9 races, 5 winners, anyone's championship

If 2009 was exciting, 2010 was promising to be a classic with 4 world champions on the grid and at least 4 teams trying to establish themselves at the front.

Red Bull started the season nicely, with Vettel taking pole in Bahrain, but a spark plug issue dropped him to fourth. Alonso inherited the win and lead the first Ferrari 1-2 since the 2008 French Grand Prix. At least the Tifosi were happy; the rest of us were just hoping to see some real racing in Australia.

Another race, another pole for Vettel, another mechanical problem. This time it was a tactical Button who took advantage of Red Bull's misfortunes to grab his first win for 2010. Could he finally prove his doubters wrong?

Malaysia saw Webber taking pole to maintain Red Bull's impressive record. A mistake at the first corner gave Vettel the lead and the car held up for Vettel to finally celebrate his first win of the season. So far we'd had 3 different teams winning the first 3 races, an exciting start to the season that we hadn't seen since 1990.

Vettel returned to his qualifying form in China, but the Red Bulls faded away in a hectic race with changeable conditions, which was won by Jenson Button. The 2009 champion was now leading the 2010 championship.

Before Barcelona and Monaco, Webber promised his dogs to go back with as many points as possible and he's not a man to break a promise; two straightforward poles and wins at Barcelona and Monaco gave him 50 points and the championship lead. Had the bad luck finally abandoned him?

Two teammates tied in points at the top is a recipe for disaster though, as Red Bull discovered in Turkey. At a race to forget, Vettel hit Webber while fighting for the lead and gave Hamilton his first win of the season. Button got a bit too close trying to grab the lead and just avoided another Red Bull-style drama.

Hamilton was back for good, and he showed it with an emphatic win in Canada. The race was a classic, packed with action and far from predictable. Even if Alonso only managed 3rd, Ferrari's pace looked good and it gave them hope that they could return to their early season pace.

The season so far had been so exciting, some people were almost looking forward to the procession that is Euro GP. Luckily for the rest of us, that's not what we got. Drivers proved that overtaking might be hard on the Valencia street circuit, but not impossible. Vettel was back; a pole and a win gave him the confidence boost which he desperately needed after Turkey. Alonso was fuming after a safety car ruined his race but, crucially, not Hamilton's. Webber proved that Red Bull does give you wings when his car went flying after it hit Kovalainen's Lotus.

And for the rest of us, Valencia proved that with good drivers in fast cars and a bit of luck, F1 is at its best.

The Lost Points

While we're approaching the half-point of the season, there's been a lot of talk of missed opportunities from several teams. Red Bull have had a big speed advantage, especially at qualifying, but they haven't always managed to convert pole positions into wins. They have had their fair share of problems and controversies but sometimes they just didn't have the race pace to win.

Although I thought James Allen was exaggerating a bit when he estimated that Red Bull had dropped 120 points so far this season, it got me thinking what the leader tables would look like if the top teams hadn't suffered any mechanical problems. Unlike James Allen, I am not taking crashes and racing incidents into account- it would make things too complicated and I don't think it's relevant.

In Bahrain, Vettel's spark plug issue dropped him to 4th and in Australia he retired from the lead when a wheel nut problem forced him onto the gravel.

In Malaysia, it was Ferrari's turn to hit trouble with Alonso's engine blowing up at the last lap and forcing him to retire from 9th.  In Spain, a brake failure dropped Vettel from 3rd to 4th, behind Alonso and at the penultimate lap Hamilton suffered a puncture and retired from 2nd.

In Monaco, Button retired with an overheating engine after a mechanic left a cooling cover on one of the sidepods. Although it's hard to tell how he would have done if it wasn't for that mistake, it makes sense to assume he could have finished at least 8th, just behind Nico Rosberg.

Turkey featured a controversial crash between teammates and, although it did gift McLaren a 1-2, it was a racing incident and not an unlucky mechanical failure - i.e. I'm not it counting here. In Canada, Vettel suffered some gearbox trouble which forced him to nurse his car to the end, but didn't lose any positions.

The Lost Points Championship

Driver    New Points    Difference
Vettel           128               -38
Hamilton      122               -13
Webber        102               +1
Button          101               +5
Alonso          81                +13
Rosberg        72                +2
Kubica          68                +5
Massa           59                 +8
Schumacher  31                +3

Clearly, the biggest loser in this is Vettel, who lost a massive 38 points from mechanical problems and, without them, he would be leading the championship now. Perhaps surprisingly, Alonso is the biggest winner, mainly because of the win he inherited from Vettel at the season opener in Bahrain.

