**Mark Webber took a dominant victory for Red Bull at the Spanish Grand Prix as McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton lost second place in a dramatic finish.**Webber led from pole to flag, but Hamilton had out-raced his team-mate Sebastian Vettel before a front-left puncture forced the Englishman out.
That promoted Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari to second, ahead of Vettel, who also hit trouble in the closing stages.
Mercedes’s Michael Schumacher was fourth from Jenson Button’s McLaren.
Vettel looked to have lost third place when he ran into problems in the closing laps.
A front wheel appeared to be loose as he came into the pits after running off the track with 12 laps to go.
And when he rejoined, Vettel was warned by his team that he had “critical” braking problems and needed to nurse his car to the finish.
Felipe Massa’s Ferrari took sixth, just over a second behind Button, while Force India’s Adrian Sutil held off the Renault of Robert Kubica for seventh.
Williams’s Rubens Barrichello was ninth after driving a superb first lap to jump up from 17th on the grid to 12th, with Toro Rosso’s Jaime Alguersuari promoted to 10th by Hamilton’s late retirement.
The result has tightened an already close championship battle.
Button retains his lead, but it has been cut to just three points by Alonso, who jumps from third to second.
Vettel is 10 points adrift of Button in third place, and a further seven ahead of Webber.
Hamilton, who would have been second in the championship just a point behind Button if he had finished second, is sixth, 21 points off the lead.
McLaren said after the race that they thought his puncture had been caused by debris on the track first damaging the wheel.
Webber was untouchable after a few nervous moments at the start, when had to fight off challenges from Vettel, Hamilton and Alonso into the first corner.
Hamilton and Alonso used theirto close up on the Red Bulls into the first corner, but they were unable to gain any positions, and they slotted into third and fourth places for the first stage of the race.
Webber settled down to make the race his own, able to pump out fastest laps at will before easing off to ensure there were no problems with his car.
“* absolutely rapt,” he said. "We knew it was a long run to the first corner here.
“It was a very important part of the race to get out of Turn One still in the lead, it was pretty tight, and then just settle into a rhythm. We just controlled the gap really.”
Vettel was unable to match his team-mate’s pace. The German was four seconds behind Webber when he made his pit stop on lap 16, a lap before the Australian and Hamilton.
Usually, stopping earlier is an advantage, as it gives a driver an extra lap on quicker, new tyres.
But here Hamilton, who had been 2.5secs behind Vettel when he stopped, actually came out of the pits as Vettel was coming down the pit straight.
They headed into the first corner side-by-side, with Hamilton inside Vettel, but still having to go around the outside of the Virgin of Lucas di Grassi, who was trying to stay out of the way.
As Vettel was forced to take to the run-off area, Hamilton swooped around him into second place.
Given Webber’s pace, and the close-to-one-second advantage the Red Bulls had in qualifying, Vettel might have been expected to challenge Hamilton.
But the Englishman was able to build a lead of a couple of seconds and maintain it.
Alonso managed to hold his deficit to Vettel to around four seconds until what appeared to be a loose wheel forced Vettel’s tyre stop with 12 laps remaining, dropping him to fourth.
“A lot of things went wrong,” Vettel said. "I was not quick enough. I struggled a lot with the balance of the car.
"Then I think we came in too early, probably expecting Lewis to come in on the same lap but it didn’t work out that way.
"The hard tyres were hard to warm up. Also we had to wait in the pit box a long time for the Ferrari to drive past and then Jenson was coming in, so we lost a lot of ground, and then we lost the position.
" It was very close with Lewis, there was no way to avoid contact and I went wide.
“Then surprisingly I had a brake failure and went off in Turn Seven, and was just lucky in the end to bring the car home. Without any brakes I was able to finish third.”
The pit stops were also costly for Button, who ran fifth in the early laps. A problem with his left-front wheel dropped him behind Schumacher.
The veteran German was considerably slower than Button but, try as he might, the world champion was unable to find a way by, despite his straight-line speed advantage, as the two were dropped by the top four by as much as a second a lap.
After several laps of Button applying intense pressure, and Schumacher using all his guile to hold the Englishman back, the seven-time champion was able to squeeze out a small advantage and secure his position.
Alonso said: "It was a fantastic weekend for us, some unexpected positions. But we saw we need to improve the car.
"Sometimes we will be third, sometimes we will be fifth, sometimes we will be first. As long as we do 100% each time we can be satisfied, so we have to be happy with this race."This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
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