Vettel is much sunnier - chatty, long answers, always ready with a joke and, as the Abu Dhabi podium ceremony proved, a salty English phrase.

Underneath, though, they share more than might at first be apparent. Both are highly intelligent, intensely dedicated to their profession, and totally ruthless in their own way.

Equally, although Alonso’s wit may be less obvious than Vettel’s, it is highly developed, bone dry, effective, and often used to tactical ends.

Sebastian Vettel (right) leads Fernando Alonso in the Championship going into the penultimate race of the season. Photo: Reuters  

And they are both, of course, utterly fantastic racing drivers.

These two all-time greats head into the final two races of a marathon and topsy-turvey 2012 Formula 1 season separated by a tiny margin. Ten points is the same as a fifth place - or the margin between finishing first and third.

Vettel, on account of being ahead and having comfortably the faster car, is favourite. But within F1 there is a feeling that Alonso would be the more deserving champion, so well has he performed in a car that is not the best.

But is that a fair and accurate point of view? Let's look at their seasons, and you can make your own judgement.

THE GOOD

Vettel

It seems strange now, in the wake of Red Bull's recent pulverising form, but at the start of this season the world champions were struggling.

The car always had very good race pace - it was right up with the quickest from Melbourne on - but qualifying was a different matter.

In China, Vettel did not make it into the top 10 shoot-out in qualifying; in Monaco he did – just - but then did not run because he didn’t feel he had the pace to make it worthwhile.

In both races, though, he was competitive, taking a fifth place in China and fourth in Monaco, where he nearly won.

That was the story of the first two-thirds of Vettel’s season. He kept plugging away, delivering the points and keeping himself in contention in the championship.

He took only one win – in Bahrain, from pole – and he should have had another in Valencia, when he was as dominant as he ever was in 2011 only to retire with alternator failure.

Then, when Red Bull finally hit the sweet spot with their car, he delivered four consecutive wins (one of them inherited following Lewis Hamilton’s retirement in Singapore), the last three from the front row of the grid, including two pole positions.

And in Abu Dhabi there was an impressive comeback drive to third after being demoted to the back of the grid, albeit with the help of a significant dose of luck.

Alonso

It is hard to think of a race in which, assuming he got around the first corner, Alonso has not been on world-class form.

In Australia, when Ferrari were really struggling with their car at the start of the season, he fought up from 12th on the grid to finish fifth (including getting up to eighth on the first lap).

His three victories have been among the best all year –in the wet in Malaysia from ninth on the grid; in Valencia from 11th, including some stunning, clinical and brave overtaking manoeuvres; and a superbly controlled defensive drive in Germany, holding off the faster cars of Vettel and Jenson Button for the entire race, by going flat out only where he needed to, lap after lap after lap.

Then, to pick out some other highlights, there was beating the Red Bulls to pole in the wet at both Silverstone and Hockenheim; his rise from 10th on the grid to third in Monza, including a courageous pass on Vettel a couple of laps after being forced on to the grass at nearly 200mph; and splitting the Red Bulls to finish second in India.

THE BAD

Vettel

Impressive Vettel has been this year, flawless he has not.

In Malaysia, he cost himself a fourth place by sweeping too early across the front of Narain Karthikeyan’s HRT while lapping it. There was a hint of frustration and a sense of entitlement about the move – as there was in his post-race comments in which he called Karthikeyan an “idiot”.

In Spain, he was penalised for ignoring yellow caution flags.

In Hockenheim he overtook Jenson Button’s McLaren off the circuit, earning himself a demotion from second to fifth place, despite the drivers being warned only a month or so before that they could not benefit by going off the track.

In Monza, he earned a drive-through penalty for pushing Alonso on to the grass at nearly 200mph, in presumed retaliation for a similar move the Spaniard had pulled on Vettel in the same place the previous year. Again, this was despite the drivers being warned that they had to leave room for a rival who had any part of his car alongside any part of theirs.

In qualifying in Japan, he got away with blocking Alonso at the chicane, despite Toro Rosso’s Jean-Eric Vergne being penalised for doing the same thing to Williams’s Bruno Senna earlier in the session.

And in India he appeared to break guidelines about having all four wheels off the track at one of the chicanes on his only top-10 qualifying lap, but kept his time because the only available footage was from outside the car, and showed only the front wheels. So the FIA had to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Alonso

Er… Has Alonso made any errors at all this year?

Well, he did cost himself a couple of points in China when he ran off the road attempting to pass Williams’s Pastor Maldonado around the outside of Turn Seven – a move that Vettel did pull off against Lotus’s Kimi Raikkonen.

He spun in a downpour in second qualifying at Silverstone, just before the session was red-flagged because it was too dangerous.

And some argue that, defending a championship lead, he should not have put himself in the position he did at the start in Japan, where his rear wheel was tagged by Kimi Raikkonen’s Lotus on the run to the first corner, putting Alonso out of the race.

The claim is that Alonso had everything to lose and that, while he did nothing wrong, trying to intimidate Raikkonen into backing off, and squeezing him twice, was too big a risk.

The opposing view of that incident is that Raikkonen, who was behind Alonso, had a better view of the situation and should have realised he wasn’t going anywhere from where he was and backed off.

THE MISFORTUNE

Vettel has lost points from two alternator failures, one in Valencia when he was leading and one in Italy when he was running sixth. And third became fourth in Canada when a planned one-stop strategy had to he aborted. That’s 36 points lost.

Alonso was taken out twice at the start – once definitely not his fault (Belgium, when Romain Grosjean’s flying Lotus narrowly missed his head); and once arguably not (Japan).

He lost a possible win in Monaco because Ferrari didn’t realise that if they left him out a bit longer before his pit stop he could have overtaken leader Mark Webber and second-placed Nico Rosberg as well as third-placed Lewis Hamilton.

He should have finished second in Canada and probably won in Silverstone - rather than being fifth and second - but for errant tyre strategies, and he would have been on the front row and finished at least second in Monza had his rear anti-roll bar not failed in qualifying.

That’s 60-odd points lost.

A POST SCRIPT

While we’re analysing Vettel and Alonso, spare a thought for Lewis Hamilton.

The McLaren driver finally lost any mathematical chance of the title after his retirement from the lead in Abu Dhabi. He is 90 points behind Vettel.

Hamilton has said that he has driven at his absolute best this season, and it’s hard to disagree – he has not made a single mistake worth the name.

But his year has been a story of operational and technical failures by his team.

At least three wins have been lost (Spain, Singapore and Abu Dhabi), as well as a series of other big points finishes, as detailed by BBC Radio 5 live commentator James Allen in his blog.

Without that misfortune, Hamilton would be right up with Vettel and Alonso, if not ahead of them.

So, if you’re thinking about ‘deserving’ world champions, if such a thing exists, spare a thought for him too.

Knowing Raikkonen's reputation, it will almost certainly not have been the last drink that passed his lips in Abu Dhabi on Sunday night as he celebrated his first win since returning to Formula 1 this year after two years in rallying.

"For sure we're going to have a good party today," the sport's most famous hedonist said on he podium, "and hopefully tomorrow, when we are feeling bad after a long night, we will remember how we feel."

How long will you celebrate for, he was asked.

The party is well deserved. Raikkonen's comeback year has had its ups and downs, but a win has looked a probability since the start of the season, and in many ways the big surprise has been that it has taken so long.

Raikkonen has been remarkably strong and consistent in races this season, but until Abu Dhabi his best chances of victory had been squandered by starting too far down the grid.

Raikkonen has now taken 37% of his career victories after starting from outside the top three on the grid. Photo: Getty

He is the first to admit that he has made too many mistakes in qualifying. Indeed, for the first half of the season he was generally being out-paced over one lap on Saturdays by his novice team-mate Romain Grosjean.

But in the second half of the season his qualifying pace has edged forward, the mistakes have dried up, and this weekend everything came together to produce the result the team and he undoubtedly deserve.

Out of the car, Raikkonen is about as uncommunicative as they come. He simply refuses to engage in the media game. That can be frustrating for journalists who are searching for insight from an undoubtedly great driver, but still there is no mystery about his true character.

The radio messages that caused such amusement during the race sum him up.

His poor race engineer was only doing his job when he informed him of the gap to Fernando Alonso's Ferrari behind him, and some may find it rude that Raikkonen would respond by asking him to "leave me alone, I know what I'm doing".

But that is Raikkonen all over. He's a no-nonsense character, and he just wants things the way he wants them. And if he is not comfortable in the spotlight, he was born to be in a Formula 1 car at the front of a grand prix.

"Kimi is a man of few words but he's all about racing," McLaren driver Jenson Button said, summing up the Finn's unique appeal.

"It's good to see him have a good race here and collect the victory. He does deserve it. He is back for the racing. That's what he loves and it's good to see that."

For all his impressive performance, Raikkonen owed his win to Lewis Hamilton's wretched fortune at McLaren.

Yet another failure - this one in a fuel pump on the McLaren's Mercedes engine - cost Hamilton another victory. It's the second time it has happened in five races and it is the story of his season.

Hamilton said on Sunday that he had "been at my best this year" and so it has looked, but he also made a pointed reference to McLaren's myriad problems throughout the season: "We have not done a good enough job to win this championship."

For the men who can win it, it was a weekend of wildly fluctuating fortunes.

Following Sebastian Vettel's exclusion from qualifying because not enough fuel had been put in his Red Bull to provide the requisite one-litre sample, it appeared that Alonso had a golden opportunity to close down some of the advantage the German had eked out with his four consecutive wins through Singapore, Japan, Korea and India.

