Not sure but it doesn't change the fact that Red Bull screwed Webber. Lap times were fine before his second stop, he could easily have gone longer. They wanted him out of Vettel's way.
yeah F1 pit radio says it was for Perez. Nothing new, Lewis complained of back runners in China and Alonso with them at Monza qualifying.
Having to ask F1 pit radio again to see if this "New" story that Vettel demanded Red Bull keep Webber away from him. Edit: Confirmed, both stories are BS, Vettel never demanded Webber to "get out of the way" or "stay away" from him in the race. Apart from the Perez incident when lapping him.
I'm still failing to see where Red Bull screwed Webber. He'd spent half the race behind Grosjean and failed to put any pressure on him so they put him on a three stopper to undercut him. Webber made a hash of getting by Romain with vastly superior tyres (scuppering any chance of catching Vettel in the process), how was he going to manage it on the same strategy? Vettel made his strategy work, Webber didn't.
This. Vettel played a waiting game, looked after his tyres and then pounced on Grosjean when he had free air to make a charge. Very disciplined victory and shows he does have good racecraft when needed, something he has not had to show for a while.
There was no need to switch Webber to a 3 stop and it looked like he was used to try and trigger Lotus into a pit stop. I also thought it was strange that he had a 15 sec lead with 9/10 laps to go and at that point Vettel was only 6/10ths quicker, surely it was worth gambling to leave him out with that margin, especially as Vettel had to pass Grisjean? I thought the Lotus strategy was neither here nor there and for a car that was capable of looking after its tyres a 2 stop was the way to go, but the way they did it (covering Webber's 3 stop) was just gifting the win to Vettel. Vettel's engineer summed it up over the radio when half way through he said he was "racing Grosjean" and not Webber?
Did RBR screw Webber, or did they play the team game and wolf-pack Grosjean, forcing him to use up his tyres by telling Webber to put him under pressure during the first stint and letting Vettel trail slightly behind conserving his tyres, wearing Grosjeans tyres out. There's no way to find out if Webber could've made a 2 stop, and when Webber was catching Grosjean, Vettel was catching Webber. Vettel quickly passed Grosjean for the lead when he needed to on his fresh hard tyres, a feat Webber struggled to do when Grosjean tyres were even worse and he had the fast softs on, so who can say what would've happened if Webber had gone for the 2 stop, would Grosjean have won instead? The way I see it RBR were 2nd and 3rd so they changed strategy on one driver and finished the race 1-2
I thought that watching it, but looking back I think they played it perfectly, they gave Romain a fighting chance by forcing both Red Bull's to pass him on track. They couldn't have covered everything, they didn't have the pace. If they'd given Romain fresher tyres at the end they'd have lost track position and he'd have been slower anyway. They stuck to the optimum strategy and forced both Red Bulls to do something different, Vettel with the very long middle stint and Webber with the three stopper.
I think that's a valid point, they could cover both basis which was likely to result in a win for 1 of their 2 drivers. I still think the engineer saying that he "wasn't" racing Webber was poignant to say the least.
It just seems (with hindsight) that Vettel made the optimum strategy work and I would have thought that the long stint would have been something that Lotus would have wanted to do themselves, to leave the shorter end stint. I reminded me abit of the final race of 2010 when Webber and Alonso went for the shorter stint and Vettel stayed out and consequently won the WDC.
