Red Bull keep Vettel on track but Ferrari at sea
Sebastian Vettel scored another impressive victory inthe Japanese Grand Prix to make retaining his world title even more of a sure thing than it was before, but all the questions after the race were about Red Bull's strategy.
Vettel won after Red Bull switched his team-mate Mark Webber, who was ahead of him for the first half of the race, to do an extra stop. And you have to question why they did that.
The team said they were forced to put Webber on a three-stop because he made a relatively early first pit stop to change tyres on lap 11. The early stop, they said, was because he had "run out of tyres", as Red Bull team principal Christian Horner put it.
But in my view Webber was not really struggling performance-wise at that point.
OK, he had lost 0.4 seconds to leader Romain Grosjean's Lotus on lap 10, but his lap time was basically the same as he had done on lap eight, which does not suggest his tyres had gone.
Once Webber had pitted, Lotus decided to pit Grosjean too, to make sure he was not 'undercut' by Webber - this is where a driver loses a place because a rival behind who pits for fresh tyres before him makes up enough time to be ahead when the guy in front makes his stop.
That meant Vettel had a clear track ahead of him and could wait until lap 15 before stopping, which was the foundation for being able to go until lap 37 before making his second stop - which was what made his race.
The problem for Webber was that he only did 14 laps on his next set of tyres. Red Bull committed to a three-stop strategy before they had explored how far that second set of tyres would go. Webber could have run competitively quite a few laps longer than that.
Teams went into the race thinking it would probably be a two-stop but might be a three-stop, which was slightly slower on paper.
Red Bull had two cars at the front and I believe they tried to cover themselves in case the tyres did go off.
It's unfortunate - and unusual - that they picked to do the worst strategy with the lead car. That's strange because normally the lead car gets the priority - if there's a better choice, the lead car would get it.
The way the strategies worked out, had Webber been able to pass Grosjean quickly, he would have had a chance to chase Vettel down.
But that was always going to be hard because by the time Webber was right on the Lotus's tail on lap 46, Vettel was six seconds in front and there were only seven laps to go.
Also, by that time Webber's tyres had been used for four laps in the race and had lost their edge and I'm sure Vettel had kept a little in hand to enable him to retaliate if necessary.
Webber caught Grosjean at exactly the wrong point - at Turn One - so had to follow him for a whole lap and then he couldn't get it done in the DRS zone. And by the time you've followed someone for two laps around Suzuka, your tyres are overheating and you become a passenger.
Webber needed to pass Grosjean within a lap or it was all over for him and that's the way it turned out.
Whatever the ins and outs of the strategy, Vettel's performance was what you expect of a soon-to-be four-time world champion.
He drives the car well, he does the job he needs to, he doesn't make mistakes, he's on the limit all the time. We almost have to stop talking about Vettel and Red Bull because if he doesn't win, he's done a lesser job than he should.
With a bit of help from his team, he got past the two cars in front of him and won the race. Throughout his career he has proved he is able to win from behind or from the front.
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