Sebastian Vettel wins the Indian Grand Prix

2013 Indian Grand Prix summary

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Sebastian Vettel continued his winning streak in the Indian Grand Prix and it carried him to his fourth consecutive world championship victory.

Vettel surrendered the lead two laps into the race when he pitted to remove the soft tyres he started the race on. That briefly left him in 17th place, but with the advantage of being able to run the rest of the race on the more durable medium tyres.

The other Red Bull of Mark Webber, which started on the harder tyres, led most of the first half of the race, but retired with an alternator problem shortly after his first pit stop. That cost Red Bull a likely one-two finish, though Webber never looked like keeping Vettel from the victory.

Nico Rosberg started second and finished there, passing Kimi Raikkonen late in the race after the Lotus driver’s tyres began to fade.

That helped Romain Grosjean take a surprising podium finish having started 17th, despite a robust defence from his team mate, thanks to a bold one-stop strategy.

Massa took fourth on a disappointing day for Ferrari after Fernando Alonso damaged his front wing on the first lap and finished out of the points.

Sergio Perez equalled McLaren’s best result of the year so far with fifth ahead of Lewis Hamilton and Raikkonen, following a late pit stop by the Lotus driver.

Both Force Indias scored point at their home race, Paul di Resta ahead of Adrian Sutil, and Daniel Ricciardo kept Alonso at bay for the final point.

2013 Indian Grand Prix

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Image © Red Bull/Getty

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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16 comments on “Sebastian Vettel wins the Indian Grand Prix”

  1. Pitted on Lap 2. Went all the way to the back. Cleared 13 cars in 10 laps and proceed to lead the race, thus winning the WDC and WCC (For Redbull) and at the same time leading Ferrari in 2nd.

  2. Once again, no driver starting on a used set of the harder tyres (After using them in Q3) has finished on the podium. Why do people seem to think this strategy works?

    1. Well, it would have resulted in a second place for Webber if his alternator hadn’t failed.

      1. +1

        Perez made the strategy work, Alonso had to pit for a front wing and Button had to pit because of a puncture.

  3. He did that with million overtakes :)

  4. im so glad i missed out

    1. You don’t enjoy watching history in the making?

    2. Right there with ya.

  5. its time for newey to change the team

  6. Still don’t quite understand why they pitted Vettel that early – lap 4 or so would seem to have been better in my view.

    1. Agreed. Surely with Massa behind, he could stay out a bit and open up a bigger gap, having less cars to pass when he comes out?

      Still, he won, so I guess it worked well enough… but I can’t help but feel it was far from optimal.

    2. Who cares, as Vettel said “strategy won’t matter too much” because he has the best car and is probably also the best driver :D

    3. OmarR-Pepper (@)
      27th October 2013, 12:32

      @mike-dee as it developed, it was the right call.

    4. I was wondering the same thing. I guess the 2 laps with the option tyre were the best strategy for Red Bull, but why they didn’t do the same in the two cars?, It seems to me that Webber had the best strategy. The only reason I can come up is, because they felt that they were so ahead of everybody else, they saw no reason for start in the second row and take the chance of a collision in the first curve.

  7. He can drive that car just like a ringin’ a bell.
    Go, go!
    Go Seb, go, go!

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