F1 News
Date:
21/April/2013
Sebastian Vettel became F1 2013’s first double winner with a
‘flawless’ drive in Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix.
The reigning triple Champion worked his way past Fernando
Alonso and pole starter Nico Rosberg during some entertaining opening laps,
then disappeared into the distance.
The Red Bull star retained the lead during his final pit
stop and won by 9.1s from Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen. Alonso’s chances were
doomed by a DRS failure on his Ferrari, while Mercedes driver Rosberg suffered
excessive tyre wear.
Vettel, whose previous victory was marred by the team orders
controversy in Malaysia, said:
“A flawless, seamless race from start to finish. The pace
was phenomenal. The car was very quick and it got better and better towards the
end. Really, a beautiful race where you could push every single lap.”
The result means that Raikkonen is now the only driver still
within one race win (25 points) of Vettel.
The young German assessed his rivals as follows: “Lotus is
very quick, they manage the tyres pretty well in the race. The Ferrari is an
all-round car as in they’re always quick and they’ve been very competitive in
the race. Mercedes is very quick over a lap, but probably a little bit too
aggressive with the tyres.
“A little bit surprised by McLaren so far, but I think they
will come back at some stage this year, probably already in Barcelona. But I
think we need to look after ourselves, make sure we score points and everything
else is difficult to predict.”
Red Bull have been among the strongest critics of the high tyre
wear seen at some events this year and were rumoured to have pushed for the
switch to the medium and harder options for Bahrain.
Vettel insisted that his complaints had not been due to Red
Bull suffering more than some of their rivals.
“I did talk about the tyres, but I always said that as long
as there are other people doing a better job then we have no right to complain,
we need to catch up,” he said.
“Comparing Formula One to a couple of years ago, you
probably have to ask Kimi, but it’s surely different, the fact that you can’t
push as hard as you like every lap, you have to work with the tyres and sit at
a certain pace.
“So I think that’s what we - at least the drivers that I
have talked to - think is very different and to some extent less enjoyable than
in the past.”
But F1 veteran and former World Champion Raikkonen appeared
to disagree.
Raikkonen and Lotus are renowned for getting the most out of
the new generation Pirelli rubber, perfectly illustrated by the Finn’s
eighth-to-second place drive - courtesy of just two pit stops - on Sunday.
“I don’t think Pirelli could please everybody, whatever they
do. There’s always somebody who will complain,” said Raikkonen. “And I don’t
think it’s their job to try to always change things if somebody’s complaining
or doesn’t like it.
“Even in the past, if we would have put the same amount of
fuel in the cars, we couldn’t have run at full speed all the time, because the
tyres would have gone off so I don’t really think it’s all that different now.”
Raikkonen’s team-mate Romain Grosjean completed the podium
in third.
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