2013 Bah GP – Weekend recap – Vettel

Sebastian Vettel was the class of the field in Bahrain this past weekend.

The reigning three-time Formula One World Champion may not have topped the timing charts throughout practice and qualifying but the race itself from start to finish it was clear there was only ever going to be one winner.

The weekend started fairly quietly for Red Bull, the Ferrari’s began brightly on Friday morning with both Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso topping the times.

Then Friday afternoon came and it was Kimi Raikkonen’s turn to set the fastest lap, but in both sessions Red Bull were only marginally off the pace, Vettel was 0.3 seconds behind in FP1 and only 0.1 in FP2.

In FP3 on Saturday morning, once again Vettel was just 0.1 seconds behind the fastest time set, this time by Fernando Alonso, so it was clear that Vettel would go into qualifying looking very strong.

Sebastian Vettel probably expected to start the race on the front row, but he was probably surprised to be in second place German compatriot Nico Rosberg.

?I?m not disappointed with that. Well done to Nico, it was a strong lap and it was all his today. When I crossed the line I saw I was second on the screen and didn?t know how much I was missing to pole as the lap was fine. When I got told the gap to P1, it was clear that even with a perfect lap he was unbeatable today, but nevertheless I?m very happy. We managed to save some tyres throughout qualifying and it will be about tyre degradation tomorrow, so we?ll see what happens. It?s good to start from the front.? Vettel said speaking to formula1.com.

Vettel got a good start away from the grid and was raced hard by Nico Rosberg who pushed Vettel to the inside before drifting back outwide to take the corner, this enabled Fernando Alonso the chance to run around the outside and to no fault of Vettel’s the German slipped down to third by the time the cars had come through the second corner of the opening lap.

But that wasn’t going to prevent getting an early foothold of his Grand Prix and before even half of the opening lap had been completed Vettel make an excellent overtaking manoeuvre stick on Alonso to claim back second place.

By lap three Vettel was in the lead, the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg was simply lacking the race pace to go with it’s qualifying speed and he could do little to fend off the faster Sebastian Vettel.

While Vettel may have lost the lead following the first round of pit stops it wasn’t long before he was out infront again on lap, overtaking Kimi Raikkonen who was working a different pit strategy

By the time Vettel pitted for his third and final stop on lap 43 he was in and out of the pits before Raikkonen could catch him.

From this point on we saw very little of Vettel as it was clear he would take the victory.

?It was good fun at the beginning with some very tight wheel to wheel racing. At the start you don?t know if you will be quick or not, as everyone is a bit all over the place, including yourself! It?s important to get to the front; we saw at the last race that if you get stuck behind someone then it does have an impact on tyre wear and today it was important to make use of the tyres we had saved from qualifying yesterday. I love to be in clean air, so I was pushing hard to get into the lead and, with the speed we had mid-race, it was quite comfortable today. Well done to the whole team, to everyone here, to the factory in the background and especially to those who were working on the strategy today; it worked just as we expected, so we obviously got the numbers right.?