Formula 1: Webber Ends Year On a High by Winning Brazil GP

Mark Webber (right) celebrates his win in the Brazilian GP with team-mate and world champion Sebastian Vettel

The 2011 Formula 1 championship was wrapped up Sunday with Australian driver Mark Webber benefitting from a dose of misfortune to his Red Bull team-mate and world champion Sebastian Vettel, who was hampered by a gearbox problem to record his first victory of the year at the very last attempt in the Brazilian Grand Prix.

Vettel looked set to to obtain his 12th victory of his dominant year after comfortably pulling away from Webber in the early laps at the Interlagos circuit. But around lap 13 of 71 the German developed a gearbox problem allowing Webber to eat into his lead heading into the second stint.

With the problem only appearing to worsen, Vettel let his Red Bull colleague through to the lead on lap 30 and the Australian never looked back to record his seventh career victory but first since August 2010 in Hungary.

Vettel impressively kept within touching distance for a while, and although Webber eventually won by 17s, the German still kept ahead of his other rivals and came home second to fittingly round off Red Bull’s second double title-winning year with their third 1-2 finish of 2011.

Jenson Button confirmed his runner-up position in the drivers’ championship with third place in spectacular style as, after being passed by Fernando Alonso in a brilliant move early on, spent the next two stints on the medium tyre and in the closing stages caught right back up with the Ferrari and passed the Spaniard with the assistance of DRS down the backstraight.

With Alonso therefore fourth, below-par team-mate Felipe Massa was promoted to fifth after Lewis Hamilton dropped out with a gearbox problem in the other McLaren.

Webber has been a customary slow starter all year but, despite an attack from Button on the outside going into the Senna S, held second - although Hamilton wasn’t so lucky in fourth and slipped behind Alonso.

With the pack safely navigating the often chaotic first series of corners and heading onto the backstraight and through the twisty middle corners, Vettel wasted little time in pulling out a gap and by the end of the first lap had already broken the crucial 1s barrier to his team-mate.

That lead was up to 2.2s by the end of the second tour but both Red Bull drivers pulled steadily away from Button, Alonso and Hamilton by the end of lap six. Button in turn appeared to hold up the Ferrari and on lap 11 Alonso demonstrated how much more grip and confidence he had in his car by pulling a sensationally bold move on the Briton around the outside of the 135mph curved right-handed turn six.

Vettel’s lead over Webber was up to 3.7s lead at this stage but on lap 13 was told about his gearbox problem. As such, Webber duly began to eat into that lead in the remaining laps before the first stops, consistently gaining around 0.3s a lap back to just under two seconds by the time Vettel ducked into the pits for a fresh set of soft tyres on lap 17.

Having struggled for a satisfactory balance on the soft compound Button went against the trend by using the medium tyre for stints three and four and despite the pace disadvantage in the former stint managed to keep Alonso, on the faster softs, in his sights before overtaking him on lap 62.

With the usual suspects filling the top five positions, Force India confirmed sixth place in the constructors’ championship as Adrian Sutil beat Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg to sixth, with team-mate Paul di Resta ending his hugely impressive rookie year in eighth place.

Sauber, meanwhile, kept ahead of Toro Rosso in the standings thanks to Kamui Kobayashi’s ninth-place, as Vitaly Petrov took the final point for Renault.

Top-10 starters Michael Schumacher and Bruno Senna, finished down in 15th and 17th places respectively after both losing ground when they collided when the former tried an overtaking move into the first turn on lap 10.

Brazilian GP Final Results

1 Mark Webber (Red Bull)
2 Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull)
3 Jenson Button (McLaren)
4 Fernando Alonso (Ferrari)
5 Felipe Massa (Ferrari)
6 Adrian Sutil (Force India)
7 Nico Rosberg (Mercedes)
8 Paul di Resta (Force India)
9 Kamui Kobayashi (Sauber)
10 Vitaly Petrov (Renault)
11 Jaime Alguersuari (Toro Rosso)
12 Sebastien Buemi (Toro Rosso)
13 Sergio Perez (Sauber)
14 Rubens Barrichello (Williams)
15 Michael Schumacher (Mercedes)
16 Heikki Kovalainen (Team Lotus)
17 Bruno Senna (Renault)
18 Jarno Trulli (Team Lotus)
19 Jerome D'Ambrosio (Virgin)
20 Daniel Ricciardo (HRT)

Did Not Finish

21 Vitantonio Liuzzi (HRT)
22 Lewis Hamilton (McLaren)
23 Pastor Maldonado (Williams)
24 Timo Glock Virgin (HRT)

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