Sebastian Vettel has claimed his second career win at the Shanghai International Circuit as rain and standing water made conditions difficult for the entire duration of the third race of 2009. It’s Red Bull’s first win in Formula 1 since their takeover of Jaguar at the end of 2004, and a 1-2 finish, with Mark Webber crossing the line in second. Championship leader Jenson Button finished third.
Vettel was obviously delighted after the race, saying: “Winning my second race, one with Toro Rosso and one with Red Bull, makes me extremely happy and I hope we can continue working in this direction! I’m extremely proud and happy. I’m so happy to have won the race, it was an enormous and great job by the whole of Red Bull. I want to say a massive thank you to them all, everyone has worked so hard, so thanks to the team and also to Red Bull. Greetings to Austria!”
Webber was also happy with his best result in F1 to date: “It’s a great day for the team in Milton Keynes, well done and thank you to them, and also to everyone in Austria. It was a challenging race at times! It was hard to follow the cars in the beginning due to the spray, but then further into the race, it started to settle a bit. When Jenson re-passed me, I was very keen to try win the race, so I passed him around Turn seven as I knew he wouldn’t know I would be there, it was one of the best moves of my career. I’m happy today!”
Third placed Button said after the race: “A very difficult race today and I am so pleased that we got both cars to the end of 56 laps and scored as many points as possible. The conditions were pretty crazy with rivers of water all over the circuit which changed every time you encountered them.”
“To finish the race today is an achievement in itself and to be on the podium is fantastic. We couldn’t have beaten the Red Bulls and congratulations to Sebastian and Mark on a great result.” Rubens Barrichello made sure Brawn picked up maximum points behind the Red Bull cars by finishing fourth.
The remaining point positions went to Heikki Kovalainen, Lewis Hamilton, Timo Glock and Sebastien Buemi, who impressed in both qualifying and the race. He said afterwards: “I am very happy as the team did a super job so that we got another point to take away from here. I am pleased that in three races, I have scored twice. Maybe I could have done a little bit better, but I’m happy all the same.”
Adrian Sutil was running in sixth and on route to score Force India’s first points before crashing out of the race. He said: “I was very lucky to keep the car on the circuit for so long. It’s a shame – you focus so much and think you can do it, but the car was just out of control at the end. I had the same feeling as Monaco – it’s hard to believe when you are in the car and then suddenly you lose it and it’s all over from such a great position.”
Fernando Alonso was also left disappointed after starting in second, saying: “The team have done a great job to improve the car, which was very competitive, especially yesterday when we qualified on the front row. However, today we were unlucky and I think it’s one of those days when you take decisions at the wrong moment and everything seems to turn against you.”
“We were on the first row on the grid and all of a sudden we were last so this was the end of our race. Bahrain will be another big test and then we have Barcelona so we need to keep improving.”
Button still leads the championship ahead of Barrichello, Vettel, Glock and Webber, while Red Bull move into second in the constructors behind Brawn. A full race report will follow.
Congratulation vettel, you are a new rain master