GP report: Vettel does it in style

Sebastian Vettel stylishly clinched his fourth straight world championship with a devastating victory won through sheer, pummelling, relentless pace, delivered within a strategy made tricky by the extreme wear rate of the softer option tyre around the Buddh International Circuit.

Yet this 26-year-old phenomenon made it look child's play.

Two of the other three men to have won four titles - Fangio and Prost - had not yet won a grand prix when they were Vettel's age. Fangio, in fact, had yet to even make his debut. Are even Michael Schumacher's records safe from Vettel's grasp?

But brilliant though Vettel was on Sunday, he was helped by a strategy that turned out to be the right one. Only hindsight tells us this. On the eve of the race, most were accepting that two-stopping was the optimum, but whether it was better to be on starting on the soft tyre (like Vettel) or the medium (like Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber) was about as clear as the view in the New Delhi smog.

As it turned out, a crucial Red Bull set-up decision made on Friday evening for both cars - made because the extreme blistering of the soft after very few laps made it obvious that whatever strategy was chosen was going to involve overtaking other cars - turned out to favour the Vettel strategy.

"After Friday we took some wing off and put on a longer top gear, on the basis we were going to have to go through traffic at some point," explained Red Bull technical chief Adrian Newey. An RB9 fast enough on the long straight to maximise the benefit of DRS ensured that Vettel was always mega-quick, even as he was storming through traffic.

Red Bull's set-up tweaks ensured Vettel was rapid even in traffic © XPB

Vettel's early-race challenge from pole was going to be to sprint clear in the full knowledge that he'd be in after very few laps to change to the more durable mediums. But thereafter he needed to get within 21 seconds of Webber before Mark pitted, if he was to jump him at the next stop.

That sounded like a tall order.

Webber's task, as the best-placed medium-tyred car on the grid, was to make maximum use of his second-row slot, hope that any soft-tyred cars ahead of him soon pitted out of his way (not all the cars were as punishing to the softs as the Red Bulls), then run flat-out in clear air up front to build up a gap, once Vettel stopped, of 21s or more.

Not to denigrate Vettel's faultless, aggressive and fast drive, but the effectiveness of DRS, in combination with the RB9's fairly strong top speed, allowed Seb to actually lap faster by constantly benefiting from DRS as he made his way from 17th after his lap-two stop.

Webber had no aid from DRS once he was at the front, and this allowed Vettel to punish his team-mate's poor opening lap. As Seb rejoined the track after his stop he was 14 seconds behind Mark, and that was the biggest the gap ever was.

Vettel's DRS-assisted pace and instant overtaking, combined with Webber's time loss in the first seven laps behind slower cars, ensured that the thrillingly closely-matched strategy game that was in prospect never played out.

Both men went into this race hugely motivated: Vettel because he wanted to win the title in style by taking a sixth consecutive race victory, one of the few records he didn't already own; Webber because, going into the last four races of his F1 career, he was still intensely competitive and had not yet won a 2013 grand prix, such has been his team mate's monopoly - and that 'stolen' Malaysia win.

Webber failed to capitalise on his second-row grid slot © XPB

It was vital to Webber's prime-tyre opening stint that he capitalise fully on his grid slot. But he failed to do that.

After an iffy start off the line - with Vettel sprinting away up front from the two Mercedes and Felipe Massa's fast-starting Ferrari - Webber, in fifth, had Fernando Alonso to his outside as they approached Turn 1.

The corner was Webber's, but he chose to take a lot of inside kerb - too much, as it turned out.

The Red Bull was thrown across the track and made light contact with the Ferrari, a piece of Alonso's front-wing endplate flying off.

With Alonso and Webber's momentum onto the uphill drag to Turns 2 and 3 compromised, Nico Hulkenberg and Kimi Raikkonen dragged past them, the Lotus then rubbing with the Red Bull through Turn 3. From fourth to seventh, with six soon-to-be-slow soft-tyred cars ahead of him, the playing out of Webber's strategy had just got off to an awful start. But all was not lost yet.

Let's see how quickly they would pit out of his way to get rid of their inevitably blistered front-lefts...

Vettel and Webber had independently chosen their strategies. For Red Bull, and almost everyone else, two-stopping was the only way of doing the race. The early blistering of the left-front soft meant there was way too much remaining distance for just a single set of mediums.

