How Red Bull beat McLaren again

Many times this year we've seen Sebastian Vettel start from pole, get a good start, build up a lead, and control the race from the front. Lewis Hamilton's superb pole effort in Korea gave us the enticing prospect of a different kind of race, one in which Vettel would have to do the chasing and his Red Bull team find a way to use strategy to give its man a crack at getting past.

In the end the team's expertise was not called upon. Vettel did the job himself, getting past Hamilton on the first lap and recreating the familiar scenario from past races as he stayed safely ahead. It was the opposite of the normal situation in the sense that this time McLaren had the quicker qualifying package (as was also arguably the case in Japan), and Red Bull had the faster car on Sunday.

Fortunately for all of us, the apparent ease with which Vettel won on raceday did not mean we had a dull afternoon, for Hamilton and Mark Webber kept us entertained with a fabulous battle for second - one that was eventually joined by Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso. The championships may be sewn up, but there's plenty of potential for entertainment over the next three races.

Korea was always going to be interesting given Pirelli's decision to bring its soft and supersoft tyres to a track about which teams still had relatively little knowledge in the dry, and that learning process was not helped when Friday was washed out.

Not much was learned, although it was clear even in the rain that McLaren seemed a little more comfortable than Red Bull. That was pretty much conclusion that Red Bull drew. Making the assumption that it would be hard to beat McLaren to the front row, Red Bull focused much more on race running in the single dry FP3 session than did McLaren. And that led to the team's decision to use supersofts all the way through qualifying and save three brand new sets of softs per driver for the race.

It was a fascinating scenario in that it clearly signalled the team's plan - or at least its provisional plan - for Sunday, with a choice of three stops and an option-prime-prime-prime strategy.

McLaren's focus on qualifying in FP3 paid off, at least with Hamilton, and on Saturday night Martin Whitmarsh did not believe that Red Bull had found an advantage for the race by going for longer runs.

"You would have got a result, but whether that result was going to guide you correctly or incorrectly as to what's going to happen in the race, I don't know," he said. "We've very little information. We've been to this circuit once before, in very different circumstances. It was very wet then, so we haven't had a dry race on this circuit.

"I think the evolution [of the track] will continue through the race. It's going to be very dynamic really; we're going to be watching what everyone's doing. The data we gather from the first stints of the entire field will, in my view, be more valuable than the data we could have gathered running with heavy fuel in FP3."

Red Bull preserved more supersofts (red), while McLaren saved extra softs © LAT

The other thing that gave McLaren some confidence going into Sunday was that both Red Bulls would be starting from the dirty side of the track.

The silver cars duly made good initial getaways, and it was later round the lap that things went wrong. Chatting after the race, Anthony Davidson said that Vettel's pass on Hamilton at Turn 4 was perhaps the best of his career. It was certainly an important one, on a par with his move on Alonso in Italy after the safety car period.

On both occasions he knew he had to recover his usual place at the front as soon as possible - Vettel knows better than anyone that's the best way of winning in 2011.

Further back, Button was bundled down to eighth by the end of the first lap.

"We had good launches, but I think our first lap could have been better," said Whitmarsh with some understatement. "Jenson got bumped by [Felipe] Massa and, probably in his desire to get back, locked up, and that let a few more through. We were eighth at the end of the first lap, and that took a little bit to come back from."

Vettel didn't disappear into the distance, as has sometimes been the case, but after a few laps he began edging away from Hamilton. It was soon apparent that the McLarens didn't have the expected race pace.

"An unbelievable start from the dirty side," said Christian Horner. "A great move from Seb, he made it stick and then got his head down and got on with it. After Friday and Saturday morning performance, we really didn't expect that. We expected the McLarens to be a lot, lot stronger."

"Certainly the race would have been different if we'd been able to take the lead on the first lap," said McLaren's Phil Prew. "I think going into the race we didn't really know where the pace was, given the limited running we'd had.

"Obviously qualifying went very well, but that's not always a 100 per cent reflection of how we're going to go in the race. Certainly Sebastian had some really good pace during the race, and was able to pull the gaps when he needed to, and that made our life really difficult.

"Lewis had a bit of understeer in the car, both drivers complained about that. Potentially we didn't get the balance quite right for race conditions, and Friday wouldn't have helped that. As soon as those gaps start opening, it's difficult to close them down again."

In fact the understeer problem was a massive handicap for both drivers.

"We had it on both cars," said Whitmarsh. "Particularly with Lewis, we lost front downforce. Whether it was damage or whether it was debris - there was lots of rubber around, so I don't know whether it got stuck in the wing or on the fence or something - but we lost about 10 points of front downforce.

Hamilton was lacking downforce, and suffering from resultant understeer © LAT

"We couldn't really dial it out of the car all race, so that was ruining the tyres. As a consequence of that we weren't quite quick enough to get the job done this afternoon."

Hamilton knew early on that he would not be able to stay on terms with Vettel, although through the first stint he stayed safely clear of Webber, who'd enjoyed a better-than-usual first lap.

At the first stops the focus for McLaren was more on Button. He lost a drag race out of the pits with Nico Rosberg, passed him when the Merc ran wide, and the lost out on DRS on the following straight! He soon got back past again and by pitting earlier, he jumped both the Ferraris. Almost immediately after the first stops - mere seconds in the case of Vettel, who waited until everyone else was done before coming in - the safety car came out.

An intervention doesn't always spice up the action, but this time it did, as it closed up the gaps and ensured that we had a much more interesting race when it went green. Crucially Vettel got out of Hamilton's DRS range, so by the time it was enabled after the restart, Lewis could do nothing about the German. Instead he had his mirrors full of Webber.

What made the contest interesting was that Webber had followed Red Bull's pre-race plan and gone onto the prime tyres, whereas Vettel went for more options. The team literally didn't know which would be the perfect solution.

