Bridgestone Race - Vettel crushes all opposition in Abu Dhabi
Race - Vettel crushes all opposition in Abu Dhabi
2013-11-04
Race - Vettel crushes all opposition in Abu Dhabi

Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel scored his seventh consecutive victory and his 11th of 2013 with insouciant ease in Abu Dhabi on Sunday evening, after taking the lead from pole-sitting team mate Mark Webber at the start.

As the Australian made a slow getaway, Vettel and Mercedes' Nico Rosberg were able to swarm past on either side of his RB9, and thereafter Webber spent his time fending off Lotus's Romain Grosjean (who pushed Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton down to fifth), coping with a minor KERS overheating problem, and then hunting down Rosberg. Eventually he was able to overtake the German on the 20th lap to make it a Red Bull one-two, but Rosberg kept him honest to the flag as Grosjean likewise kept the pressure on the Mercedes. Vettel, however, was half a minute up the road and, as Webber suggested afterwards, "In a different category."

Hamilton, who'd had brake issues on the grid formation laps, struggled behind Esteban Gutierrez's Sauber, Jean-Eric Vergne's Toro Rosso and Adrian Sutil's Force India at times when they were out of kilter on tyre strategy, and in the closing stages was unable to pass Paul di Resta despite getting within half a second of the Scot's Force India. In the end they both lost places to Fernando Alonso, who played second fiddle for a long time to Ferrari team mate Felipe Massa while doing a very long middle stint. The Spaniard was on fire after a late pit stop and set several fastest laps as he clawed his way up to a great fifth place. He aggressively rejoined the track after his pit stop and passed Toro Rosso's Jean-Eric Vergne seemingly outside of track limits. However, stewards decided the incident required no further action following a post-race in
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