Sebastian Vettel went out to win the Chinese Grand Prix held on 19th April, closely followed by his teammate Mark Webber making it a 1-2 finish for Red Bull for the first time and their first ever win. Due to the torrential rains, the race was started under safety car and the track was wet throughout the race.
Fernando Alonso’s strategy caused him the race. The double World Champion started from second position, but he pitted on the last lap of the safety car, making him start from last position once the safety car was called in. The Spaniard was light on fuel, as his car approximately weighed 637kgs with the fuel, compared to Vettel’s Red Bull which weighed about 7kgs more.
Ferrari for a third time had a bad outing. The scarlet team didn’t qualify that well, but Massa reached the top 5 when his car had some failure, which ended his race. Kimi had another bad outing. Toyota and BMW didn’t have a great weekend either.
With Hamilton’s car having the intermediate diffuser, he did some good overtaking maneuvers but had to pay for the mistakes he had done. The last two Grand Prix winner Jenson Button grabbed the third position for the Brawn GP.
The young Vettel commented after the race, “It’s unbelievable – I’m so, so happy. Ten laps from the end I tried to control the gap between me and the car behind and adapt my pace. I was trying to have everything under control, but it was difficult. At some points I was trying to bring the car home, but that meant I lost focus, so then I just tried to take it corner by corner, not looking too far ahead. On the last two laps I backed off a bit, as I didn’t want to risk aquaplaning on the water at the side of the track. And then… well it’s just fantastic. Winning my second race, one with Toro Rosso and one with Red Bull, makes me extremely happy and I hope we can continue working in this direction! I’m extremely proud and happy. I’m so happy to have won the race, it was an enormous and great job by the whole of Red Bull. I want to say a massive thank you to them all, everyone has worked so hard, so thanks to the team and also to Red Bull. Greetings to Austria!â€