Pirelli's strict camber and pressure limits, keeping stress off the structure of the tyre and minimising the risk of failures, combined with the punishing challenge of Turns 10/11/12, meant the tyre crown was taking all the load which, on the left-front, meant blistering "worse than I've ever seen", according to one engineer.

All cars were afflicted but the Red Bulls more than any, because they have the most downforce. This track and compound combination made for a perfect demonstration of how there is a threshold of tyre strength, below which the best cars are penalised and above which they dominate.

This phenomenon has long restricted the full potential of Red Bull in the Pirelli era, and has been a major reason for the tyre politicking that's been such a theme of this season. Around Buddh, the RB9 on softs was good for a fabulous qualifying lap 0.8s clear of the field, but was hopeless after three to four race laps - significantly fewer than even the next-worst-afflicted cars could manage.

On the medium, it could retain its devastating qualifying advantage into the race. We had the essential competitive mechanism of the season laid out bare in India, for all to see and understand.

The fast-starting Massa sliced ahead of the Mercedes and into second © LAT

As Vettel screamed clear of the pack, so Massa slipstreamed by the Mercs of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg down that long smoggy back straight, slicing boldly ahead into the tight Turn 4 to take up second place. Hulkenberg's Sauber, Raikkonen, Webber and the McLaren of Sergio Perez (like Webber, on mediums) followed.

The other McLaren of Jenson Button went round the outside of Turn 4, with Alonso on the inside. As Jenson came back off the exit kerb at just the moment Alonso was oversteering, trying to get the power down, they snagged.

The Ferrari's already damaged front wing was now properly done for, while the McLaren took some sidepod and tyre damage. Alonso would be in at the end of the second lap for a replacement wing, with Button coming in after six laps when the damaged tyre finally punctured.

That pretty much ruined the races of both drivers, given that they were on the mediums and therefore needed to do long stints.

From 17th on the grid, Romain Grosjean reckoned he needed a good start to have any hope of a good result - and he'd failed to get one.

After Paul di Resta pitted in front of him at the end of the first lap to get rid of his softs, the Lotus was stuck behind Esteban Gutierrez's Sauber - which had jumped the start - for a lap but then began picking cars off. His was an interesting strategy based around the Lotus's famously easy tyre usage. He was using the soft for his first stint and hoping to get it to last 12 laps - from where he intended to run to the finish...

"One stop? No way. Impossible. Forget it," exclaimed one rival of that prospect. Pirelli agreed. It had advised that the soft should not be run for more than 15 laps and the medium no more than 35. Which, if adhered to, made a one-stop impossible for the 60-lap race. But it was only advisory.

Lotus's Alan Permane was irritated by that and saw no reason why his team should comply. "I went down to see Charlie [Whiting, race director] to see what his views were and he was happy for people to not stick to that," he explained.

Grosjean and Lotus managed to pull off a one-stop, against expectations © LAT

"Our tyre wear said we were absolutely fine to go further than that and Charlie felt it was unfair to base everyone's race on the car with the hardest tyre use. We felt we could do 48 laps on the medium and that's why we knew we had to get Romain to 12 on the softs."

Vettel was 2.5s clear of the pack at the end of the opening lap. Next lap he came in!

This was earlier than expected, even of a soft-tyred Red Bull. But it actually made perfect sense. On the Red Bull, that front-left wasn't going to last for more than a handful of laps - and when it went it would lose whole chunks of time. Avoiding that risk, Seb was in and under way again on fresh primes after a 3.1-second stop. He rejoined behind Max Chilton's Marussia, 14 seconds and 11 places behind Webber.

Massa led for the next six laps, while Webber waited patiently in the queue. He went by Raikkonen with the aid of DRS up to Turn 4 on the sixth lap but otherwise seemed content to wait, knowing that he would be leading soon enough.

By contrast, Vettel - with the same gearing and wing level - was making full use of DRS to pass people every lap, carefully ensuring that he came upon them at just the right moment and not in the fast, no-passing middle part of the lap. Used in this way, the 10mph end-of-straight advantage of DRS was worth almost half a second of lap time.

In hindsight, Webber needed to be doing the same; Seb's progress meant he could no longer afford the luxury of just waiting until those in front stopped.

