Hamilton redeems himself in dominant Abu Dhabi victory

After a long drought of victories, going back to July, McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton won Sunday’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, benefiting from Vettel’s retirement on the very first lap due to a puncture which caused damage to his RB7.

In runner up spot finished Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso while Jenson Button was a happy third, as his MP4-26 faced some KERS issues.

It was a short race for Sebastian Vettel. As it has happened for the last races the German jumped off to the lead from pole at the first corner, but on the next one his RB7 would go into a spin as its right rear tyre deflated. The world champion still tried to bring his car to the pits but too much damage had already been made, forcing him to make his first retirement since last year’s Korean GP.

Hamilton jumped to lead and was being followed by Alonso who had passed Mark Webber and Button after the first corners.

The rest of the race action was dominated by the Hamilton and Alonso throughout most of the race. The two drivers were always within a second of each other. Without being able to overtake the McLaren driver on the track Ferrari tried to gain an advantage by running longer before Alonso's second stop. Without the expected result Hamilton built on his advantage to safely head to his first win since July.

Although he had troubles on his first stop, with a wheel that didn’t want to come out, Webber managed with a three-stop strategy to finish in fourth place. He made his last visit to the pits on the very last lap but that wasn’t sufficient to beat Button, with whom he had battled for most of the race. He also benefited from Felipe Massa’s quick spin with six laps to go. The Brazilian still managed to finish fifth.

After an early battle between the two Mercedes, Nico Rosberg went on to take sixth place ahead of Schumacher. The seven-time world champion would beat Force India Adrian Sutil by a close margin, while Sutil’s team-mate Paul di Resta and Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi filled the last point positions.

Rubens Barrichello worked on a redemption for his team’s weekend as he was just out on the top ten finishing 12^th behind Sergio Perez.