of vettel wins melbourne f1 grand prix

Invincible Vettel wins with ease in Melbourne: Sebastian Vettel finished 22 seconds ahead of Lewis Hamilton. Vitaly Petrov came in third to earn Renault a podium finish.

Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel got his world championship defence off to the best possible start in Albert Park on Sunday evening. The German beat Lewis Hamilton’s KERS-assisted rush as they had a drag race to the first corner, and thereafter that was all she wrote.

Vettel was 2.4s ahead at the end of the opening lap, and simply controlled the pace to win by 22.2s after a problem with the floor of Hamilton’s McLaren caused an off-course moment in Turn One on Lap 32 and cost him some downforce.

At times the Englishman was able to match Vettel’s pace and he did a better job controlling his tyres in the first part, as both ran two-stop strategies in a race in which all the gloomy predictions about Pirelli’s tyres proved completely unfounded.

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