Currently reading: Vettel cruises to Italian Grand Prix victory
Red Bull Racing ace tightens his grip on F1 world championship with a straightforward win at Monza

Reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel claimed Red Bull Racing's 40th Formula 1 race win with an untroubled drive in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza today.

The German led away from pole position, and his only concern during the race was a flat-spotted front tyre that compromised his pace during the opening stint.

On Saturday Vettel and Webber locked out the front row of the grid for Red Bull, but their key title rivals all endured incident-packed qualifying sessions.

Fernando Alonso qualified fifth, one place behind Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa, after the team's attempt to get its drivers to give each other a slipstream around the super-fast circuit went awry. It prompted a barbed comment from the Spaniard over the car-to-pit radio.

Kimi Raikkonen, Lewis Hamilton and Romain Grosjean all failed to make it through to the final tranche of qualifying, with the Brit blaming himself for his failure to properly hook up a decent lap.

The real star of qualifying was Sauber's Nico Hulkenberg, who set a superb time to line up third on the grid, although the German wasn't entirely sure where the pace had come from.

Changeable conditions prior to the start caused some head-scratching as the teams lined up on the grid. Hamilton and Raikkonen both gambled on starting on the harder compound tyre, whereas all of the top ten drivers had to start on the medium rubber they had used for their fast qualifying laps.

Massa and Alonso both made storming starts and seriously pressed Vettel and Webber into the first chicane. With his mirrors filled with scarlet Ferraris, Vettel locked-up his front-right brake and scarred the Pirelli tyre with a flat-spot, but still maintained the lead ahead of Massa, Webber and Alonso.

The tight confines of Monza's myriad chicanes caused the usual argy-bargy in the pack. Raikkonen chose to use the rear of Sergio Perez's McLaren as a brake into the first chicane, punting the Mexican driver across the run-off area and inflicting front-wing damage on his own Lotus, which he brought into the pits at the end of lap one.

Paul di Resta out braked himself into the second chicane and struck Grosjean's Lotus, wiping the front-left wheel and suspension off his Force India and retiring on the spot.

On lap three Alonso bravely sliced past Webber for third position, inadvertently clipping the front wing of the Red Bull with his rear tyre as he did so but inflicting no serious damage.

Half a dozen laps later, the Spaniard slipped past his dutiful team-mate for second position and set off in pursuit of Vettel, who was steadily inching clear at the head of the field. 

However, the Red Bull pit garage was concerned by a vibration caused by that flat-spotted front-right tyre and as the first tyre changes approached, Alonso began to take significant chunks out of Vettel's lead.

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At the end of lap 24 Vettel and Webber both pitted, briefly elevating Alonso and Massa to first and second, to the delight of the tifosi.

On the following lap Massa came in for new boots, ceding third place to Webber in the process because Ferrari's stop was half a second slower than Red Bull's.

Alonso stayed out on track until the end of lap 27, which soon looked like being the wrong decision because Vettel started to turn in some very fast laps on his fresh tyres.

The double world champion rejoined ten seconds behind the German, and only a second or so ahead of third-placed Webber.

The Aussie's prospects of attacking for second place were stymied by a gearbox glitch that prompted the team to tell him to short-shift his gear changes. Vettel was instructed to do likewise as a precaution, but he remained well clear of his pursuers to secure his sixth victory of the season.

Behind fourth-placed Massa, Hulkenberg drove intelligently to secure a valuable slug of points for Sauber, while Nico Rosberg had a quiet race to sixth place.

Although the race at the front failed to ignite as contest, there was plenty of action further down the field as Raikkonen and Hamilton recovered from their early issues.

Hamilton ran in tenth place in the early stages, but his pace was inconsistent and Mercedes suspected that he had a slow puncture on the front-right tyre.

They called him in for a pit stop, but Hamilton, struggling with a radio issue, was unable to hear the team's repeated calls. He eventually came in and dropped to 18th position.

That early pit visit meant he had to run on a two-stop strategy, which in turn meant he could take advantage of fresher tyres in the closing stages of the race.

The Briton mounted a terrific charge, dispatching Raikkonen, Perez and Button in the closing laps and salvaging ninth place from a challenging weekend.

Results (provisional)

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Italian Grand Prix, 8 September 2013

1 Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull)

2 Fernando Alonso (Ferrari)

3 Mark Webber (Red Bull)

4 Felipe Massa (Ferrari)

5 Nico Hulkenberg (Sauber)

6 Nico Rosberg (Mercedes)

7 Daniel Ricciardo (Toro Rosso)

8 Romain Grosjean (Lotus)

9 Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes)

10 Jenson Button (McLaren)

 

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Peter Cavellini 9 September 2013

All Hail !!!!!!!!

Yep, judging by this,Vettel is Champion now!,the rest are just the rest,no one has caught up technically with Redbull,and that's the sole reason why Alonso,Hamilton etc haven't a Snowball's chance unless Vettel's car has a breakdown,nothing new in one make dominating,McLaren Honda in the 80's won nearly every race,was that then down to the car or driver?,either way, the Redbull is dominating,maybe a change nxt yr...?