Formula-1 news

Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel has sealed his place in the F1 history books as the sports youngest world champion after a dominant win in Abu Dhabi on Sunday. Vettel led home the McLarens of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button.

The men who had been ahead in the standings, Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso and Red Bull’s Mark Webber, lost out on the ultimate prize after ill-timed pit stops, finishing seventh and eighth…

Team principal Christian Horner has insisted Red Bull will not be favouring Mark Webber over Sebastian Vettel at the championship’s penultimate round in Brazil, despite the Australian’s points advantage following their Korea DNFs.

Webber is second in the table, trailing Fernando Alonso by 11 points, with Vettel a further 14 adrift. Horner says that with 50 still available, it’s too early to back one man…

McLaren’s Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton sandwiched Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel at the top of the times after Friday morning’s first free practice session at Monza.

The reigning world champion lapped in 1m 23.693s, just 0.097s faster than the German’s 1m 23.790s, with the 2008 title winner on 1m 23.967s in the second MP4-25. Nobody else breached 1m 24s, but Robert Kubica and Nico Rosberg got closest…

McLaren’s MP4-25 was tipped to be the fastest car around Monza, and it may yet prove so. However, as the British team experimented with F-duct versus non F-duct configurations on Friday afternoon, Hamilton and Button found themselves outpaced by arch rivals Red Bull and Ferrari. We take a team-by-team look at early progress in Italy

Sebastian Vettel was in a world of his own in qualifying as he thrust his Red Bull to a fastest time of 1m 18.773s, and his second-run lap of 1m 18.832s would have been sufficient to win him the pole too as team mate Mark Webber could not improve on his first effort of 1m 19.184s.

The only man to get anywhere near the Australian was Fernando Alonso with 1m 19.987s for Ferrari, then there was a big gap to Felipe Massa on 1m 20.331s in the other Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton who achieved McLaren’s dream with a top five time, 1m 20.499s.

1st Fernando Alonso (Ferrari), 1h27m38.864s; 2nd Felipe Massa (Ferrari), 1h27m43.060s; 3rd Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull), 1h27m43.985s.

Q: Fernando, as the team told you at the end you have indeed been very quick this weekend. Frustration though for much of the race and you said on the team radio at one stage ‘this is ridiculous’ but in the end it ended very well for you.
Fernando Alonso: Yeah, I think it was a good weekend overall. We did improve the car a lot and immediately from Friday we felt very competitive…

Hockenheim is practically in Sebastian Vettel’s back yard – he grew up barely 40 km away – so few were surprised to see him take pole for his home race. More surprising was the way he then got dumped down to P3 at Turn One by the Ferraris. Vettel, however, is looking on the bright side – he outscored his main title rivals and for a change it is a team other than Red Bull courting controversy at the end of the weekend

Hockenheim was a weekend of extremes for Ferrari. They finally found the speed needed to beat Red Bull and rediscover winning-ways, but their much-needed one-two came at a price – $100,000 to be precise. The team insisted Alonso’s pass on Massa was not the result of team orders, but the stewards disagreed and now the FIA’s World Motor Sport Council must decide if the matter is taken further. While the result stands, however, it puts Alonso very much back in the hunt for a third drivers’ title, as his key rivals – unable to match the race pace of the two red cars – were left to conduct damage-limitation exercises. We take a team-by-team look at Sunday’s events in Germany

Heavy rain five minutes before the start of Saturday morning’s final practice session for the German Grand Prix threw things into disarray for a while, but created a gripping final few minutes after the track had dried out.

A series of rapid-fire laps saw fastest time changing hands by the minute, but in the end it was Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel who claimed the top slot with 1m 15.103s ahead of Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari on 1m 15.387s…

Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso led Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel in both Q1 and Q2 at Hockenheim, and again after the first runs in Q3, but on his very last run the German stopped the clocks in 1m 13.791s.

And when the dust had settled after the Spaniard had completed his second run he came up just two-thousandths of a second short, on 1m 13.793s. There could scarcely have been a more dramatic scene-setter for Sunday’s German Grand Prix…