Vettel Takes The Win Again In Spain

The Spanish Grand Prix 2011 was a very exiting race right from the start.

With Webber on pole followed by Vettel and Hamilton nobody would have imagined Alonso, on his home soil, rocketing from P4 to P1 in the opening straight down into turn 1. With this great start boosting his confidence Alonso managed to hold onto first place, ahead of world champion Sebastian Vettel, for the first 9 laps, but with both Red Bulls putting in consistently faster lap times the Red Bull team decided to pull Vettel in early for fresher tires and to put him in some open track. Vettel's out lap saw him gaining on Alonso who then also pitted to cover Vettel, but Vettel managed to get ahead before he could re-emerge from the pits.

Alonso from here dropped further and further off the pace, finishing up in 5th.

Button did not have such a great start, dropping from 5th to 10th before the end of lap 1. However he had another good drive from the back and together with a 3 stop strategy managed to finish in 3rd, which was still > 35 secs off the race winner, Vettel.

Button said: "I had a terrible start and was on the outside into Turn One and Turn Three, where I lost further places. I was down in 10th at the end of the first lap, which was extremely disappointing."

The closest contender for 1st place was Lewis Hamilton. Starting 3rd on the grid he put in a consistently fast race, matching Vettel and outpacing him towards the end. The last 9 laps Hamilton and Vettel were within a few car lengths of each other putting Vettel under immense pressure. Unfortunately for Hamilton, even with KERS and DRS he could not muster an overtake on Vettel, finishing 0.6secs behind at the chequered flag.

Hamilton commented: "Despite DRS, it’s still very difficult to overtake at this track – you can’t follow through Turn Three or Turn Nine, so that makes it really hard. Also, I was in Sebastian’s [Vettel] dirty air and the car was sliding a lot – it was incredibly tough behind him."

This race may mark the start of come back for some of the other teams and drivers over the Red Bull dominance we have seen so far this season, especially if Red Bull cannot fix their apparent reliability problems with their KERS system.

22-May-2011
« Back to articles