But after a wildly topsy-turvy race and an impressive drive by Vettel, the German joined his Spanish rival on the podium.

All three podium finishers gave an object lesson in racing to the many drivers who crash-banged into each other behind them, including each of their team-mates, and while Vettel's drive quite rightly stood out, so too was a little luck involved.

Vettel damaged his front wing against Bruno Senna's Williams on the first lap, but was able to continue and overtake the rabbits at the back of the field.

Then, not for the first time in his career, he made a mistake behind the safety car, misjudging the pace of Daniel Ricciardo's Toro Rosso as the Australian warmed his brakes, veering to avoid him, and finishing off the front wing against a marker board.

The mistake forced Red Bull to pit Vettel when they were not going to and the fresh tyres he fitted at the stop meant he had a grip advantage over the drivers he now had to pass.

Again, he sliced rapidly through the backmarkers - this time without incident - so that he was up to seventh by the time the pit-stop period started for those in front of him.

By the time the leaders had all stopped, Vettel was in second place, and suddenly it looked like he might have a chance of pulling off a sensational victory.

Raikkonen's Lotus team, for one, thought Vettel would not be stopping again, but Red Bull were concerned enough about tyre wear to want to play safe, and the 20 seconds he lost in his second pit stop were then wiped out by another safety car.

Fourth at the re-start, the fastest car in the field and on fresher tyres than Raikkonen, Alonso and Button ahead of him, it again looked like he might win.

In the end, though, Button's clever defence kept him behind long enough to ensure that although he could pass the McLaren, third was as far as he was going to go.

BBC F1 chief analyst Eddie Jordan said Vettel's ability to salvage a podium finish from a pit-lane start must feel like a "dagger in the heart for Ferrari" but if Alonso was disappointed you would not want to play poker with him.

He talked about his pride at finishing second in a race Ferrari had expected to deliver a fifth or sixth place - and as Red Bull team boss Christian Horner pointed out, Alonso celebrated on the podium as if he had won the race.

For a while now, Alonso has been saying Red Bull's winning run would end, that eventually they would have some bad luck.

Well, in Abu Dhabi they had it, and still Alonso could gain only three points on Vettel, and it was noticeable that the tone of his remarks after the race shifted slightly.

In India two weeks ago, he said he was still "100% confident" of winning the title. After Abu Dhabi, though, he did not repeat that remark.

"Without the problem for Sebastian we were thinking we would exit Abu Dhabi with 20 points deficit or something and we are 10 (behind)," Alonso said. "In the end it was a good weekend for us.

"They will have the fastest car in the last two races. There is no magic part that will come for Austin or Brazil. But as I said a couple of races ago, they have the fastest car, we have the best team. So we see who wins."

"I switched off the car," Vettel said. "I was told to park the car under the podium and I couldn't remember where it was from last year and Mark gave me a little bit of a push."

He added that he thought it was his "only mistake" of the day, which sounds about right.

The victory was his fourth in a row, a new achievement for the German despite his domination on the way to the world championship last year, and he has now led every racing lap since Lewis Hamilton's McLaren retired from the lead of the Singapore Grand Prix four races ago.

It also moves Vettel to one win short of the tally of Sir Jackie Stewart. At this rate, Vettel will not only pass the Scot's number of victories before the end of the year but join him as a three-time world champion as well.

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Vettel is still only 13 points ahead of his only remaining realistic rival, Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, which is less than a driver earns for a third place, but it is the scale of Red Bull's current superiority that has led many to suspect the battle is already effectively over.

Vettel was fastest in every practice session in India and took yet another pole position. After the German's crushing wins in Japan and Korea, the only surprise at the Buddh International Circuit was that Red Bull's margin over the rest of the field was smaller than expected in qualifying.

In the race, though, Vettel was completely untouchable.

In the first 20 laps, he was not that much faster than team-mate Mark Webber in second place, and the Australian was being pretty much matched by Alonso.

But then Vettel cut loose, suddenly lapping 0.5 seconds faster than before. Team boss Christian Horner admitted that, not sure about tyre wear, Vettel had simply been measuring his pace in the opening third of the race.

Ferrari and McLaren both appeared to be in better shape after the single pit stops, more comfortable on the 'hard' tyre than the 'soft', but even then it was clear Vettel was in total control.

For the dispassionate observer wanting to see close racing, Red Bull's current form may be depressing, but it is hard not to admire what they have achieved this season.

For the first time in two years, they started the championship without a dominant car, and although they had strong race pace they were struggling to qualify at the front - the position from which they used to crush their opposition in 2011.

But they have worked away diligently at a series of upgrades aimed at allowing them to run the car as they did last year, and the breakthrough came in Singapore.

Further modifications came on stream in Japan and Korea and now Red Bull have a car that on pure pace is out of reach of their rivals.

It is the qualifying pace that is the key - start at the front and you can run in clear air, dictate the pace of the race, and are not affected by the turbulence of other cars. In this position, Vettel is close to unbeatable.

The start of the season, when there were seven different winners in seven races, seems a very long time ago.

Red Bull are a brilliant team, managed without compromise by Christian Horner and led by a genius designer in Adrian Newey, working in perfect harmony with a great driver. In many ways, it is similar to the way Lotus boss Colin Chapman and Jim Clark dominated the mid-1960s.

How they have done it, BBC F1 technical analyst Gary Anderson has expanded on in his column. For now, the problem for their rivals is what to do about it.

Alonso was as impressive in India as he has been all season, aggressive and inch perfect in the opening laps as he fought past both McLaren drivers, and relentless in his pursuit of Webber for second place.

The fact that the Spaniard passed the Australian was down to a degree of luck, it has to be said. Webber's Kers power-boost system was working only intermittently, and crucially he got held up behind some backmarkers, allowing Alonso to close to within one second - which meant he was within the margin that allows use of the DRS overtaking aid.

Once there, it took only two laps for Alonso to pass Webber, who without Kers, was defenceless on the long straight against a Ferrari with better straight-line speed anyway, and also employing Kers and DRS.

Nevertheless, to even keep the Red Bulls honest was quite an achievement by Alonso - no-one else was even close.

If there is such a thing as a driver 'deserving' the world title more than another, most people in F1 would say Alonso has been the stand-out competitor of the year.

As Lewis Hamilton put it in India: "Fernando unfortunately doesn't have as quick a car as Sebastian; it's nothing to do with his driving skills, that's for sure."

F1, though, is not purely a drivers' championship - he has to have a car, and at the moment Alonso is fighting an unequal battle with inferior equipment.

And in any case, Alonso himself would undoubtedly say that the driver who ends the season with the most points is the deserving champion.

Red Bull are now virtually certain to clinch a third consecutive constructors' title - indeed they seem likely to do so in Abu Dhabi next weekend.

For all Vettel's recent domination, though, in purely mathematical terms the drivers' championship remains wide open.

Thirteen points sounds a decent amount but the margin between Vettel and Alonso is, in F1's old scoring system abandoned only at the end of 2009, the equivalent of less than four points.

One retirement by Vettel, or a marginal improvement in the performance of Ferrari in the final three races, could tip the balance back in Alonso's favour. Time, though, is running out.

Alonso said on Sunday that the team did have improvements due in the next three races, and there was a hint in some of the other things he said over the weekend that the team expect them to amount to something more substantial than Ferrari have introduced for a while.

McLaren sporting director Sam Michael said on Sunday evening: "The performance can swing from one track to the other by a couple of tenths, and that's all there is in it at the moment - 0.2-0.3secs in terms of qualifying.

"And if you can have that performance, from the front row you have a better chance. So even if no-one upgraded their cars there would still be a reasonable chance that people could have a go at them.

"If Ferrari have a competitive car, then obviously Alonso can still do it."

In the context of the overpowering brilliance of Red Bull, though, that is a big if.

After three consecutive victories for Vettel and Red Bull, the last two of which have been utterly dominant, it does not look as though Alonso is going to be getting it back.

Alonso will push to the end, of course, and he made all the right noises after the race, talking about Ferrari “moving in the right direction” and only needing “a little step to compete with Red Bull”.

“Four beautiful races to come with good possibilities for us to fight for the championship,” he said, adding: “Now we need to score seven points more than Sebastian. That will be extremely tough but we believe we can do it.”

Sebastian Vettel won the Korean GP by finishing ahead of team-mate Mark Webber and Ferrari's Fernando Alonso (left). Photo: Reuters

Indeed, a couple of hours after the race, Alonso was quoting samurai warrior-philosophy again on his Twitter account, just as he had in Japan a week before.

"I've never been able to win from start to finish,” he wrote. “I only learned not to be left behind in any situation."

Fighting against the seemingly inevitable is his only option. The facts are that the Ferrari has been slower than the Red Bull in terms of outright pace all year, and there is no reason to suspect anything different in the final four races of the season.

Vettel’s victory in Korea was utterly crushing in the manner of so many of his 11 wins in his dominant 2011 season. The Red Bull has moved on to another level since Singapore and Vettel, as he always does in that position, has gone with it.

Up and down the pit lane, people are questioning how Red Bull have done it, and a lot of attention has fallen on the team’s new ‘double DRS’ system.

This takes an idea introduced in different form by Mercedes at the start the season and, typically of Red Bull’s design genius Adrian Newey, applies it in a more elegant and effective way.

It means that when the DRS overtaking aid is activated – and its use is free in practice and qualifying – the car benefits from a greater drag reduction, and therefore more straight-line speed than its rivals.

