Immediately there were howls of outrage, for ‘team orders’ are supposedly banned, and a ‘team order’ this unquestionably was, prompting some to compare the incident with the notorious happenings in the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix, when Rubens Barrichello was ordered to let Michael Schumacher through.

Team orders are never welcome, of course, most people in the sport feeling that drivers should be allowed to race their team-mates, the only proviso being that they do not ‘take each other off’.

That said, to compare Hockenheim ’10 with the A1-Ring ’02 strikes me as a touch farcical. In Austria Barrichello completely outpaced Schumacher in both qualifying and race, and by the time the order came through from sporting director Jean Todt he had built up a considerable lead, and was not many laps away from the chequered flag. As well as that, the Ferraris were under no threat from any rival – and Schumacher already had an enormous lead in the World Championship. On the run up to the finish line, Barrichello had almost to stop in order to allow him to catch up.

At Hockenheim Alonso was considerably quicker than Massa in qualifying, but being second fastest (to Vettel) he necessarily started on the ‘dirty’ side of the grid, whereas Massa – third – was on the clean side. Away from the grid Vettel predictably chopped across to block Alonso, and as the two of them messed around Massa swooped around the outside of the pair of them.

It was a little like Malaysia, where Vettel snicked by team-mate Webber into the first turn, and the race result was decided right there. So difficult is passing in F1 – particularly between identical cars – that he who leads into the first corner is, all things being equal, going to win the race.

So why did ‘team orders’ come into play at Hockenheim? In their post-race remarks, the drivers offered little clue. Massa was plainly upset by what had happened, Alonso plainly embarrassed. There was a lot of mumbling about it being ‘a good day for the team’, and so on. Massa, asked to comment on the moment he backed off, smiled sadly: “I don’t think I need to say anything about what happened…”

“I think,” Alonso said, “that sometimes you’re quick, and sometimes you’re slow, depending on your tyres…” And Massa allowed that, on the very hard Bridgestones on which they ran for the bulk of the race, he was ‘struggling’ (although it hardly looked that way).

If Ferrari had a concern, it was surely that Vettel still lurked in third place, and not very far behind. Alonso may have been the faster of the Ferrari drivers, but he couldn’t get past Massa. The supposition was that if Vettel mounted a strong late-race challenge, Ferrari considered that Alonso would be better able to keep him at bay. May be right, may be wrong, but that’s what most people thought.

Whatever, the post-race atmosphere was certainly clouded, and that was a pity, because in all other respects Ferrari – after a run of miserable luck – could hardly have impressed more. It was good to see Alonso and Massa in the think of things, where they belong, and where they should have been all season long. “The car has been much better in the last few races,” Alonso commented. “We were very competitive at Valencia and Silverstone – but we came away with no points…”

Despite that, in recent weeks Alonso refused to rule himself out of the World Championship reckoning, and on the strength of the red cars’ pace in Germany he was right to do so. It was good that the Ferraris were so quick, too, for otherwise Red Bull would have been completely unopposed, McLaren being off the pace this time out. Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button finished fourth and fifth, banking more World Championship points, but they were fully half a minute adrift of Alonso at the flag.

It was a low-key weekend, too, for Mark Webber, who started fourth after making a mistake on his final qualifying lap, but was obliged to take it easy for much of the race, the team much concerned by his engine’s excessive oil consumption. In the circumstances, Mark was happy enough to come away with sixth place, and eight points. The two Red Bull drivers, incidentally, now have 136 apiece, Webber ahead of Vettel in the standings by virtue of more victories, three to two.

If McLaren had a middling time at Hockenheim, for Mercedes it was not less than disastrous. Initially Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher were encouraged by technical updates on the car, and spoke in terms of qualifying in the first six. When it came to it, though, Rosberg only just made it into Q3 – but Schumacher did not. Both finished in the points, Nico ahead of Michael as usual, but eighth and ninth places – behind Robert Kubica’s Renault – were not what Mercedes was looking for in its home race.

On Sunday evening Ferrari was required to explain its actions to the FIA stewards, and later it was announced that the team had been found in breach of Article 151c of the International Sporting Code, and would be fined $100,000. As well as that, the stewards’ statement said, the case is to be referred to the FIA World Motor Sport Council ‘for further consideration’.

