No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Enzo Ferrari always said to finish first first you have to finish. It's not really that simple but, it is. That and you need to be lucky as well as brilliant.

Fernando Alonso was all that. He is a pit bull, he never gives up and that is why he is head and shoulders the best driver in the current F1 field.

Even if you are the biggest Alonso hater in the world you have to bow to his performance today. Even without Vettel's retirement his march from eleventh on the grid to second was astounding. You can't deny that outside pass on the impressive Romain Grosjean on the restart, you can't deny how he managed these mysterious Pirelli tires, attacking when necessary, holding back when needed after the first lap charge.

Nobody guessed Valencia would be exciting but it was, unlike Monaco and Montreal which were very exciting last season.  Certainly nobody put money on a Ferrari win even if there were clues to their race pace.

Clearly, this was going to be Vettel's race, he was just insanely fast in the first phase of the race. But hey, things happen even to bulletproof Red Bulls. Was it really an alternator?  Was it the exact same failure on Vettel's and Grosjean's RS27 lumps? As a rule, whatever you are officially told is never the real reason.

Grosjean is now a force to be reckoned with, no doubt about it. His pass on Hamilton was "magnifique". Lotus is in a groove.

Speaking of grooves, or maybe, anti-grooves, there is something really wrong with the world of F1 when Mclaren can't build manual jacks that work!  Two failed on Hamilton's second stop? Really Mclaren, it's a jack!
Imagine if it had been Ferrari who had such a comical string of pit stop failures, you would be reading about it everywhere, not just as a side note.  Where are the calls for Whitmarsh and Michael's heads? Mclaren is failing and Williams is going fast...I'm just saying.

Maldonado and Hamilton...Maldonado was obviously at fault but Hamilton was just dumb: why fight there and in such a high risk way? He had to know he was a sitting duck.
So much for Hammy 3.0,  the one with the eyes on the Championship.   However, Lewis should never have found himself in that position, forced to push because of the botched pit stop. But he also made an unforced error locking up into the final corner probably delivering a death blow to his Pirellis.

Red Bull has an interesting pickle to sort: in the Championship their best placed driver is Mark Webber not Vettel.  Awkward.    I had to laugh at Helmut Marko blaming the safety car on "America" and implying there was a conspiracy to stop Vettel. . Hilarious.

I'm guessing Button and Massa must have spent the evening in a bar sharing FAIL tapas. Massa certainly had an eventful race but getting passed by Petrov in a Caterham must not have done his psyche any good.
 Button's bad performances could be down to his not coming to terms with the unpredictability of the Pirellis and a constantly changing car but it's a big failure on the team's part not to have found a solution for him yet.

Schumacher on the podium was almost a relief, certainly for him. With Kimi, Schumi and Alonso, a podium filled with Ferrari DNA.

We have to go with the BBC highlights as I'm currently internet impaired, thanks for your patience and feel free to comment, yes even the rabid Lewis fans!