Vettel has been at pains to emphasise that this does not help Red Bull in the race, when they can only use the DRS in a specified zone when overtaking other cars. But that’s not the whole story.

The greater drag reduction in qualifying means that the team can run the car with more downforce than they would otherwise be able to – because the ‘double DRS’ means they do not suffer the normal straight-line speed deficit of doing so.

That means the car’s overall lap time is quicker, whether in race or qualifying. So although the Red Bull drivers can’t use the ‘double DRS’ as a lap-time aid in the actual grands prix, they are still benefiting from having it on the car.

And they are not at risk on straights in the race because the extra overall pace, from the greater downforce, means they are far enough ahead of their rivals for them not to be able to challenge them, let alone overtake them. As long as they qualify at the front, anyway.

It’s not all down to the ‘double DRS’, though. McLaren technical director Paddy Lowe said in Korea: “They appear to have made a good step on their car. I doubt that is all down to that system. I doubt if a lot of it is down to that system, actually. You’ll probably find it’s just general development.”

BBC F1 technical analyst Gary Anderson will go into more details on this in his column on Monday. Whatever the reasons for it, though, Red Bull’s rediscovered dominant form means Alonso is in trouble.

While Red Bull have been adding great chunks of performance to their car, Ferrari have been fiddling around with rear-wing design, a relatively small factor in overall car performance.

They have admitted they are struggling with inconsistency between the results they are getting in testing new parts in their wind tunnel and their performance on the track, so it is hard to see how they will close the gap on a Red Bull team still working flat out on their own updates.

The Ferrari has proved adaptable and consistent, delivering strong performances at every race since a major upgrade after the first four grands prix of the year.

But the only time Alonso has had definitively the quickest car is when it has been raining. It is in the wet that he took one of his three wins, and both his poles.

But he cannot realistically expect it to rain in the next three races in Delhi, Abu Dhabi and Austin, Texas. And after that only Brazil remains. So Alonso is effectively hoping for Vettel to hit problems, as he more or less admitted himself on Sunday.

How he must be ruing the bad breaks of those first-corner retirements in Belgium and Japan – even if they did effectively only cancel out Vettel’s two alternator failures in Valencia and Monza.

If anyone had reason on Sunday to regret what might have been, though, it was Lewis Hamilton, who has driven fantastically well all season only to be let down by his McLaren team in one way or another.

Hamilton, his title hopes over, wasted no time in pointing out after the race in Korea that the broken anti-roll bar that dropped him from fourth to 10th was the second suspension failure in as many races, and a broken gearbox robbed him of victory at the previous race in Singapore.

Operational problems in the early races of the season also cost him a big chunk of points.

Hamilton wears his heart on his sleeve, and in one off-the-cuff remark to Finnish television after the race, he revealed a great deal about why he has decided to move to Mercedes next year.

“It’s a day to forget,” Hamilton said. “A year to forget as well. I’m looking forward to a fresh start next year.”

In other words, I’ve had enough of four years of not being good enough, for various reasons, and I might as well try my luck elsewhere.

There was another post-race comment from Hamilton, too, that said an awful lot. “I hope Fernando keeps pushing,” he said.

Hamilton did not reply when asked directly whether that meant he wanted Alonso to win the title. But you can be sure that remark is a reflection of Hamilton’s belief that he is better than Vettel, that only Alonso is his equal.

Whether that is a correct interpretation of the standing of the three best drivers in the world, it will take more than this season to tell.

In the meantime, if Alonso and Ferrari are not to be mistaken in their belief that they still have a chance, “keeping pushing” is exactly what they must do. Like never before.

"If the enemy thinks of the mountains," Alonso wrote on his Twitter account, "attack by sea; and if he thinks of the sea, attack by the mountains."

That the Ferrari driver can reach for the words of a 17th century kensei warrior and strategist in a moment of such strain reveals a lot about the manner in which he combines an indomitable fighting spirit with a status as possibly the most cerebral Formula 1 driver of his generation.

But it will take more than relentlessness and clever strategy for Alonso to hold on to a lead for which he has struggled so hard this season, but which has now dwindled to almost nothing.

Alonso has won three races and taken a series of strong points finishes to establish what was until recently an imposing championship lead in a car that has never once been quick enough to set pole position in the dry.

He did so by driving, in terms of consistency and lack of mistakes, one of the most perfect seasons there has ever been - a feat made all the more impressive because it was done in not the best car.

Fernando Alonso leads Sebastian Vettel in the Championship by four points. Photo: Getty

Yet now, through no fault of his own, Alonso has failed to finish two of the last four races and in that time Vettel has made hay, taking 37 points out of his rival's lead.

Heading into Japan, it was already beginning to look as if Vettel was going to be hard to resist.

While the Red Bull has been a forbiddingly quick race car all season, the team did not in the first half of the season find it very easy to get the best out of it in qualifying.

But since mid-summer they have found consistency, and started to qualify regularly at the front of the grid as well. At the same time, luck has deserted Ferrari and Alonso.

More than that, Red Bull also appear in recent races to have made a significant step forward in the performance of their car.

Vettel looked very strong in Singapore two weeks ago, trading fastest times with Lewis Hamilton throughout the weekend and taking victory after the Englishman's McLaren retired from the lead with a gearbox failure. And in Japan the Red Bull looked unbeatable from as early as Saturday final practice session.

How much of this is to do with the new 'double DRS' system which came to light in Suzuka is unclear.

Team boss Christian Horner said he thought it was more to do with the characteristics of the track suiting those of the Red Bull car. Perhaps, but the 'double DRS' certainly won't be doing any harm.

Unlike the system that Mercedes have been using since the start of the season, which uses the DRS overtaking aid to 'stall' the front wing, Red Bull's works entirely on the rear wing.

What it means is that they can run the car with more downforce in qualifying without the consequent straight-line speed penalty caused by the extra drag, because the 'double DRS' bleeds off the drag.

This does bring a straight-line speed penalty in the race, when DRS use is no longer free. But as long as the car qualifies at the front, this does not matter, as it is quick enough over a lap to stay out of reach of its rivals.

It is not clear how long Red Bull have been working on this system at grand prix weekends, but to the best of BBC Sport's knowledge, Japan was the first time they had raced it. Coupled with a new front wing design introduced in Singapore, it has turned an already strong package into an intimidating one.

Vettel used it to dominate the race in the fashion he did so many in 2011 on his way to his second-consecutive title. As he so often does in the fastest car when he starts at the front of the grid, he looked invincible.

Alonso, though, is not one to be intimidated easily and will take solace from the fact that Ferrari's pace compared to Red Bull was not as bad as it might appear at first glance.

Alonso may have qualified only seventh, but he reckoned he was on course for fourth place on the grid before having to slow for caution flags marking Raikkonen's spun Lotus at Spoon Curve.

And judging by the pace shown by his team-mate Felipe Massa in the race, Alonso would have finished in a sure-fire second place had he got beyond the first corner. He might even have been able to challenge Vettel, given how much faster the Ferrari has been in races than in qualifying this year.

Alonso's problem for the remainder of the season is that salvaging podiums is no longer enough - he needs to start winning races again. Which means Ferrari need to start improving their car relative to the opposition.

Meanwhile, spice has been added to an already intriguing final five races by a seemingly innocuous incident in qualifying in Japan.

After slowing as he passed Raikkonen's car, Alonso continued on his flying lap, but when he got to the chicane, he came across Vettel, who blocked him.

Ferrari reckoned this cost Alonso somewhere in the region of 0.1-0.2secs, which would have moved him up a place on the grid. The stewards, though, decided to give Vettel only a reprimand.

They justified this on the basis that they believed Vettel had not known Alonso was there - and they let him off not looking in his mirrors because they felt he had reason to believe no-one would be continuing on a flying lap following the Raikkonen incident.

But some would see that as flawed thinking. Alonso was one of several drivers who had at that point not set a time in the top 10 shoot-out, and all of them were likely to be continuing their laps because whatever time they did set was going to define their grid slot.

Although there is no suggestion Vettel held up Alonso deliberately, the Red Bull driver is a sharp cookie, and almost certainly would have known this.

Even if he did not, his team should have warned him. And on that basis, it can be argued that Vettel's offence was no less bad than that of Toro Rosso's Jean-Eric Vergne, who was given a three-place grid penalty for delaying Williams's Bruno Senna in similar fashion earlier in qualifying.

Ferrari were distinctly unimpressed by the stewards' verdict, but Alonso being Alonso, he has not mentioned any of this publicly. Alonso being Alonso, though, he will have lodged it away for the future.

In the meantime, before heading to Korea for another potentially pivotal race next weekend, might he be studying Musashi a little more?

You must "know the times", Musashi wrote. "Knowing the times means if your ability is high, seeing right into things. If you are thoroughly conversant with strategy, you will recognise the enemy's intentions and thus have many opportunities to win.

"If you attain and adhere to the wisdom of my strategy, you need never doubt that you will win."

It was a mark of the respect still held for Schumacher and a reflection of the appreciation for what was clearly an emotional moment for the man whose seven world titles re-wrote the sport's history books.

Schumacher stumbled a couple of times as he read off the paper in front of him and once, as he mentioned the support of his wife Corinna, his voice almost cracked.

Once through the statement and on to a question-and-answer session with the journalists, he was more comfortable, relaxed in a way he has so often been since his comeback, and so rarely was in the first stint of his career.

