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Lewis Hamilton has taken his third win of the season in Abu Dhabi using
Pirelli’s P Zero tyres, running a two-stop strategy with two stints on the P
Zero Yellow soft tyre followed by a single stint on the P Zero White medium.
Hamilton claimed the 17th win of his career, having previously won in China
and Germany this year.
A similar strategy was adopted by all of the top three finishers, while Red
Bull Racing’s Mark Webber tried a three-stop strategy, only switching to the
harder tyre with one lap to go. Force India driver Paul di Resta was the
only finisher to go for a one-stop strategy, changing from medium to soft
tyres on lap 27 and then running 28 laps on the P Zero Yellow to the finish.
The majority of competitors used a two-stop strategy over the 55 laps.
Hamilton took the lead on the first lap after newly-crowned world champion
Sebastian Vettel retired with damage to the rear of his car after his tyre
deflated on the opening lap. The cause of the sudden deflation is still
being investigated by Pirelli’s engineers. This brings to an end Red Bull
Racing’s run of 19 consecutive podium finishes, and it is also the first
time in 19 races that Vettel has retired.
As usual, the Abu Dhabi race started at dusk and finished at night, with
track temperatures stabilising at around 28 degrees centigrade towards the
end of the race. This helped to extend the tyre life, with the soft tyres
lasting around 25 laps and the medium compound for about 30 laps. The race
was characterised by a fierce battle between Hamilton and Ferrari driver
Fernando Alonso, who moved from fifth to second on the opening lap. At the
last round of pit stops, Alonso stayed out for two laps longer than Hamilton
– which brought him close enough to try and pass. The Spaniard finished
second, scoring his 10th podium of 2011 and his first in Abu Dhabi: the only
current race where he has not been in the top three.
Despite starting at the back of the grid following mechanical problems
during qualifying, Rubens Barrichello managed to climb up the field and
finish 12th thanks to a two-stop strategy, starting on medium tyres followed
by two stints on softs. Kamui Kobayashi also scored points for Sauber for
the first time in seven races with a similar strategy.
Pirelli’s motorsport director Paul Hembery commented: “Together with Red
Bull Racing, we’re still examining the remains of Sebastian Vettel’s tyre in
order to try and piece together what happened. It certainly seems to be a
very unusual incident and we’ve already been to look at the place with
Sebastian: there seems to be no reason that is immediately obvious and the
set of tyres was one that he had already used for qualifying. But until we
know for sure, there’s no point in speculating. With the dropping
temperatures, our soft and medium tyres were faced with slightly different
track conditions to normal, with different teams trying a very wide variety
of strategies, from one to three stops. I’ve been told that last year there
were just 11 overtaking manoeuvres here, so this year certainly presented
quite a contrast. Normally at this point we would be packing up to go home,
but now we look forward to the young driver test later this week, where we
will try out some of our 2012 range of tyres for the first time.” |
