FORMULA ONE: CHINESE GRAND PRIX:LEWIS HAMILTON broke Sebastian Vettel's stranglehold on the Formula One championship yesterday with a thrilling win at the Chinese Grand Prix.

After claiming pole seven-tenths clear of Hamilton in qualifying on Saturday, it looked as if Vettel was set for another easy march to the chequered flag, having already taken victory in the opening two races of the season in Australia and Malaysia.

But, via a combination of the right strategy and a wonderfully aggressive race, Hamilton erased Vettel’s raw pace advantage and, with just a few laps remaining, swept past the German to assume the lead and his first win since the Belgian Grand Prix of last year.

“I am absolutely overwhelmed,” said Hamilton of his first win of the season. “It feels like a long time since I was sitting here. I am proud and grateful for all the hard work I have put in.”

That hard work began in the run-up to qualifying, when the McLaren driver opted to save a set of the soft option tyres for the race, thus sacrificing outright qualifying pace in the hope he could make a three-stop race work. It all depended on how Red Bull Racing would work Vettel’s strategy.

Before that became apparent, however, Hamilton was already making moves. When Vettel bogged down at the start, second-placed Jenson Button swept past to take the lead and, with Vettel struggling to recover, Hamilton, too, snuck past on the inside.

With the championship leader bottled up behind the twin McLarens, it looked like Hamilton might get the chance the build a gap, but as the Briton’s first set of tyres began to fade, Vettel was able to move back to second, passing Hamilton on lap 15.

It went from bad to worse for McLaren when leader Button pitted, closely followed by Vettel. The Briton, momentarily distracted, bizarrely opted to stop at Red Bull Racing’s pit box and had to be furiously waved on to his own garage. The delay in getting Button away, though, was enough to allow Vettel to get out ahead. The German was in the lead once more and looking comfortable.

The comfort zone, though, began to shrink towards the end of Vettel’s second stint. Needing to stay out longer to make his two-stop race work, his lap times began to drop and he was slowly but surely reeled in.

And the situation became alarming for Red Bull Racing after Vettel made his final stop and took on the hard tyres. The leader’s times began to fall away faster and both McLarens, on fresher rubber following their third stop, began to chew through the gap. And it was Hamilton closing quicker.

Having already brushed past Button with a brave move down the inside into turn one on lap 37 of the 56, he then set about removing the threat of Felipe Massa, also two-stopping. He dismissed the Brazilian with a textbook feint and pass on the main straight and roared after Vettel.

The German attempted to respond by marginally upping his pace but, as his tyres degraded, Hamilton loomed ever larger until, three laps from home, he simply bustled his way into the lead and the win as Vettel struggled through turn three.

It was a stunning result for a driver who almost didn’t make the start, as a flooded engine just before the car was due to take to the grid caused panic in the McLaren garage.

Vettel admitted that stretching for a two-stop race had been too ambitious.

“I think we tried too hard staying on two stops,” he said. “I saw Lewis coming closer and closer. I tried to defend as much as I could without losing too much time to the guys behind, but he found his way past easily.”

Vettel took heart from the outstanding performance of team-mate Mark Webber. The Australian had a disastrous time in qualifying, his crew miscalculating his runs and leaving him without enough time for a second run in the first session.

It left him 18th on the grid and looking at a struggle to even figure in the points. But, after toiling fruitlessly through the opening phase of the race on the less efficient hard tyres, the Australian, buoyed by the fresh soft tyres he had in reserve, having not used them in qualifying, scythed through the field and eventually muscled past Button to claim the final podium spot.

“To still see P17 on your (pit) board after 15 laps is not good,” Webber said of his tricky start. “But then all of a sudden I felt comfortable with the car and obviously had a few sets of tyres left from qualifying. Maybe that’s the best way to do it all the time – not even take part in qualifying and just go from there!”

Webber, though, denied that it had been one of his best races.

“I had a good feeling from the middle part of the race that things were starting to come to us. It would be easy to sit here and say ‘yeah, it was phenomenal, top-three drive’, but in the end, that’s my job, isn’t it?

“You’ve just got to (get your) head down, arse up and get into it – and that’s what I did.”