Schumacher's retirement from the Singapore Grand Prix had a familiar look to it. Photo: Getty

The Schumacher who returned to Formula 1 in 2010 with Mercedes was quite different from the one who finished his first career with Ferrari in 2006.

The new Schumacher was more human, more open and more likeable.

As he put it himself on Thursday: "In the past six years I have learned a lot about myself, for example that you can open yourself without losing focus, that losing can be both more difficult and more instructive than winning. Sometimes I lost this out of sight in the earlier years."

Most importantly, though, the new Schumacher was nowhere near as good.

In every way possible, there is no other way to view his return to F1 than as a failure.

When he announced his comeback back in December 2009, he talked about winning the world title. Instead, he has scored one podium in three years, and in that period as a whole he has been trounced by team-mate Nico Rosberg in terms of raw pace. In their 52 races together, Schumacher has out-qualified his younger compatriot only 15 times.

It is ironic, then, that there have been marked signs of improvement from Schumacher this season. In 14 races so far, he has actually out-qualified Rosberg eight-six.

And although Rosberg has taken the team's only win - in China earlier this year, when he was demonstrably superior all weekend - arguably Schumacher has been the better Mercedes driver this year.

Schumacher has suffered by far the worst of the team's frankly unacceptable reliability record and would almost certainly have been ahead of Rosberg in the championship had that not been the case. And he might even have won in Monaco had not a five-place grid penalty demoted him from pole position.

That penalty, though, was given to Schumacher for an accident he caused at the previous race in Spain, when he rammed into the back of Williams driver Bruno Senna having misjudged his rival's actions.

That was only one of four similar incidents in the last 18 months that have crystallised the impression that the time was approaching where Schumacher should call it a day.

It is unfortunate timing, to say the least, that the last of those incidents happened less than two weeks ago in Singapore, almost as if it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

That was not the case, of course. Schumacher has been vacillating on his future for months and in the end his hand was forced. Mercedes signed Lewis Hamilton and Schumacher was left with the decision of trying to get a drive with a lesser team or quitting. He made the right call.

His struggles since his return have had an unfortunate effect on Schumacher's legacy. People within F1 - people with the highest regard for his achievements - have begun to question what went before.

There have always been question marks over his first title with Benetton in 1994, given the highly controversial nature of that year. Illegal driver aids were found in the car, but Benetton were not punished because governing body the FIA said they could find no proof they had been used.

But since 2010 people have begun to look back at the dominant Ferrari era of the early 2000s, when Schumacher won five titles in a row, and begun to wonder aloud just how much of an advantage he had.

It was the richest team, they had unlimited testing and bespoke tyres. Did this, people have said, mean Schumacher was not as good as he had looked?

If you watched him during his first career, though, you know how ridiculous an assertion this is. Schumacher in his pomp was undoubtedly one of the very greatest racing drivers there has ever been, a man who was routinely, on every lap, able to dance on a limit accessible to almost no-one else.

Sure, the competition in his heyday was not as deep as it is now, but Schumacher performed miracles with a racing car that stands comparison with the greatest drives of any era.

Victories such as his wet-weather domination of Spain in 1996, his incredible fightback in Hungary in 1998, his on-the-limit battle with Mika Hakkinen at Suzuka that clinched his first title in 2000 were tours de force. And there were many more among that astonishing total of 91 victories.

So too, as has been well documented, was there a dark side to Schumacher, and it was never far away through his first career.

Most notoriously, he won his first world title after driving Damon Hill off the road. He failed to pull off a similar stunt in 1997 with Jacques Villeneuve. And perhaps most pernicious of all, he deliberately parked his car in Monaco qualifying in 2006 to stop Fernando Alonso taking pole position from him.

Those were just the most extreme examples of a modus operandi in which Schumacher seemed often to act without morals, a man who was prepared to do literally anything to win, the sporting personification of Machiavelli's prince, for whom the ends justified the means.

Those acts continue to haunt Schumacher today, and even now he still refuses to discuss them, won't entertain the prospect of saying sorry.

"We are all humans and we all make mistakes," he said at Suzuka on Thursday. "And with hindsight you would probably do it differently if you had a second opportunity, but that's life."

He was given a second opportunity at F1, and he took it because in three years he had found nothing to replace it in his life.

His self-belief persuaded him that he could come back as good as he had been when he went away, but he learnt that time stands still for no man.

He has finally been washed aside by the tide of youth that with the arrival of Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen towards the end of his first career already seemed to be replacing one generation with the next.

It seems appropriate in many ways that the agent for that was Hamilton, the man who many regard as the fastest driver of his generation.

That, after all, is what Schumacher was, as well as one of the very greatest there has ever been. And nothing that has happened in the last three years can take that away.

Ahead of the 2010 season, Fernando Alonso moved to Ferrari, world champion Jenson Button switched from world champions Brawn (soon to become Mercedes) to McLaren and Michael Schumacher came out of retirement to replace Button.

Now, the man who most consider to be the fastest driver in the world has taken a huge gamble by switching from McLaren, who have the best car this year and have won five races this season alone, to Mercedes, who have won one race in three years.

To make way for Hamilton, Mercedes have ditched the most successful racing driver of all time.

Hamilton leaves a team that has won more races in the last 30 years than anyone else. Photo: Getty

That the announcement was made just five days after the latest in a series of collisions in which Schumacher rammed into the back of another driver after misjudging his closing speed simply rubs salt into the wound.

Hamilton will be replaced at McLaren by one of F1's most promising rising stars - Sauber's Mexican driver Sergio Perez, who has taken three excellent podium finishes this year.

That's quite a shake-up, and it raises any number of fascinating questions, the first and most obvious of which is why Hamilton would leave a team that has won more races in the last 30 years than anyone else - even Ferrari - for one that has won one in the last three.

The explanation for that lies both at his new and current teams.

Mercedes sold the drive to Hamilton on the basis that they were in the best position to deliver him long-term success. In this, there are echoes of Schumacher's move to Ferrari in 1996.

Back then, the Italian team were in the doldrums, having won just one race the previous year. But Schumacher fancied a project, and saw potential. It took time, but by 1997 he was competing for the title, and from 2000 he won five in a row.

The architect of that success was Ross Brawn, then Ferrari's technical director and now Mercedes' team boss. Brawn is one of the most respected figures in F1, and Hamilton is banking on him being able to transform Mercedes in the same way as he did Ferrari.

Undoubtedly, Brawn will have made a convincing case to Hamilton; he is a very persuasive and credible man. It is also worth pointing out that Mercedes - in their former guise of Brawn - have won the world title more recently than McLaren. Button succeeded Hamilton as world champion in 2009.

Mercedes believe that the new regulations for 2014, when both the cars and engines will be significantly changed, will play into their hands.

They are devoting a lot of resources towards that year, and are optimistic they will be in good shape - just as Brawn were, in fact, when the last big rule change happened for 2009.

And Mercedes have a technical team that, on paper, is immensely strong. In Bob Bell, Aldo Costa and Geoff Willis, they have three men who have been technical directors in their own right at other top teams all working under Brawn.

Part of this argument is predicated on the fact that new engine regulations always favour teams run or directly supported by engine manufacturers, on the basis that they are best placed to benefit from developments, and to integrate the car with the engine.

But this is where that argument falls down a little - McLaren may be a mere 'customer' of Mercedes for the first time next year, but they are still going to be using Mercedes engines in 2014, and on the basis of parity of performance.

The love affair with McLaren, who took him on as a 13-year-old karting prodigy, ended some time ago.

Since 2010, Hamilton has been complaining from time to time about the McLaren's lack of aerodynamic downforce compared to the best car of the time.

Through 2009-11, he grew increasingly frustrated at his team's apparent inability to challenge Red Bull. Hamilton is well aware of how good he is, and it hurt to watch Sebastian Vettel win two titles on the trot and not be able to challenge him.

That explains his ill-advised - and dangerously public - approach to Red Bull team boss Christian Horner at the 2011 Canadian Grand Prix.

This year, McLaren started the season with the fastest car for the first time since, arguably, 2005. But again they could not get out of their own way.

Pit-stop blunders affected Hamilton's races in Malaysia and China early in the season, and then a terrible mistake in not putting enough fuel in Hamilton's car in qualifying in Spain turned an almost certain win into a battle for minor points.

These errors badly affected his title charge and in early summer his management started approaching other teams.

His favoured choice was almost certainly Red Bull, but they weren't interested. They also approached Ferrari, where Alonso vetoed Hamilton. That left Mercedes.

It is ironic that his decision to move teams has been announced on the back of four races that McLaren have dominated.

Meanwhile, Hamilton's relationship with McLaren Group chairman Ron Dennis, the man who signed him up and who promoted him to the F1 team in 2007, has collapsed.

It was noticeable that after Hamilton's win in Italy earlier this month Dennis stood, arms-folded and stoney-faced, beneath the podium, not applauding once. Nor did Dennis don one of McLaren's 'rocket-red' victory T-shirts, or join in the champagne celebrations with the team once Hamilton had completed his media duties.

In Singapore last weekend, it seemed that McLaren still believed they had a chance of keeping Hamilton; at least that was the impression from talking to the team.

But did Dennis already know in Monza of Hamilton's decision to defect? Was Hamilton's sombre mood after that win a reflection of his wondering whether he had made the right decision?

Was Hamilton's ill-advised decision to post a picture of confidential McLaren telemetry on the social networking site Twitter on the morning of the Belgian Grand Prix, the weekend before Italy, the action of a man who had had enough and didn't care any more because he knew he was leaving?

