2012 Korean Grand Prix
Sebastian Vettel won Driver of the Weekend for the first time this year after completing a hat-trick of wins in the last race in Korea.
Vettel passed Mark Webber at the start of the race and coped with tyre wear worries in his final stint.
Felipe Massa in the top three for the second consecutive weekend and third place went to Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg.
Driver of the Korean Grand Prix Weekend poll – top three
1. Sebastian Vettel – 33.5%
2. Felipe Massa – 20.3%
3. Nico Hulkenberg – 16.6%
Vettel wasn’t perfect, but he has to be a contender by making the race winner never in doubt after the first few corners. Massa did very very well all weekend, as did Hulkenberg.
Vettel seemed a dead cert for pole position on Saturday. But he got too close to Massa on his last run and lost out to Mark Webber. However he beat his team mate off the line better to take the lead.
He led throughout despite repeated warnings from engineer Guillaume Rocquelin about state of his tyres. Vettel’s win puts him in the lead of the drivers standings by six points from Fernando Alonso.
It cannot be anyone else than Vettel in my opinion. Again a perfect demonstration of how to command a race when you are leading by the end of the first lap.
You cannot go past the man who only missed out on pole because he got checked by Massa on his last lap in Q3, then jumped his team mate at the start despite being on the dirty side of the track, then led every moment of the race from then on without being threatened by anybody.
Vettel had the race so completely under his control from turn one lap one that he made it boring after that first lap. If that is not true class I don’t know what is.
As in Japan, Vettel was the best driver. His only faults were his second lap in Q3 and the lock-up on his in-lap during the second stint.
Massa was out-qualified by Alonso for the 15th time this season, but made up ground during the race passing Raikkonen at the start and later taking the struggling Hamilton.
He found himself right behind his team mate but was instructed by the team not to get to close to Alonso and had to settle for a fourth-place finish behind him.
I’ll vote for Massa. Such a convincing performance, could’ve snatched third place off Alonso, and maybe fight Webber – if he had a chance in the team, that is.
Maybe he’s getting back to where he used to be, and that Suzuka podium really got his confidence back up.
Fer no. 65
I’ll give this one to Massa as I believe this was the performance that finally consolidated his return to top form.
Decent qualifying, there or thereabouts all weekend and superb pace on Sunday. It’s the second Grand Prix in a row where Massa is the one who got the most out of his Ferrari, not Alonso.
Massa gets my vote. His past four races have been stellar – beginning with Monza. But at both Monza and Korea, he had to cede to Fernando.
At Suzuka he clearly showed he had the speed. Same with this weekend. I thought he’d have taken second place if only the team gave him a chance.
Hulkenberg enjoyed his second-best qualifying result of the season and split the Lotus drivers at the finishing line.
On his way to sixth place, he overtook Romain Grosjean and Lewis Hamilton with a superb single pass.
Hulkenburg kept his head and even though lost out to Grosjean mid-race, kept up behind him and executed the double-pass beautifully. Not an easy thing to do when both cars ahead of you have better pace even if they were handicapped in some way.
I really hope Force India don’t let him go to Sauber. They could do with a stable line-up for next year.
The drive that impressed me the most was the one of Hulkenberg, he got everything from that car, in qualiying and on the race and that move on Grosjean and Hamilton was the highlight of the race.
Hulkenberg for me, very solid weekend, made himself stand out yet again and massively out-performed his team mate. Extra points for the beaming grin and excitement shown in post race interviews.
2012 Driver of the Weekend results so far
|Australia||Jenson Button (43.6%)||Fernando Alonso (21.1%)||Sergio Perez (8.2%)|
|Malaysia||Sergio Perez (61.4%)||Fernando Alonso (28.1%)||Bruno Senna (3.7%)|
|China||Nico Rosberg (69.1%)||Lewis Hamilton (10.0%)||Jenson Button (6.4%)|
|Bahrain||Kimi Raikkonen (56.3%)||Sebastian Vettel (19.3%)||Paul di Resta (10.6%)|
|Spain||Pastor Maldonado (56.8%)||Lewis Hamilton (27.5%)||Fernando Alonso (6.4%)|
|Monaco||Mark Webber (32.6%)||Heikki Kovalainen (20.2%)||Fernando Alonso (14.2%)|
|Canada||Lewis Hamilton (58.7%)||Sergio Perez (19.1%)||Romain Grosjean (15.3%)|
|Europe||Fernando Alonso (51.7%)||Sebastian Vettel (18.4%)||Michael Schumacher (8.9%)|
|Great Britain||Mark Webber (50.1%)||Fernando Alonso (18.7%)||Romain Grosjean (17.3%)|
|Germany||Fernando Alonso (62.4%)||Jenson Button (12.5%)||Kamui Kobayashi (8.7%)|
|Hungary||Lewis Hamilton (55.2%)||Kimi Raikkonen (30.1%)||Bruno Senna (5.5%)|
|Belgium||Jenson Button (52.7%)||Sebastian Vettel (20.5%)||Nico Hulkenberg (8.9%)|
|Italy||Sergio Perez (50.6%)||Lewis Hamilton (30.0%)||Fernando Alonso (10.9%)|
|Singapore||Lewis Hamilton (26.2%)||Paul di Resta (25.6%)||Sebastian Vettel (18.6%)|
|Japan||Kamui Kobayashi (39.2%)||Sebastian Vettel (33.1%)||Felipe Massa (16.8%)|
|Korea||Sebastian Vettel (33.5%)||Felipe Massa (20.3%)||Nico Hulkenberg (16.6%)|
Vettel became the tenth different driver to win the poll and made his sixth appearance in the top three. He and Massa were also in the top three the previous weekend.
Hulkenberg appeared in the top three for the second time this year.
2012 Korean Grand Prix
- Alonso: ‘We’re fighting against Newey’
- Vettel earns Driver of the Weekend for Korea win
- Korean Grand Prix gets lowest rating of season so far
- F1 fans’ videos from the 2012 Korean Grand Prix
- Korea “most disappointing race” this year for Williams
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