No backing off, says Sebastian Vettel
Page last updated at 12:26 GMT, Monday, 29 August 2011 13:26 UK
By Andrew Benson
BBC Sport
Vettel is keen to finish the season with the Championship trophy
Sebastian Vettel says he will not back off despite moving into a virtually unassailable championship lead after his Belgian Grand Prix victory.
The German led Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber to a one-two at Spa on Sunday to take a 92-point lead with only 175 remaining in the final seven races.
"If you are out in two races and someone else has a good couple of races, it could change," Vettel said.
"So all we do is try to get the optimum every time."
Vettel admitted his victory had "brought us closer to our final target" but he insisted the title was "still a long way" away.
His view that it would be wrong to adopt a cruise-and-collect approach was echoed by team principal Christian Horner.
"There are seven races to go," he said. "There are still a lot of points available.
"It's our seventh win, our 12th pole, we've got a 100% finishing record, but we don't underestimate our rivals and there'll be no complacency and heads down focused on the next race. We won't change our approach."
Vettel's Belgian win - his first at the famous and historic track in the Ardennes mountains - was his seventh in 12 races this year, during which he has also taken nine pole positions. Webber is the only other driver to take a pole position this season.
Vettel is 102 points ahead of the first non-Red Bull driver - Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, who finished fourth in Belgium - and 110 ahead of McLaren's Jenson Button.
The Englishman moved three points ahead of team-mate Lewis Hamilton after finishing third, while Hamilton crashed out.
Spa was a tense race for Red Bull as they overcame safety concerns about their tyres to win on a track where they had not expected to be so strong.
Red Bull had not won since the European Grand Prix at Valencia at the end of June, and Horner said he was surprised the team were so competitive.
"In many respects, yes," he said, "because power is a dominant factor here, particularly in the first and third sectors and that was arguably our most competitive race of the season.
Crash chaos at start of Belgium GP
"We had very strong race pace. We thought it would perhaps favour some of our opponents more. But it just shows how difficult it is to predict performance."
"For the team it has been a phenomenal weekend. Yesterday was massively tricky for the team. It shows how strong we are as a unit to get the calls and strategy right, the cars had tremendous pace and the drivers did their bit. It was a massive result for us."
Horner said he rated Vettel's Spa victory as one of the best of his 17 career wins because of everything the team had to cope with.
"It was right up there among some of his best, like Monaco when he went so far on the hard tyre," Horner said. "He produced a very mature drive."
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