2011 Indian F1 Grand Prix : Sublime Vettel, Brilliant Buddh, Incredible India!

They said it could never be done; the Indian way of doing things would be the key reason behind any large event happening and more so an elite sport like F1 Grand Prix racing was wishful thinking. Two weeks before the actual event, when the loud raucous roar of a F1 engine was heard doing the rounds of the 5.14km Buddh International Circuit, there was cautious optimism if you were a diehard F1 nut. There was more reason to cheer though within a week when the big names from all the F1 teams began to descend on Delhi, and what so many had thought too good to be true actually manifested itself as fact.

Coming as it did a mere year after the inglorious Commonwealth Games in the capital, this was fantastic news to savour for all patriotic Indians and more so for motorsport to have helped wipe out the stigma associated with the CWG. Just a stark but timely reminder of what is in the realm of possibility with private enterprise and next to no political interference. But then while this point of mention was important, it is not at all at the core of this story but the grand spectacle of F1 coming to India certainly is. And while like many I could sense that the track was a radical departure from previous Herman Tilke thought and design, Jenson Button while echoing the same before he had even driven on it in anger, said the track looked great but one had to wait and see if it could also have a soul of its own to enthuse and impress the F1 gladiators. However, the first objective had been met, every driver and team principal as also most Grand Prix pundits from former world champions to race reporters had already gushed about the Buddh being a great new venue for the sport.

It is hard to think that after having dominated the 2011 F1 World Championship to date, Sebastian Vettel had never achieved a clean sweep of everything there was to stamp his authority on a Grand Prix – pole, fastest lap and leading every lap from start to finish. The German was more delighted with his eleventh win of the season than the statisticians among the GP regulars but the latter also did highlight one more fact to show how dominant Vettel has been this season. The record for the most laps led in a season has been Nigel Mansell’s long standing record from 1992, the Englishman’s 692 laps up front having held to date. After his stunning drive to victory in India, Vettel has now stamped his name on this record, leading 711 laps so far with two more GPs yet to go!

Having seen the circuit and how its super smooth surface had behaved in qualifying and the free practice sessions, tyre strategy was paramount and with Pirelli having chosen the soft tyre as the prime and the hardest of its hard tyres as the option, it was obvious that the bulk of the runs would be on the prime but the critical decision of how long to use the primes and when to switch to the option tyre was to play heavy on the minds of the teams and drivers. Having said that, when I quizzed Mark Webber on the subject of tyre stops on the Saturday evening (when he had amazingly turned out to reveal the Renault Pulse), one could gauge his thoughts when he didn’t care to give a direct reply but enquired whether I was affiliated with some other F1 team! Of course, having seen Mark not get the best out of his tyres this entire season, one could understand his predicament and so it was to prove for him during the course of the GP.

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No such bothers for his team-mate though and Sebastian was hot off the line from pole, getting the slingshot into the first corner and then just opening out that slight cushion to stay ahead of his pursuers. It was expected that the over a kilometre long straight would play in the hands of the McLarens. And to a certain extent it did when Mark Webber starting alongside Vettel also made a decent start to slot behind his team-mate, but Jenson Button was right on his case and once he got slightly sideways cresting the rise out of turn 3 towards the long long straight, the McLaren had him set up. Jenson stayed tight behind Webber, letting the Red Bull create the ideal opportunity for his McLaren to slipstream past down the long undulating straight. After the long straight it is all about a car’s downforce and while Webber tried his best to make use of all his Red Bull RB7 was worth, it made for a good sight to see Button cover all bases as the duo zoomed around on the opening lap.

Speaking of which, Fernando Alonso had made another banzai start as had his team-mate Felipe Massa, who had streaked past his nemesis Lewis Hamilton to climb up one place. Behind him came the two silver Mercedes MGP W02s of Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher, the latter having made another great start off the line, held off using his KERS in the first couple of corners and then use it to great effect to zoom past both Toro Rossos and the Force India of Adrian Sutil.