Amid all the huffing and puffing and outrage, more reasoned observers considered this a lot of fuss about not very much. “Ferrari were too honest,” one cynic laughed. “All this talk on the radio, all this apologising to Massa… other teams do this sort of thing so much better, don’t they? They slow this driver or that by telling him he’s low on fuel, and need to turn his engine down, or something like that…”

Twenty-four hours earlier, at the post-qualifying press conference, Webber had looked like a man ready to explode, which indeed he was. Alongside him sat the pole position man, his Red Bull team-mate Sebastian Vettel, and clearly Webber felt it had not been a fair fight.

It was all a matter of wings – in particular, front wings. The team had new ones for Silverstone, but there had been time enough to manufacture only two, one for each driver. Or so Webber thought. On Saturday morning, though, Vettel’s collapsed on the Hangar Straight – ‘finger trouble’ (F1-speak for ‘human error’), apparently – and it looked like bad luck for Sebastian, for the wing was damaged beyond repair and no spare was available.

Except, of course, for the one on Webber’s car. And it was decided by the team that because Vettel was ahead of Mark in terms of championship points and position, he should have the one and only new front wing at Silverstone. Accordingly, it was transferred from Webber’s car to Vettel’s, and symbolically – if nothing else – that was highly significant, for it further fuelled the widespread belief (hotly denied by the team, of course) that Sebastian is the favoured one at Red Bull, and Mark ‘the other driver’.

Webber was livid, and none could blame him. Unsmiling, stone-faced, he suggested at the conference that, “The team had got the result it wanted…”

As we know, Webber has come through a hard school en route to the top echelons of Formula 1, and as the cars came up to the grid one almost – but not quite – felt a twinge of sympathy for the boy Vettel, who was about to experience the wrath of a team-mate who felt he had been wronged.

Having qualified second, Mark was of course on the ‘dirty’ side of the track, but at Silverstone this tends to be less of a problem than at most circuits (perhaps because of the unusually large number of support races here), and when the lights went out the second Red Bull was instantly alongside the first, Webber ignoring Vettel’s attempt to block him.

In effect, the destiny of the British Grand Prix depended on a drag race in the opening seconds, and Webber won it. At Copse, the first corner, Vettel’s problems were multiplied when his car was hit from behind by Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren: swiftly he radioed in to say he had a puncture.

Vettel came at the end of the first lap, his soft Bridgestones replaced by the harder ones – which would now, of course, have to last for an entire Grand Prix. Initially Sebastian, dead last, seemed to lose heart, but by half-distance he had come alive again, and in the end finished a good seventh, having dealt in the late laps with fellow Germans Nico Hulkenberg, Adrian Sutil and, ahem, Michael Schumacher…

After the race Webber was all smiles, of course, after one of the most satisfying races of his life, and the victory put him up to third in the World Championship, one place ahead of Vettel. Did this mean, someone asked, that if there were a ‘wing situation’ or something similar at the German Grand Prix (in two weeks’ time), he would get preferential treatment over Vettel? Mark grinned: “Dunno, mate. You’d think so, wouldn’t you…?”

Although, as expected, the Red Bulls were clearly the fastest cars at this, a circuit made for their peerless ability in ultra-quick corners, Webber allowed that he had not had an easy afternoon, Hamilton not having the car quite to challenge him, but certainly one quick enough to keep him alert. “I had no interest in anyone else in the race,” said Mark. “All I wanted was the pitboards giving me the gap to Lewis…”

Hamilton reckoned his qualifying lap, good for fourth on the grid, to have been probably the best of his life, which is saying something. McLaren looked to be in real trouble during practice on Friday, with the team’s new exhaust-blown diffuser (due originally to make its debut at Hockenheim) not producing the results anticipated. That evening it was decided to drop it for this weekend, and put the cars back to original specification. But still they didn’t look like front-runners, and Hamilton’s fourth best time – Jenson Button was back in 14^th – was heroic, as indeed was his drive on race day. Button, for his part, also drove a fine race and came up to fourth, sandwiched between Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes and Rubens Barrichello’s ever-improving Williams-Cosworth.

