VETTEL CHARGES BACK AT SILVERSTONE
By Motorsportchannel.com
22 June 2009

It was an inevitable victory for Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull Racing on Sunday's British Grand Prix at Silverstone for Round 8 of the Formula One Championships. Vettel and team mate Mark Webber simply had better pace throughout the weekend against title rivals Brawn Grand Prix and the rest of the field.

Vettel's victory was his third in his brief F1 career, while Webber took second for only the second time this season, completing Red Bull Racing's second 1-2 finish of the season since the Chinese Grand Prix in April.

"The car was fantastic, just unbelievable. I was able to push more and more and the tyres were very consistent. The second stint wasn’t so easy; there were a lot of lapped cars that were battling with each other, so the team told me to be careful."

"From the last pit stop I was in clean air and from then on I was just counting down each lap. I had quite a big gap to Mark (Webber) and was controlling the race from that point on."

Brawn Grand Prix's Rubens Barrichello (above & right) drove an assured race to bring his car home in third position at the team's home Grand Prix. Team mate Jenson Button (above right) managed only a sixth position for 3 points, struggling with grip all weekend long.

Button and Barrichello still lead the Drivers standings with 64 and 41 points respectively to third place Vettel with 39 points, while Brawn GP leads the Constructors' with 105 points to Red Bull Racing's 74.5 points.

Barrichello commented on his podium finish, "The car has been well balanced and we certainly haven't lost performance since the last race, it's just that we have suffered badly in the cool conditions with our tyre temperatures. I had a good start to maintain second but Sebastian (Vettel) then disappeared in front of me and we knew that we were competing for third."

"Still to come away with third and the best position that the team could have achieved this weekend is satisfying and I'm happy to have taken some points out of Jenson's lead," he added.

McLaren duo of Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen had by far their worst race of the season with Hamilton crawling home 16th and Kovalainen retiring from an accident with Toro Rosso's Sebastian Bourdais.

“I gave it my all on raceday,” Hamilton (left) said. “Despite fighting for the lower positions, I was absolutely on the limit for the whole race. We knew it would be difficult, and I enjoyed my battle with Fernando (Alonso), but we didn’t have the pace to get into the points."

Kovalainen (right) spent the majority of his race pushing to make up places from way back in 19th in the early stint. The Finn was fuelled heavy for a one-stopper, pitting on lap 35 and switching from Option to Prime. A lap later, he was hit from behind by Bourdais under braking for Vale corner.

The rear impact punctured his MP4-24's left-rear tyre, and, while he pitted for new tyres, he immediately reported that the rear-corner felt strange. The team chose to pull him into the pits and retire him for safety reasons.

Six points in the bag for Ferrari, a fourth place for Felipe Massa and an eighth for Kimi Raikkonen (left).

With this result, Massa has moved up to sixth place in the Drivers’ classification, while Raikkonen stays tenth: Ferrari has consolidated its fourth place in the Constructors’ Championship.

Massa (right) quoted, “To start eleventh and finish fourth is a really great result. We weren’t expecting it and so we are doubly happy."

"We had a good strategy and I pushed to the maximum at the key moments. The KERS was a great help, especially at the start, but the whole car was also working well."

BMW Sauber F1 Team had another horrendous race for the 2009 F1 campaign with both Robert Kubica (above left) and Nick Heidfeld (above right) barely keeping up to stay in the midfield throughout the race. In the end, the team drivers came away empty-handed with Kubica 13th and Heidfeld 15th. It was a similarly disappointing race for the Renault F1 Team as Nelson Piquet (below left) and Fernando Alonso (below right) finished in 12th and 14th places respectively.

Toyota garnered two points from a frustrating race as hopes were high for a podium challenge after a competitive qualifying performance by the drivers.

Jarno Trulli (left) started on the second row but a launch issue saw him lose ground off the line to leave him seventh at the end of the first lap. Timo Glock dropped three places to 11th on the opening lap.

Trulli's first stop came on lap 18 and he opted for another set of soft tyres, with fast work by the pit crew moving him up to sixth. Glock (right) stopped a lap later and followed the same tyre strategy, emerging again in 11th.

With decreasing track temperatures, the team chose a short final stint for both drivers on the hard tyres. Trulli dropped to seventh but Glock came out ninth and fighting for the final point.

As Trulli brought the car home in seventh, Glock hounded the eighth-placed Raikkonen but there was no opportunity to pass.

AT&T Williams' Nico Rosberg (above left) claimed a second successive fifth place finish, his four points promoting the team into the top half of the Constructors’ Championship to fifth place. Despite gaining track position in the first lap and running in fourth up until his first stop, Kazuki Nakajima (above right) was unable to convert the competitive pace he’s demonstrated all weekend and dropped down the order to end the race in P11.

Giancarlo Fisichella (left) put in a faultless drive to tenth position for the Force India F1 Team.

An impressive early stint, bold overtaking moves and an aggressive pit stop strategy moved the Italian six places from his starting position to end the race under two seconds from a points-scoring eighth position.

Team mate Adrian Sutil started the race from the pit lane following Saturday's qualifying accident. The team elected for a one-stop strategy and Sutil was able to reclaim three positions to finish 17th overall. For a second race in succession he enjoyed a close battle with Hamilton, finishing just over a second from the reigning champion.

Toro Rosso's Sebastien Buemi (right) rounded off eighteen and last in the British Grand Prix classifications.

[View Results & Standings]

The entourage goes on a brief three-week break before moving on to the Grand Prix of Germany in Nurburgring on 12 July.