When was the Mercedes deal actually finally signed?

Was it done before BBC Sport broke the story of it being imminent in the week leading up to the Italian race?

Or was it not inked, finally, until this week, on the basis that only now has the Mercedes board committed to new commercial terms with F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone?

In which case, was the gearbox failure that cost Hamilton a certain victory in Singapore, and effectively extinguished his title hopes for good, the straw that broke the camel's back?

In short, was Hamilton's decision based on cold, hard logic, rooted primarily in performance, in making more money, or founded on emotion as much as calculation. Or was it a combination of all those factors?

All these questions will be answered in time. Whatever led to Hamilton's decision, it is fair to say that it is an enormous gamble, one on which the next phase of his career hangs.

Hamilton has two competing offers on the table for his future - one to stay at McLaren and one to move to Mercedes.

The word at the Singapore Grand Prix - for what it's worth - was that he is leaning towards staying where he is; one McLaren insider even suggested that a deal could be inked within days.

At the same time, there may be a complication. There are suggestions that earlier this year Hamilton signed something with Mercedes - a letter of intent, a memorandum of understanding, perhaps - that he would need to get out of before he could commit to McLaren. His current team have heard talk of this, too. Hamilton's management deny this.

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The conventional wisdom is that Mercedes are offering Hamilton more money and that the deal is sweetened further by greater freedom over personal sponsorship deals. Those are highly restricted at McLaren because of the team's breadth of marketing tie-ups.

But BBC Sport understands it is not quite as simple as that.

For one thing, some sources say the figures quoted for the Mercedes offer in the media so far - of £60m over three years - are significantly larger than what is actually on the table.

Of course, in theory, as one of the largest car companies in the world, Mercedes can afford to pay almost any figure it wants.

But the board's commitment to Formula 1 has been in question all year. While it is understood that the company has now reached an agreement with the sport's commercial rights holders defining the financial terms under which they have committed for the next few years, F1 is not a money-no-object exercise for them.

McLaren believe their offer to Hamilton is broadly similar to Mercedes', and that in terms of total remuneration he could actually end up earning more money if he stays where is.

How so? Well, it seems the headline salary figures may not differ that much - although I understand Mercedes' offer is larger.

Mercedes offer greater freedom in terms of new sponsorship deals with which Hamilton can top up his income, and out of which his management group - music industry mogul Simon Fuller's XIX - would take a cut that some sources say is as great as 50%, a figure XIX say is wildly exaggerated.

McLaren, by contrast, have strict rules around their driver contracts - they do not allow any personal sponsorship deal that clashes with any brand owned by a company on their car.

So deals with mobile, fashion, household products, perfumes, oil and so on are all out. Jenson Button is allowed to have his deal to endorse shampoo because it was signed before McLaren had GlaxoSmithKline as a partner.

McLaren, I'm told, have loosened some of their restrictions in an attempt to give Hamilton more freedom.

And in their favour is that all contracts contain clauses that define bonuses for success; in McLaren's case for wins and championships. These amount to significant amounts of money and on current form Hamilton would earn more in bonuses with McLaren than with Mercedes.

Financially, it is in XIX's interests for Hamilton to move to Mercedes - that is where they will earn most money.

But that may not be the case for Hamilton, which of course begs the question of whether the driver and his management group actually have conflicting interests.

While Hamilton has steadfastly refused to discuss his future with the media, he has been consistent in one thing. As he put it at the Italian Grand Prix earlier this month: "I want to win."

He knows exactly how good he is and it rankles with him that he has so far won only one world title.

In which case, the last few races will have given him pause for thought.

McLaren started this season with the fastest car in F1, the first time they have done that since at least 2008 and arguably 2005.

But Hamilton's title bid was hampered by a series of early season operational problems that prevented him winning until the seventh race of the season in Canada. Was it during this period that he signed that "something" with Mercedes?

After a slight mid-season wobble through the European and British Grands Prix in late June and early July, though, McLaren have come on strongly.

Upgrades introduced at the German Grand Prix gave them a big step forward, making the McLaren once again the fastest car.

Progress was disguised in Hockenheim by a wet qualifying session, which allowed Alonso to take the pole position from which he controlled the race.

Even then, though, with Hamilton out of the reckoning after an early puncture, Button ran the Spaniard close.

Since then, it has been all McLaren. Hamilton won from pole in Hungary and Italy; Button the same in Belgium. Then in Singapore Hamilton lost an almost certain victory, also from pole, with a gearbox failure.

Meanwhile, Mercedes have floundered. And while rival teams agreed that a big upgrade to the silver cars in Singapore did move them forward a little, Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher only just scraped into the top 10 in qualifying and were anonymous in the race until Schumacher's embarrassing crash with Toro Rosso's Jean-Eric Vergne.

Undoubtedly, Mercedes will have given Hamilton the hard sell.

They'll have pointed out that they have won the world title more recently than McLaren - in their previous guise of Brawn in 2009.

They'll have said they are a true works team backed by a huge car company, whereas McLaren are from next year paying for their "customer" Mercedes engines.

They'll have argued that, in team boss Ross Brawn, Mercedes have the architect of the most dominant dynasty in F1 history - the Ferrari team of the early 2000s - who is determined to do it again. Triple world champion Niki Lauda, who is expected to be given a senior management role at the Mercedes team, has also been involved in trying to persuade Hamilton to join the team.

And they'll have said Hamilton has relative commercial freedom with them to make as much money as he wants.

What they won't have said is that the 2009 world title came about in rather exceptional circumstances and that at no other time has the team looked remotely like consistently challenging the best - whether as BAR, Honda or Mercedes.

And they won't have said that McLaren - for all Hamilton's frustrations over the cars he has had since 2009 and the mistakes that have been made in 2012 - have a winning record over the past 30 years that is the envy of every team in F1.

Of course, the past does not define the future, but the future is built on the past.

It's possible that the near future of F1 is one of Mercedes hegemony, but it would be a hell of a gamble to take for a man who professes he just "wants to win".

If the latest indications about his mind-set are correct, perhaps that is what Hamilton has now realised.

The McLaren driver said all the right things after the race about not giving up, but the sad reality is that he is 52 points behind Ferrari's Fernando Alonso with only 150 still available.

To expect Hamilton to be able to make up more than a third of the points still remaining on a man who is driving one of the best seasons in Formula 1 history is ambitious in the extreme, although it's certainly going to be entertaining watching him try.

Hamilton's performance in Singapore confirmed two things about this season - McLaren are the team to beat with the consistently fastest car and the 2008 world champion is driving superlatively well.

A gear box failure caused McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton to retire from the Singapore Grand Prix. Photo: Getty 

His pole lap on Saturday was a sight to behold, all controlled aggression and commitment, brushing the walls, judging the balance between risk and reward to perfection to leave his rivals breathless.

Until that point, Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel had appeared to be evenly matched with Hamilton but when it mattered the German found his car's grip had mysteriously disappeared. Hamilton found plenty, though, to go more than half a second clear of anyone else.

It was, as McLaren sporting director Sam Michael put it, a "fantastic" lap and he followed it with a controlled performance in the race, taking only as much as he needed to out of the car and tyres, confident that he had pace in reserve if Vettel upped his pace behind him.

But then the oil started leaking out of his differential, he lost his seamless gearshifts, then third gear and finally all his gears, and he sadly coasted to a halt at Turn Five with more than half the race still remaining.

It was the latest in a series of disappointments for Hamilton this year, without which he would be right up with Alonso in the championship.

For nearly all of them he has been blameless. Only in his collision with Pastor Maldonado in Valencia could you perhaps lay any small fault at his door - of course the Williams man drove into him, but ex-drivers, including Ivan Capelli, have questioned whether Hamilton might have been wiser in the circumstances to leave him a bit more space.

Despite the series of McLaren-related incidents that have cost him his best chance of the title since 2008, Hamilton's mood upon getting back to the paddock was notably different from his subdued bearing after taking pole and victory in Italy two weeks ago.

In Monza, he was downbeat, almost monosyllabic, despite his crushing performance. Here, the speed was the same, but the disposition far sunnier.

It remains to be seen whether that was to do with him making up his mind about his future one way or the other.

But it would take a brave man who gave up the pace of the McLaren for the uncertain and unimpressive form of Mercedes, whatever the difference in remuneration, real or potential, there may be between the offers.

"I think it would have been a nice result for us but we still have more races to go," he said.

"We really couldn't afford today but it is what it is. The good thing is we have good pace. I have to go and win the next races."

On his and McLaren's current form, he could easily win all of them, but if the season continues in its topsy-turvy way, with wins shared about, it is difficult to see him making up so many points on Alonso.

Vettel, though, is a different matter. The low-downforce circuits of Spa and Monza behind them, the Red Bull is likely to be competitive everywhere.

Even if it is not as strong as the McLaren, it is certainly consistently quicker than the Ferrari and in that context a 29-point deficit following the victory he inherited from Hamilton in Singapore is eminently bridgeable.

As Red Bull team boss Christian Horner pointed out, Vettel "was 25 points down with two races to go in 2010, which indicates anything is possible for all the drivers. We need to keep taking points off Fernando, which ideally means getting a few more cars between us and him."

And there's the rub.

Alonso has not won since Germany in July. A potential win escaped him in Italy two weeks ago because of a mechanical problem in qualifying, but Ferrari's poor performance in Singapore, when he had been expecting to fight for pole and victory, was a wake-up call.

