Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsRace of Champions

Vettel wins ROC Champion of Champions title

©ROC

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Sebastian Vettel has been crowned the Champions of Champions at the Race of Champions in London.

The Ferrari driver beat Petter Solberg in the first round before winning against Team Germany team-mate Nico Hulkenberg in the quarter-final. He then got the better of David Coulthard over three legs in the semi-final before taking the title with a 2-0 victory over Le Mans legend Tom Kristensen.

Vettel's victory was set up by a tight win in the first race against Kristensen before a change to the KTM cars for the second race saw the Dane hit the barrier at the first corner, leaving Vettel with an easy route to his first Champion of Champions title having beaten last year's winner - Coulthard - in the semis.

The rest of the Formula One grid fared less well, with Vettel the only F1 driver in the semi-final as Alex Buncombe lost out to Kristensen. Buncombe had been Jenson Button's team-mate for Team England 2 on Friday in the Nations Cup, but outperformed the 2009 world champion who was knocked out in the first round by Felipe Massa.

Massa was then beaten by Coulthard in the quarter finals, with last year's Champion of Champions also beating Susie Wolff in her final race before retirement. Romain Grosjean joined Button in losing in the first round, while Jolyon Palmer and Pascal Wehrlein both failed to get through the heats to make the first round proper having been beaten by Buncombe and Andy Priaulx respectively.

Priaulx and Jason Plato had denied Vettel and Hulkenberg in the Nations Cup final on Friday night, but Vettel bounced back from his first ever Nations Cup defeat to win the Champion of Champions title for the first time.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.