Formula One: Vettel takes step to fourth title

It was Vettel’s sixth win in 12 races this season – his third around the famous old track – and 32nd of his F1 career, drawing him level with Alonso.

Vettel was joined on the podium by his Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber, the Australian driving in his final European race given he is due to quit the sport at the end of the season.

The championship would appear to be a two-horse race as Lewis Hamilton could only finish ninth in his Mercedes, while Lotus’ Kimi Raikkonen was 11th. The duo are now 81 and 88 points off the pace.

Raikkonen started from 11th and Hamilton 12th, the latter failing to make it into the top 10 shoot-out for the first time in 67 races stretching back to the 2010 Malaysian Grand Prix.

Raikkonen’s bid for a podium was scuppered heading into the Rettifilio chicane for the first time as the Finn ran into the back of Sergio Perez’s McLaren under braking.

Forced into a pitstop at the end of lap one for a new front wing, Raikkonen dropped to 21st and what was last place as Paul Di Resta had already retired after running into the second Lotus of Romain Grosjean. With the Scot losing the front-left wheel from his Force India, it means he has now failed to score a point in four races.

The stewards are to investigate the incident but, with Di Resta holding his hands up to making a mistake, he is almost certain to be handed a grid penalty for the next race in Singapore.

As for Hamilton, he was running 11th when, after 11 laps, he was informed he had a slow puncture to his front-right tyre.

With radio issues, Hamilton failed to pit at the first opportunity but got the message second time around after 13 laps, putting on the quicker medium-compound tyres but dropping down to 19th.

Given the early pit stops, and in a one-stop race for the leaders, Raikkonen and Hamilton were forced into making a second trip into the pits later in the race. On both occasions, Raikkonen after 30 laps and Hamilton 38, the duo were running in fifth.

Hamilton’s stop was a surprising one, though, as the lap earlier he had set the fastest of the race. Aware, however, Hamilton was never going to run for 40 laps on one set of medium-compound tyres, Mercedes had no choice but to bring him in again.

With both taking on the faster mediums again, and with those around them on the hard rubber, that at least resulted in them going on a charge over the final 15 laps, but come the end they were only fighting over scraps.

As for Vettel, from the 40th pole of his career, the only pressure he encountered was at the start, on the long run down to the Rettifilio, from Webber and Ferrari’s Felipe Massa.

The 26-year-old made a rare mistake by locking up his front-right wheel under braking into the chicane, resulting in concern on the Red Bull pitwall for a while given the flat spot on the tyre.