When Sebastian Vettel ended Jenson Button's run of four straight wins in 2009

Sebastian Vettel didn’t win the first of his four Formula 1 world championships until 2010. However, the young German was making his mark on the sport and laying down the markers for future challenges in 2009 itself. That was the year he got Red Bull their first win in the Chinese Grand Prix. Incidentally, that race also saw Red Bull take their first ever 1-2 finish, with Mark Webber finishing second. But the first major indicator of a serious title charge for Red Bull came in England. The British fans who came to the iconic Silverstone circuit would have been happy with either a Jenson Button or Lewis Hamilton win. Instead, it was the young German in an Austrian team who took the chequered flag first.

With 12 years having passed since the day, let us look back at Sebastian Vettel winning the 2009 British GP.

The background

The 2009 season was only 7 races in yet the driver’s and constructor’s championship had runaway leaders. Jenson Button led the driver’s standings from teammate Rubens Barichello. And team Brawn GP led the constructor’s standings.

That Brawn GP even had a car on the grid was a miracle, given how Honda’s last-minute departure from the sport left the team in tatters. Yet here they were, leading everyone and every team!

Of the 7 races held that far, only Vettel had broken the Brawn-Button dominance. Thus, when Red Bull dominated practice that weekend, everyone had an idea of what was to come.

The car had some new upgrades that worked a treat, and the team’s domination continued on Saturday as well.

The two Red Bull’s were the fastest cars in the first session of qualifying right until the end of the session. Williams driver Kazuki Nakajima stunned everyone by outpacing Vettel by a tenth of a second to finish the session quickest.

The other big news to come out of Q1 was that Hamilton was eliminated from the next round. He was on a final flying lap that would have taken him to Q2, but an accident suffered by Force India’s Adrian Sutil caused the session to be red flagged.

Button himself narrowly avoided missing out on Q3 but only qualified fifth. Vettel and Webber, meanwhile, finished on pole and third, respectively, with the Brawn of Barichello splitting them.

Sebastian Vettel gets the ‘hat-trick’

The race itself was a fairly dominant showing from Vettel and Red Bull. The team led from start to finish and even wound up claiming the 1-2, with Webber finishing second.

Barichello came home in third with Button in sixth, a relatively forgettable weekend for the home hero. Hamilton had an even more forgettable day, finishing well outside the points in 16th.

In fact, the other two world champion drivers on the grid that year – Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso – also had disappointing outings.

Raikkonen finished 8th to get the last championship point on offer but Alonso finished in 14th, dropping four places from his starting position.

McLaren-Mercedes, who had plenty of strong showings in Silverstone, continued their woeful run of 2009 at England. Heikki Kovalainen, Hamilton’s teammate, did not even finish the race. And Hamilton’s title defence looked all but over, even though he would go on to win twice that season.

Still, the afternoon in Silverstone belonged to Vettel. He managed the race weekend hat-trick too – qualifying on pole, winning the race and also notching the fastest lap.

The aftermath

Amazingly, Vettel snapping Button’s win streak would put an end to the Brit’s run of finishing atop the podium that year. Brawn GP would win two more races that season, but both went ti Barichello.

Button would have the last laugh, however, as he went on to claim his one and only world championship at the end of the season.

Red Bull would, however, show the kind of form that would subsequently make them win the next four world driver’s championships. The team won four more races that year, including the final three of the season.

Webber and Vettel split those wins two each, but in the following year it was the young German who led the team’s charge.

As for Hamilton, he would go on to claim two race wins that year but the decline of McLaren was steadily underway – even though, at the time, no one knew it.