Top-gear Vettel hits Bull’s eye

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April 10: Sebastian Vettel is threatening to make 2011 all his own. The defending champion drove his charging Red Bull from flag-off to finish at the Sepang International Circuit for an untroubled victory in the Formula One Petronas Malaysian Grand Prix on a humid Sunday afternoon, leaving the field trailing in his wake. Vettel extended his championship points haul to 50 from the first two races of the season, and if he can maintain his current form, he could well pull off a repeat of Michael Schumacher’s 2004 year of glory, when the latter won 13 of the season’s 18 races.

Vettel broke away at the start and was never threatened at any stage. He lost the lead briefly in the pit-stop roundabout but once things had settled down, he simply ran away with the race. Second-placed Jenson Button was so far behind that Vettel even had time to weave his car across the track twice in celebration as he took the chequered flag. Finishing third behind Button’s McLaren Mercedes was the surprise package of the race, Renault’s Nick Heidfeld. Force India still look some way off the pace but Scotsman Paul di Resta had the garage in smiles when he brought home their first points of the season with a 10th-place finish, one behind Schumacher, who also racked up his first top-10 result of the season.

On a day when the new Pirelli tyres finally had a say in the way the race played out, three pit stops was the order of the day, yet Button nursed his prime set for all of 19 laps to hold Heidfeld back. Renault are quickly translating their form of 2010 into good performances this year, and will be one of the teams to beat in the season. Heidfeld was good enough to keep Lewis Hamilton at bay in the closing stages — the Briton’s degrading tyres forcing a fourth pit-stop — which allowed Vettel’s team-mate Mark Webber take fourth place.

Ferrari still seem some way from their best but were still good enough to take fifth and sixth, Brazilian Felipe Massa crossing the line two-tenths of a second ahead of Fernando Alonso, who looked good for third but had to make a late pit-stop for a new nose after going wheel-to-wheel with Hamilton and bumping the McLaren in the process. Hamilton came in seventh, but was demoted one place as the race stewards hit him and Alonso with 20-second penalties for “making more than one change of direction” in their clash. That pushed the Sauber of Kamui Kobayashi up the order and gave Hamilton eighth place while Alonso retained his placing. Narain Karthikeyan did manage to make the starting grid but his race was a short one, the HRT coming to a halt early in the race.