Sebastian Vettel's third victory of the season came in the same imperious style as the previous two.
ITV.com/F1 columnist James Allen says Red Bull’s dominance bodes well for its chances in the final two races, although the odds remain stacked against Vettel and in favour of Jenson Button in the drivers’ championship.
James discusses the points permutations and tips his hat to Jarno Trulli after a splendid performance by the Italian – will it be enough to save his seat?
This race was one for the connoisseurs really.
It was a magnificent drive by Sebastian Vettel to cap of a weekend of dominance. He was fastest in all three qualifying sessions and totally controlled the race.
There wasn’t much drama and, apart from Jenson Button’s pass on Robert Kubica early on, there wasn’t much action. It was mainly about getting into position to jump other cars in the pits.
It was a shockingly impressive performance by the Red Bull, whose car was half a second faster than the competition here. It was much like Silverstone in that respect.
It moved Vettel to 16 points behind Button with two races left, one point less than the deficit Kimi Raikkonen turned around relative to Lewis Hamilton going into the last two races of 2007.
Rubens Barrichello, meanwhile, is 14 points behind his team-mate.
In many ways Vettel’s task seems easier than Barrichello’s given the pace of the car he has under him now. I can see him finishing between the Brawn drivers in the championship.
However he does have to be careful on engines after several failures earlier in the year.
Mark Webber’s weekend showed how it can all go wrong even when you do have the fastest car.
The Aussie crashed on Saturday, had to miss qualifying, started from the pit lane and made five pit stops for various problems.
The engine situation might hurt Vettel in Abu Dhabi, where his track time in Friday practices will be limited, which may leave him short of set-up data on this new circuit.
Red Bull are still bringing updates to the RB5 and will have a new front wing for both Brazil and Abu Dhabi. They see no reason why they should not be competitive there.
I think McLaren will be very strong in Abu Dhabi as it looks like a real KERS track and has only one really fast corner.
Nevertheless, Vettel’s task now is simple (though not easy): He needs to win both races and see what happens with Button.
Jenson needs four points in two races to end Vettel’s challenge, the same number he has scored in the past two.
Should he have a pair of races like Hungary and Valencia, however, then Vettel would take it from him, provided he won both the last two rounds.
Brawn thought they might be travelling home as constructors’ champions because Nico Rosberg broke the speed limit under the safety car.
But the FIA stewards let Rosberg off because his dashboard was showing a low fuel message and this had over-ridden the speed and time information on his screen.
If Vettel was magnificent, I also rated Jarno Trulli’s performance through qualifying and the race extremely highly.
He managed to qualify a few hundredths of a second behind Vettel with only a shade less fuel in a Toyota car which is clearly no match for the Red Bull.
And then in the race he fought like a tiger to get second place back from Lewis Hamilton, having lost it to him at the start.
Hamilton was able to use KERS to get Trulli off the line, but the system failed later in the race – so when fate offered him a second chance to get Trulli, at the restart after the safety car, he wasn’t able to take advantage of it.
This was right up there with Monaco 2004 as Trulli’s finest drive.
He matched Hamilton’s times for most of the race and at the critical moment when he had the chance to get in position to pass Hamilton at the second pit stops, he pushed even harder to make the time he needed.
He described the race as a series of qualifying laps. With some doubt about his place in the Toyota team next year, this will have done his case no harm.