Before the race it looked unlikely that anyone would offer a serious challenge to Red Bull, and so it proved, but the man apparently closest to Vettel and Webber on pace was Fernando Alonso, as usual comfortably faster than his Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa.

Alonso, though, made a poor start, dropping instantly from third to fifth place, demoted by Rosberg and Robert Kubica’s Renault, and there he stayed until the tyre stops. The revisions to Silverstone went down better with some drivers than others, but all concluded that, sadly, they offered nothing in terms of more overtaking opportunities.

Later, in a scrap with Kubica, Alonso somewhat unavoidably cut a corner, and in so doing got ahead of the Renault driver, after which he should have given the position back. By the time the stewards reached a decision that he should be penalised – with a ‘drive-through’ – Kubica had already retired, and instead of losing just one position Alonso lost a great many. Most considered the stewards’ decision harsh, and afterwards Fernando was so angry that he refused to be interviewed. With precisely four points from the last two races, Ferrari – while pretty good on pace – is having a thin time of it just now.

Webber, so far the only driver to win three races this year, glowed with delight afterwards. Had this been a case of poetic justice? “Well,” he grinned, “maybe there’s a bloke upstairs every now and then… I made a good start, and I was… very keen to make it my corner, let’s put it that way.

“I wasn’t massively in favour of what happened yesterday, with the front wing thing – to be honest, I would never have signed a new contract for next year if I’d believed that was the way things were going to be. Let’s just see how it goes in the future. I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing, and hopefully it’s enough.”

And now comes Germany…

And it was a great job, but it wasn’t the only German victory of the afternoon as a dismal England football team was knocked out of the World Cup in South Africa.

Vettel’s victory almost took a back seat in terms of viewing interest as Webber walked away from a horrifying accident soon after the start of the Grand Prix. The Red Bull driver slipped to ninth by the end of the first lap and soon pitted for tyres feeding back into clear air. He quickly came up behind Kovalainen’s Lotus and instead of gliding easily past, the Red Bull hit the back of him so hard that Webber flew up into the air, landing upside down. The car then ploughed on into the barrier at a ferocious speed. Amazingly the Aussie jumped out seemingly unhurt and complained of only a “couple of bruises” afterwards.

Although Webber was the one that hit Kovalainen it was unclear whether or not the Lotus was letting him past. Kovalainen admitted later that he was defending strongly as they were in fact fighting for track position – as Webber had already visited the pits – which seems faintly ridiculous, if admirably competitive.

Because of the Webber/Kovalainen crash the safety car was deployed and Hamilton, who had slowed while it was coming out of the pits seemingly unsure about what to do, passed it just after. Alonso, who was running third at the time didn’t think his actions were that innocent (perhaps they weren’t?) and once everyone had pitted and the safety car came in, he found himself all the way down in ninth, while Hamilton was still up in second. The Spaniard was furious and the stewards gave Hamilton a drive through penalty. However, the damage was already done and the trip through the pits didn’t actually change his track position such was the gap between him and third-placed Kamui Kobayashi. Nine other drivers are still under investigation as I’m writing this for behaviour behind the safety car so we’ll keep you posted on any news that arrives.

It’s worth mentioning Kobayashi as he had a tremendous race, driving with the same grit and determination that he showed in Brazil at the end of last year. He stayed out on his first set of tyres and ran as high as third – without, it’s worth saying, actually holding up fourth-placed Jenson Button as much as he might have done – until the dying moments of the race. He then fed out ninth after finally pitting and managed to overtake both Alonso and Buemi, the latter of which he slid past on the last corner of the last lap.

Hopes for an exciting race weren’t high before Valencia, but I must say it was not the procession we all feared. Most importantly though, it’s great that Mark Webber walked away from such a large accident.

It was at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve three years ago that Hamilton won his first Grand Prix, and this time around, too, he was always the man to beat. A memorable last-second pole position, and then a superb race drive, during which he was under pressure for virtually the entire distance. As in Turkey a fortnight ago it was a McLaren 1-2, with Jenson Button just a couple of seconds adrift of Lewis at the flag. Fernando Alonso, having pushed Hamilton hard for much of the afternoon, finished third finally, having suffered more than most from the traffic problems endemic to Montréal.

