There is no other way to describe the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix than to say it was a master class; a demonstration of just why Sebastian Vettel is a four-time world champion. It was perfection on wheels as the German won his 11th race of the season and the seventh in succession. To complete the precision, Red Bull scored a one-two finish as an appropriate mark of their continuing status as world champion constructors.
Mark Webber’s stunning lap in qualifying was good enough for pole position and an indication of how much he wants to win a race in 2013 before leaving at the end of the season. But not even the best efforts of the Australian could match what Vettel had up his sleeve for this 17th round of the championship.
Webber, for once, made a reasonable start. Vettel’s was marginally better; good enough to give him the inside line to the first corner. And that was that.
After five laps, he was 4.7 seconds ahead. The thought that he might have ruined his tyres in the process was to be completely demolished by a pace that was quite staggering, even by Vettel’s standards.
Not only did he keep the tyres alive, he made them last several laps longer than any of the leading drivers. By the time he made his first stop at the end of lap 14, Vettel had enough in hand to get in and out of the pits without losing the lead. His pace had been such that, even on the well-worn soft tyre, he had been lapping quicker than all of the drivers emerging from the pits on brand new medium tyres which, even allowing for the 0.6-sec a lap difference, were not as slow as Vettel made them look.
And so it went on. He repeated the process leading up to his second and final stop before cruising home to win by half a minute; a huge margin, even by Vettel’s powerful standards.
Webber, having been trapped at the first corner and dropping to third behind Nico Rosberg, eventually got the best of the Mercedes driver, but not before he had been stuck behind the one-stopping Force India of Adrian Sutil for long enough to dismiss any thought, no matter how fanciful, of trying to catch Vettel.
When it came to the option of a one-stop strategy, Lotus were thought to be in favour, given a history this season of being kind to tyres. But it didn’t work out that way and Romain Grosjean had to accept fourth place behind Rosberg.
Grosjean’s failure to get on the podium for the fourth race in succession was a blow to Lotus in their battle for third place in the Constructors’ Championship, particularly as a disastrous weekend for Kimi Raikkonen had started with disqualification from an excellent fifth on the grid because the floor, battered on the kerbs, had broken and failed to pass a defection test. Raikkonen, not having started among unruly back markers since 2006, got no further than the first corner where a touch against the rear wheel of a Caterham broke a track rod.
The only good news for Lotus was that Ferrari, their closest championship rival, had not fared much better with a car that lacked traction and grip. Fernando Alonso, out-qualified yet again by Felipe Massa, eventually jumped ahead of the Brazilian when Massa was put on a different strategy. But the start of a late charge on the soft tyre brought a controversial, not to say scary, moment following the final pit stop as Alonso rejoined and overtook Jean-Eric Vergne’s Toro Rosso with all four wheels off the track.
Vettel’s drive, by comparison, was as uneventful as it appeared effortless. It was, as usual, the result of detailed thought given to every aspect of a car he said was ‘unbelievable’.
Red Bull team chief Christian Horner felt the same way about his driver. ‘That drive was astonishing,’ said Horner, with genuine wonder. ‘Seb had absolutely no issues and the lap times he got from the tyres were way beyond what we expected. It was like he selected another gear.’
Last week in India was the champion’s drive. Now came the master class. Quite astonishing indeed.