Vettel survives two Safety Cars to win at Korea

Sebastian Vettel survived two Safety Car periods to take his fourth consecutive Grand Prix win of the season. However, this win was much less dominant than that in Singapore where the German took the chequered flag with a margin of over 30 seconds to Fernando Alonso.

The first Safety Car came out when Sergio Perez suffered a massive delamination on the back-straight forcing Charlie Whiting to react immediately. Vettel lead the field safely at the restart but the Safety Car had to come out again when Mark Webber’s RB9 caught fire for a second race in running. This time it was caused when Adrian Sutil’s Force India lost his rear on the back straight and caught the Red Bull of Mark Webber, damaging his fuel pumps.After the second Safety Car, Vettel cruised to take his eight win of the season.

Kimi Raikkonen finished the race four seconds behind in second place. The Finn used the two Safety Cars to recover from his poor grid slot of ninth to finish in second place for sixth time this season.

Romain Grosjean overtook Lewis Hamilton on the opening lap and maintained a decent lead over Sebastian Vettel during the final stint. However, in between the two Safety Cars, he ran wide at the final corner handing second place to teammate Kimi Raikkonen. Nevertheless, he went on take his third podium of the season.

Nico Hulkenberg drove a fantastic race to finish in a career equalling fourth place. The German driver held off Lewis Hamilton for final seven laps of the race in a great late race scrap which also included Fernando Alonso, Nico Rosberg and Jenson Button.

Hamilton’s frustrating afternoon started much earlier before he got held up by Nico Hulkenberg. The British driver was left frustrated after the team didn’t allow him to pit despite him losing 2-4 seconds per lap to the leaders. After his pit stop he came out behind the second Lotus of Kimi Raikkonen. Luckily for him, the Safety Car neutralised the time lost on track.

Fernando Alonso, meanwhile finished in a disappointing sixth place at Korea. His Ferrari didn’t had the pace to challenge the leaders and Alonso couldn’t do anything special at the start either.

Nico Rosberg took seventh after suffering a front wing failure in middle of the race. The failure was similar to what Alonso had earlier this season in Malaysia but the reason for this one is yet unknown.

Jenson Button and Sergio Perez completed a double points finish for McLaren. The former pitted as early as lap four resulting in a chain reaction as other drivers found out that medium prime tyre was better in race trim.

Felipe Massa got sandwiched between the two McLarens to finish in ninth place and take two championships points. However, his result could have been far better had he not spun on the opening lap of the race.

Esteban Gutierrez finished in 11th ahead of the Williams due of Valterri Bottas and Pastor Maldonado. The trio along with Massa and Perez were involved in a great five driver fight with Massa coming out on top and Maldonado at the bottom, who initially led the fight.

Force India had another DNF with Di Resta crashing out of the race and Sutil retiring with a damaged car after his colission with Mark Webber.