Motorsports
Webber takes aim at DHL Fastest Lap trophy
Red Bull-Racing driver Mark Webber was the king of speed at super-fast Suzuka – qualifying on pole and taking the Fastest Lap. The race for the DHL Fastest Lap Award heats up.
Team Red Bull “clearly have the best pace this year,” says DHL’s F1® Expert and former F1 driver, Christian Danner. And it showed this past weekend at the 2013 FORMULA 1 JAPANESE GRAND PRIX. After dominating qualifying, teammates Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel started 1-2 on the grid on Sunday.
That domination ended quickly – albeit temporarily – when the lights went out in Suzuka. “They blew the start and ended up behind Romain Grosjean in the Lotus,” explains Danner.
Strategy makes difference
The swift and unanticipated turn of events forced Team Red Bull to improvise their front-runner strategy. And it also “meant that each [driver] had to go for different strategies,” adds Danner. “Mark with a three-stop and Sebastian with a two stop.” That’s ultimately what made the difference and decided the race. “Seb won it with ease.”
Webber consistently outpaced his teammate – not to mention the rest of the field – over the course of the race, setting the Fastest Lap of the Japanese Grand Prix at the start of his final stint.
But that doesn’t mean the world champ was the fastest man on this sunny day in Suzuka. Webber consistently outpaced his teammate – not to mention the rest of the field – over the course of the race, setting the Fastest Lap of the Japanese Grand Prix at the start of his final stint. It would be his seven-lap struggle to pass Romain Grosjean in that last stint – despite lapping up to 1.8 seconds faster than the Lotus – that would cost the Aussie an opportunity to give his German counterpart a run for his money in the final laps.
Webber eventually outmaneuvered the Frenchman in Lap 51 to follow his teammate across the finish line and into second place.
Title beckons as Vettel wins fifth in a row
The reigning World Champion has returned to the dominant performance last seen in the 2011 season – taking his fifth checkered flag in a row and joining yet another short list of elite drivers who have achieved such a feat in the sport’s 64-year history. Only five other F1 drivers have ever achieved this: Alberto Ascari, Michael Schumacher, Jack Brabham, Jim Clark and Nigel Mansell.
The German wunderkind is now staring at a fourth consecutive world championship, a feat that only a shocker result at the next Grand Prix in India could delay.
Content from disqus has been blocked because you did not allow to load it.
Loading the blocked content will adjust your privacy setting and content from this service will not be blocked in the future.
You have the right to revoke or change your decision at any time.
Posting Guidelines
All communications on Logistics of Things should be appropriate for a professional community, respecting the diverse views of individuals from different backgrounds. We will review all comments and reserve the right to terminate or restrict access to user's account and to delete any content posted through it, without notice and at our discretion, if we deem it to be overly promotional, offensive, or off topic.
All posting become property of DHL.