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Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel led from pole position to win the Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang Sunday.
It was the second straight victory for the reigning Formula One world champion after he claimed the season-opener in Australia a fortnight ago.
Jenson Button finished second in his McLaren with Nick Heidfeld rewarded for his brilliant drive in the Renault with the final podium place.
Vettel’s teammate Mark Webber of Australia made up ground after a poor start to finish fourth.
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Formula 1: Sebastian Vettel Beats Out Hamilton For Pole at Sepang Circuit
Formula 1: Malaysian Grand Prix - Race Line Up
Veteran Heidfeld moved ahead of Button’s teammate Lewis Hamilton into second position on the first corner and was always among the front runners through the pits stops.
It was the start of a disappointing afternoon for 2008 champion Hamilton, who trailed home seventh behind the Ferrari pair of Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso in fifth and sixth. CNN International
Scot Paul di Resta picked up his second point with 10th for Force India behind Michael Schumacher’s Mercedes.
Vettel ran a sensible race, handling his tyres well on Sepang’s blistering circuit and coping with intermittent use of the Kers power-boost system in the second half of the race.
The German comfortably collected the 12th grand prix win of his career to stretch his championship lead to 24 points.
Vettel said: “We could control it, but it was never easy. When Jenson was behind me I could control the gap.
“Kers was a little bit on-off during the race. Two weeks ago [when he won in Australia] we never raced it at all.
“Today if I didn’t have it at the start the race would never have unfolded as it did. Then we had a problem and had to turn it off, but it came back on again.” BBC Sport
Nico Rosberg had a miserable race for 12th in the second Mercedes, ahead of the duelling Toro Rossos of Sebastien Buemi, who overcame a stop-and-go penalty for pit-lane speeding to beat team mate Jaime Alguersuari to 13th. Heikki Kovalainen just failed to catch the Spaniard by the flag, as Lotus beat Virgin and Timo Glock in the newer teams’ race to complete the finishers.
Vitaly Petrov had just repassed Kobayashi for eighth place on the 53rd lap when he had a big off which sent his Renault bouncing so high over a kerb that his car’s steering column seemed damaged on landing, but though he hit an advertising hoarding he didn’t hurt himself. His race, however, was over.
Tonio Liuzzi didn’t make the finish either as his HRT stopped when running 18th, nor did Jerome D’Ambrosio’s Virgin which had been just ahead of him. Jarno Trulli’s Lotus also ran into unreliability, as did Sergio Perez’s Sauber and Narain Karthikeyan’s HRT, while both Williams drivers, Pastor Maldonado and Rubens Barrichello, had early problems and failed to get home. Formula 1
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