Fundamentally, the Canadian Grand Prix was all about tyres. In the old days, before refuelling was banned, tyre wear wasn’t too much of a consideration – essentially you raced a car in qualifying spec, always light, always on new-ish tyres. Now, though, looking after your tyres – particularly when the car is fuel-heavy in the early laps – has become an important new discipline for the drivers to learn, and in Montréal ‘graining’ was a problem for everyone, particularly with the softer of the Bridgestone compounds on offer (both compounds, of course, must be used during a race).

After qualifying the feeling was that Red Bull were in the pound seats, for although Hamilton had beaten them to pole position, Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel (together with Renault’s Robert Kubica) had set their times on the harder Bridgestones. It was a certainty that all their major rivals would have to make a very early stop, at which point, went the received wisdom, Webber and Vettel would canter away into the distance.

In the event, it didn’t work out that way. Yes, the McLarens were indeed in early (Button stopping on lap six, Hamilton a lap later), but significantly Kubica – on the hard tyres, remember – was in after nine laps, and the Red Bulls stopped after 13 (Webber) and 14 (Vettel) laps. With a heavy fuel load, in other words, the harder Bridgestones didn’t last anything like as long as expected.

Even before the race started Mark’s day began badly, for his car required a gearbox change and that meant a five-place penalty on the grid, so that he started seventh, rather than second. Certainly Vettel had pushed Hamilton in the first few laps, but he was never able to get by him, and even with a clear track was unable to build enough of a cushion to keep his lead through his own first stop.

When the first round of stops was all done Hamilton was in front, chased hard by Alonso, then Button – and then Vettel and Webber. All (except Vettel) were now on the harder tyres – but McLaren and Ferrari, of course, already had the more troublesome soft ones out of the way.

This season, with refuelling banned, we have become accustomed to single-stop strategies, everyone beginning the race on the soft tyres, then coming for the harder ones and running through to the finish on them. Even though the track surface at Montréal is not particularly abrasive, though, that policy looked out of the question thanks to the graining problems, and ahead of the race Bridgestone folk reckoned everyone would need to stop at least twice.

So it proved, and different folk threw the dice in different ways. The Red Bull drivers, as we have said, both started on hard tyres, but when they made their first stops Vettel opted to switch to soft, whereas Webber took another set of hard.

In the short term, at least, this worked well for Mark. As the race neared half-distance, the three drivers ahead of him – Hamilton, Alonso, Vettel – all made their second stops, whereas Webber was able to stay out and at this point took over the lead. For 20 laps he looked very comfortable, but eventually the grip began to go away and his problem was that, with only his soft Bridgestones to come, he was obliged to stay out as long as possible before changing to them.

By lap 50, with 20 to the flag, Hamilton passed the hobbled Red Bull in front of the pits, and at the end of the lap Webber duly came in. This left Hamilton to fight off the advances of Alonso, while Fernando, at his absolute best in Montréal, was obliged also to keep a weather eye on Button.

On lap 56 Alonso was badly held up by the tardy HRT of Chandhok, which changed line unexpectedly in front of him. So much did the Ferrari have to slow that in an instant Button was past, and away up the road. Fernando, who had suffered similarly at the hand of Trulli’s Lotus earlier in the race, was afterwards remarkably charitable about the slow traffic: “Yes, I had a bad time with it today, but sometimes, you know, it can work to your advantage – over a season it evens out for everyone…”

Thereafter there was nothing to be done for Alonso, but although he finished only third he was delighted to be back on the podium. “It’s strange, this Formula 1,” he said later. “In Turkey we were nowhere – completely out of it – and we bring exactly the same car to Canada, and we’re competitive! I really think we had the pace to win today. For the next race, in Valencia, we have some major updates on the car, and I hope then we can start to be competitive everywhere…”

There was no denying the McLarens, though. With the air cleared between them, after the spot of unpleasantness in Istanbul, Hamilton and Button were all smiles afterwards. “It was a very difficult race,” said Jenson, “because of the tyre situation. The whole time you’re driving you never know if you’re not pushing hard enough because you’re saving your tyres – or maybe you’re pushing too hard, and hurting them. It’s so easy to grain tyres here…”

Hamilton agreed that it had been a tough race: “There’s the tyres, of course, but also the traffic is always a big problem here – almost as bad as at Monaco. I must say, too, that I was amazed there was no safety car period – you almost always get at least one here. Still, the car was fantastic, I must say, and I didn’t have worries here about running low on fuel – I managed to save some at certain points in the race, and there was no problem at all.”

