Sebastian Vettel has been unmatched this whole season. His victory in the inaugural Indian Grand Prix at the Buddh International Circuit has taken his tally of the season to eleven wins. With two races to go in the season, Vettel now has his eyes on Schumacher’s record tally of 13 race wins in a season. Behind him were Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso, teammate Mark Webber and Michael Schumacher who outpaced Nico Rosberg for fifth. Lewis Hamilton finished in seventh after yet another tussle with Felipe Massa. iSporter Sahil Bhalla reviews the Indian GP.
There was plenty of good racing on offer and a near capacity crowd meant that everyone present at the track had an awfully good outing. This was the perfect advertisement for Formula 1 where India only have two drivers competing, Karthikeyan and Chandhok.
At the start it was all Button and Schumacher. Button jumped Alonso at turn 1 and made his way past Webber at turn 4. Schumacher on the other hand gained three places from 11th to 8th, while Bruno Senna moved up to 10th after starting from 14th. Right from the beginning of the race there were plenty of incidents. Kobayashi, Trulli and Barrichello were all involved in some contact or the other and the Sauber driver was forced into an early retirement while extra early pit stops were called for the others. Another causality was Timo Glock who retired alongside Maldonado within the first lap.
Vettel was unmatchable throughout the race and Button and Webber could do nothing about this. This made the front of the race not too exciting to watch. The midfield had some packed entertainment. Sutil, Alguersuari, Buemi and Senna were all racing neck and neck through most of the race. The two DRS zones allowed the Toro Rosso’s to eventually get in front of the Renault but shortly after, Buemi’s engine gave up.
Alonso, Webber, Button and Vettel all pitted as usual around lap 17. Seven laps later, on lap 24, Massa and Hamilton collided once again. This is an ever-increasing feud between the two. Hamilton tried to pass Massa into turn five. Massa as it appeared, did not see Hamilton come in quickly and as he turned into the corner, his Ferrari spun off into the run-off area. The result? A broken wing for Hamilton and what was a slight break for the McLaren, Massa got a drive-through penalty for causing the collision. This was the right decision by the Stewards. Massa clattered over turn 9 shortly after coming out of the pits and this broke his suspension and sent him into retirement. This was very reminiscent of his incident during qualifying.
Near the end of the race, Button was hotly behind Vettel but as Vettel got his tyres up to speed, after his final pit stop, he began to pull away. Vettel had led every lap of the race and drove super well in the end to win by over eight seconds. As another change for the season, Vettel also claimed the fastest lap of the race on the last lap of the weekend.
What was good news for Indian fans all around was on two fronts; Firstly, the Force India of Adrian Sutil finished in 9th position and garnered some points. Secondly, the HRT of Karthikeyan finished the race in 17th, which isn’t so bad considering he hasn’t raced much of the season and his car isn’t up to speed.
Alguersuari finished in 8th, just in front of Sutil and Sergio Perez got the last points for the race.
The celebrations were different this time around. Celebrations on the podium were largely muted as the top three remembered Dan Wheldon and Marco Simoncelli who lost their lives while racing in the last fortnight. All three of them dedicated this race in their memory.
All in all, the Indian Grand Prix lived up to its hype. Some were saying it might not happen or it wouldn’t be as great because of what happened with the Commonwealth Games, but with all the problems, the Indian organizers pulled off a fantastic race. Here is looking forward to the next Indian Grand Prix. Maybe next year there will be an Indian on the podium?
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