On the form of this weekend, Alonso does not look likely to win in normal circumstances unless Ferrari can bring some more speed to the car.

But what he does keep doing is finishing in the points.
In the 10 races since the Spanish Grand Prix in May, Alonso has retired only once - after being hit by the flying Lotus of Romain Grosjean in Belgium three weeks ago. Of the nine he has finished, seven of them resulted in a podium - including two wins - and the other two fifth places.

No-one else has consistency anything like that, and it is in that consistency that lies his best hope.

The concern for Alonso is that if both McLarens and Vettel finish races, those podiums will be hard to come by, and in those circumstances that gap would come down quickly indeed.

So well has he been driving this year that Alonso has to still be considered a narrow favourite for the title.

But while McLaren's weaknesses have made the championship a long-shot even for Hamilton, as Alonso leaves Singapore, he will be casting worried glances over his shoulder at Vettel.

McLaren did their best at last weekend's Italian Grand Prix to dismiss the story - team boss Martin Whitmarsh even joked: "Any sentence that begins, 'Eddie Jordan understands' is immediately questionable, isn't it?"

But it was noticeable that not only did McLaren not deny the story was true, they said very little to suggest Hamilton was staying with them.

From Whitmarsh, it was: "Lewis and his management have made their position clear to us", "my understanding is we're talking to him" and "I'm pretty convinced we will have a very good, competitive driving line-up next year."

None of which translates as "Hamilton is staying".

Hamilton was triumphant at Monza, but how many more races will he win with McLaren? Photo: Getty

As for the doubts cast on the veracity of the story, the source is strong and credible, and the core information - that Hamilton has agreed terms on a contract with Mercedes for next year - is based in fact.

That does not necessarily mean Hamilton will move but it does mean he is thinking about it seriously. And you can make what you will of his downbeat behaviour throughout the Monza weekend - even after he won the race.

In the paddock, the general view was that a move would be a mistake - but it is a much more complicated decision than that.

Firstly, McLaren have undoubtedly been more competitive than Mercedes in the last three years. Between them, Hamilton and team-mate Jenson Button have won 16 races since the start of 2010; Mercedes only one, with Nico Rosberg in China this season.

Over an extended period, McLaren have a winning pedigree beyond that of any other team. Only Ferrari have won more grands prix, and they have been in F1 for 16 years longer.

Hamilton, who has been nurtured by the team since he was 13, says: "I want to win." On pure performance, there's only one choice, right?

In F1, things are rarely that simple.

Yes, McLaren usually have a good car, but until this year it had been a long time since they had unquestionably the best.

It was close with Ferrari in 2007-8, although hindsight would suggest now that the McLaren was probably not quite as good then. In which case, you probably have to go back to 2005 to find the last time McLaren had conclusively the fastest car in F1.

This is known to have irked Hamilton in 2010-11, and played some part in the cocktail of issues that led to his difficult season last year, when his frustration at the car's inability to compete for the title and problems with his family and his girlfriend led to what he admitted was his worst season in the sport.

That all changed this season. The McLaren is again setting the pace. But a series of operational problems in the opening races badly affected Hamilton, costing him 40 points. Add those points to his current total and he would be leading Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, not trailing him by a win and a fourth place.

Hamilton has done well to disguise his disappointment publicly, but it was around this time that his management started approaching McLaren's rivals about job opportunities.

On top of that, McLaren are entering an uncertain period. For the first time next year, they will have to pay for their Mercedes engines - that's in the region of eight million euros they cannot spend on the performance of the car unless they find it from other sources.

Tied in with this is the question of salary. McLaren have made it clear they cannot afford Hamilton at any price. The word is they have offered him a cut in money for next season, on the basis that they cannot afford anything more. This might be offset by other compromises, such as over PR appearances, flights and so on.

Already on about half of what Alonso earns at Ferrari, one can imagine how that has gone down with Hamilton - especially as McLaren's portfolio of sponsors makes it very difficult for a driver to do personal deals elsewhere to top up his earnings. That's because almost anywhere he looks there's a clash with a company that has links with McLaren.

Meanwhile, Mercedes are by definition a "works" team with factory engines, have the might of an automotive giant behind them. They can pay Hamilton a lot more than his current salary - believed to be about £13m - if they want to. And at Mercedes there is also a lot more freedom for a driver to do personal sponsorship deals.

The funding for Mercedes' F1 team comes entirely from external sponsors - and the budget is reputedly significantly less than enjoyed by Red Bull and Ferrari. But it is underwritten by the parent company so even if there is a sponsorship shortfall it doesn't affect the team.

Performance-wise, the team that is now Mercedes actually won the world title more recently than McLaren, when they were Brawn in 2009. Ironically, the man who won it was Button. His success - and what he interpreted as the team's ambivalence about him staying - led to him moving to McLaren.

Admittedly, Brawn's success in 2009 was tainted by the row over double-diffusers that clouded that season. Once everyone had them, the car was no longer as competitive as it had been.

Mercedes have certainly been under-performing since then, but that can at least partly be explained by the fact that Brawn, facing serious financial problems, slashed their staff by 40% in 2009. As Mercedes, they have been slowly building levels up again.

The pressure on the team to up their game is massive - hence the huge investment in terms of staffing and resources in the last 18 months or so.

And while they are a long way behind McLaren this season, they are on an upward trend, even if it is significantly slower than either the team or the Mercedes board would like.

Equally, few in F1 would disagree that Hamilton is one of the three best drivers in the world, alongside Alonso and Sebastian Vettel. Mercedes don't have any of them.

It's impossible to know how much faster the car would go in their hands than it has done so far in those of Rosberg and Michael Schumacher. Some might argue not at all. But, that's not how Hamilton, who raced and beat Rosberg in their formative years, will look at it.

Add all that up, and the decision doesn't seem so easy after all.

They have won nearly twice as many races as any other team this season – their five compare with the three of Ferrari and Red Bull. No-one else has won more than one.

Just as worryingly for their rivals, the last two victories – Hamilton’s on Sunday and Jenson Button’s in Belgium seven days previously – were utterly dominant.

The retirement of Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel with his second alternator failure in a race this season also helped Hamilton move into second place in the championship.

Lewis Hamilton (centre) celebrates winning the Italian GP on the podium with Sergio Perez (left) and Fernando Alonso (right). Photo: Getty 

The 27-year-old may be 37 points behind Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, but there are 175 still available in the remaining seven races.

Alonso is, by common consent, the stand-out driver of 2012, but Hamilton has also driven a superb season and has almost certainly been second best.

Had it not been for a number of operational problems early in the championship, he may well be leading the championship. Even as it is, he has every chance of making a fight of it to the end of the season.

For a man in such a position, after a strong weekend, Hamilton was in a subdued mood after the race, as indeed he was throughout the four days in Monza.

He insisted that the BBC Sport story in which Eddie Jordan said that Hamilton was on the verge of leaving McLaren and signing for Mercedes had not affected him, but it did not look that way.

Whatever was prompting him to keep his answers short and to the point in his news conferences and television interviews certainly did not affect his driving.

He was in excellent form throughout the three days, tussling with Alonso for the honour of being fastest man at Monza.

And once the Spaniard was put out of the reckoning for victory with a rear anti-roll bar problem that left him in 10th place on the grid, Hamilton always looked odds-on for victory.

His task was made easier when Ferrari’s Felipe Massa beat Button away from the grid and held on to second place, with the McLaren never really hustling as it might have been expected to do, until he made his pit stop on lap 19. By then, Hamilton had the race won.

There was no evidence Button would have been able to challenge his team-mate had he got away in second place.

Button did close a little a few laps after their pit stops, but it was clear Hamilton was measuring his pace, and he let Button get no closer than seven seconds before holding him there until the second McLaren retired with a fuel system problem.

It was a mature, controlled drive, just as were his victories in Canada and Hungary. Alonso, who rates him as his toughest rival, will take the threat from him in the championship very seriously.

All in all, it was a tense weekend at McLaren. The Hamilton/Mercedes story made it a difficult weekend for the team and the relationship between their two drivers is frosty, presumably following Hamilton’s decision to post a picture of confidential team telemetry on the social networking site Twitter on the morning of the Belgian Grand Prix.

Button said he was “surprised and disappointed” by his team-mate’s actions, for which read “seriously hacked off”.

“I didn’t concentrate on it too much,” Button said on his arrival at Monza. “I thought it was important to say how I felt. It’s very easy not to say anything; also if you say something you can clear it up quicker. That was the last race. We’ve moved on from that.”

Perhaps, but the body language between the two men was palpably cool throughout the weekend, and they were not troubling to hide it, even in public arenas such as the restaurant at their hotel.

One night, sitting at adjacent tables, they did not even look at or acknowledge each other, let alone exchange a word.

McLaren insiders were relaxed about the situation, though. They like their drivers to race and a bit of edge focuses their minds, one senior figure pointed out.

Hamilton admitted his victory would have been a lot harder had Alonso qualified on the front row, as he looked certain to do before his problem in qualifying.

As it was, Alonso was forced to salvage what he could from 10th on the grid and, typically, he made the most of the situation.

An aggressive and clinical first few laps go him into fifth place by lap seven, but there his progress halted against the back of Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull.

The world champion was robust in his defence, and Alonso was not able to pass before they made their pit stops together on lap 20.

Ferrari’s slick pit work, consistently among the best this season, almost got him out ahead of Vettel, but the Red Bull edged ahead, forcing Alonso to get past on the track.