The 95,000-strong crowd were getting a glimpse of some hard fought action in the early laps of the Indian Grand Prix with Webber trying all he could to get back the place he had lost to Button. However, Webber’s inability to keep his tyres in good nick was something Button had experienced all year long and he knew that he had to only position his car perfectly on the tricky parts of the circuit where the McLaren could be vulnerable so as to keep Mark at bay. In doing so he was getting the Red Bull driver to charge harder and use up his rears and that was what happened. By lap eight, the Red Bull’s rear tyres were giving away and Webber began to fall away from Button while at the same time he began to be reeled in by a charging Fernando Alonso. The Spaniard had been itching to have a go and with the Red Bull looming every larger lap after lap in front of him, the Ferrari driver knew that he could challenge Webber for a move ahead. Felipe Massa was just about holding station behind Alonso while Hamilton was a couple of seconds behind Massa.

Meanwhile what everyone had hoped for on the opening lap would materialise at turn 3, in fact manifested itself at the very opening corner. Charging hard the two Williams drivers Rubens Barrichello and Pastor Maldonado touched and the former was sent spinning; in the process he collected the Sauber of Kamui Kobayashi who managed to gather it all and rejoined the track. Unfortunately his re-entry on the track was pretty clumsy and he found the Virgin of Timo Glock on the racing line. In the ensuing crash, the Sauber seemed to limp awhile before the Japanese driver parked it while Timo drove to the pits for a new front wing but his race ended two laps later with damaged suspension.

The rear end is always a tough place to be in with drivers more than eager to go better than their slow cars would permit them on the faster sectors of the track. And in the Barrichello-Maldonado-Kobayashi-Glock contretemps, a fast charging Narain Karthikeyan in his HRT rear-ended the Lotus of Jarno Trulli going into turn 3. Trulli spun off the track but got going again to make it into the pits. His Lotus had sustained a lot of damage but even though the crew repaired his car and had him out, he was out of the reckoning, finishing 19th and last. Narain though was lucky; his car had sustained a bit of damage but he continued in the fray, trying to run his own race in a car hopelessly off the pace.

Given the opening skirmish between Button and Webber, Vettel had used this to good effect to open up an eight second cushion and he was controlling the race from the front pretty comfortably. Not having to fend off any attack, Button began to drive in his smooth fast manner and he trimmed off the gap to around 5 seconds but that was all. It might not have seemed too exciting for the capacity crowd but a certain skill and nuance in the art of the game was being played out by the leading bunch. The lap times, the smooth tarmac and the long pit lane plus the manner in which the soft prime tyres were holding out meant that one was looking now at a two-tyre stop race at best for the majority of the front runners.

If Webber had lost out to Button thanks to using up his rears quickly, he was in for even more trouble. The Red Bull pit wall had deduced that if they could get him in for a tyre stop when he still had a couple of seconds cushion over Alonso, he could get out and build up a gap over the Ferrari driver. Mark was called in on lap 16 but Ferrari responded and called in Alonso as well on the same lap. Both came out with fresh new sets of soft tyres but Alonso got caught up behind Michael Schumacher’s Mercedes which had yet to stop and he lost a bit to Webber as he had to fight his way past the seven time world champion who was driving a brilliant race given the machinery under him.

The pits suddenly came alive with the Webber-Alonso duo having started a rash. McLaren pulled a masterstroke by calling in Hamilton on the very lap the Webber-Alonso duo had pitted, knowing fully well that the Ferrari crew had their hands full with Alonso so couldn’t precipitate matters by calling in Massa as well. This worked out well for Lewis slashed over a second and a half to Massa once the Brazilian had also made his pit stop for fresh rubber a lap later and suddenly the two protagonists were at it yet again!

Around this time up front at the head of the field, Button was putting in a string of good fast laps which had seen him whittle down the gap to about 4 seconds before the message went out to the leader who responded by upping his pace and Button had no answer. The McLaren think tank opined that they could not beat Vettel and Red Bull on sheer pace so it had to be on strategy and pit stops came to mind. They called in Button early on lap 18 for a fresh set of rubber, hoping against hope that Vettel’s next set wouldn’t be on the same pace and Button could probably chew into that vital cushion. It was a great game of master stroke being played out as the team managers and race strategists on the Red Bull and McLaren pit walls scanned data, sector times, etc but it was all business as usual.

