Sebastian Vettel gave a menacing message to his rivals after snatching pole position in the Istanbul Park. The young German was in the right place to aim for another uninterrupted race victory and to lengthen his already healthy lead of the FIA World Championship. In the end Vettel won his third race win from four races in the 2011 season and now he has 34 more points than 2nd place man. He led Red Bull’s first 1-2 of their title defence as Mark Webber finished second to secure the team’s 11th career one-two. Also for the first time this season Ferrari's Fernando Alonso finished on the podium.
"I think we had a good weekend overall," said Alonso.
"The car performed a bit better than what we did in the first three races of the championship, so finally we're enjoying racing again and we enjoyed a race fighting for the podium positions, and changing second and third position through the race. Finally we can enjoy racing again. He said the only difference between his and Webber's pace during their various dices came from who had the best tyres at any time. I maybe had a little bit of advantage in terms of tyre degradation compared to Mark at that part of the race, and we used the DRS and I was able to overtake him," Alonso recalled.
“It's a very sweet victory, brilliantly executed by both drivers" said Red Bull team principal Christian Horner. "Good strategy, great race. Mark needed to pass Alonso and he made it stick; he had a new set of primes at the end of the race and they really worked out well for him.”
Nico Rosberg in the Mercedes sprinted past Webber at the start to run second but could only take fifth place for Mercedes by the end of the race.
Lewis Hamilton beat his McLaren team mate Jenson Button to take fourth place just off the podium. Renault collected another solid points haul with Nick Heidfeld and Vitaly Petrov in seventh and eighth positions respectively, the former eventually emerging on top after the pair had earlier clashed at the final corner.
Sebastien Buemi drove a strong race from 16th to ninth for Toro Rosso, while the ever charging Kamui Kobayashi stormed from the very back to the final point.
Renault did well as Nick Heidfeld took seventh and Vitaly Petrov eighth respectively.
Although Nick Heidfeld accused his team-mate Petrov of putting an “unsafe” move on him during the race. Heidfeld waved his fist as the two touched wheels.
“Yeah, it’s not nice it shouldn’t happen. He just pushed me back and we made contact. It’s not a safe thing to do.”
Sebastien Buemi drove a strong race from 16th to ninth for Toro Rosso, while the ever charging Kamui Kobayashi stormed from the very back to the final point, while Massa in the second Ferrari took a disappointing 11th place outside of the points.
The next race will be the Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Catalunya on the 20-22 May.
(Sunday 22 May: Race - 1300).
