Red Bull boss Christian Horner was full of praise for Sebastian Vettel after the German lodged his fourth consecutive GP win in Malaysia, having dominated the race from pole.
The relegation of Mark Webber to fourth after a KERS failure and poor first lap was the only downside for the team.
“We’ve managed to get the pole and we’ve managed to lead pretty much every lap of the race this afternoon,” said Horner. “To me that’s a job well done with Sebastian. Obviously with Mark we need to make sure we learn from today. It was a KERS debut on our car, and we’ve learned a lot of lessons.
“You can see that performance can ebb and flow. Ferrari looked to be having a very strong race today, so we just need to focus on optimising our own performance. We managed to win the two opening Grands Prix of the season, which is a tremendous start, and we’ll obviously look to build on this form as we head to China next week.”
Horner said Vettel had put in a perfect drive: “A great performance by Sebastian again today. He had a great start, led into the first corner and then his pace was excellent. He was able to build a lead, which gave us options. We then responded to the cars behind us, and we then had the option of going a three or a four stop. In the end we didn’t need to do a four stop, and he brought the car home with a very, very mature and level headed drive.
“He’s in great form. I think he was the coolest man in Malaysia today! Sitting on the pit wall we were getting a bit hot, and whenever you spoke with him it all sounded totally under control and pretty relaxed. He’s in a really good place, his confidence is high, and he’s really delivering.
“It was a very mature performance from him today, and a very controlled drive. He’s just gaining experience. It’s sometimes easy to forget that the guy’s only 23 years of age.”
Webber lost the use of KERS right at the start of the race, and thereafter struggled to regain ground. He eventually recovered to fourth.
“He was unlucky at the start, because he had the worst of all worlds. He had a poor start and then on top of that KERS went into a safe mode. There was an electrical issue that we actually haven’t seen before, so he had a combination of a bad start and no KERS at the second longest run to the first corner, and not a great first lap where he obviously lost another place to Kobayashi.
“He was actually 10th at the end of the first lap, so we decided to go aggressive with him and we went with a four-stop strategy. He needed to make it work, and he made a great recovery. A combination of strategy and his performance so nearly got him back onto the podium.
“These points are invaluable. In difficult weekends he’s picked up a fourth and a fifth place finish. They will all count at the end of the year. It was a great drive from him today, a great performance from him today. Just a shame that obviously he didn’t got the start that he or we wanted.”
Adam Cooper F1 