Red Bull called Vettel in for a fresh set of primes on lap 19 and the leader rejoined in the lead yet again and simply turned up the wick and opened up his 5-second cushion. I think in this game of cat and mouse, the two men up at the head of the field were putting in class drives though not much could be made out by the crowd who were now fixated at the impending battle between two men who have been in the wars on more than three to four occasions this year. Having made his stop for tyres, Lewis Hamilton had quickly got up to speed and was hounding Felipe Massa whose car was obviously tailored for a low downforce set-up to make the most of the long straight. Also the new front wing which Ferrari had got for their two drivers did help Massa but on lap 22 the Brazilian got it all wrong at the exit of turn three, the blind right-hander dropping down to the start of the long straight. This was enough for Hamilton to close right up on the Ferrari but the McLaren couldn’t pass as much as Lewis tried. Massa though had his hands full and was just intent on making his car as wide as possible and also driving raggedly to stay ahead.

Hamilton attacked again on lap 23 but Massa fobbed that before Lewis did what Schumacher had done earlier. He did not hit the KERS button on the back straight and preserved that for the main straight on the next lap, safe in the assumption that Massa would have used all the juice in his haste to stay ahead. Running in hard as the duo approached the fast flowing esses, the McLaren was on the Ferrari’s tail when Massa seemingly moved to the right as if to allow Lewis the space to pass. However, the Brazilian was just getting to the racing line, braking later and holding his line through the turn when he felt the McLaren’s front wing clout his left rear. Lewis who was on the dirty part wasn’t alongside and also short of grip but the inevitable happened, the Ferrari was shoved sideways and the McLaren thumped it again for good measure! Judging by the fact that this was one more incident between the two, the penalties always had been accorded to Lewis but this time round, thanks to a curious ruling from the previous GP in Korea, Massa was adjudged as the one to blame and given a drive thru penalty!

The Brazilian was livid. “I don’t understand this,” he said after the race. “I braked later than him, I was in front and on the grippier part of the circuit and I didn’t see him on the left. So he was behind and touched my rear wheel. I braked later than him, so was I supposed to back off and let him through?” Massa seemed to have a point but in Korea a week earlier, the drivers were told by race control to give enough room to overtaking cars to pass but with Massa not deemed to have done so he had caused this accident!

While Massa spun off the track, Lewis held it together and made a visit to the pits to get a new front wing but then the spark was gone from the man battling a host of personal problems and already involved in clash with Massa for the umpteenth time in his career. A mysterious rear end vibration meant that it was a drive for points from there on and the Brit soldiered on to seventh. Massa though had suffered badly in the coming together, the Ferrari suffering from a recalcitrant gearbox and also a slowly fading front tyre. He did pit for new tyres and then served out his drive-through before he again saw his front wing fluttering alarmingly, the end plates scraping the tarmac in a shower of sparks. Having to contend with that and also make the climb back up into the pits, the Brazilian managed to find another one of those dreaded kerbs, unique to this circuit, way off the tarmac though, and this time round he hit it hard enough for his left front suspension to collapse and he was out for the day.

By this time though the race had settled into a good familiar pattern and even though one Ferrari may have given up the ghost, the other was still going strong and trying to make the most of what was a tough GP weekend for the Scuderia. Alonso had managed to close up on Webber and as the critical time for the final tyre stops neared the Red Bull team management debated when to bring Mark in. Too early and if the hard options didn’t work out, he would be gobbled up by the Ferrari; too late and it would happen any which way! Webber himself took the onus on him to drive into the pits on lap 37. Ferrari didn’t respond and kept Alonso out for a further two laps before calling in him to get on the hard options. Webber had given it his all but Alonso jumped him out of the pits and the Spaniard was now in a podium scoring slot, something which looked way too distant when his Ferrari had stopped out on the track in the first practice session.

