginning, more and more, to resemble last year’s campaign, after Sebastian Vettel cruised to his fourth consecutive race win with a dominant display at the Indian Grand Prix.

The German overcame a loose front aero splitter to lead home a hard-charging Fernando Alonso, while Mark Webber suffered a late-race KERS failure, managing to fend off a fast-closing Lewis Hamilton for the final podium spot.

The result gives Vettel a 13-point cushion over Alonso in the Drivers’ Championship standings. With three races left to run and Red Bull Racing showing incredible end of season form over its rivals, it’s looking more and more likely that he will claim a hat-trick of championship titles with just three races left to run.

In warm and very hazy conditions, Vettel managed to convert pole position into a race lead that would never be threatened, marginally squeezing team-mate Webber on the short blast to Turn 1. From that point, he was never headed, skipping away into an early lead to occupy first lap for each of the race’s 60 laps.

There was some drama at the first corner when Michael Schumacher was clipped by Jean-Éric Vergne under braking for Turn 1. Schumacher picked up a right-rear puncture, while Vergne pitted for damage to his front wing. Neither was a factor for the rest of the race, with Schumacher touring around in last position before retiring his car with a handful of laps to go in order to secure a new gearbox for next weekend’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

That was one of three punctures witnessed during the race, in what was an alarming trend of front wings tagging tyres. Sergio Pérez turned in too early on Daniel Ricciardo as he attempted a passing move and saw his Pirelli go pop, and that led to the Mexican’s retirement at one-third distance.

Schumacher copped a puncture on the opening lap...

...while Maldonado suffered the same fate mid-race

Punctures were the order of the day at the Indian Grand Prix…

That wouldn’t be the last of it, as Pastor Maldonado suffered the same fate after he was clipped by Kamui Kobayashi at Turn 5. He would limp back to the pits and finish a lowly 16th.

The only other retirement came to Pedro de la Rosa, whose cooling-poor HRT suffered a sudden brake failure at the end of the back straight, sending the hapless Spaniard careering backwards into the barriers – fortunately without injury to the veteran driver.

Webber slotted into second place in the early laps. He wasn’t fast enough to peg the gap to Vettel, but he was quick enough to keep him clear of the chasing pack.

Just behind him, a fast and exciting battle raged between Alonso and the two McLarens. As Button and McLaren diced for third place along the back straight on the opening lap, Alonso picked up an almighty slipstream to overtake both of them before Turn 4, only to be re-passed by both on the run into Turn 5.

On the next lap, Alonso tried again, using a high top-gear ratio and a helping of DRS to slingshot past Hamilton, before repeating the same trick on Button three laps later.

It was a clever set-up call by Ferrari, who tweaked both Alonso and Massa’s F2012s to be ultra-quick in a straight line, while their rivals at McLaren and Lotus – as Kimi Räikkönen found out all race – were being made to pay for opting for too much downforce at the expense of straightline speed.

Up at the front, Vettel ran a one-stop strategy and claimed an untroubled 26th career win, moving him ahead of Jim Clark and Niki Lauda on the all-time winners’ list, and only one short of the tally claimed by Sir Jackie Stewart.

He was thwarted from claiming back-to-back grand chelems – pole, leading every lap and posting the fastest lap of the race – when Jenson Button recorded the fastest tour of the Buddh International Circuit on the final lap of the race.

Behind him, Alonso managed to overhaul Webber with just over a dozen laps to run, courtesy of the Australian being stymied by a KERS failure. After breezing by the hobbled Red Bull, Alonso set about trying to chase down Vettel in the closing laps, but ran out of time and grip to make a grandstand finish even look remotely likely.

After breezing past team-mate Button, Hamilton set about chasing down the KERS-hobbled Webber

Webber’s troubles gave fourth-placed Hamilton the impetus to stage a bid for the final podium slot. After rapidly closing down the gap to Webber, a mistake on the penultimate lap gave the Aussie enough breathing space to secure third place, while Hamilton crossed the finish line in his wheeltracks to salvage fourth.

Button finished fifth after battling with vibrations brought on by flat-spotting a front tyre, while Felipe Massa claimed another points finish with a solid drive to sixth place.

Räikkönen finished a disappointing seventh, a poor result given that his Lotus had plenty of grip, but was hampered by a poor set-up choice that left him down on straightline speed.

After managing to leapfrog Massa in the round of pit stops, he was immediately overtaken by the Brazilian on his outlap when Massa had the benefit of DRS.

