Sebastian Vettel becomes four-time world champion with emphatic drive in India

Sebastian Vettel

Sebastian Vettel became a four time world champion with an emphatic drive from pole position in India. However, the race wasn’t as easy for Vettel asitas been at the last two occasions with the German having to make his way up the traffic after pitting as early as end of lap 3. But the German did a great job of getting past the drivers who were yet to pit as they started on the medium tyres.

Nico Rosberg, unlike Vettel wasn’t able to get past the medium tyre starters and instead decided to pit early on lap 28. That got him into clean air and later pass the Lotus pair for second spot on the podium. His teammate Lewis Hamilton waited a bit longer for making his second stop and that meant he finished down in sixth.

He also used his tyres a bit more in the final stint and lost out to McLaren’s Sergio Perez who finished in fifth.Romain Grosjean scored his third podium in a row, this time from 17th on the grid with the Frenchman starting on the soft tyres, making his way up the grid and then doing the remainder of the stint on one set of medium tyres. Like Mercedes, the world champion driver of the team was not as good as managing tyres and Raikkonen fell down to seventh on the grid. He did make a stop on the penultimate lap but only because Di Resta was nearly 30 seconds behind in eight.

Felipe Massa, who started the race on the medium finished in a respectable fourth place.

Force India’s Adrian Sutil ensured a double points finish by finishing in ninth place, some five seconds behind his teammate but on a different strategy. The German driver started the race on medium tyres, stayed on them for 42 laps and then completed remaining 18 laps on a single set of soft tyres. In the process he kept a long que of drivers at bay led by Daniel Ricciardo who took the final championship point by finishing in 10th.

Fernando Alonso finished in 11th after hitting Mark Webber at the very first corner of the race. The latter first made contact with Raikkonen and then Alonso touched him too, damaging his car in the process, and subsequently being forced to make a pit stop for a new front wing.

Mark Webber too had a tough race. The Australian was set to finish in second but the team told him to stop the car on track due to an ongoing alternator issue.