Just like in Singapore, Vettel kept his head as several behind him appeared to lose theirs, and in doing so made sure the wheel-to-wheel battling stayed firmly in his mirrors. Kimi Raikkonen held off team-mate Romain Grosjean for second place as he made use of the safety cars to recover from his ninth-place grid position to finish on the podium. Grosjean will have felt hard done by after holding on to the coat tails of Vettel in the first half of the race, only to be passed by his Lotus team-mate into Turn 1 in the gap between the two safety car periods.
The battle for fourth raged from the safety car periods to the chequered flag as Lewis Hamilton was passed by Nico Hulkenberg at the first safety car restart and then failed to find a way back past. Hulkenberg drove a superb race from start to finish, but was put to the test in the closing stages as Hamilton attacked the Sauber lap after lap. Fernando Alonso was stationed in sixth to pick up the pieces, but despite a couple of looks up the inside of the Mercedes, never found a way past.
However, it was not just Red Bull's rivals who were left with questions to be answered at the end of the race. Sergio Perez suffered a tyre delamination on his right-front Pirelli causing the first safety car and a fire truck was deployed onto the track in front of the cars as they were still racing to deal with a fire on Mark
Webber's car. The Pirelli delamination is likely to be explained by a nasty lock up in the previous braking zone, but the fire truck will likely result in a review of procedures to deal with fires.
At the start Vettel made a perfect getaway and led Hamilton and Grosjean into Turn 2, who continued to battle into Turn 3 where Grosjean got ahead. The main casualty of the opening lap was Felipe Massa, who spun on his own heading into Turn 3 and nearly took out team-mate Alonso.
Jenson Button also got tagged in the melee and had to pit soon after to change a damaged front wing.
Tweet
