Four in a row for Vettel as Alonso keeps up the fight

Fernando Alonso took a brilliant second place in India today with a superb display of damage limitation in the face of a fourth consecutive dominant performance by Sebastian Vettel in the class of the field Red Bull. It’s really going to take something special from Alonso to stop Vettel steam rolling his way to a third title in a row.

It was one of Vettel’s traditional wins, get pole position, lead in to the first corner then reel off the laps. He blitzed the opposition in the first few laps then steadily increased the gap and maintained it to the end. Not even a broken skid block could slow him down in the final few laps.

He’s now increased his lead in the championship to 13 points over Alonso and let’s face it, he looks a pretty safe bet to go on to claim the main prize, possibly with another three wins to add to his collection as well, that’s how unstoppable the Red Bulls look at the moment. Only a KERs failure on Mark Webber’s sister car prevented another 1-2 finish.

From the unpredictability of the first two thirds of the season this seems like it’s all becoming rather routine now. Still, with three races still to run and only 13 points in it all is not yet lost, and Alonso won’t give up without putting up a considerable fight.

Alonso won't give up

Fernando proved today the Ferrari still has strong race pace and can compete if only he can qualify it that bit higher to get involved with the leaders right from the start. He gave it a good go from 5^th on the grid. On the opening lap exiting turn 3 onto the 1.2km main straight he got a massive slip stream behind the 2^nd row starting McLaren’s.

He shot ahead of them, but Jenson Button managed to hold him off into turn 4 and it was a few laps later than the Ferrari got ahead with the aid of the DRS. He maintained the gap to Webber in 2^nd, but slowly he began to erode the distance between them bringing his Ferrari into contention for one more step up on the podium.

After the mid race stops Alonso got right onto the back of Webber as the Australian’s KERs system started malfunctioning. With 10 laps to go the Spaniard breezed past him in the DRS zone and set about trying to catch Vettel, but to no avail. Webber managed to keep hold of third.

It was a good fight back though, and Ferrari can at least have some hope that with a few more developments for the next race in Abu Dhabi they might have a chance to challenge for the win, but Red Bull likely to have more updates too, it won’t be easy to catch them but it won’t be for lack of trying; Alonso is still in this title fight.

McLaren show pace too late

Behind the top 3 McLaren will be disappointed not to get a car onto the podium despite starting 3^rd and 4^th. Button got the better start from 4^th, but couldn’t maintain the leaders pace and was soon overtaken by Alonso and then his team mate Lewis Hamilton.

The McLaren seemed to be a lot better suited to the harder compound tyre and they began to show some good pace. After the stops Hamilton particularly started hunting towards the podium, and with Webber having difficulties, he was right on the back of the Red Bull come the end of the race.

Unfortunately for Lewis he ran out of laps, Button was a distant 5^th but did manage to set the fastest lap. Overall though not a good race for McLaren, after the mid-season break they were the car to beat, but something has gone wrong for them, and I’m not sure they even understand what it is as surely a team of their quality would have rectified it by now.

They are now certainly out of the championship hunt, when just a few races ago Lewis looked like he’d take the win in Singapore to become the main challenger to Alonso. He didn’t win, his car failed and Vettel stepped up and has been unstoppable since. Too much unreliability has been to blame for a disjointed season, even in this race we witnessed the quickest steering wheel change on Lewis’ car, due to radio problems.

Then again if you look at Lewis’ new team for next year things could be worse. Mercedes got Nico Rosberg in the top 10 but he could only manage to fall to 11^th, while Michael Schumacher started 14^th only to suffer a puncture at the first corner and later retire; great days for the Stuttgart marque.

Rest of the top 10

Felipe Massa boosted Ferrari’s points haul with 6^th, it looked like he could challenge Button at one point, but with 

Kimi filling his mirrors, he eventually dropped back but he at least kept the Finn behind.

Kimi got his Lotus to 7^th, but reckons he could have been scrapping for a podium if they hadn’t gone the wrong way on set up before qualifying. He had no straight line speed to get ahead of the Ferrari, as when he actually did get past by diving round the outside of turn 2 before finishing it off into turn 3 just after the pit stops, Massa DRS’d straight back ahead.

Nico Hulkenberg in the Force India had a good start to blast straight into the top 10 from 12^th on the grid. Another decent result with 8^th, he’s really outshined his team mate Paul di Resta in the 2^nd half of the season.

Behind him came Romain Grosjean who had a good battle with the Williams cars and made his strategy of starting on hards when most others were on softs work well for him to come home 9^th, with not a hint of contact.

Bruno Senna had looked quick all weekend and disappointed not to get into the top 10 unlike his Williams team mate Pastor Maldonado. But whereas Maldonado suffered more contact which resulted in a puncture after Kamui Kobayashi clipped him, Senna made some good moves and eventually DRS’d by Rosberg to take the final point.

Sauber lost Sergio Perez after a puncture, while Kobayashi failed to shine today. Toro Rosso cars seemed to just like causing punctures as both Jean-Eric Vergne and Daniel Ricciardo had their front wings clipped by Schumacher and Perez respectively destroying their races.

India failed to provide us with a great race but it was an interesting one for the title, as despite Vettel winning, Alonso proves he'll not go away without a fight. So off to Abu Dhabi next for the next installment, if Vettel wins there though it’ll practically be game over.

all photo's taken from autosport.com