Vettel and Trulli were as good as inseparable all day, with the German winning a closely-fought battle.  That much was expected.  Jenson Button beating them both wasn’t.

Button had two things going in his favour today.  The first was that his Brawn, which turned out to be as good as ever in race conditions after a lacklustre qualifying session, was one of the few cars that could post a reasonable lap time no matter what tyres it was on.  The second was that the team that should really have beat him, Toyota, shot themselves squarely in the foot.

Having led comfortably enough in the early going, the Japanese squad might well have won with Trulli had they ran the same tyre strategy as everyone else.  Instead, when everyone else saved the unfavoured medium tyres for the end of the race, Toyota ran them for a long stint in the middle of the Grand Prix.  Trulli and particularly Timo Glock saw their pace vanish, while Button on the faster super-softs was able to maintain his pace.  In clear air Jarno might still have had something for him after switching back to super-softs for the last stint, but Vettel had used his super-softs to leap ahead of the Italian during the final pit stop phase and didn’t have all that much difficulty keeping Kate’s Dirty Sister ahead in the final laps.

Not that you should think Button won this race solely because the men who could have beat him decided not to bother.  That helped, yes, but he’d been jumped at the start by Lewis Hamilton’s KERS system – his ’special button’, as Sebastian Vettel called it – and would have faced a miserable opening stint behind the slower McLaren had it not been for a wonderful overtake at the start of lap 2.  The move, made from some distance behind Hamilton after more judicious special button pushing from the reigning champion, was perfectly judged and, crucially, gave Button the opportunity to run in clear air at his own pace, keeping the Toyotas within striking distance.  As in Malaysia, he jumped into the lead by driving like his backside was on fire after the cars ahead had made their first pit stops before him, the novel twist being that thanks to an electrical issue, his rump really was being seared.

Hamilton was the one of the only KERS runners to gain any meaningful ground at the start, surging briefly into P2 before settling into P4, a position he’d maintain to the end.  The McLaren looked faster and more driveable this weekend, and it’ll be interesting to see how it fares next time out in Barcelona after it struggled so badly there in pre-season testing.  Fernando Alonso was the other KERS runner to make a lightning getaway but found that the track ahead of him was occupied and the Astroturf alongside it wasn’t the ideal surface for performance driving, his only notable moment in an otherwise anonymous run to 8th behind Glock and Raikkonen, of whom more in a second.  Alonso’s team mate and friend of petrolheadblog.com Nelson Piquet Jr will earn himself a stay of execution if his next couple of race performances are as good as his feisty, combative run to 10th today, a run in which he didn’t put a wheel wrong (and we’ll assume Barrichello’s hand-waving was either frustration at being held up legitimately or Rubens genuinely expecting that if he’d caught Piquet, he must be about to lap him) and ended up only a dozen or so seconds adrift of his illustrious team leader.

Is this Ferrari’s worst start to a season in history?  Yes.  It’s up for debate, apparently, but why?  On the two previous occasions they’ve scored no points until round four, they’ve finished 5th (Jody Scheckter in 1980, Didier Pironi in 1981).  Today, Kimi Raikkonen was 6th.  Yes, today’s scoring system means his 6th is worth more points than 5th was in times of old, but it’s surely more important that his finishing position was lower than either Jody or Didier.  The car lacks pace, has a KERS unit that’s only happy when it’s broken, and looks like it’ll be mired in the midfield for some time to come yet.

BMW would kill to be mired in the midfield.  Both drivers sustained front wing damage on lap 1 (staying out on track until the end of lap 2 at reduced pace and bringing about a glorious free-for-all behind them involving what looked like half the world, all of them being passed by Mark Webber), and after pitting for repairs remained glued to the back of the field for the duration, coming home as the last finishers.  Nick Heidfeld established a record for the highest number of consecutive race finishes with his 25th in a row, sadly passing on the opportunity to claim 19th place while punching the air and singing down the radio, but he did so without ever looking likely to progress up the order and with a KERS unit that might or might not have been working.  BBC’s Ted Kravitz said there was ’some doubt’, so Christ knows how that driver-to-pit conversation went:

“Nick, when you push the KERS button, do you get more power?”
“Er…”
“Does it feel the same as it has all those other times you’ve used it?”
“Well…I mean…I’ve been a bit busy in here, and…”
“Nick, do a lap with it and a lap without it, see if there’s any difference…”

A word on the new technical regulations to round things off.  The purpose of the 2009 aerodynamic rules is to allow cars to follow each other more closely and so allow for more overtaking.  It’s starting to look as if they can indeed follow more closely, but somehow still not quite closely enough.  Twice in the race, when first Hamilton and then Trulli had a queue of cars behind them, we saw a pack of three drivers circulating within a couple of seconds of each other with the slower driver in front never in any real danger of being overtaken by the quicker men behind.  Today was the first instance of that this season, but then it was also the first dry daytime race of the season.  One-off or sign of things to come?  With the soporific Barcelona race coming up next, we might have to wait a couple of races to find out.