Neither Red Bull driver made the podium in Canada, but in fact neither Vettel nor Webber was too disappointed. “We didn’t really expect to shine here,” said Mark. “It’s not really a track that brings out our car’s best qualities. But we scored some useful points – and Valencia, I’m sure, will be good for us.”

Sixth, behind Vettel and Webber, was Nico Rosberg, who drove a thoroughly excellent race for Mercedes after being disastrously held up by a first corner contretemps between Tonio Liuzzi’s Force India and Felipe Massa’s Ferrari. Rosberg was actually in 13^th place at the end of the opening lap, but came back strongly, on the way setting the third fastest lap of the Grand Prix.

His team-mate was rather less distinguished – indeed, this was probably the worst drive by Michael Schumacher most people could remember. Having qualified only 13^th, Michael made a good start and his race looked promising for a while, but thereafter we seemed to see only the worst of him, prompting one former F1 driver to comment that he drove ‘like a bad-tempered old man’. Off the pace, and plainly not enjoying the experience, Schumacher blocked and weaved and chopped, just as he always did, but now he was doing it from 12^th place, or whatever, and there was something curiously sad about it. This, after all, was a man who had won the Canadian Grand Prix seven times…

Webber has been on a role for the past two races, while Vettel has struggled to match his pace, so when he was presented with an opportunity to pass his Australian team-mate on the 40th lap it would have seemed like a golden opportunity to take the initiative back.

However, there was no way that Webber was going to make it easy so he held station, with enough room on his left for Vettel’s car. Vettel made it past, but crucially moved over too early and hit the side of his team-mate’s car. Webber managed to carry on and finish third, however, Vettel wasn’t so lucky and had to retire on the spot. We’ve seen tangles on the track with team-mates before, but this one will no doubt add to the tension in the Red Bull camp.

Even though Hamilton was lucky to inherit the lead, both him and his team-mate could match the Red Bulls for pace for the first time this year. With one Red Bull out and the other back in third it looked like an easy run to the finish for Hamilton. However, Button – who was now running second – had other plans and quickly closed the gap between them. He managed to take the lead with nine laps remaining only for Hamilton to re-pass him going into turn 1.

“It was heart stopping… I wasn’t comfortable for a few moments” admitted Martin Whitmarsh after the race. He will be a lot more comfortable now though after McLaren has proved – once again – that they are the best team on the grid when it comes to mid season development. The rate that McLaren develops its cars is quite remarkable and the Turkish Grand Prix could well be a turning point in the season.

“What can I say?” Webber beamed afterwards. “It’s hard to avoid the clichés, isn’t it – but this is the Monaco Grand Prix! I guess it has to be the proudest day of my career – to win here is a dream for every driver. A party tonight? Probably a lot of people are going to be here, rather than going home, because of the volcanic ash, so… yes, I’d say there’s likely to be a party tonight, with a few sore heads in the morning. The boys really deserve it – they work so incredibly hard…”

It had not been easy, he said – just keeping your concentration going for 78 laps around Monaco can never be easy – but it had been more straightforward than perhaps he might have expected. After qualifying the Red Bulls were again the strong favourites at this, a circuit at which they had not previously shone, but there was clearly some threat from the Renault of Robert Kubica, which separated Webber and Vettel on the grid, and lurking, too, were Felipe Massa’s Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren.

Kubica, as it happened, got a little too much wheelspin away from the line, which allowed Vettel to snick through on the run to Ste Devote. “That pretty much decided second place,” said Sebastian, but I couldn’t do anything about Mark today – he was just too quick – and in fact I was concentrating more on my mirrors today, because Robert was never very far away.”