Nico Hülkenberg salvaged plenty of Force India pride with an excellent drive to eighth place, a welcome recovery after the team’s poor qualifying performance on Saturday and equally important given the enormous number of VIP guests in attendance for the team’s ‘home’ race.

Ninth place went to Romain Grosjean – who bucked the trend of much of the field by starting on the harder-compound Pirellis and running a long opening stint – while Bruno Senna drove a sensible, error-free race to snatch the final point with tenth place, with the highlight being a great overtaking move on Nico Rosberg around the outside of Turn 4.

Bruno Senna drove a mature race to finish tenth

Hülkenberg staged a great scrap with Sergio Perez in the early stages en route to finishing eighth

Bruno Senna recovered from his qualifying woes to deliver Williams another points’ finish, while Nico Hülkenberg auditioned for a Sauber seat with another fine race for Force India

Rosberg finished outside the points to continue Mercedes’ miserable run over the last three races, which have not seen either of the team’s cars finish in the points. How his win at China must seem like an eternity ago, but at least the team has some consolation in the fact that their main rivals, Sauber, also had a point-less weekend.

After Pérez’s retirement, it was all on the shoulder of Kamui Kobayashi to deliver something of a result. But the Japanese has struggled all weekend long here, and he never looked like challenging for points. Such was the performance between he and Pérez, that it certainly won’t help his chances being retained by the team for 2013, particularly with the rumours linking Hülkenberg to a seat with the Swiss team…

The celebrations were raucous but brief in the Red Bull garages, with the teams having to rapidly get their packing gear together in order to ship their entire freight over to the United Arab Emirates for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix next weekend.

Despite the Indian Grand Prix organisers again putting on a good show – the decision to put Martin Brundle in charge of the post-race podium interviews was a masterstroke, and one that should be considered a full-time appointment – fans and the media alike were almost unanimous in their criticism of the race itself, which was rather processional by 2012 standards.

At least we all know that next weekend’s race at Yas Marina will be a snoozefest, although one will hope for something other than a Vettel win in order to breath life back into the 2012 championship race.

2012 Indian Formula 1 Grand Prix – Final Classification (60 laps):

	Driver	Team	Laps	Result
1.	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull Racing Renault RB8	60	1:31:10.744
2.	Fernando Alonso	Scuderia Ferrari F2012	60	+ 9.437
3.	Mark Webber	Red Bull Racing Renault RB8	60	+ 13.217
4.	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren Mercedes MP4-27	60	+ 13.909
5.	Jenson Button	McLaren Mercedes MP4-27	60	+ 26.266
6.	Felipe Massa	Scuderia Ferrari F2012	60	+ 44.674
7.	Kimi Räikkönen	Lotus F1 Renault E20	60	+ 45.227
8.	Nico Hülkenberg	Force India Mercedes VJM05	60	+ 54.998
9.	Romain Grosjean	Lotus F1 Renault E20	60	+ 56.103
10.	Bruno Senna	Williams Renault FW34	60	+ 1:14.975
11.	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes AMG F1 W03	60	+ 1:21.694
12.	Paul di Resta	Force India Mercedes VJM05	60	+ 1:22.815
13.	Daniel Ricciardo	Scuderia Toro Rosso Ferrari STR7	60	+ 1:26.064
14.	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber Ferrari C31	60	+ 1:26.495
15.	Jean-Éric Vergne	Scuderia Toro Rosso Ferrari STR7	59	1 lap behind
16.	Pastor Maldonado	Williams Renault FW34	59	1 lap behind
17.	Vitaly Petrov	Caterham Renault CT01	59	1 lap behind
18.	Heikki Kovalainen	Caterham Renault CT01	59	1 lap behind
19.	Charles Pic	Marussia Racing Cosworth MR01	59	1 lap behind
20.	Timo Glock	Marussia Racing Cosworth MR01	59	1 lap behind
21.	Narain Karthikeyan	HRTF1 Cosworth F112	58	2 laps behind
22.	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes AMG F1 W03	55	Gearbox
	NOT CLASSIFIED
DNF.	Pedro de la Rosa	HRTF1 Cosworth F112	44	Brakes
DNF.	Sergio Pérez	Sauber Ferrari C31	20	Puncture
	FASTEST LAP
	Jenson Button	McLaren Mercedes MP4-27	60	1:28.203