Same drill as always.  Drivers, cars, weights in kilos from those wonderful folk at the FIA:

1. Jarno Trulli, Toyota, 648.5 kg
2. Timo Glock, Toyota, 643
3. Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull, 659
4. Jenson Button, Brawn GP, 652.5
5. Lewis Hamilton, McLaren, 652.5
6. Rubens Barrichello, Brawn GP, 649
7. Fernando Alonso, Renault, 650.5
8. Felipe Massa, Ferrari, 664.5
9. Nico Rosberg, Williams, 670.5
10. Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari, 671.5
11. Heikki Kovalainen, McLaren, 678.5
12. Kazuki Nakajima, Williams, 680.9
13. Robert Kubica, BMW Sauber, 698.6
14. Nick Heidfeld, BMW Sauber, 696.3
15. Nelson Piquet, Renault, 677.6
16. Sebastien Buemi, Toro Rosso, 678.5
17. Giancarlo Fisichella, Force India, 652
18. Mark Webber, Red Bull, 656
19. Adrian Sutil, Force India, 679
20. Sebastien Bourdais, Toro Rosso, 667.5

Contrasting fortunes for the Red Bull boys.  Three of their cars out in Q1, with Bourdais hopelessly off the pace, Webber blocked horribly by Sutil at the end of one lap and the start of the next and Buemi hampered by a mistake.  Vettel, though, did nothing to spoil his ever-growing reputation with a brilliant lap in Kate’s Dirty Sister, while presumably doing his best to mention delicately that she’s put a little bit of weight on since China.

One of the keys to the outcome of this Grand Prix is going to be how well Vettel, in the heaviest car among the top runners, can stay with the lighter Toyotas in the early part of the race.  Glock’s best time was fairly ordinary given that he’s not exactly laden with fuel, but Trulli’s pole position lap in the sister car was anything but.  Formula One folk are fond of using the word ‘mega’ to describe anything that’s better than merely good.  Mega is what Trulli’s qualifying was.  While Jarno does have a remarkable ability to qualify cars much higher than they deserve and then slide back to his rightful place on race day, Toyota spent their winter testing in Bahrain and do appear to be genuinely quick.  A win is there for the taking if the Italian can, just this once, be as brilliant on a Sunday as he is every Saturday.  If Vettel is within striking distance come Trulli’s first pit stop, though, the advantage of a few extra laps in clear air might prove decisive for the German.

The alarm bells seem to have gone off among the Brawn drivers, both men being neither particularly quick or particularly heavy.  They looked very good on longer runs in free practice which suggests good race pace, and we know that in the heat of Bahrain the Brawn will be among the better cars at looking after its tyres through the race, so they’re not out of the equation.  However, they’re certainly not dominant this weekend, and with no strategic advantage Button and Barrichello have work to do.  A podium is a possibility, a win is a big ask.  I doubt either man expected to be sandwiching the reigning world champion, whose lap in the previously middling McLaren was very good.  Hamilton is one of the cars running KERS so he’ll have a power boost off the start that could, used well, see him getting involved with Vettel and perhaps a Toyota on the long run down to turn one.  I’d be staggered if his race pace is good enough to get him any higher than his starting position come the chequered flag, but the Woking squad are beginning to make progress.

So too are Renault, which is awful news for one of their drivers.  Friend of petrolheadblog.com Nelson Piquet Jr has the demeanour of a man waiting for the end, his confidence completely shot.  He might be married to Renault for now, but the increased presence and visibility of their test driver Romain Grosjean in the pits and paddock suggests they’re dreaming of divorce.  Fernando Alonso, sensibly fuelled for once, did his usual marvellous job and, like Hamilton, is equipped with KERS and well placed to ruin a few afternoons at the start.  Solid points are in the offing for the double world champion.

Ferrari must have been delighted to get two cars through to Q3, and if you’d been told in February that you’d be reading that four races into the season you’d have laughed heartily.  Massa and Raikkonen are fuelled heavier than the front-runners but no heavier than the Williams of Rosberg they’re next to, so they’ve not made the stride forward that Renault and McLaren have.  Ferrari have never before gone without points in each of the first four races of a season, and they should have enough speed tomorrow to make sure they don’t do it this year, but with Rosberg, Nakajima and Kovalainen in close attendance a place in the top eight isn’t guaranteed.

Winners of this week’s No Stops Til Christmas award are BMW, whose two drivers aren’t going to be making their only pit stop until some way beyond half distance.  The better race tyre this weekend appears to be the softer one, Bridgestone having again brought super-soft and medium compounds with them, but with so much weight on-board BMW may well be the only people who’ll need to run the harder option first, the softer tyre probably not up to the demands of 30-odd laps on a heavy car in sweltering heat.  The two-stoppers will be spending as much time as they can manage on the super-soft.

Tomorrow?  The obvious thing to say is that Vettel’s going to win again.  It wouldn’t be a bad thing for the sport if he did – he’s a very likeable man clearly enjoying himself, and this won’t be the first time you’ll have seen someone observe that you can’t say that of many of his contemporaries.  There are a few others having fun, though, Formula One’s fastest vineyard owner among them.  A win for Jarno Trulli would be a popular one, and exactly the kind of result Toyota need if they’re to continue justifying their racing operation.  Tomorrow, we might just see it.