After being off the pace in qualifying in Australia, Malaysia and China, the Milton Keynes squad got their act together in Bahrain on the Saturday to get Vettel on pole and then on Sunday the German drove a faultless race to claim the win.The defending World Champion, who had to hold off a charging Kimi Raikkonen during the latter stages of the race, felt the hard work that the team put in the last few weeks is finally paying off.
"I think it was an incredible race, extremely tough," he said.
"We had a good start, I was able to pull away immediately which turned out to be a big advantage because we always had to go on a used set of tyres as we used nearly all of them in qualifying. Kimi was very quick, so was Romain [Grosjean]."
He added: "The strategy, everything seemed to work.
"I can only say a big thank you to the team. They did an incredible job. The amount of work they had to do which we have given them because we were weren't happy with the car.
"Little tweaks here and there. It was tough. We were trying to get the car to our liking. We got it right this weekend, I was very happy in qualifying and the race to be fair."
Vettel's victory in Bahrain helped him to jump to the top of the Drivers' Championship with 53 points, four ahead of Lewis Hamilton with Mark Webber another point adrift.
"It's a very tight season. The cars are very close to each other. Small things can make a huge difference," he said.
"We started the season with McLaren as the best car by far but we have seen Sunday can be a different picture. I think they still have one of strongest packages. China was a very good lesson for us, driving two packages. For here we focused on our new package and pushing that forward. I'm just happy for now. I don't care what happens in the next race, at least not today."
Source: Planet-F1
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