Sunday: Vettel and Red Bull Triumph on the Ardennes Rollercoaster
After being overtaken in the final seconds of qualifying by Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel returned the favor to the Mercedes driver in the opening seconds of the race, taking the lead and never relinquishing it. Meanwhile, Mark Webber, hampered by his clutch, made a poor start, impacting the remainder of his race.
Sebastian Vettel – 1st:
I don’t think we expected to be dominant here, and it surprised all of us really; it’s a good result. I think we knew we were in the race at our pace compared to the Mercedes, which may have helped us a little, but we didn’t know where we stood compared to the others, especially against Ferrari, and the Lotus cars seemed very fast in dry conditions too. It wasn’t certain that the rain would come at the end of the race, so we kept pushing, but the gap we had meant we were able to control the race from that point on, and the last laps weren’t too stressful.
Mark Webber – 5th:
« The two starting attempts before the race were not good, so we were somewhat worried about the clutch for the start, which pushed us back to the rear. We did our best, but we lost a few places which was not good. We then had to try to overtake people on the track, which was difficult because we had set the final gear to run with a clear track ahead rather than to overtake. The bad start put us out of position and everything stemmed from there, given that you wear your tires more to regain a good position. »
