Webber takes the win from penalized Vettel

F1 Grand Prix, GP Hungary, Hungaroring

Mark Webber has taken the win at the Hungarian GP after his teammate and holder of the pole position was penalized for exceeding the distance behind the safety car, which made him lose one position. While Fernando Alonso managed to hold off Sebastian Vettel for second place.

As soon as the lights went out, Vettel charged away and kept the lead into the first corner, despite an attempt of Alonso through the outside. Alonso maintained second place thanks to a nice drift from the starting line, while Mark Webber dropped from second to third due to starting on the dirty side of the track.

Petrov made a great start and is up to 5th, while Michael Schumacher moved up to 13th position. Petrov though moved back to 6th when Hamilton passed him on the outside of turn 3 - it will later turn out Petrov decided to let Hamilton go as he was struggling with tyre warmup and would damage his tyres too much in defending that position.

Just one lap into the race, Alguersuari retired with a blown Ferrari engine.

After just 6 laps, Vettel already pulled away 5 full seconds from Alonso, putting on a string of fastest laps. At the same time Schumacher is complaining of brake problems, but his team cannot see anything unusual on the telemetry.

On lap 15 there is a yellow flag due to debris on the track. Jenson Button immediately dives into the pitlane, with Liuzzi right behind him. A safety car is deployed 10 seconds later, and Vettel is just able to dive into the pits, followed by nearly everyone.

Due to extreme business in the pitlane, Kubica is released into the path of Sutil. Just when Kubica left his crew, Adrian Sutil turned right towards his pitcrew, positioned just behind the Renault box. Sutil is out immediately, while Kubica went back to the track one lap down.

Meanwhile Nico Rosberg is out of the race due to his pitcrew badly fitting his right rear wheel.

At the SC restart on lap 17, Webber is in the lead as he didn't stop. Vettel is second but is taking quite a bit of distance behind Webber to try to defend his position to Alonso. It is no secret that the Ferrari is quicker on the straight and could otherwise be a threat for Vettel.

Because of Vettel's move, by lap 20 Webber is 5 seconds ahead of his teammate while Vettel has 4 seconds to Alonso. Behind him is Hamilto who gained a place on Massa in the pits.

By lap 23 race control announced that Kubica is handed a 10 second stop-and-go penalty for causing a collision in the pitlane. He decided to serve that immediately. At the same time as Kubica is standing still, Hamilton is out with a technical problem on his car. He parks his McLaren on the grass on the inside of turn 4.

On lap 26 Kubica retires from the race as he dives immediately into the pitbox. That same lap Vettel is put under investigation, with immediate radio messages to Vettel and Alonso following, ordering them both to push as hard as they can to anticipate a possible penalty.

On lap 29 race control decides on a drive through penalty for Sebastian Vettel as he exceeded a maximum 10 car length behind the safety car. Replays show he was simply too far behind his teammate on the pit straight.

Further radio messages show that Vettel was simply not aware he had broken any rule and as a result was furious after hearing he had to serve such a penalty. In fact he was expressively waving his hands while running through the pitlane.

Vettel served his penalty on lap 32 and rejoins the track 3.7s behind Alonso and 2.2s ahead of Massa.

The battle for first place is extremely intense with Webber trying to build a gap for his pitstop. Alonso though is giving it all to prevent that, while Vettel is trying to catch up Alonso.

By lap 41 Webber is still on the options, 23 seconds ahead of Alonso. Vettel has regained and is just one second behind the fastest Ferrari.

On lap 44 Webber finally makes his stop and switches to the primes, rejoining the track still 5 seconds ahead of Alonso.

The next laps mark continued pressure on Alonso, but the steady Spaniard is not making any mistakes. The slightly better top speed on the Ferrari surely helps preventing Vettel from actually placing an attack.

Late on in the race, Barrichello makes a late single stop to switch to options, dropping from 5th to 11th. Few laps later though he finds himself closely behind Michael Schumacher in 10th.

On lap 66 he launches a passing attempt on the pit straight after following closely all through the lap. He makes the move stick by turn 1, even though Schumacher irrationally pushed Barrichello into the pitwall. Rubens was effectively millimeters from the concrete and rightly so immediately called for Schumacher to be black flagged. That didn't happen though, but a 10-place drop for Spa-Francorchamps would be announced after the race.

In the end, Webber won the Hungarian GP, 20 seconds ahead of Alonso, with Vettel closely behind him and still furious, not knowing why he got the drive-through penalty.