The manner in which he swallowed up Hamilton to take the lead on the fourth
lap, with Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa in Alonso’s slipstream, was
exquisitely judged.
In his 13th season in Formula One, this complex son of Oviedo is starting to
cement his status in the sport’s pantheon, with a 31st win elevating him to
joint-fourth in the all-time standings alongside Nigel Mansell. “It feels
fantastic,” he said. “It was an almost perfect race.”
Perfection is a remote ideal in this sport, given the tendency for tyre
management to determine races this year. The drivers here in China required
not so much a racing brain as an advanced chemistry degree as soft and
medium Pirelli compounds addled their minds on a stiflingly hot afternoon.
At one stage, Jenson Button snapped over the McLaren intercom: “Am I racing or
playing it safe?”. Alonso, it transpired, was doing both, expertly limiting
his tyre degradation while fending off the charge of Lotus’ Kimi Raikkonen.
That Alonso did so having started on softs, which appear to melt away faster
than a tub of margarine on a sundial, was testament to the deft calculations
within the Ferrari camp.
While Vettel and Button, both on the less fragile medium tyres, looked for
extended sections of the grand prix to have an inbuilt advantage, the
Spaniard struck for home after 41 cat-and-mouse laps, having built a lead of
13 seconds ahead of his third pit-stop.
It was unassailable even for the alarmingly quick Raikkonen, who somehow
brought his car home in second despite damaging his front wing in a
collision with McLaren’s Sergio Pérez.
“What the hell is he doing?” the Finn screamed at his garage as the Mexican
scythed across his Lotus, also mangling the nose and creating a marked
degree of understeer.
But we should known better than to doubt Raikkonen’s capacity to finish; he
has, after all, not retired for 20 races.
His prang with Pérez was far from the only shunt of the day. Mark Webber, who
had already been relegated to the back of the grid for running out of fuel
in the second qualifying session, suffered further indignity when he came
together with Jean-Eric Vergne’s Toro Rosso on the 16th lap.
Two laps later, Webber’s right wheel fell off and careered across the track –
almost, in delicious poetic justice, straight into the path of Red Bull
nemesis Vettel, who had so controversially passed him in Malaysia three
weeks earlier.
The Australian’s gesture as he slumped away, throwing up his hands in despair,
spoke eloquently of his state of mind.
As if his race weekend could not become more miserable, Webber was later
penalised by stewards for coming together with Vergne, receiving a
three-place penalty for next Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix.
“It’s disappointing,” Webber said. “If Jean-Eric had gone around the corner,
we would have both survived. It looks quite clumsy but I could not get out
of it.”
Vettel toiled in frustration to cross the line in fourth, just a wheel’s
breadth adrift of Hamilton, although the German’s world championship lead
remained intact. He heads to the Gulf this week three points clear of
Raikkonen and nine ahead of the resurgent Alonso.
Here Alonso served the most ominous notice of intent, ultimately prevailing by
10.2 seconds.
Tellingly, he suggested that Ferrari were still making refinements, too.
“I am at the best team, so I should be confident that everything is going in
the right direction,” the two-time champion said, with a grin to make his
rivals’ blood run cold.