Sebastian Vettel picked up his first victory at the Formula One German Grand Prix with the Red Bull driver holding off the challenges of Lotus duo Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean to stand on the top of the podium of his home GP.
Vettel, who made a flying start, strengthened his grip on the driver's championship title, pulling away from second-placed Fernando Alonso, who finished fourth in Nurburgring, of Ferrari. Vettel now has 157 points to Alonso's 123, with Raikkonen third on 116 points.
"It's unbelievable," an ecstatic Vettel, who also won his first ever F1 race in July, said. "I'm very, very happy, an unbelievable race.
"Kimi was pushing very, very hard in the end and obviously they tried to do something different with different compound tyres.
"I think we had a very solid, very controlled race but I was pushing, I think, every single lap, except the laps behind the Safety Car.
"Very happy with the result and incredible to finally win in Germany."
Raikkonen rued the fact that he did not have enough time to try and overtake Vettel, who just about held off the Finnish driver's challenge towards the closing stages.
"We had a pretty good last stint of the race, but the cars are close on performance so it's difficult to overtake," he said. "Maybe some more laps would have helped us, but the race is only 60 laps so you have to do your best with that.
"After my first stop I was stuck behind a Mercedes for a while, but once I was past the car was pretty good. After the safety car three of us were able to pull away, but we were too close on speed to change the order.
"It was a good day for the team. Of course, we wanted to win, we couldn't, but we did score the most points here. The warmer temperatures definitely helped us, so let's hope for some more hot weather in Budapest."
There was an incident, which could have been really dangerous early on, when Mark Webber was waved back out too soon after his first pit stop on the ninth lap, with the Red Bull driver's right-rear wheel coming off and hitting a cameraman, knocking him down to the ground.
Thankfully the cameraman remained conscious and was treated at the circuit before being taken into hospital for observation.
"I knew we had lost the tyre in the pit stop of course, but not that someone got hit by it," Webber, who recovered pretty well to finish in seventh, said. "That's bad and I hope he is OK, that's the main thing.
"Today (Sunday) was a bit of a nightmare and you want to wake up tomorrow and have another go at it. We had an excellent start and were in a great position leading up to the first stop with Seb, but we lost all of that. We lost a lot of points today and a chance to challenge for the win, but there's no rewind button now."
Results: 1. Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull); 2. Kimi Raikkonen (Lotus); 3. Romain Grosjean (Lotus); 4. Fernando Alonso (Ferrari); 5. Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes); 6. Jenson Button (McLaren); 7. Mark Webber (Red Bull); 8. Sergio Perez (McLaren); 9. Nico Rosberg (Mercedes); Nico Hulkenberg (Sauber).