By the time Hulkenberg, Rosberg, Massa and Hamilton had all pitted from in front of Webber for their primes, it was lap nine - and Seb was already up to sixth place, having kept that 14-second gap to Webber constant.

Webber's eight flying laps behind the soft-tyred cars averaged 1m33.1s. With a clear track he was immediately into the 1m31s. He had lost around 12 seconds being stuck at their pace, which, added to the 14s by which Vettel trailed him, would have put him more than a pitstop ahead and placed the onus on Seb. But that battle was now effectively lost already for Mark.

Furthermore, Vettel continued to lap quicker and, by the time Webber pitted at the end of lap 28, Vettel was just 10 seconds behind, meaning he was 11.5s in front once Webber rejoined.

Game over.

Traffic proved the undoing of Webber's win hopes © XPB

Webber had been fitted with the softs at this stage, and would be in again for his final set of mediums just four laps later, rejoining just behind Daniel Ricciardo, who would pit his Toro Rosso out of Mark's way at the end of the next lap.

In the short gap between Webber's first and second stops, Vettel came in for his second.

It made for a slightly confusing time for the watching Indian fans, and afterwards even more seasoned observers were asking why Red Bull had chosen to put Webber on the softs in the middle of the race rather than at the end. The reality was it made next to no difference.

With such a short stint length possible on them, and few traffic considerations (because the Red Bulls were so far clear of the field) it would not have played out significantly different had Webber delayed fitting the softs until the end.

In that scenario, Vettel's lap-31 stop would have brought him out around 10 seconds behind Webber, with both on new primes and Vettel not needing to stop again. Webber would be needing to stop no more than five to six laps from the end for his softs, at which point he would drop back 11s or so behind Vettel, assuming Seb had done no more than maintained that 10s gap.

"We did it that way around because it minimised Mark's risk to a safety car," explained Newey.

"That risk was one of the downsides of Mark's strategy. If the safety car had come out and wiped the half-minute advantage he had on the rest of the field when he was still on the primes, he would have lost many positions when he came in for his softs. This got the softs out of the way and Mark back on track still in second. We were able to do it because of the gap we'd built over everyone else."

Assuming no mechanical dramas, the Red Bull match had now played out, and Vettel had never looked like losing once he'd started coming through the field in those early laps while still managing to gain on the leaders. It was a remarkable performance.

But in the Red Bulls' wake things were much less clear-cut. In the battle for best of the rest, it was Massa versus the two Mercs, Hulkenberg and Raikkonen (who had all started on the softs and made early stops), Perez (who'd started on the prime and run until lap 28), and the one-stopping Grosjean (who remarkably got his softs to last for 13 laps, yet still managed to overtake efficiently).

Hulkenberg was involved in a multiple-car scrap for third © LAT

Massa was driving faultlessly in carrying Ferrari's hopes. Relative to the closely following Mercs of Rosberg and Hamilton, he was stronger early in the stints than at the end, but they couldn't pass, even with the benefit of DRS, because they were geared shorter and ran with more wing.

Mercedes decided to get Rosberg out of this stalemate by bringing him in early for his second stop, at the end of lap 27. Ferrari didn't take the bait and left Massa out for another three laps, thereby keeping his final stint down to 30 laps.

In this way Mercedes undercut Rosberg ahead of the Ferrari. Hamilton came in with Massa and left still behind him, the pair exiting either side of Grosjean and only just in front of Perez. Grosjean was then able to take advantage of Massa's cold tyres to overtake up at Turns 4/5.

Hulkenberg stayed out until lap 33, carrying a frustrated Raikkonen along in his wake. The Sauber definitely wasn't as quick as the Lotus over a lap, but was much faster down the back straight, trapping Kimi. With places already lost to Grosjean and Perez if he stopped, Kimi himself decided to throw the dice.

"We weren't sure if we could get his tyres to do a stint of 53 laps [18 more than Pirelli's advisory!]," explained Permane, "but Kimi said let's give it a go and try to get to the end. It was his call and we were happy to try."

At this point he was lying fourth, behind the yet-to-stop prime-tyred Force India of Adrian Sutil, but well ahead of the fresher-rubbered Rosberg-Grosjean-Massa-Hamilton-Perez-Hulkenberg train.

Force India has gone a long way towards recapturing the early-season traits of its car, before the tyre-spec change, and was the team other than Lotus unconvinced that a one-stop was impossible.