When he went for the big move, around the outside of Curva Grande at 180mph on lap 26, Vettel unceremoniously barged him on to the grass, the Ferrari bucking scarily as Alonso wrestled for control.

Understandably, he was furious, although he kept his counsel after the race. It was a sure-fire penalty, in the context of a clarification on acceptable driving which was issued verbally to the drivers at the Spanish Grand Prix and then in written form in Canada.

The assumption was that Vettel was getting Alonso back for a similar situation, with roles reversed, in last year’s Italian Grand Prix. That one, in which Vettel passed Alonso with two wheels on the grass, has rankled with the German ever since.

He has brought it up at every opportunity, and this looked very much like revenge.

The difference was that, then, Alonso left Vettel just enough room, and Vettel took to the grass when he could – just – have stayed on the track. This time, Vettel left no room, and his behaviour was clearly unacceptable.

Vettel has the arrogance and self-belief that is required of all great drivers but there is also sometimes a sense of entitlement about him which is less than appealing.

He got this one wrong, and one hopes that when he watches a video of the incident, he will recognise that himself.

There has appeared no urgency from either Hamilton or McLaren to sort out a new contract for 2013 and at the same time there have been signs of unease in the relationship.

The 27-year-old's management team have approached all the big teams this summer and they got short shrift from Red Bull and Ferrari.

Mercedes's reaction has been warmer, and negotiations are known to have taken place, but the issue is complicated by Michael Schumacher's situation.

Lewis Hamilton is on the verge of leaving Mclaren to drive for Mercedes next season. Photo: Getty

Schumacher has not exactly been setting the world on fire this season, with the notable exception of qualifying fastest in Monaco, but at the same time Mercedes cannot be seen to be sacking him because of his status, particularly in Germany.

The German legend is of huge promotional value to Mercedes but the company is split on whether he should continue.

From a marketing point of view, he is a dream - and as he is considered untouchable in Germany any decision to move aside must appear to have come from him.

But those who see the F1 programme from a performance point of view would rather Schumacher stepped down and made way for someone younger and faster.

If they can replace him with someone of the highest calibre - someone such as Hamilton, for example - then that helps, too, as the decision is more easily understandable.

And it is clear after an increasingly uncompetitive season that the team could benefit from employing Hamilton, who is one of F1's 'big three' alongside Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel, neither of whom are available.

The attraction Mercedes might have to Hamilton is less clear, given their current struggles, but perhaps the continuing frustrations of his time at McLaren have convinced him it is time for a change.

McLaren struggled by their own high standards in 2009-11, during which time Hamilton did not have a car competitive enough to mount a full-on title challenge.

They came closest in 2010, but it was always a battle against the generally faster Red Bull and Ferrari.

And although McLaren started this season with the fastest car - and have it again after a brief mid-season dip in form - operational errors earlier in the season hit Hamilton's title bid.

Money may well also be an important factor. Hamilton made some cryptic comments in Belgium last weekend about his future move being a "business decision".

Equally, there have been signs of friction between him and McLaren.

In certain quarters of the team, they are uncomfortable about Hamilton's approach to his job and his mindset. And the disconnect was made public this weekend with his ill-advised behaviour on the social networking site Twitter, on which he posted a picture of confidential team telemetry.

Where does that all leave McLaren, Mercedes and Hamilton? Time will tell.

Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel, who finished second to Button after an impressive performance of his own, had an even bigger margin of superiority in Valencia but he was unable to make it count because his car failed.

Button had no such trouble. He stamped his authority on the weekend from the start of qualifying and never looked back, as all hell broke loose behind his McLaren.

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The frightening first-corner pile-up helped him in that it took out a potential threat in world championship leader Fernando Alonso's Ferrari. The Spaniard was up to third place from fifth on the grid before being assaulted by the flying Lotus of Romain Grosjean, who had collided with the other McLaren of Lewis Hamilton.

But before the race Alonso had entertained no prospect of battling for victory, and while he would almost certainly have finished on the podium, there is no reason to believe he would have troubled Button.

The Englishman also comfortably saw off in the opening laps the challenge of Lotus's Kimi Raikkonen, hotly tipped before the weekend.

Raikkonen was left to battle entertainingly with rivals including Vettel and Mercedes driver Michael Schumacher, on whom the Finn pulled an astoundingly brave pass into the 180mph swerves of Eau Rouge which was almost a carbon copy of Red Bull driver Mark Webber's move on Alonso last year.

Button, meanwhile, was serene out front, never looking under the remotest threat.

For Button, this was a far cry from the struggles he has encountered in what has not overall been one of his better seasons.

A strong start included a dominant victory in the opening race in Australia and second place in China.

But after that he tailed off badly, struggling with this year's big Formula 1 quandary - getting the temperamental Pirelli tyres into the right operating window.

The 32-year-old had a sequence of weak races and even at other times has generally been firmly in Hamilton's shade.

Those struggles were ultimately solved by some head-scratching on set-up at McLaren, but they were undoubtedly influenced by Button's smooth, unflustered driving style.

Button's weakness - one of which he is well aware - is that he struggles when the car is not to his liking. Unlike Alonso and Hamilton, he finds it difficult to adapt his style to different circumstances.

The flip side of that is that when he gets the car's balance right, he is close to unbeatable. It is a similar situation to that of two former McLaren drivers - Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost.

Senna, like Hamilton, was usually faster, but when Prost, whose style was similar to Button's, got his car in the sweet spot he was matchless.

"I obviously have a style where it's quite difficult to find a car that works for me in qualifying," Button said on Saturday, "but when it does we can get pole position."

Perhaps an elegant style that does not upset the car or over-work the tyres was exactly what was needed through the demanding corners of Spa's challenging middle sector.

That was McLaren technical director Paddy Lowe's view, certainly.

"It could well be," Lowe said, "because it's made up of these longer flowing corners rather than the short, stop-start ones. So that may well be something he can work with well, just tucking it all up and smooth lines."

Was this the secret to Button's performance in qualifying, when he was a remarkable 0.8 seconds quicker than team-mate Lewis Hamilton?

In a well-publicised series of tweets after qualifying, Hamilton blamed this on the team's collective decision - with which he agreed when it was made - to run his car on a set-up with higher downforce.

This is a perfectly valid decision at Spa -it was a route that Raikkonen also took - and in pure lap time the two differing approaches should balance themselves out. But for them to do so, the driver with the higher downforce set-up has to make up in the middle sector the time he has lost on the straights.

As the McLaren telemetry of which Hamilton so unwisely tweeted a picture on race morning proved, however, that was not the case. Hamilton was not fast enough through sector two - indeed his time through there on his final qualifying lap was 0.3secs slower than his best in the session.

Hamilton tweeted a photo of the McLaren telemetry, prompting a rebuke from his team.

That was the real reason why he was slower than Button in Spa qualifying - not the fact he was down on straight-line speed, which was always going to be the case once he went with the set-up he did.

It's worth pointing out in this context that Hamilton was also significantly slower than Button in final practice - a fact that led him to take the gamble on the different set-up.

How Hamilton would have fared in the race will never be known, because of the accident with Grosjean.

It was a scary moment - Grosjean's flying Lotus narrowly missed Alonso's head - and the incident underlined once again why F1 bosses are so keen to introduce some kind of more effective driver head protection in the future.

From the point of view of a disinterested observer, the only plus point of the accident, which also took out the two impressive Saubers, was that it has narrowed Alonso's lead in the championship. Vettel is now within a race victory of the Spaniard.

Despite this, to his immense credit, Alonso was a picture of measured calm after the race.

Invited to criticise Grosjean, he refused. Although, being the wise owl he is, he not only had at his fingertips the statistics of Grosjean's first-lap crashes this season, but slipped them into his answer.

"I am not angry [at Grosjean]," he said. "No-one did this on purpose, they were fighting, two aggressive drivers on the start, Lewis and Romain and this time it was us in the wrong place at the wrong time and we were hit.

"It's true also that in 12 races, Romain had seven crashes at the start, so..."

It was, Alonso pointed out, a good opportunity for governing body the FIA to make a point about driving standards this season, which Williams's Pastor Maldonado has also seemed to be waging a campaign to lower.

It was an opportunity the stewards did not decline.

Grosjean will now watch next weekend's Italian Grand Prix from the sidelines after being given a one-race suspension, the first time a driver has been banned since Michael Schumacher in 1994. Maldonado has a 10-place grid penalty for jumping the start and causing his own, independent, accident.

Earlier this year, triple world champion Jackie Stewart, who is an advisor to Lotus, offered to sit down with Grosjean and give him some advice about the way he approached his races.

Stewart is famous not only for his campaign for safety in F1 but also for his impeccable driving standards during his career. He has helped many drivers in his time, but Grosjean turned him down.

On Sunday evening, I was contacted by an old friend, the two-time winner of the Indianapolis 500 and former IndyCar champion Gil de Ferran, who was involved in F1 a few years ago as a senior figure in the Honda team.

That coaching, De Ferran said, "seems like a great idea".

In this remarkable season of unpredictability and uncertainty, of seven winners in 11 races, of the most open title battle in years, Formula 1 is still waiting for one big result.

A victory for the revived Lotus team has looked inevitable since the start of the year. And as the world championship re-starts in Belgium this weekend following a month-long summer break, the expectation is that this could be their race.

The car, from the team formerly known as Renault that won two world championships with Fernando Alonso in 2005-6, has been fast all season. Its best result has been four second places. But the momentum seems to be with them.

