The queen of motorsport continues its Asian tour. The teams moved to South Korea from Singapore and then to Japan. Sebastian Vettel won both Grand Prix creating an even larger gap between him and his Championship competitors.
South Korean race in spite of being “provincial” (the circuit is almost 400 km far from Seoul, the country’s capital) and having a relatively out-of-date structure (it was built during the world crisis in 2007 — 2010 and a lot of investors refused to participate in that project, so that the government had to take it over and due to economy reasons cut down many recreational and infrastructural bonuses invented by Hermann Tilke), attracts the sportsmen by its interesting configuration and a great number of possibilities for struggle and overtaking.
According to the forecasts the weather was going to “cheer up” the pilots with heavy rains — typhoon was heading towards Korea. But it did not happen. It rained on the night of Saturday to Sunday but by the time of start the surface was dry again and there were no weather questions anymore. The pilots of Red Bull Racing were in the centre of attention as always. Vettel had won the pole and managed to take full advantage of it. The race went off without a hitch for Sebastian and he was holding the first position for all 55 laps. In fact, nobody is surprised at his victories anymore, people are getting used to them. Meanwhile, his team-mate Mark Webber made the news in the “incidents” section. Due to a punishment for Malaysian taxi Mark had 13th starting position which is not that pleasant together with the third place in qualifying. In addition to that on the 37th lap after the race restart the car of Adrian Sutil spinned on the track and hit the rear part of Webber’s car setting it on fire. As a result the 2nd and 3rd places were taken by Lotus drivers Kimi Räikkönen and Romain Grosjean.
Japanese Grand Prix began with an evident intrigue. The pole has been won for the first time by the Korean fire victim Mark Webber. In spite of KERS system failure Vettel qualified second on the grid. Second row was taken by Lewis Hamilton who crashed into Vettel’s car right after the start — though without any serious consequences — and Romain Grosjean who took advantage of the turmoil, pulled away and was leading the peloton for almost half of the race. Grosjean — Webber — Vettel. The pilots move in this order till the 30th lap when Grosjean goes into pits to change tires and comes back behind Webber. On the 41st lap Vettel warms up fresh tires and increases the speed overtaking Grosjean. Webber, leading at that time, goes to pits and returns third into the race and almost by the end of Grand Prix reaches for the second position. As a result Red Bull racing has the maximum overall score; Grosjean (Lotus) is third. Vettel took his ninth race win of the season and his fifth in a row leaving even less chances for his competitors to win the title. It’s quite possible that the title’s fate will be sealed during the next Grand Prix which will be held in Delhi, India in the end of October.