Indeed he wasn’t. “A lot of the time I think I was actually a bit quicker than Vettel, particularly on restarts, but…it’s almost impossible to pass here, you know, and late in the race I flat-spotted a tyre, and then had terrible vibration from it. I drove hard today, and I think third place is not too bad…”

The Monaco Grand Prix effectively ended ‘under yellow’, for at Rascasse a couple of backmarkers – Trulli and Chandhok – became entangled in a nasty-looking incident, the Lotus going over the top of the HRT. Neither driver was hurt, but the safety car was instantly deployed, and such was the quantity of debris that, with only three laps left, there seemed little chance of restarting the race proper.

As it was, the safety car pulled off at the end of the final lap (so as not to appear on all the ‘chequered flag’ photographs), and it was at this point that Michael Schumacher suddenly made a desperate lunge past Fernando Alonso for sixth place.

What is it about Schumacher and Rascasse? On his last appearance at Monaco, in 2006, Michael ‘parked’ his Ferrari at the corner, thus blocking the track in an attempt to protect his pole position from last-second attack. For that, he was put to the back of the grid, and most felt he got off very lightly.

This time around he passed Alonso at the end of the final lap – which had been run as a ‘safety car’ lap, and therefore precluded overtaking before the start/finish line. Afterwards the stewards debated the matter for hours, and one didn’t really understand why, for it seemed like an open-and-shut case. Eventually it was announced that Schumacher had indeed transgressed, but as the regular penalty – a ‘drive through’ – could not be applied as this was the last lap, a time penalty of 20 seconds was imposed instead.

Much earlier in the race there had already been muttering about Schumacher, who got ahead of Mercedes team-mate Rosberg, and remained narrowly there until lap 19, when he came in for tyres. With a clear track in front of him Nico cut loose at this point, setting new fastest laps on consecutive laps, and it seemed clear that he would be ahead of Schumacher after his own stop. As it was, for reasons unclear to all but the ultra-cynical, Mercedes decided not to bring Rosberg in until lap 28, by which time his tyres had gone way past their best. When he rejoined Nico came out just behind… Michael Schumacher…

Alonso, never at the best of times exactly a fan of the great man, was furious about the Rascasse incident, in which he came close to hitting the barriers, but already he had been on the back foot all day, having started from the pit lane, stone last. In the Saturday morning practice session, having just set the fastest time, Fernando clattered into the fence at Massenet, and although the impact speed was not that high, the Ferrari’s monocoque was damaged, obliging him to miss qualifying altogether – no T-cars allowed these days, of course.

Alonso had been fastest in both sessions on Thursday, and was very much a man to fear for the Red Bull boys. He makes remarkably few mistakes in a Grand Prix car, but this one – who knows? – might ultimately cost him the World Championship.

For McLaren, Monaco was a consummate disappointment, with Hamilton finishing fifth after never featuring, and the unfortunate Jenson Button retiring after a couple of laps, his engine cooked after someone forgot to remove a cooling cover from the left hand sidepod – where resides the radiator…

No such problems for Webber, though – no problems of any kind, in fact. The Red Bull is unquestionably the fastest car – and at the moment the man who is driving it fastest is one derided by some as a hard trier, and very brave, but essentially an artisan at the wheel. At Monte Carlo, as at Barcelona, he looked like an artist.

The Red Bulls were clearly the fastest cars all weekend and despite other teams bringing various upgrades to the race, they will be left wondering what they can do to close the gap. Mercedes was quicker, and most notably Schumacher was faster than Rosberg throughout all practice sessions, qualifying and the race for the first time this season, but he was still over a second and a half adrift of Webber.

Catalunya isn’t known for its overtaking opportunities so all eyes were on the first corner, the McLaren of Hamilton that was third on the grid, and the Ferrari of Alonso that was fourth. Even with the relatively short run down to the first corner, both Red Bulls were wary of the F-Duct system and knew that they’d have their work cut out to stay in front. However, much to the joy of Webber, and much to the dismay of anyone hoping for an exciting race, the order of the top six cars stayed the same.