The battle behind these two was also all about tyres but it was an all-Mercedes battle. For the last five to six GPs, Michael Schumacher had displayed his race ability in strong measure and here as well he had been displaying a fair turn of speed while keeping his soft tyres in great shape. In contrast his teammate Nico Rosberg was in trouble with his second set of the soft tyres and he came in for his final stop to put on the hard options on lap 45. Schumi who had been holding station a few car lengths behind moved into fifth and managed to go a whole five more laps on his own set of soft tyres before pitting for the hard options. He rejoined ahead of Nico and even though Rosberg tried to respond that’s how the duo finished, Michael again ahead with Nico in sixth. “I am obviously happy about the race today,” said Michael. “We achieved the maximum e could hope for, and as a team maximised our potential. Fifth and sixth paces are a great result for us. On top of that, my car was very nicely sorted for the race and very stable.”

The fastest cars in the race through the speed trap were the two Toro Rossos and both were looking good until Sebastian Buemi who had qualified ninth saw his Ferrari engine give up the ghost. His team-mate Jaime Alguersuari drove a fine race, mindful of the championship positions. What was pleasing about his drive was the manner in which he quickly passed Bruno Senna’s Lotus-Renault and Adrian Sutil’s Force India when it mattered to take a strong eighth at the flag.

For Force India, the inaugural Indian GP was a race with mixed feeling. Given Paul di Resta’s 12thpace on the grid, the team decided to start him on the hard option tyre, called him in on the opening lap and switched him to a three-stop strategy which never quite panned out the way everyone hoped for. Sutil in contrast had a strong run in qualifying to 8th on the grid but given the strength of the Force India and its capability, ninth was the most the young German could extract from it on this fabulous circuit. Having said that, of the two Sutil always looked the one most likely to deliver the big points and with Sauber’s Sergio Perez finishing behind him in tenth, the two points Sutil gained for his afternoon’s work could prove vital for the team at the end of the year in its quest to finish sixth in the constructors points table.

The two Lotus-Renaults were just not n the pace as the Toro Rossos or Sutil’s Force India and both finished out of the points, in 11th and 12th, Petrov ahead of Senna. Di Resta was 13th while Heikki Kovalainen drove a fine race in his Lotus to take 14th, just ahead of Rubens Barrichello in the Williams-Cosworth. Both of them were two laps in arrears while a further lap adrift came Jerome D’Ambrosio who was next up in his Virgin. Narain Karthikeyan followed in 17th place, having driven a stupendous race given the machinery under him. He had a tough event given that his pace had seen him at the mercy of the leaders lapping him quite frequently and with the way the new circuit had been configured, getting out of the tricky narrow bits was a major problem for the Indian driver on many an occasion. However, to have finished ahead of a Virgin and a Lotus was a great thing for Narain as was also the small battle he had won by putting his own highly rated team-mate Daniel Ricciardo firmly behind him.

Up front, the status quo seemed to have been established. Webber had reconciled himself to fourth while Alonso was managing to shave off a few thousandths from Button ahead but it wasn’t to any avail. Button tried to up the pace but Sebastian was well in control and driving beautifully. And then the unthinkable began to happen. The glory of Grand Prix racing to those who follow it well began to be played out. Despite having his engine revs being turned down in the closing stages and when everyone seemed to have gone off the boil, Vettel was setting fastest lap after fastest lap. At one point just four laps from the finish his engineer came on the radio and in a voice everyone could hear said, “Seb, please. There is no trophy for fastest lap.” Vettel acknowledged that but by upping the pace with his driving doing the talking – his time of 1 minute 27.4 seconds on the penultimate lap being the fastest lap of the race. Game, set, match and what have you, they all were bowled over by the young German’s charge to the flag. Even Button was gracious in defeat but on this day, as on so many other occasions this year, no one had the firepower or the skills or the set-up to come within a whisker of denying him his due on the top of the podium.

And as if to underline why many Indians have loved another German before him, he did endear himself to this land of over 1.2 billion with his humility in the post race press conference. “It’s a very impressive country here, very different to what we know in Europe, but very inspiring. If you keep your eyes and ears open, you can learn a lot from the way people in handle things here. It’s a big country with a lot of people, but they are happy and enjoy life, which is what it’s all about. At the end of your life, it’s friendships, emotions, and thoughts that you take with you, rather than what’s in your bank account. So, even though people don’t have a lot here, they are a lot richer in many ways and we can learn from that. It’s been a great race, a great event and the circuit is fantastic, so thanks a lot to all the people in India."