Hamilton, Vettel and Alonso kept their positions after the first corner, as Mark Webber was demoted to 7th place on the grid due to his gearbox change after qualifying. The Aussie did however manage to pass 2 drivers after the start and got into the leading back, behind Jenson Button.
As the two Red Bull drivers were starting to gain some pace in the early laps of the race, both Hamilton and Alonso entered the pits at the same time. The Spaniard managed to pass the McLaren driver in the pit lane and it seemed he would grab the lead as soon as the Red Bull pair would make their stops.
That plan was demolished by Scuderia Toro Rosso’s Sebastien Buemi, who emerged as race leader after Webber and Vettel entered the pits. Being more than a second slower than Alonso, he kept the Spaniard behind him for a full lap, something that Hamilton took advantage of fully. He passed Alonso at the end of the long straight, just before Buemi entered the pits, and never let go of the lead until the finish line.
The second round of pit stops did nothing but to stretch Ham’s advantage ahead of Alonso, while Webber preferred to stay on the track and push the acceleration hard from 1st place. He was eventually caught up by Hamilton and Alonso and decided to finally make his 2nd stop late in the race, which demoted him to 5th place, behind teammate Vettel.
At this point, everybody was racing to the finish line, and Vettel was instructed from the pits to push on Jenson Button for 3rd place. However, an issue on his RB6 – confirmed by his engineer via radio – kept him outside podium contention for the remainder of the Sunday action.
With Vettel off his tails, Button started closing the gap on Alonso and, just when the pair was preparing to pass a late driver, Button made an overtaking attempt on Alonso after the first chicane and grabbed 2nd place.
With all podium runners needing to save their tires for the remainder of the race, nothing changed until the finish line. Vettel and Webber had to settle for 4th and 5th respectively, while Robert Kubica was passed for 6th place in the eleventh hour by Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg.
Sebastien Buemi managed to score 4 valuable points for his team from 8th place, while Vitantonio Liuzzi had an afternoon to remember to eventually cross the finish line in 9th place. The Italian was involved in a racing incident in the very first chicane of the race and was practically forced to start the race from the last spot, but slowly moved up the pack to set up a last minute thriller with Michael Schumacher. While clearly faster than the 7-time world champion, Liuzzi made numerous attempts to pass the German, put only succeeded in doing so in the last lap. While trying to fend off the Italian driver, Schumacher damaged his car and lost another position to Adrian Sutil in only a few hundreds of meters, finishing the race outside points.
In the overall classification, Hamilton now leads from teammate Jenson Button by 3 points, while Webber is 3 points further in the back.
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