Hamilton drove another strong race and managed to jump Vettel during his stop. However, with less than two laps of the race remaining and a comfortable second place in his sights, his front left tyre blew and into the barriers he went. The crowd went wild as this promoted Alonso, the home favourite, to second and Vettel, who had to nurse his car to the end with serious brake troubles, to third.

Schumacher finished a credible fourth, while Button could only manage fifth. The seven-times World Champion overtook the ‘Frome Flyer’ when he emerged from the pits and Button then failed to get past him in the ensuing laps, despite having a much faster car. Schumacher blocked impressively, but to be honest, Button was never going to make too much of an impact by trying the same thing lap after lap: going round the outside of turn one, where Schumacher predictably shut off the inside line.

So well done to Mark Webber. Yes he had the fastest car, but even Vettel, with all his raw speed and talent, couldn’t match him. The other 11 teams are going to have to have a proper think about how to close the gap to Red Bull. If they can’t, we’re staring down the barrel of a rather predictable rest of the season…

On Sunday at Jerez de la Frontera, we saw why. The Gran Premio de Espana was always going to be a thriller, this race invariably producing a nail-biting finish. This is partly to do with the nature of the circuit and partly because MotoGP racing is just so damn close.

A huge crowd didn’t know whether to cheer for Dani Pedrosa or Jorge Lorenzo, both Spaniards and both in with a chance of beating Valentino Rossi who had hurt his shoulder falling off a Motocross bike. But everybody loves a legend, so they screamed and waved their flags for all three. And boy, were they entertained.

Pedrosa took a surprising pole on the Honda though he didn’t look very happy about it, complaining of inconsistent handling. Breathing down his neck were arch-rival Lorenzo in second (they don’t much like each other) and Rossi in fourth. Away from the line it was Pedrosa who got the jump followed by Rossi, who somehow managed to squeeze his way past team-mate Lorenzo. There is no quarter given or taken at Yamaha, where both men want the title – a first for Lorenzo and a tenth for Rossi.

Just as we thought it was going to stay this way till the end Lorenzo made his move, catching and passing Rossi before attaching himself to the back of Pedrosa, who could get no more from the Honda’s tyres. One of the great things about Jerez is that you have slow corners at the end of very fast straights, while one of the great things about MotoGP is that you have overtaking, and lots of it. The fun was about to begin.

As is so often the way, a superb duel between the two Spaniards – watched closely by Rossi – was decided by a breathtaking manoeuvre on the last lap. As they came down to the Dry Sack Corner, braking from 180mph to less than 50mph, Pedrosa ran wide and Lorenzo slipped through to win by half a second. He’d tried this move before, the bikes touching, Rossi ready to pounce, but this time he made it stick. Afterwards Lorenzo stopped out on the circuit to soak up the adulation, got going again, stopped again and jumped in a lake. By the time he made it to the podium, water streaming from his helmet, the crowd was hysterical.

I mention this because this weekend we return to Spain for a different kind of Grand Prix, this time at the Catalunya circuit outside Barcelona, a much less exciting track that does not encourage overtaking. Especially in a modern Formula 1 car. Sadly, we don’t go to Jerez any more. In recent years this race has been a procession, by the end of which you can’t wait to get to Monte Carlo where at least the procession is highly unpredictable.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. Sport has to be dramatic, it has to enthral, excite and surprise the audience. MotoGP does this in bucketfuls and I urge you to make the trek to Silverstone next month for the race there. I fear that the only surprise in store at Barcelona will be a close finish, never mind the cars involved. A brighter note on which to close is that, later in the year, things may get very spicy indeed between Messrs Button and Hamilton and between McLaren and Red Bull. Let’s hope so.

Whoever wins, however, he won’t be leaping into a lake. He will park neatly in parc ferme, hug his mechanics and step quickly to the weighing machine. Bring back laps of honour, flags flying and crowds yelling their approval. Much more fun.

Rain came again later in the race, but this time there was no question whether or not intermediates were needed. From then on Jenson confirmed how good he is in these tricky conditions and nursed his car, and most importantly his tyres, to the flag to record his second win of the season.

