Sebastian Vettel took victory at Yeongam to record his third consecutive Korean Grand Prix win and extended his World drivers championship lead to 77 points as main title rival Fernando Alonso could only manage sixth place. Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton can all mathematically win the title but unless Vettel loses all his driving abilities or his RB8 suddenly becomes incredibly unreliable, it’s extremely unlikely that Vettel will fail to become a four time World champion!
The race got off to a chaotic start, Vettel disappeared off into turn one while everyone else played catch-up, Daniel Ricciardo had an Alonso like start jumping from 12th to 8th place while Romain Grosjean overtook Hamilton on the brakes into turn 3 as Felipe Massa spun his Ferrari almost collecting team mate Alonso and forcing everyone behind wide allowing Button to pass Perez!
Ricciardo, now upto seventh place courtesy of Massa’s spin on lap one soon found himself going backwards being passed by Raikkonen and then the driver he is replacing at Red Bull next season, Mark Webber and soon after Raikkonen overtook next season’s Ferrari teammate Alonso for fifth place. All this happening before lap 10, definitely one of the most eventful first 10 laps this season!
In the next few laps, we saw battles between Romain Grosjean and Hamilton, and Alonso and Nico Hulkenberg with the lesser experienced drivers coming out on top in their respective battles. Both relative rookies did fantastic jobs for their respective teams to finish the race in third and fourth place. Although you’d have to say that Hulkenberg had some fortune with Rosberg’s front wing failing as he passed team mate Hamilton on lap 28 which forced an additional pitstop for Rosberg!
Then we hear team radio of Hamilton saying “When are you going to call me in man? These tires are f**ked”; I presume that this message came as Rosberg overtook the Briton as the response said “we are going to service Nico first, you’ll be in next lap”. Judging from the last couple of races, it sounds like Hamilton is getting as frustrated with Mercedes as he did with McLaren last season.
On lap 31, McLaren’s Sergio Perez had a massive tyre delamination scattering pieces of carbon fiber everywhere, which punctured Webber’s tyre forcing a second pitstop just one lap after he had previously stopped for tyres, but the damage was minimal because the safety car was depoloyed.
Afterwards Webber was making his way through the field after starting 13th because of the 10 place grid penalty he incurred for a third reprimand at the previous race. Before Adrian Sutil lost the rear end of his Force India and ploughed into the side of Webber pushing the bodywork against the Australians exhaust which ignited a fire at the rear of the RB8 which forced Webber to bail out immediately meaning retirement for the second consecutive race, how unlucky can Webber be?
Before Webber’s fiery RB8 brought out the safety car again; and the fire marshall’s car which ended up on the track ahead of the safety car somehow (FIA screwup I’d suspect), Raikkonen managed to make up two places, jumping Hulkenberg for third and then a mistake from teammate Grosjean allows the Finn to get past the Frenchman for second place and that’s the way it stayed.
Sauber’s Gutierrez and Williams’ Maldonado who were squabbling over 10th place drifted off the racing line allowing Massa to slide up the inside into 10th. Hamilton had no answer to Hulkenberg’s pace out of the corners and extreme top speed which allowed the German to stay ahead even with Hamilton’s DRS open. leaving Hamilton asking his team over the radio if they had any ideas on how to overtake the German. Teammate Rosberg finally got past Jenson Button’s McLaren for seventh as Daniel Ricciardo parked his car on the grass on lap 53 moving Sergio Perez into the points.
Top 10 finishing positions for the Korean Grand Prix:
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1. Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull) 1:43:13.701 2. Kimi Raikkonen (Lotus) +4.200 3. Romain Grosjean (Lotus) +4.900 4. Nico Hulkenberg (Sauber) +24.100 5. Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) +25.200 |
6. Fernando Alonso (Ferrari) +26.100 7. Nico Rosberg (Mercedes) +26.600 8. Jenson Button (McLaren) +32.200 9. Felipe Massa (Ferrari) +34.300 10. Sergio Perez (McLaren) +35.100 |
