Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel won the F1 2011 season-opening Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne with a comfortable and untouchable race, retaining his victorious momentum since the last 3 races of 2010 season that crowned him F1 world champion.
The 2010 world champion Sebastien Vettel starting form the pole position, got pulled clear in the opening laps, until Hamilton began to match his lap times and closed to within 2 seconds by the time Vettel made his first pit stop. The drop off in tyre performance was clear though, and when Hamilton pitted 2 laps later he returned to the track five seconds behind. Crucial to Vettel's charge was a pass around the outside of Button in turn four, who had yet to pit but had the potential to ruin Vettel pace pulling Hamilton in the lead.
From that point Vettel rushed away with noone else being able to threat his victory, opening up a comfortable 12 second lead and managing the gap to the end of the race with a performance made all the more impressive following Christian Horner's post-race admission that Red Bull had not run KERS all weekend.
Vettel commented about his victory:
"Obviously it was a good race," the reigning world champion said. "In the end things calmed down a bit when Lewis didn't push as hard anymore, so we tried to control the last part of the race. But I don't think it was an easy race, obviously the start was crucial and being on the clean side I got a good getaway but I didn't know if it was enough. Then I saw that Lewis and Mark were battling for position and I was clear of that. In the first stint I tried to hold the gap, but we saw how quickly you then reach the cliff and the tyres start to see degradation. Lewis caught up and we came in, but I couldn't have really done more laps."
Vettel, was followed by Lewis Hamilton, who took a solid 2nd place without being able to mount any serious challenge. In fact he was hampered by what he described as a "massively damaged" undertray that rubbed along the floor and could have cost him an after-race penalty if it has caused his plank to wear away below the required amount.
Vettel's dominance caused action to be shifted behind as Alonso got shuffled backwards on the outside of turn one during the start and Petrov made a strong start up to 4th that pushed him to his maiden podium. Petrov finished just 1.5 seconds ahead of Fernando Alonso, marking again his 2nd duel victory against the Spaniard double world champion since the 2010 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix that cost him the 2011 championship.
Having lost out from Alonso in the final round of pit stops, Mark Webber finished only 5th in his home grand prix when he was obliged to change early his Pirelli tyres.
Button was caught behind Massa in the early stages and struggled to pass him although he was faster than the Brazilian. Eventually, Button tried to go round the outside of turn 11 but as he ran wide cut turn 12 in order to overtake. With Massa soon pitting, Button was handed a drive-through penalty despite protesting that he was already ahead going in to the corner, but recovered to take an impressive 6th, re-passing Massa later.
Perez managed his tyres brilliantly on his debut and stop for only one tyre change before finishing 7th, ahead of his team-mate Kobayashi. Massa 9th after a late pit stop, and made use of the Drag Reduction System (DRS) to get past Buemi in to turn one.
The Pirelli tyres held up surprisingly well, seeing the front runners complete only two stops during the race, while the DRS did see some moves take place in to turn one, but didn't appear to create the speed differential expected.
As it was expected to happen, both HRT drivers Tonio Liuzzi and Narain Kartikeyan, weren't allowed to race after failing to complete a qualifying time within the 107% of the pole sitter and were furthermore refused a special dispensation to race by the stewards. In fact F1 world behaved ironically to HRT when the media centre fell into sarcastic applause when an HRT completed a flying lap during qualifying session.
Tonio Liuzzi commented:
"If you compare us with Red Bull or Ferrari, who spend $400 million per year, our situation is very negative. But if you consider that our guys have been almost completely without sleep, it is more positive and even something to be proud of."
