After qualifying and the first 15 laps, it looked as though Sebastian Vettel was going to secure an easy victory at the Hungarian Grand Prix but it was Mark Webber who took advantage of the German’s misfortune to steal victory.

Vettel qualified four tenths quicker than his team mate and then pulled out a lead of over a second a lap over Fernando Alonso, who managed to get ahead of Webber at the start. But a safety car period on lap 15 all but ruined Vettel’s chances of victory. It wasn’t the safety car period itself that spoiled his race but the German making a schoolboy error whilst queueing up behind Webber who hadn’t stopped.

Vettel fell foul of the rule that you have to keep within 10 cars lengths of the car in front whilst under the pace car. He therefore fell back behind Alonso while Webber put in some stunning laps to create the gap he needed to make a stop and come out still in the lead.

After the well publicised animosity between the two team mates, Vettel, ironically, dropped over 10 car lengths behind Webber trying to help him get enough of an advantage on the restart. Vettel said he didn’t really understand the ruling but admitted he was sleeping when the safety car went in.

“I didn’t understand what was going on and why I was penalised. I still don’t.

I didn’t see the lights, and also usually the leader drops back a bit but Mark was very close so I was sure we had another lap. I was pretty unlucky I would say, and I’m very disappointed because it could have been a walk in the park. After that I was behind Fernando but they are faster than us on the straights so I knew it was impossible to get past.

To finish third is very, very disappointing.”

Because of Vettel’s error, Mark Webber has once again found himself with very little credit for what was a stunning drive in the middle part of the race. Webber opened up 22 seconds on Alonso and Vettel in just 25 laps on tyres that were nearly 50 laps old. Having lost 2nd place at the start, the Australian must have been thinking it was deja vu from a week ago. Webber admitted he was a bit lucky but it’s about time something like that happened to him!

“It was a bit of a gift, but I’ve not had many of them, so I’ll take it. It’s an incredible day for us.

“It’s nice to have more points than anybody else, but we’re not getting ahead of ourselves as there are some big events coming up.”

Red Bull were miles quicker than anybody else throughout the weekend and it looked like a nailed on 1-2 until Vettel’s mistake. This was shown with the lap times in the race with the two cars nearly a full second quicker than everyone else with their fastest laps. With the enforced 4 weeks break now upon us, Webber leads the drivers standings by 4 points from Lewis Hamilton with Vettel a further 6 points back.

Team boss Christian Horner declared himself delighted with the results.

“Mark drove a blinding race. His middle stint was quite amazing, to build the gap he needed for the pit stop.

It’s a fantastic result to get a first and third. McLaren had a difficult day with Lewis failing to finish, and we managed to capitalise at what was our 100th Grand Prix.”

The pace of Red Bull will be a frightening prospect for the rest of the field as the teams hit Spa in 4 weeks time and who would bet against more Red Bull dominance?

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