Vettel out of reach at Monza, Alonso needs 2012 in reverse


F1 News
Date: 8/September/2013

Sebastian Vettel remained out of reach throughout Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix to move more than two wins clear at the top of the F1 Championship standings.

Vettel, who claimed his very first grand prix victory while driving for Toro Rosso at Monza in 2008, laughed off booing by the partisan fans during the podium ceremony following his fifth win of the season.

“In 2008 when we won here in an Italian team with a Ferrari engine the atmosphere was fantastic. When we won here in 2011 [the booing] was a surprise, this year I think it was kind of expected,” said Vettel.

“I said on the radio that the more booing we get, the better we have done today. It’s normal. I don’t blame the people to be honest, I think their love of Ferrari is in their genes. It’s something very special.”

Red Bull’s reigning triple champion began the first European round of the 2013 season, at Barcelona in May, holding a ten-point lead over Kimi Raikkonen.

Vettel leaves Europe with a whopping 53 point advantage over Ferrari star Fernando Alonso, who finished runner-up by 5.4s to Vettel in Sunday’s race.

Seven rounds remain, starting in Singapore later this month and ending in Brazil on November 24, but Alonso admitted the world title is now Vettel’s to lose.

However the Spaniard is taking slight consolation from seeing his own similarly dominant advantage wiped out in the final rounds of last season.

“We need to be realistic about the championship, now there’s a very big gap. We don’t have enough races and probably we don’t have the speed right now to win some consecutive races.

“We need to be lucky and we need to have some DNFs from Sebastian or something to win the Championship.

“It’s hard but in a way, it was exactly the same last year. We could only lose the championship, with [39] points advantage in front of Sebastian after Monza. It was difficult for him to catch up and so it was maybe up to us [to lose it].

“We didn’t complete the job because we had a DNF in Suzuka and some other problems.

“There’s still a long way to go; we will try until the last race to be as good as we can and score as many points as possible and then in Brazil we will see how many points we have compared to him.”

Vettel’s team-mate Mark Webber completed the podium in third.

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