It will be all smiles in the Vettel camp of Ferrari as the four-time World Champion had yet another solid weekend, as he continues to have a strong debut season with Ferrari.
The four-time world champion greatest success of the weekend came in qualifying where he managed to split the Mercedes cars for the first time since round four in Bahrain, however a resurgent Kimi Raikkonen, managed to pip him to second place.
In terms of the race for Vettel, it started strongly and got better from there. Taking advantage of Raikkonen’s disastrous start to put himself into second, yet wasn’t able to match the pace of Hamilton who led from start to finish.
Rosberg’s slow start to the race also meant that Vettel was able to put lap times in without pressure in order to put distance between him and the Williams drivers.
The only time his second place looked under threat was when a marauding Rosberg started to close the gap. With the distance between them reaching as low as 2.9 seconds with eight laps to go. Although with a Mercedes powered car at his disposal; closing that sort of gap in such a short time seemed challenging.
Eventually though engine failure would put pay to Rosberg getting any points at the weekend, and with the Williams cars long down the road, all that remained to do for the 28-year-old was to make it to the end himself.
The four-time world champion would go on to make an emotive, yet truthful remark about what it would mean for F1 to lose one of it’s premier races:
“If we take this [race] away from the calendar for any shitty money reasons, you are basically ripping our hearts out.”
An emotional Vettel also went on to thank fans “for the emotion” whilst also calling it the best second place of his life.
Whilst Hamilton now has nine fingers on the championship with his Italian delight, Vettel’s strong performance now opens up the door for him to snatch second place in the Drivers Championship from Rosberg.
With seven rounds to go Vettel has now closed the gap on Rosberg to just 21 points, and with Suzuka and Sochi being the only tracks where the speed of the Mercedes will be noticeable; Vettel might be able to pull off a championship finish that would start to dent the concept that Mercedes are unbeatable.
