Sebastian Vettel has moved to the head of the F1 standings after securing a dominant victory in Korea, heading a
Red Bull Racing 1-2 and taking his third win in a row.
The German had qualified on the front row of the grid alongside Webber but made a better start when the lights went out to take the lead into turn one.
Although Webber attempted to come back at him on the long run down to turn three, Vettel was able to maintain his position at the front and would then remain out front for the remainder of the race, even when forced to ease off in the closing stages due to concerns about his tyres.
It meant the defending champion led from start-to-finish for the second successive race and meant he has now overhauled
Fernando Alonso for the championship lead with just four races now left to run.
In a race that was far from being a classic, it would turn out to be a relatively straight-forward affair for the top three runners. Having failed to make the most of arguably his one and only chance to get back ahead of Vettel, Webber remained second all the way to the flag despite also suffering concerns about his tyres towards the end, while Alonso minimised his losses to Vettel by taking third.
The Spaniard did close on Webber towards the end but in truth, he never had the pace to match the
Red Bull duo out front and third was the best result he could have hoped for, although he has now slipped to six points behind Vettel in the standings.
Alonso's closest challenger turned out to be Felipe Massa, who produced an impressive drive to more than match his team-mate. In the second half of the race, the Brazilian was able to close up on Alonso for the final podium position before a radio call from the team to maintain the gap saw him settle for fourth spot.
Kimi Raikkonen was a lonely fifth for Lotus while sixth went the way of Nico Hulkenberg, with the German producing an impressive drive for Force India. He would produce a rare moment of excitement while dicing for position with
Romain Grosjean and
Lewis Hamilton – making the most of squabbling between the pair to take both in one fail swoop before racing away up the road.
That left Grosjean in seventh, with the Frenchman at times appearing to be somewhat cautious in his approach given his recent run of incidents on track, with Jean-Eric Vergne and Daniel Ricciardo providing
Toro Rosso with reason to cheer as they both picked up points.