It really was a case of nursing the tyres as by the end of the race almost everyone’s intermediates looked like slicks. Add to this the fact that it started raining again a few laps from the end and it was quite astonishing that (almost) everyone managed to stay on the Tarmac.

This is what we’ve all been waiting for: a race where there are changeable conditions, drivers having to make quick, race–making decisions and most importantly, being able to see how hard these cars are to control. Too often recently you can look at a Grand Prix car and be non-plussed about how difficult they are to drive. But with damp track conditions and some old tyres… what a spectacle it is.

It’s doubtful that the Red Bull team is feeling so upbeat about the race, however. Having locked out the front row in qualifying, neither driver made the right choice at the right time when it came to tyres and neither car looked like it could seriously challenge those ahead of it. Vettel finishing sixth and Webber down in eighth will leave Christian Horner with plenty to think about.

Alonso had a typically feisty race, overtaking his team-mate down the pit access road on the way to fourth. He served a drive through penalty for jumping the start and pitted a further four times and still managed to finish within spitting distance of the podium. It was another great drive by the Spaniard.

Schumacher had another lacklustre race, which was only highlighted further by the fact that Rosberg finished on the podium. The seven-time world champion didn’t seem to have any traction exiting corners and was, at times, a moving chicane. Don’t write him off yet though as once he gets the car sorted he’ll be making his team-mate’s life a little bit harder.

So another Grand Prix, and what a great one it was. Did we complain a little early at the beginning of the season about the quality of the spectacle? Perhaps, but don’t expect every race to have quite so much action. Unless of course they implement the ‘sprinkler system’…

As can always happen in this part of the world, the heavens opened before qualifying and instead of the rain easing during Q1, it got worse and worse meaning that any cars that didn’t venture out onto the circuit in the first part of the session were never going to set a competitive enough time to make it through to Q2.

The two teams that fell most foul of this though were the most experienced in the paddock: Ferrari and McLaren. With these two contenders safely at the back of the grid, the Red Bulls, which had qualified on pole (Webber) and third (Vettel), only had to worry about each other and perhaps the Mercedes of Rosberg that was also on the front row.

Webber produced a brilliant lap in Q3 to get pole, being the only one in the top ten to attempt intermediates rather than full wets, and finished more than a second faster than Rosberg. However, his opening corner wasn’t so brilliant as, thinking that there was no threat from Rosberg, he left a gap on the inside going into the first corner, which Vettel immediately dived through. The Australian tried his best through the following corners to regain the place, but the damage had been done. It must have been a hard pill for Webber to swallow knowing that he had gifted his team-mate the race so early on.

Apart from the pitstops the leading three of Vettel, Webber and Rosberg remained unchanged throughout the Grand Prix. Further back though was another matter. Hamilton drove a great race and was in typically good form overtaking almost ten cars within a few laps. Button on the other hand got stuck in traffic and after pitting very early to go onto the harder compound, he then had to endure nearly three quarters of the race on the tyres. Even with his famously smooth driving style, it was a tall order. Despite being very quick soon after pitting, the World Champion struggled near the end of the race and lost a place to Massa. He would have no doubt lost another to Alonso, even though the Spaniard had a gearbox problem, if the Ferrari had not blown up while trying to get past the McLaren.

The Malaysian Grand Prix confirmed a few matters which have been discussed in depth both on the Motor Sport site and on the rest of the Internet. Firstly, if the Red Bulls could finish a race without any trouble they would be devastatingly quick. They certainly were in Sepang and you got the impression that they probably had another second to give if they were being pushed. Secondly, Formula 1 racing without fuel stops isn’t as boring as Bahrain would suggest, nor is it as thrilling as a damp Australia suggested. The old issue remains: if the cars have such huge amounts of downforce, they will be very hard to overtake. You only need to look at Hamilton closing down on Sutil in the final stages of the race at a rate of nearly two seconds a lap only to get onto the tail of the Force India and have no hope of getting past.

This isn’t going to change in the near future, so for the time being let us admire a sublime race and deserved win by Vettel, rue Webber’s missed opportunity, enjoy the overtaking exploits of Hamilton and another great finish for Renault’s Kubica, and tip our cap to Alguersuari who looked very impressive on a Grand Prix track for one of the first times in his career.