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Our runaway championship leader may have been forgiven for feeling a little under pressure coming into the Valencia weekend, after he had finally shown off his fragile human side when he was forced into a mistake by Jenson Button in the closing stages of the previous race in Canada. But 2011's edition of Sebastian Vettel is altogether a calmer and more reliable proposition than the error-prone crash magnet of last season, and once again the rest of the F1 field got a lesson in calm domination from the reigning champion, in the perfect tonic for his slip-up two weeks ago.

And he was very much pleased with the final result as well. "This is the best one so far," he screamed at his team over the pit radio shortly after taking the chequered flag - his sixth of the year. But while that may be his opinion on the win, it was few people's opinion on the race itself, as Valencia doled out another relative snoozer compared to the thrills and spills of 2011's races to date.

There was certainly more going on than usual at Valencia, with a decent few scraps down the field and a fair few moments of genuine overtaking meaning that this was probably the most action-packed Valencia race to date. But although the entertainment levels from 2010 to 2011 increased in the same way as every other race so far this year, it still remained the same distance behind the other races in terms of real excitement. To analogise an explanation as to why Valencia was still seen as being so dire, if everyone on the planet suddenly got 20 times more attractive, Shane MacGowan would still be ugly.

Practice and Qualifying

The Valencia circuit appears to have the ability to make every aspect of a race weekend slightly duller, as even the free practice sessions passed without much in the way of incident or interest. It was Mark Webber who topped the Friday morning session while his team mate toiled down the order, apparently on a completely different programme of testing for the session. The only noteworthy incident occurred early on when Force India reserve driver Nico Hulkenberg crashed his car, leaving regular driver Paul di Resta to have to sit out most of FP2 as the team repaired the damaged VJM04.

The afternoon running saw Webber fall back as Fernando Alonso assumed what is fast becoming his typical role of Friday practice dominator. The Spaniard finished clear of Lewis Hamilton's McLaren, with Vettel down in third and Michael Schumacher ensuring four different constructors made up the top four places by finishing behind the younger German in his Mercedes. Overnight, many fans will have been hopeful of that sort of close order to remain throughout the whole weekend, but those pipe dreams would never really look like coming to pass across the rest of the weekend.

Indeed, Vettel resumed his dominant form from the get-go on Saturday, scorching to the top of the timesheets in the final practice session, before bimbling unimpeded to pole position number seven for 2011, maintaining Red Bull's 100% qualifying record for this season. He secured top spot in a virtually uncontested Q3 battle, which saw his only realistic rivals, Alonso and Hamilton, abort their second flying laps after realising that they were never going to get near the German's time and opting to save tyres for the race itself.

Red Bull's domination of the grid was completed when Webber did managed to improve on his own second flying lap to take the front row slot alongside Vettel and secure the first RBR qualifying 1-2 in three races. Such a result made pre-event suggestions that the FIA's ban on qualifying-spec off-throttle engine maps would hurt the caffeinated squad more than their rivals look more than a little silly. In the absence of bothering to try and improve, Hamilton and Alonso settled for the second row, ahead of their team mates - Felipe Massa in fifth for Ferrari and Jenson Button sixth for McLaren.

The only other cars to attempt to set a time in the final part of qualifying were the Mercedes twins, and Nico Rosberg took seventh place from Michael Schumacher, while Nick Heidfeld's Renault and the surprise Q3 man, Force India's Adrian Sutil, completed the top ten. Elsewhere, Sergio Perez marked his return to competitive action after withdrawing from the Canadian GP due to aftereffects of his Monaco qualifying crash with a slightly underwhelming 16th place, while Narain Karthikeyan managed to sneak onto the grid in 24th place, despite spending most of practice lapping outside the 107% time.

The Race

Despite the last race in Canada starting - and then restarting - behind the safety car, as the lights went out, Vettel showed no signs that he had forgotten how to get away from the line properly, as he surged away from the pack behind with a perfect getaway. Alongside him, Webber made a similarly decent getaway to tail him through the gentle curve of turn one, while the real rocket start came from Felipe Massa, who jumped up from fifth on the grid to take third through turn one. As the pack streamed into the braking zone for turn two, he had a look up the inside of Webber, but the Australian blocked stoutly, and the delay to Massa's progress enabled Alonso to streak around the outside of the second turn to take the inside line into turn three and snatch away third place to put his upstart team mate safely back in his place.