"We were still undecided at that point which was the better tyre," said Horner. "So we decided to split the cars. The tyres looked pretty evenly matched in fairness, so give it to Pirelli, they got the choice right."

McLaren meanwhile was happy to stick with the option.

"Going into the race we were very open minded," said Prew. "We didn't know exactly what the tyres were going to do. We were prepared to go either way, putting the option on, or a prime. As it turned out the option behaved very well, which we worked out during the first stint, and then we were able to continue using that. I don't think there was any dispute that the option was a faster tyre.

"As we saw, the option was a very good race tyre. I think it exceeded people's expectations in terms of its wear life. The track evolved so much through the course of yesterday that lessons learned always have to be taken with some caution, it was really learning what was happening during the race and adapting to those. That's what we did with the tyres. Other people didn't really stay on the prime tyre that long. They used the option tyre, which performed very well."

Hamilton stayed pretty close to Vettel through that middle stint, despite the distraction of the close attentions of Webber. His 'Don't talk to me when I'm braking' radio message was indicative of how hard he was working...

Webber thought it was wrong to pit on the same lap as Hamilton © LAT

The second stops were to be crucial, given that - thanks to the safety car giving everyone a breather - they were also to be the last.

Hamilton was the first to pit (and the whole world knew he was coming as the message came out on the TV!). And to the surprise of many, he was followed down the pitlane by Webber. The stop was his big chance to pass, so he could either come in before or after Hamilton - doing it on the same lap was relying on foul-up in the McLaren pits. There wasn't one, so Webber just followed him out. Webber himself made his disappointment pretty clear after the race.

"In the end, I think the second or the last pitstop was really what snookered us, I suppose," he said. "I was informing the team that my tyres were still good, but we still pitted. Yeah, that was a bit disappointing to do the same thing as Lewis because we should have done something different."

Horner explained it thus: "We looked at going for the undercut, because we could see Mark's performance on his out lap on the previous set of tyres was very strong. Unfortunately McLaren picked exactly the same lap as us so it was a race in the pitlane."

The problem was the team was also focusing on Vettel up ahead. Had they kept Webber out for that extra lap, the German would have had to stay out for two laps longer than Hamilton, and the McLaren was still close enough to be a threat. By bringing in Webber at the same time, Vettel could come in just a lap later, and the team could be confident that he would retain his lead.

Meanwhile Hamilton's problems didn't get any better.

"In fact we nearly changed the front wing," said Whitmarsh. "Because of where Mark was, we would have ceded the place. He could have been quicker to the end of the race with a new front wing. We've had a great wing stop this year, but it's still going to cost us two, three seconds, and it would have cost us a place to Mark. Had we had a little bit more margin, we would have changed the front wing, definitely. But we didn't have the margin to do that."

Hamilton was thus left to defend his position with a car that he was clearly struggling with, and yet he did it in great style.

"Lewis defended really well against Mark all the way through that last stint," said Prew. "It was a great piece of driving. With DRS it's not easy, so we had to modify our KERS deployment etc to help him there."

"It was not easy what Lewis did," added Whitmarsh. "That was a brilliant piece of race driving. It's easy to win races when you're in front and you've got the best car, the real class is when you've clearly got a car that's not performing as it should do, and you can defend.

"When you haven't got DRS, when you have a car behind you that is frankly quicker and has a powerful DRS, to be able to hold on and hold on like that was truly a brilliant drive."

Crucially, Webber couldn't get a perfect run on Lewis into the DRS zone.

Despite passing Hamilton on lap 50, Webber could not stay ahead © LAT

"Mark was quicker, but he couldn't get off Turn 1 and 2," said Horner. "We tried everything, but just couldn't make the move stick."

All of this was of no concern to Vettel, who opened up a 12s advantage while the four cars behind closed up on each other, Alonso having joined the party after finding performance in the final stint.

It was somewhat ironic that after qualifying second so often this year, Hamilton converted his first pole into second place.

"I'm reasonably comfortable that we got the best out of the car," said Prew. "Sadly it wasn't quite quick enough to compete for the win. It's never nice to lose a race from pole position, but it's encouraging that we had the pace to put it on pole. Certainly a pole position helps you win races, certainly that's what we want to do in the next three, and then try to convert them into real points."

"It ended up with most people running similar strategies," said Whitmarsh. "Some did option-prime-prime, some did option-option-prime. I don't think there was too much difference between the tyres.

"At the end of a horrible first lap I think we did a reasonable job to recover. The team made the right calls, the drivers did a fantastic job, but for whatever reason they lost the front downforce. We weren't quite quick enough, but I'm very proud of the drivers, particularly Lewis, for coping with those circumstances and defending. It wasn't easy to defend and look after those tyres when you've got a very understeering car."

"I thought it was going to be a very, very hard race with the McLarens," said Horner. "Our preparation yesterday morning was crucial. We put quite a bit of focus into the race, perhaps sacrificing something in qualifying, and it paid dividends today. The other teams chose to focus on their qualifying preparation. That was definitely the right call yesterday, and stood us in good stead for today."

Meanwhile Whitmarsh still insisted that the race-preparation focus in FP3 had not handed Red Bull an advantage: "The track's very different and the wind direction's very different. Everyone talked about the strategy of using lots of primes, but they didn't actually in the end. We didn't have the performance that we hoped to have this afternoon, and I don't think more laps yesterday would have made any difference."

Given his robust defence of second, could Hamilton have hung on in front had he completed the first lap ahead of Vettel? We'll never know.

"It would have been tough, but there's no reason why he couldn't," said Whitmarsh. "There are lots of ifs and buts! In fairness I think Sebastian did a great job, as he's done all year, and we weren't quite quick enough to beat him today."