Yesterday’s race at the Buddh Circuit near New Delhi gave Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull a chance to wrap up the Drivers’ & Constructors Championships with 3 race to spare. Did they do it? Find out below the fold…

Vettel Wins in India for the 3rd Year in a Row and Clinches Championship

Despite starting on the non-preferred soft tires, Pole-sitter Sebastian Vettel won his sixth race in a row and an amazing seven of the last eight, thereby securing his fourth consecutive Drivers’ Championship, as well as the fourth-in-row for team Red Bull-Renault. The unstoppable German wunderkind sprinted into the lead on the track where he has never lost in three tries while his nearest pursuers tangled amongst themselves, and quickly pitted on lap 2 to dump the short-lived Soft compound Perrellis in favor of the much more durable Mediums. And while Ferrari’s Felipe Massa then inherited the race lead for a while, it was only a matter of time and pit stop cycles before Vettel again resumed prime position, with teammate Mark Webber the only driver to possibly challenge him for the win midway through. Massa did finish a very strong 4th after driving an aggressive but clean race.

But while Webber had looked good to possibly prevail over his nemesis after starting on the opposite strategy (Mediums at the start, Softs later) and was eating into Vettel’s lead, he encountered reliability issues yet again and an alternator issue on the 39th lap forced the team to order his retirement. Vettel’s only mathematical rival for the championship, Ferrari’s Fernado Alonso, also encountered trouble, albeit less severe, as he incurred front wing and probably some suspension damage on the opening lap after coming together with both Webber and Jenson Button. The resultant lack of handling fated Alonso to finish a lowly 11th. And so Vettel proved once again that it is not only good to be a brilliant driver with a technically superior chassis but that it also helps to have luck on your side. Or at least a little bad luck for your competition.

Team Mercedes continued their pattern of their drivers taking turns in the spotlight and in India it was Nico Rosberg’s time to shine, as he finished 2nd (although a full 29.8 second adrift of Vettel). Teammate Lewis Hamilton struggled with his tires, as he often does, but managed a respectible 6th place. The other podium finisher was Romain Grosjean for 3rd, who once again severely bested his outgoing teammate Kimi Raikkonen, who had to settle for 7th. Force India had a good weekend in front of the home crowd after several sub par races, with Scotsman Paul di Resta claiming 8th and his German teammate Adrian Sutil taking 9th. Sergio Perez had an excellent race for McLaren and finished a strong 6th with teammate Jensen Button mired in 14th.

Top 10 finishers for the Grand Prix of India here:

Full results here at Formula1.com.

The all-important Constructors’ Championship standings here.

The next race is this coming weekend in Abu Dhabi.

Some final thoughts: By claiming his fourth Drivers’ title, the 26-year-old Sebastian Vettel now joins an elite group of men to achieve such a feat: Juan Manuel Fangio, Alain Prost and Michael Schumacher, with only Fangio and Schumacher achieving four consecutively as Vettel has just done. One can argue that the different eras make comparing drivers too difficult to hold much meaning. But motor racing is no different than baseball or football: it is a sport that records its achievements in numbers. And much like winning a World Series, a Super Bowl or a Stanley Cup entitles the victor to something more than just numerical appraisal of their accomplishment and enables comparison with the greats of those sports’ past, so does capturing a Drivers’ Championship in Formula 1. For at the very the pinnacle of motor sport, like the top of any other athletic or competitive endeavor, greatness is measured in championships. And it now appears that young Mr. Vettel has an opportunity to achieve what once seemed unthinkable: to better Fangio’s 5 and, most tantalizingly, Michael Schumacher’s 7 total World Championships. Some will say the latter can’t be done and with the new formula coming into effect next year it remains to be seen whether aerodynamics’ genius Adrian Newey will retain his supremacy with Red Bull. But with a driver as hyper-competitive and quick as Vettel–and also as lucky–and an engineer as talented as Newey, I would not bet against those two men continuing their astonishing winning ways together (so long as they do, in fact, stay together). After all, Fangio won his last title at 46, Prost at 38 and Schumacher at 35 so even if Vettel retires when he is only 35-36, that gives him 10 more years to bag 4 more titles and break the record. It’s not a fait accompli, obviously, and F1 is notorious for rapid reversals of fortune. But it should be interesting to watch even if only to root against this young Teutonic titan who makes winning look so, so easy and his competition look stuck in the mud. Simply put, we are witnessing history right now and like him or loathe him, Vettel currently represents this era’s supreme talent. So I say: enjoy it while it lasts.