The full grid managed to negotiate the first lap without any incident, which is not a particularly unusual statement for Valencia, and Vettel enjoyed a 1.3 second lead over Webber as they crossed the line for the first time, with Alonso 2.2 seconds back in third place from Massa and Hamilton. Rosberg had managed to jump a tardy Button off the line to take sixth, leaving the Canadian GP winner in an uncomfortable Mercedes sandwich, with Michael Schumacher providing the second layer of thick-sliced granary in eighth place. Sutil and Heidfeld completed the early top ten from Paul di Resta, who put a neat move on Rubens Barrichello midway around the opening tour to grab 11th place from the Brazilian.

Although the first few laps were of the usual Valencia-spec variety, free of action up and down the field, there were still high hopes of some entertainment being provided by the second incarnation of the FIA's dubious new double DRS zone, with the two zones again operating rather annoyingly off a single activation point. The first real pass of the race, though, relied rather more on Rosberg's timid nature than any more overt artificial means, as Button reasserted himself at the rear of the 'big three' team scrap on lap 5 when he easily outbraked the German down into turn two. Conspiracy theorists may go as far as to suggest that Rosberg is moonlighting as part of Button's post-Canadian GP PR push, given how early he was on the brakes in a way that gave what was actually a straightforward pass a sense of super-brave outbraking dramatics from the British driver.

That move put Button back into sixth place, but thanks to his laps stuck behind the painfully slow Mercedes, he was now some 14 seconds off the lead, and over eight seconds behind Massa, who was directly ahead of him on the road. At the front, Vettel was having things all his own way, controlling a three second margin back to his team mate, while Webber found himself getting distracted by Alonso breathing down his neck from behind too much to think about trying to close down the gap to the German, though the Ferrari man rarely looked like he was going to get close enough to attempt a pass.

The relative tedium was broken on lap 11, as the first round of pit stops merrily kicked off. Hamilton was the first of the frontrunners in at the end of lap 12, and managed to emerge in some clear air. The logical thing for Ferrari to do would have been to pit Massa, who was squabbling with Hamilton for fourth place to the point that the Brazilian had nearly ceded the place a couple of laps before when he ran deep in turn two, on the next lap around. But the Italian team doesn't do logic these days, and they inexplicably left the Brazilian out, as the rest of the frontrunners cycled through their own stops.

The net result was that although Massa stayed out for long enough to actually lead a lap after Vettel, Alonso and Webber all pitted from ahead of him, when the Brazilian eventually came in on lap 15, he predictably dropped behind the 2008 champion. Maybe the Scuderia management assumed the new F1 points system includes a NASCAR-style bonus for leading a lap. The upshot of that moment of tactical derping from Ferrari meant that by lap 20 Vettel led by 2.4 seconds from Webber, with Alonso still keeping pace with the Aussie's shadow. Then came Hamilton, Massa, Button and Rosberg, with Sutil now eighth, Heidfeld ninth and Barrichello into the top ten for Williams.

The lower points places were by now missing a certain Mr M Schumacher, who had decided to extract himself from the fight for points in Valencia after his own first stop, when he came out of the pit lane only to clumsily tag the right rear tyre of Petrov's Renault. The clash left him with a damaged front wing and a damaged reputation, though as he fought his way back around to the pits he still managed to re-pass Paul di Resta's Force India after the Scotsman passed him only to immediately run wide. But that moment of wing-less fun aside, he was in for a fresh nose cone shortly after, which dropped him down into the depths of the midfield for the rest of the race.

Into the second stints, Webber initially looked to be catching his team mate for the first few laps on his fresh Pirellis, but the Australian lost out badly when trying to lap the dawdling Hispania of Narain Karthikeyan, and despite making his feelings known with a spot of F1-spec angry gesticulation, that left him back in the clutches of Alonso. After a few more laps of Valencia-style follow-my-leader, the Spaniard finally made his apparent pace advantage pay on lap 22, with a picturebook DRS move up the inside into turn 12, Webber barely even bothering to defend as the flappy wing eased Alonso past the Red Bull.

The focus then became locked on whether or not Alonso could now send his home fans into delirium by dealing with the second Red Bull still ahead of him, but Vettel was quick to respond to the Alonso threat before the Spaniard could even think about getting close, perhaps mindful of his overly-cautious approach in Canada which allowed Button to catch and eventually pass him. The German dropped his lap times that fraction more, and although Alonso responded with some fast laps of his own, the lead remained comfortable around the three second mark.

