Motor Sport: Sebastian Vettel proved to Jenson Button this season's Formula One world title fight will not be a walk in the park after a storming British Grand Prix victory. After totally dominating the year with six wins from the opening seven races, Button finished a distant sixth to Red Bull Racing star Vettel.
Button’s championship lead is now 23 points ahead of Brawn GP team-mate Rubens Barrichello who managed third behind Mark Webber as Red Bull scored their second one-two of the year, with Vettel now 25 points down.
Once the five red lights disappeared to signal the start of the 60-lap race, so did Vettel into the distance. Unlike in Turkey a fortnight ago when Vettel again started on pole, only to make an error on the first lap that allowed Button through and onto victory, this time the young German was faultless.
Once Vettel hit the first turn into Stowe still at the head of the field, only a disaster would deny him his third career victory, one that never materialised.
As it turned out, after dominating practice on Friday, qualifying yesterday, so it followed in the race as he pulled out a stunning second a lap over Barrichello and Webber.
By the time of Vettel’s first pit stop on lap 21, after setting fastest lap after fastest lap, the 21-year-old held a 23-second advantage over Webber, enough to take on fuel and tyres — and emerge ahead of the Australian to retain his lead.
It was frighteningly impressive stuff, and as Button endured his worst weekend of the season, frustratingly in front of a sell-out home crowd to boot, denying them the victory they craved.
Starting from a season-low sixth on the grid, Button’s start was compromised as he found himself boxed in on the short run down to Stowe.
In the space of a few hundred yards, Button had lost three places, notably two of them to the Ferrari duo of Kimi Raikkonen and team-mate Felipe Massa who had started ninth and 11th.
But the use of KERS propelled the scarlet machines up the field, leaving Button out of the points at that early stage.
The 29-year-old’s problem, one his team failed to conquer over the course of the weekend, was a failure to get consistently enough heat into the tyres.
The Brawn GP cars enjoy warm weather, but even on a mild summer’s day with temperatures hovering around 18 degrees, that was nowhere near hot enough for Button’s car.
It left Button scrabbling around for a meagre point, and unable to give the majority of a sell-out crowd anything to cheer about.
Come the finish, Button at least picked up three points, but 46.2 seconds down on Vettel whose Red Bull undoubtedly gave him wings as he flew around the circuit, and would have ended up lapping the entire field if he had wanted to.
But after his first stop he was ordered by his engineer to slow it down, and duly obeying the command by the time of his second trip into the pits on lap 44 he had allowed Webber to close to within 14 seconds.
As Vettel made his second stop ahead of Webber, it denied him the chance of leading from start to finish as his team-mate had three laps out in front before pitting again.
From there, it was a straightforward run to the finish for the Red Bull duo, with Vettel finishing 15 seconds ahead of Webber, who was a further 26 seconds up the road from Barrichello.
Massa claimed fourth ahead of Williams’ Nico Rosberg, and behind Button came Trulli and Raikkonen.
As for Hamilton, who won this race a year ago by an astonishing 68 seconds in the wet, the 24-year-old finished 16th and a lap down.
He did give his fans a rare moment of excitement when he pulled out a brilliant move on old rival Fernando Alonso midway through the race for 16th place, only for the Renault star to reclaim such a lowly position a lap later.
The one significant incident involved Hamilton’s team-mate Heikki Kovalainen who was caught from behind at Vale on lap 36 by Toro Rosso’s Sebastien Bourdais, sending debris across the track and both into retirement.