If he goes on to win on Sunday, as he will surely do providing he makes a clean
start, only three men – Red Bull team mate Mark Webber, McLaren’s
Jenson Button and Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso – can stop him becoming
champion.
In truth it would be kinder to put us all out of our misery now. This season
has had an air of inevitability about it for the last three months.
Better to head to Japan without the prospect of banal questions about the
so-called title ‘race’; better to celebrate Vettel’s ascending
star in this fitting arena, under Singapore’s balmy night sky.
Asked whether they felt a duty to keep the title race alive, Webber and Button
seemed almost embarrassed still to be discussing such a thing.
“Look,” said Button, who must finish in the top two, “even if Seb
doesn’t start the next six races it would be hard to catch him.
Anyway once the lights go out you’re not really thinking about the championship.”
“I know the championship’s been pretty boring,” Webber added. “But the racing
has been awesome.”
That it has, which is why it would be better for all concerned not to drag
things out any further. Then we can appreciate each individual race on its
own merits rather than as part of a wider narrative, however inevitable it
has become.
Webber will start from second this evening after producing, by his own admission,
one of his best qualifying performances of the year.
He was still nearly half a second down on his team mate.
Button will start third after out-qualifying his McLaren team mate Lewis
Hamilton for only the fourth time this year.
Hamilton had an eventful evening, suffering a puncture during the second
session before a run-in with Ferrari’s Felipe Massa at the start of
the final top-10 shootout annoyed him.
It wouldn’t be a race weekend without a minor controversy involving Hamilton
who accused the Brazilian of “blocking, blocking, blocking”.
Massa hit back, saying the Briton had failed to engage his brain “one more
time”.
Either, Hamilton was unable to set a final hot lap as a refuelling problem
meant McLaren could not get him back out on track. It has been that sort of
season for him.
“I think we could have got on the front row,” he said plaintively. “I
had more time in the bag.”
It doesn’t really matter. The weekend, the season has been all about Vettel.
Two more hours and it could all be over.