The second almost-interesting round of stops were kicked off by Hamilton on lap 25, with the McLaren man suffering from degradation issues from his Pirelli soft tyres. Despite that, he kept faith with the softer tyre, as the race developed into a three-stop event for most of the frontrunners. With Hamilton safely enough behind the front three for them to be unconcerned by the 'undercut', there was no great deal of urgency from everyone to rattle through the second stops, but inevitably the stops came, with Webber the first of the front trio to stop in a somewhat transparent effort to make the undercut on his fresher Pirellis work.

And work it did, to the temporary delight of most of the Australian nation. Alonso stayed out for an extra lap, possibly in an effort to stretch out his own soft tyres before having to switch to the harder compound later in the race that this current Ferrari car tends to fear so much. After he made his second stop to take on his final set of soft Pirellis, he emerged back behind Webber, and after finding a way past just a few laps ago he now had it all to do again. Vettel resumed in the lead just ahead of the non-stopped Massa, to highlight how clear his advantage was over the second Ferrari. That meant that Massa was now temporarily running between the leader and the Webber/Alonso tussle, with conspiracy theorists eager to see if Ferrari would then use the Brazilian to hold up the Red Bull. Alas - but predictably, Massa proved useless at this task, as Webber breezed past using his DRS wing.

Massa was then in to complete the second stops, all of which left Vettel leading Webber by 2.1 seconds at the end of lap 35, with Alonso some 1.7 seconds further back. It was a three-way scrap for the win now by some distance, with Hamilton having fallen over 20 seconds behind the race leader with his tyre and general performance issues, while Massa rejoined after his stop back in fifth place and just ahead of Button, with the second McLaren now facing the extra issue of a glitch with his KERS function. The biggest scrap in the top ten away from the front trio was fast becoming the one for seventh place, with Jaime Alguersuari in the middle of trying to make a two-stop strategy work and running ahead of the three-stopping Rosberg in his Toro Rosso.

Alguersuari had already enjoyed a feisty old race, scrapping with his team mate Sebastien Buemi early on before being promoted up the order from his 18th place starting position thanks to his strategic call and spending the middle portion of the race in the fight with the Mercedes man. He had made his first stop on lap 19, and was now trying to stretch out his second stint to a point where he had a chance to get to the end on his final set of tyres. Unfortunately for the Spaniard, his aging tyres weren't enough to hold off Rosberg, as the silver car streamed past him on lap 40 down into turn 17, but he still looked to have a good chance of finishing eighth, holding a seven second advantage over ninth place man Sutil with the same number of stops left to make.

As the laps ticked on, so the idea that the final finishing order would be decided at the final pit stops became a near certainty. And it was the two drivers struggling the most for grip on the Pirelli softs - Webber and Hamilton - that were the first to chance their arms and switch to the Pirelli medium for their final stints, hoping to get their tyres up to temperature slightly more quickly than they had managed during practice. Unfortunately for Webber though, he emerged from his stop on traffic, and Alonso was then able to stay out on his final set of softs for a few more laps. After passing him once on the track earlier, the Spaniard then passed him again on pit stop strategy, as he emerged from his own final tyre change on lap 45 ahead of the Australian.

Meanwhile, Hamilton was similarly looking like he might lose a place to Massa, but he got a stroke of luck - a rarity at the moment for the beleaguered McLaren man - when the Brazilian's final stop was a complete mess, delaying him and allowing Hamilton to comfortably hold on to fourth place. As successes go, it was a minor one, but given how his last few weekends had gone, it was something for him to feel relatively happy about at the end of the race.

The final few laps were an exercise in quiet domination from Vettel. The German had found some late performance in his own final set of softs, which meant that he emerged from his own final stop with an increased eight second advantage over Alonso, who was pounding around on the relatively-gripless medium compound, and he then simply ticked off the laps to the flag to take his sixth victory of the 2011 season.

Vettel had once again controlled a race from start to finish, and for those of you keeping count, that result meant that the reigning champion has now led 408 of the 499 racing laps in 2011 so far. He led every one of this particular race bar one, thanks to Massa's silly late first pit stop. And Vettel's win meant that he was maybe the only person in the world who was delighted with the afternoon's entertainment. "Maybe from the outside [it was boring]," he shrugged afterwards, "I don't know how much there was happening in the grand prix." Not much, Seb. Not much.

