Vettel leads championship after winning in Korea

Sebastian Vettel out in front

Sebastian Vettel has overtaken Fernando Alonso in the drivers’ standings after taking victory at the Korean Grand Prix.

The German secured his fourth win of 2012, and his third in a row having won last weekend in Japan and in Singapore the race before, after controlling the grand prix at Korea from start to finish, and a third consecutive world championship is very much on the cards for him.

It was the Red Bull of Mark Webber who started on pole position, but by starting in second, Vettel jumped his teammate immediately into turn one. Alonso finished third in the race, but has seen his lead disappear, as now the Spaniard is six points behind Vettel in the fight for the world title.

Red Bull have been dominant all weekend at the Yeongam circuit, and it was a surprise that it wasn’t Vettel who was on pole.

With Webber the man starting from the first grid slot, the Australian knew he had to get a good get away to keep Vettel at bay. Instead, he endured one of his infamous slow beginnings, and Vettel was able to get him easily into turn one. Behind the Red Bulls, Alonso from fourth jumped Lewis

Hamilton, and there was a huge battle going on down the long straight.

Webber came back at Vettel, but the latter did enough to hold him off. Meanwhile, Alonso, Hamilton, Felipe Massa and Kimi Räikkönen were all racing wheel-to-wheel, but kept the racing clean. The same couldn’t be said for Kamui Kobayashi.

The Japanese driver who superbly finished on the podium last week in front of his adoring people in Suzuka crashed into Jenson Button, and got a drive-through penalty for causing a collision. Button retired soon after. Vettel was in his element at the front, and by lap 10 he had a healthy lead over Webber.

Hamilton by pitting first triggered all of the others to pit after lap 14, but the McLaren driver was clearly struggling, and just kept on falling back during the grand prix, losing places to Räikkönen and Massa. His race went from bad to worse as he later collected some astroturf on his sidepod, and he eventually finished 10th having started from third.

By the second round of stops, Alonso was cutting Webber, and Massa was closing in on his Ferrari teammate Alonso. When all completed their second stops, Webber was fine to hold onto second, but Massa was faster than Alonso. However, he was told to drop back to Alonso, this time the case being to Massa “Fernando is slower than you”.

The only worry for Red Bull at the end was Vettel’s front right tyre wearing, and the team were constantly on the radio telling the German to look after them and ease off the pace.

Vettel only knows how to drive fast, so being told to slow down is something he isn’t used to. However, he managed to get the car to a finish, and in fact set the fastest first sector of the race, just for good measure.

But more importantly, he is now the leader of the drivers’ standings, and is six points clear of Alonso, who was just unable to do nothing to stop Red Bull from securing their first one-two finish of the year.

He looks as though he will be unable to stop Vettel from winning a third world title in a row as well.

Sebastian Vettel: ‘We have to just keep it simple and do our job’

2012 Formula One page

Final race positions

İsmail Vedat

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