For the first time in a number of races Mark Webber had a decent start to the Japanese Grand Prix and held his station through the first laps.
Back in the field Daniel Ricciardo had out qualified his teammate again and showed good pace in the race, at times pushing the Virgins ahead of him.
Unlike most the season however out front the Red Bulls did not have it all their own way. Tyre troubles were seeing both Webber and Vettel having to run shorter stints. This saw Jenson Button grab the race lead from Fernando Alonso with Vettel settling into third.
Webber meanwhile benefited from a undercut strategy that allowed him to clear Lewis Hamilton and Fellipe Massa to claim fourth place a position he would hold until the end of the race.
The third place result for Vettel was enough to see the young German claim back to back World Drivers Championship titles after dominating the season with 9 wins. His lowest finishing position for the season was fourth in Germany.
Webber is now fourth in the standings on 194 points 8 behind Alonso in third. Ricciardo is yet to score any Championship points.
After the race he was however keen to acknowledge the effort of his teammate “Congratulations to Sebastian - to become a double World Championship is a very good job.
“All the overtaking during the race was in the pit stops today, with not much on track. We passed a Ferrari and a McLaren, but it was quite even between all of us” he continued
“I had some contact with Michael Schumacher, which did some damage to my front wing at a crucial part of the race as I was trying to come back through the pack. We made contact, but he got away with it.
“The safety car didn’t really come at the right time for me - as I was hoping to have a look at Fernando around the stops, but when the field bunches up you have to go through the Michael situation again and it's hard to undercut people.
“In the end it was a reasonable result; it was a great race for Jenson, it's his second home race in many ways, and congratulations to Seb for the title.”
For Ricciardo he was pleased with 22nd and the steps forward he and the teams were taking “The race went quite well considering yesterday’s pace, we’ve got to be happy about being only a few tenths behind the Virgins.
“At one stage I was in front but the safety car didn’t help. It came out at times that didn’t suit us.
“But I’m happy with the performance and, personally, I’m pleased with the way I drove and I don’t think I could have done much more. The car was good; with every run we made adjustments that improved it. I’m happy for the team because it was a strong race for us. We made good progress since the last few races we’ve had incidents in the first few laps so I’m satisfied to have had a clean race”.
His team boss Colin Kolles again saw good improvement from the Australian “Daniel kept a good pace from the beginning and fought both D'Ambrosio and especially Glock throughout the race. With the blue flags and traffic we ended up behind them but all in all Daniel did a very good race and took another step forward.
