Felt for Webber's anger, if I'd been him I would have seriously have taken Vettel out German style, because if we are not playing by team orders, then lets get stuck in and have a free for all.
Vettel's race was compromised by the team favouring Webber in the stops and his Kers breaking. If they'd given Vettel preference at the pitstops he'd have rejoined ahead of Hamilton and would've finished about 20 seconds ahead of Webber. Webber was only asked to hold station for 5 laps, unlike the 50 Vettel was aked to today, and Mark didn't ultimately respect the order, he just couldn't get past as he admitted after the race. Vettel was clearly faster today, but Red Bull seemed hell bent on denying him the win. Ted said early in the second stint that Webber had been asked to save his tyres with assurances that Vettel wouldn't be allowed to attack. Vettel also managed to 17 laps on his first set of options, easily keeping pace with Webber. He could've made a three stopper work but they wouldn't even let him race against the clock and cost him a place to Hamilton. Vettel deserved the win, he was the quickest guy all weekend and ruthlessly took the win despite his own team doing their best to hold him back. If the roles had been reversed everyone would be sayng good on Webber for knocking the Golden Boy off his pedestal. Hypocrisy at its finest.
Twitterfacts -Mercedes bet on a safety car or more rain. Partially explains Hamilton's fuel issues. -Mercedes scored biggest points haul from single race since they returned to F1 in 2010, finishing 3rd and 4th for 27 pts in Malaysia.
One more thing. Webber's (and Vettel's) fastest lap came on lap 45, the lap after he emerged from the pits side by side with Vettel and the lap before Seb past him. No way had he turned his engine down.
However it happened, for the first time I can remember Red Bull have come out an publicly criticised Vettel. When asked why the team did not ask Vettel to relinquish the position to Webber in the closing stages to make up for his defiance, Horner said:
You are entitled to your opinion but we don't have agree. Webber might have been more successful if Vettel hadn't been turned into a spoilt brat.
Ahhhh mannnnnn...... I missed the 2nd half of the race because somebody turned up at my door (I know!! on a sunday morning!!! <grrr>) I had to avoid the forum for a bit till the re-run not to spoil. (Hope I havnt missed any naughtyness here?) But look at what I missed! That was spicy!
And they have to because what Seb has done today is to signal that he thinks he is bigger than the team and will act accordingly.
If every driver was in the same car Webber would struggle to finish in the top 10 over a full season. Vettel is nothing special either, he's a very good driver, probably in the top 4 but I wouldn't say he was exceptional
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Can we have another race today? Currently watching Indy but I have a feeling it wont be quite as heated as the F1 was. The Vettel/Webber rivalry could make this season seriously tasty. Need MOAR!!!!
tbh, all people have to do is take their blinkers off, look at his behavior all the way through his F1 career and they'll come to the same conclusion. I think silverstone 2011 is a good place to start considering this afternoon, the only difference is Vettel had the talent to succeed in ignoring them rather than just trying.
Absolutely buzzing after today's race I actually think all of this controversy is great, but I think it finally puts to bed the idea that Vettel is a 'nice guy'. Very ruthless but It could be the difference between winning a championship or not, he obviously thought the punishment he would receive from RBR and the media (and his peers) was outweighed by maximising his points for today. Going to rumble on for the next three weeks though but Red Bull wish they had another back to back so they could quickly focus on another race!
Completely agree. This race will live long in the memory because of that scrap and all the tension afterwards, there'll be a heightened tension between Vettel and Webber for the rest of the season too. If the Red Bull's had crossed the line how Mercedes did the last stint would've been incredibly boring.
Fernando Alonso (DNF) “Today, unfortunately, we were very unlucky. After making a good start, I touched with Vettel at the second corner: it was a surprise to find him there, almost stopped and I don’t know what speed he was doing. Despite the fact the car was damaged, it didn’t seem to be too bad and, together with the team, we decided to keep going, because if we’d stopped immediately and then again on lap 3 or 4 to fit dry tyres, we would have dropped too far back and definitely lost the chance to finish up the front. It’s easy to criticise this decision, but at the time it seemed like the right one. It was certainly a shame, because here we could have fought with the Red Bulls, but circumstances didn’t help and apart from the wisdom of the decisions we took, bad luck really played its part, when you think how many off-track excursions there were in Australia without any consequence and even here when the cars first went out on track. Now we are already focusing on the coming races in China and Bahrain, where we hope to do better than last year, so that we arrive in Europe with as many points as possible.”
THAT BRAKE-TESTING CHEATING GERMAN FOOL!!!! I'm only kidding. I think it's poor from Alonso to say something like this, he was 100% at fault and shouldn't be making excuses