Sutil began the race open-minded about the possibility and would run until lap 41 on his primes, coming out some way behind Hulkenberg and trying to get a set of softs to do the remaining 19 laps. Team-mate di Resta had gone for the opposite approach and, after ditching the softs on lap one, then divided the race into two sets of mediums.

There was little to choose between di Resta and Sutil's differing strategies © LAT

By the time all their stops had played out, they were running line astern, with di Resta putting a pass on the tyre-conserving Sutil. There really was very little to choose on strategies.

Up front, Vettel continued to edge out his lead over Webber, giving his engineer 'Rocky' Rocquelin a bit of stress every time he lit up the timing screens with purple sectors.

"You need to make these tyres last the whole race," he reminded his driver, a familiar dance between the pair, Seb feeling he had it all under control, 'Rocky' not seeing the point of the risk.

That stress took on an extra dimension when the team began seeing signs of imminent trouble on Webber's car. The alternator - the returning Achilles' Heel of the Renault engine from last year - was failing. On lap 39 Webber was instructed to switch off. He pulled to the side at Turn 2.

The Renault men looked at Vettel's data intently and were concerned by one of the electrical readings. It may just have been a faulty sensor and it wasn't - yet - showing anything like as serious a problem as Webber's. But for the sake of caution Vettel was instructed to shut everything down that would have a draw on the alternator, which included KERS.

That lost him around 0.3s of performance once he'd rebalanced his brakes, but that was still faster than anyone else, the nearest of whom was almost half a minute behind.

Vettel's wasn't the only Renault concern in the pitlane. At Lotus it could be seen that Grosjean's air supply for the engine's pneumatic valves was leaking, the exact same thing that had stopped him in Singapore.

"About 20 laps from the end they told us it wasn't going to finish," said Permane. Grosjean was instructed to short-shift, thus bringing to an end his hopes of launching an attack on Rosberg. Before too much longer he was shifting at 14,400rpm rather than 18,000. Still he was keeping Massa behind him.

This whole train of cars was now inevitably catching Raikkonen on his ancient tyres. He'd been lapping competitively until the rubber had finally surrendered with about 12 laps to go.

Rosberg went past using DRS with eight laps to go, and next came team-mate Grosjean and the chasing Massa. As they raced up the straight to Turn 4 with four laps remaining, Grosjean was on his DRS but Raikkonen was defending down the inside. Romain went around the outside but Kimi was not surrendering, running out wide.

Raikkonen did not immediately cede ground to Grosjean © XPB

Light contact between the two Lotuses was made, Grosjean driving off the track to avoid a harder hit. He was ahead but had been off the track to complete the move, so immediately surrendered it.

Massa was now right on top of them and things were getting stressful in the Lotus pits. "Kimi, get out of the ....ing way," shouted Permane.

"Don't shout," countered Raikkonen, who finally backed off exiting the penultimate corner, Grosjean flashing past there, Massa one corner later.

Hulkenberg by this time had pulled out: "I was braking for the final turn and felt something in the car click. Then suddenly my brakes were gone." This brought di Resta and Sutil up to eighth and ninth ahead of Ricciardo, who was faultless in fending off Alonso.

Hamilton had been trying hard for most of the race's second half to put a pass on Massa and by now this had taken a toll on his tyres. With three laps to go they were almost finished, and Perez sensed his chance as they came upon the limping Raikkonen onto the back straight.

Hamilton got DRS on the Lotus to spear effortlessly past it, Perez got DRS on Hamilton to go by them both in a perfectly executed double-pass to take fifth.

Raikkonen, his strategy gamble having bust, trailed in for new softs and rejoined seventh, shattering the fastest lap record. Cue more stress for 'Rocky'. "Don't even think about it," he warned Vettel. "We're in enough trouble as it is."

But they weren't really. Vettel crossed the line to take his fourth consecutive title in the best, most resounding way possible, half a minute clear of second-placed Rosberg.

Grosjean kept that engine running - its air bottle was literally empty at the end - while keeping out of DRS range of Massa to take a fabulous third from 17th on the grid.

'Rocky' had another instruction for his driver. "Well done Seb; normal routine please." No, not today, Seb decided.

Instead he pulled up in front of the pits after his slow-down lap and produced a lovely series of celebratory donuts, adding yet more smoke to the New Delhi sky.