In total, Red Bull have lost 37 points so far while McLaren just 8, with Hamilton being the overall loser at -13 and Button averaging at +5 despite his retirement at Monaco. Ferrari have gained 21 points from other people's problems, but they have had their fair share of accidents and mistakes, like Alonso's crash at Monaco or the bad qualifying choices in Malaysia- these are not taken into account here.

Mistakes, accidents and failures are all part of the racing though, and building a good car also means building a reliable one. At the end of the year, no one will care about missed points and opportunities; Vettel's two lost wins might cost him, but the points he managed to salvage in Bahrain and Spain could prove extremely valuable.

Is Renault the third fastest team?

Last Saturday wasn't the first time this year that Fernando Alonso didn't make the last stage of qualifying. It was though the first time that he failed to do so because the car wasn't quick enough. After the session he told journalists that Ferrari is now only the fifth fastest team, behind Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes and Renault. I am not sure he is enjoying the irony of the situation.

Robert Kubica qualified behind both Mercedes cars, although less than two tenths off Michael Schumacher, with Nico Rosberg splitting the two. Vitaly Petrov also made it into Q3, four tenths of a second behind his teammate. During the race though, the Renaults showed superior pace and Kubica was frustrated to be stuck behind Nico Rosberg whose quick pit stop (fastest of the race) helped him stay ahead.

Vitaly Petrov posted the fastest lap of the race on the last lap and, although it was because he had very little fuel and new tyres on (a result of his tangle with Alonso) it was only 30 hundredths off Mark Webber's fastest lap. Webber posted his 3 laps earlier and since a lap of fuel is worth about 0.1 sec a lap, Renault can't be much more than 3 tenths off Red Bull's pace.

The team has still work to do to improve their qualifying pace if they want to catch the top teams but with their F-duct and a new front wing coming soon, we might see Robert Kubica regularly challenging for podiums.

How McLaren almost did a Red Bull

More details have been emerging about the Webber-Vettel battle as well as the Hamilton-Button one, alongside many rumours of favouritism inside Red Bull. What we now know for sure is that, at lap 40, Webber went into fuel saving mode and turned his engine down. At the same time, Vettel was using the optimal engine setting and was able to get the run on Webber down the straight. Christian Horner has claimed that Vettel had managed to save an extra kg of fuel while being in Lewis's tail. There other versions of the story which include Vettel ignoring his team's orders to turn down the engine himself or even the team telling him to turn the engine up to overtake Webber.

I find the latter hard to believe, as it doesn't make much sense for a team to start alienating the driver who is currently leading the championship. They might prefer Vettel as he is younger and he is the product of their young driver development product, but a championship is a championship, and Webber would make a deserving champion and a very exciting story after years of being in underperforming cars.

Interestingly enough, Turkey '09 ended up with Vettel feeling let down by the team, as the strategy cost him a place to Webber. He was quick in the last stint but he was instructed not to pass with the message "Mark is faster". He went on to post the fastest lap of the race, surely wanting to show that he had the pace.

In a similar way to Vettel, Jenson Button decided to take advantage of Hamilton's fuel struggles and attacked him a few laps after the Red Bull crash. He overtook him briefly, but Hamilton was able to regain the lead soon after. What is interesting is that, in the lap before the overtake, Button managed to lap 1.2 sec quicker than Hamilton, and suddenly ended up right on his gearbox. After the race, Hamilton said he was instructed to save fuel and was given a target lap time, which he quickly slowed down to. He assumed Button would have been in a similar situation, and was very surprised to see him catch up so quickly.

The podium was a very awkward one, as all three drivers looked quite upset, each one for different reasons. There's an interesting story in the Guardian about Hamilton and Webber talking about Vettel's move. Lewis said something along the lines of "He did the same thing to me", presumably referring to their pitlane incident in China. Button thought he was referring to the move he pulled on him and, although Hamilton was quick to clarify, the misunderstanding says something about the tension that was evident on the podium between the McLaren teammates.

At least they managed to have a clean and exciting battle, which is something the Red Bull duo could learn from.