Kimi Raikkonen's Lotus pushed Lewis Hamilton's winning McLaren all the way in Hungary five weeks ago. The Finn has a stunning record at the stunning Spa-Francorchamps track that hosts this race and Lotus have been working on a technical trick that could give them a key advantage on the demanding track that swoops and twists around the contours of the Ardennes mountains.

Kimi Raikkonen has won the Belgian Grand Prix four times. Photo: Getty

The 32-year-old Finn seems to have a special affinity with the circuit regarded as arguably the biggest test for a racing driver anywhere in the world. He has taken four victories here - and either won or retired from every single race he has competed at Spa since 2004.

Raikkonen's all-action style, based on fast corner entry in a car with good front-end bite, seems perfectly suited to Spa's cascade of long, fast corners.

Two of his wins - for McLaren in 2004 and Ferrari in 2009 - came in years when his machinery was otherwise uncompetitive. The other two were dominant victories from the front in 2005 and 2007.

But Raikkonen's position as arguably the favourite for victory this weekend is not founded just on his renowned Spa specialism. He is widely expected to have the car to do the job.

Lotus have come agonisingly close to victory twice already this year - in Bahrain in April and at the last race, in Hungary at the end of July.

Both times it was Raikkonen who challenged only to just fall short, behind Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel in Bahrain and Hamilton in Hungary. But the Finn, who returned to F1 this season after two unproductive years in world rallying, has actually been Lotus's weaker driver for most of the year.

His team-mate, the Franco-Swiss Romain Grosjean, who is in his first full season, has generally had a marginal advantage - to the point that around the European Grand Prix in Valencia at the end of June there were murmurings of dissatisfaction with the Finn, who won the world championship for Ferrari in 2007.

Raikkonen ultimately finished second to Alonso in Valencia, but had been off the pace of Grosjean all weekend - indeed the younger man was pushing the Ferrari hard when his alternator failed late in the race.

When, following the race, Raikkonen expressed his frustration at it taking so long for Lotus to win, one team member privately expressed the view that he would be better focused on beating Grosjean before moaning about not winning yet.

Since then, though, Raikkonen has upped his game and in the race in Hungary he was fantastic, the middle stint there that lifted him from fifth place to potential victor one of the most impressive pieces of driving all season.

Had Raikkonen not made a mess of qualifying, and taken the front row slot he should have earned rather than the fifth place he did, he might well have won. The same can be said of Bahrain, where a decision to save tyres for the race left him down in 11th place on the grid and with too much to do.

Grosjean, too, must be considered a potential Spa winner. Despite making too many errors, he has been all confidence and commitment this year.

He has looked a different driver on his return to F1 in 2012 from the haunted figure who was demoralised by Alonso during his first half-season at Renault in 2009, after which he was dropped.

The high expectations for Lotus at Spa are partly based on the car's inherent qualifies - a factor in its general competitiveness this year has been strong performance in fast corners, and Spa is full of them.

As well as that, though, is that innovation mentioned earlier. In Hungary, and in Germany the week before, Lotus trialled a clever system aimed at boosting the team's straight-line speed without compromising its performance in other areas.

Like the DRS overtaking aid featured on all the cars, the Lotus system affects the rear wing to reduce drag.

It works by channelling air from scoops behind the driver's head to the rear wing, which this extra air then 'stalls', reducing the downforce the wing creates and therefore its drag, boosting straight-line speed.

What is not clear is when exactly the Lotus system comes into play.

Is it independent of the DRS, as some believe, and therefore active above a pre-set car velocity and usable at all times, including in the race when DRS use is restricted to a specific zone?

Or is it, as BBC F1 technical analyst Gary Anderson believes, linked to the DRS and simply an extra boost to the car's speed when that system is employed, like the system Mercedes have been using but without the inherent compromises that team have discovered?

Either way, it could be a significant boost to Lotus's chances in Spa. Lotus have yet to use the system outside free practice, and this weekend they will again try it out on Friday before making a decision whether to race it.

For all the talk of Lotus, though, a win for them is a very long way from a foregone conclusion. Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren will be as strong as ever on a track that should suit all their cars.

In fact, it will be a particularly interesting weekend all round.

Which teams have made best use of the mid-season break to develop their cars?

Have Ferrari made the step forward in performance they seemed in Hungary to need if Alonso - unquestionably the stand-out driver of the season so far - is to hang on to his championship lead?

Can McLaren maintain the upward momentum they showed in Germany and Hungary after a brief slump?

Will Red Bull finally unlock the potential of what has looked, on balance, overall the fastest car?

The climax of one of the sport's greatest seasons, a hyper-intense period of nine races in three months, starts here.

Those three victories have all been very different, but equally impressive. And each has demonstrated specific aspects of the formidable army of Alonso's talents.

In Malaysia in the second race of the season, at a time when the Ferrari was not competitive in the dry, he grabbed the opportunity provided by rain to take a most unexpected first win.

In Valencia last month, it was Alonso's opportunism and clinical overtaking abilities that were to the fore.

Other drivers may wonder how to stop Alonso's relentless drive to a third title. Photo: Getty

And in Germany on Sunday his victory was founded on his relentlessness, canniness and virtual imperviousness to pressure.

Ferrari, lest we forget, started the season with a car that was the best part of a second and a half off the pace. Their progress since then has been hugely impressive.

But vastly improved though the car is, it was not, as Alonso himself, his team boss Stefano Domenicali and Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel all pointed out after the race on Sunday, the fastest car in Germany.

Vettel's Red Bull - which finished second but was demoted to fifth for passing Jenson Button by going off the track - and the McLaren appeared to have a slight pace advantage over the Ferrari, given their ability to stay within a second of it for lap after lap.

But Alonso cleverly managed his race so he was always just out of reach of them when it mattered.

He pushed hard in the first sector every lap so he was always far enough ahead at the start of the DRS overtaking zone to ensure his pursuers were not quite close enough to try to pass him into the Turn 6 hairpin.

After that, he could afford to back off through the middle sector of the lap, taking the stress out of his tyres, before doing it all over again the next time around.

Managing the delicate Pirelli tyres in this way also meant he could push that bit harder in the laps immediately preceding his two pit stops and ensure he kept his lead through them.

Equally, he showed the presence of mind to realise when Lewis Hamilton unlapped himself on Vettel shortly before the second stops that if he could, unlike the Red Bull driver, keep Hamilton behind, it would give him a crucial advantage at the stop.

It was not quite "67 qualifying laps", as Domenicali described it after the race, but it was certainly a masterful demonstration of control and intelligence.

And there was no arguing with another of the Italian's post-race verdicts. "(Alonso) is at the peak of his personal performance, no doubt about it," Domenicali said.

It was the 30th victory of Alonso's career, and he is now only one behind Nigel Mansell in the all-time winners' list. The way he is driving, he will surely move ahead of the Englishman into fourth place behind Michael Schumacher, Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna before the end of the year.

At the halfway point of the season, Alonso now looks down on his pursuers in the championship from the lofty vantage point of a 34-point advantage.

That is not, as Red Bull team principal Christian Horner correctly pointed out in Germany, "insurmountable" with 10 races still to go and 250 points up for grabs. But catching him when he is driving as well as this will take some doing.

Alonso is clearly enjoying the situation, and is taking opportunities to rub his rivals' noses in it a little.

He is not the only driver to have been wound up by the index-finger salute Vettel employed every time he took one of his 11 wins and 15 pole positions on the way to the title last year.

So it was amusing to see Alonso do the same thing after he had beaten the German to pole position at Vettel's home race on Saturday.

The exchange between Alonso, Button and Vettel as they climbed out of their cars immediately after the race was also illuminating.

After standing on his Ferrari's nose to milk the applause, Alonso turned to Button and said: "You couldn't beat me?" He then pointed to Vettel and said: "He couldn't either."

All part of the game, but a little reminder to both men of what a formidable job Alonso is doing this season.

The race underlined how close the performance is between the top three teams this year.

Red Bull had a shaky start to the season by their standards - although to nowhere near the extent of Ferrari - but have had on balance the fastest car in the dry since the Bahrain Grand Prix back in April.

And while McLaren have had a shaky couple of races in Valencia and Silverstone, they showed potential race-winning pace in Germany following the introduction of a major upgrade.

Despite a car damaged when he suffered an early puncture on debris left from a first-corner shunt ironically involving Alonso's team-mate Felipe Massa, Hamilton was able to run with the leaders before his retirement with gearbox damage.

And Button impressively fought his way up to second place from sixth on the grid, closing a five-second gap on Alonso and Vettel once he was into third place.

This has not been Button's greatest season, as he would be the first to admit.

Germany was the first race at which he has outqualified Hamilton in 2012 and even that may well have been down to the different tyre strategies they ran in qualifying.

Nevertheless, he remains a world-class grand prix driver and Germany proved the folly of those who had written him off after his recent struggles.

And despite Alonso's lead in the championship, the season is finely poised.

Germany was a low-key race for Mark Webber, who was unhappy with his car on the harder of the two tyres but remains second in the championship. And Red Bull's two drivers clearly have the equipment to make life difficult for Alonso.

The McLaren drivers are determined to make something of their season still and Lotus are quick enough to cause the three big teams some serious concern.

Mercedes, meanwhile, have a bit of work to do to turn around their tendency to qualify reasonably well and then go backwards in the race.

"It's going to be a great, great season," said McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh on Sunday. "It already has been a great season."

And the next instalment is already less than seven days away in Hungary next weekend.