Alonso made the best of another bad weekend for Ferrari by taking second place behind the young German, splitting the Red Bulls and securing what Ferrari's ever-conciliatory PR team was happy to paint as a relative victory. Possibly because they're starting to forget what an actual victory feels like, with it now being over nine months since a Ferrari driver last crossed the line in first place. Webber came home third to help Red Bull extend their constructors championship lead, but the Australian admitted afterwards that he had rather ruined his own chance to help secure what would have been only Red Bull's second 1-2 of the season with his early final stop. His efforts to fight back were further ruined in the final tours as he was forced to short-shift his way around a gearbox issue. Still, you live and you learn, and at least this year's visit to Valencia didn't end with him hitting an aerial advertising hoarding with his car's undertray.

Behind the dominant front three came Hamilton, after a race which he appeared to spend going either too fast or two slow, a sobering 46 seconds behind the race winner. "We can't beat the Red Bulls right now. We just can't," he muttered glumly after the race, though it didn't really need pointing out. Massa was left ruing his tardy final pit stop as he came home fifth, with Jenson Button back to his normal emasculated self in sixth after his stunning drive in Montreal. Nico Rosberg took a thoroughly anonymous seventh place for Mercedes GP, with Alguersuari's two-stopper working out brilliantly as the Spaniard took eighth, manfully holding off Sutil over the final few laps to match his best ever F1 finish. Nick Heidfeld completed the top ten in the 'best' of the Renaults.

The returning Perez ended up eleventh, having attempted and largely failed to repeat his Melbourne heroics from earlier in the season with another one stop strategy. Rubens Barrichello ran in the points early on, but dropped back thanks to the non-standard strategies of Alguersuari and Perez, with Buemi, di Resta, Kobayashi, the recovering Schumacher and the second Williams of Pastor Maldonado completing a full complement of established runners. In fact, for only the fourth time in F1 history, the European GP saw every driver make the finish, with the backmarking Lotuses, Virgins and Hispanias coming in two-by-two a long way behind the rest of the field, and allowing Narain Karthikeyan to secure the dubious record of being the first F1 driver ever to be classified in 24th place.

As landmarks go, it was a questionable one, and certainly not a patch on the sort of records that Vettel will inevitably break through his long F1 career. The main thing he appeared to break in Valencia, though, was the resolve of his opponents, with Alonso and Hamilton admitting afterwards that the championship was effectively over. Both drivers, it has to be said, had a point.  Vettel now leads Button and Webber by 77 points, Hamilton by 89 and Alonso by 99, with eleven races to go.

So then, Vettel called it the "best one so far". From a fan's perspective, it certainly wasn't. But for the runaway points leader, that would not have been his main concern.

Driver of the Race

Fernando Alonso - Arguably this should go to Jaime Alguersuari, who secured a second eighth place in a row from 18th place on the grid for Toro Rosso just as his career in Formula One appeared to be coming to an end under mounting pressure from Daniel Ricciardo. But if we're being particularly unkind, then a driver securing a decent finish after being one of the only men in the field to actually run the optimum pit stop strategy isn't a particularly surprising result. Instead, Alonso's successful attempt to split the Red Bulls scoops this award. It's not enough to really keep him in the championship fight without some actual race wins within the next few races, but it is enough to prove that at least one Red Bull is beatable.

Moment of the Race

Lap 8 - While there were a fair few genuine overtakes during the European GP, few of them were edge of the seat moves. In fact, the only point that this writer was on tenterhooks was early on, during an onboard shot from Kamui Kobayashi, as he attempted to pass Rubens Barrichello into the final corner by adopting the most ludicrous sideways slide up the inside of another car that you ever will see. It wasn't a genuine pass, but it was genuinely entertaining. God bless Krazy Kamui.

Quote of the Race

"I can't go any slower"/"This is as fast as I can go" - Lewis Hamilton's issues change entirely over the course of ten laps of his penultimate stint, with the team firstly asking him not to destroy his tyres, and then warning him that his pace was dropping off. One might suggest that the latter issue was a result of the former...

Patronise F1's European GP Index

Race Preview - European Grand Prix

Minute-by-minute reports:
Free Practice 1
Free Practice 2
Free Practice 3
European GP Qualifying
European GP Race

Session reports:
FP1 - Webber dominates quiet opening practice
FP2 - Friday king Alonso reigns again in Spain
FP3 - Vettel sails to the top in Valencia
Qualifying - Vettel takes pole in Valencia anti-climax
Race - Vettel completes Spain double in Valencia

Post-race coverage:
Patty Chatty - Europe
Five talking points from the European GP
Fifth Column - Europe

The Results

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