Nico Rosberg is beginning to look a bit like the Mark Webber to Lewis Hamilton's Sebastian Vettel. Only once this season has Rosberg truly beaten Hamilton - in qualifying at Bahrain when his advantage lasted one corner - and he owes his lead of the World Championship solely to the 50p-component which failed on his team-mate's car in Australia and the extent to which the W05 transcends all others in the field. In normal circumstances, an eighteen-second difference between team-mates, as was the case this weekend in a repeat of the Malaysia GP result three weeks ago, would equate to a difference of three or four places in position and Rosberg wouldn't be coming home in second place. The W05, however, isn't normal and the size of its superiority means that the German is still scoring consistently even after being off form in Shanghai and even further off his team-mate's pace. Hamilton left Shanghai with another rallying cry to his team, pleading for more pace and more performance, but with the rest of the pack so far behind and Rosberg still a tortoise-like threat to his hare, a contraction between Mercedes and the chasing pack better may suit the Englishman's title ambition better. Unlike his faltering team-mate, Hamilton can afford to give away a few extra tenths and still live in comfort.
Rattled by the pace of Daniel Ricciardo, struggling to understand the complexity of the RB10 - "there's a lot of things in my head", complained Sebastian on Sunday night after an afternoon of complaining on the track - and uncomfortable with the unfamiliar style of his new car, the F1 world has turned upside down for the World Champion. While Vettel's soundbite-friendly retort of rebellion has been seized upon for post-race scrutiny - did the time lost behind Vettel as the German dallied before yielding cost Ricciardo third place? Probably not given that the Red Bull was so slow in a straight line compared to the Ferrari - it's the fact that the German was beaten to the line by twenty seconds by his team-mate, and was so soundly thrashed despite being faster off the line, that is most telling. His struggles are now official and profound.
At this rate, Alonso v Raikkonen will go down in history alongside the Millennium Bug as the greatest fuss about nothing much. In plain-speak, the Finn is nowhere in the F14 T - which, barring a mini-recovery in Bahrain, is where he has been since the car's birth three months ago. At the close of play on Sunday, Raikkonen was almost a minute behind Alonso, his struggles with the aggressive power delivery of the F14 T exacerbated by Shanghai's chilly conditions. Like Jenson Button, Raikkonen's smooth style becomes a weakness in such climes, with both drivers subsequently bemoaning their struggles to warm up their front tyres.