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VETTEL’S win was a surprise, to say the least, and at a superficial level it gave the impression that Ferrari had literally overnight turned a significant deficit to Mercedes into a pace advantage. But that impression was wrong.

The result turned on two, inter-related circumstances: the blistering start made by both Ferraris, and an uncharacteristically ham-fisted performance by Lewis Hamilton.

On pace, the world champion was in a league of his own all weekend, but after he found himself down in fourth place by the second corner his race fell apart.

A few corners further on, he ran wide at the chicane, and dropped to 10th, and that was him out of the fight for victory, until a late-race safety car gave him another chance, only for Hamilton to mess that up as well by colliding with Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull.

With Hamilton out of the picture, the only opposition to the Ferraris was his team-mate Nico Rosberg, who could not keep up.

Rosberg had been out of sorts all weekend, never happy with the balance of his car. He set it up with some understeer in qualifying, hoping that would protect the delicate rear tyres in the race, but, by his own admission, went too far.

While Hamilton was 0.719 seconds quicker than third-placed Vettel in qualifying, Rosberg’s advantage was only 0.144secs. Ferrari scented an opportunity.

“Had Lewis had a more normal getaway this would’ve been a more normal proposition,” Ferrari technical director James Allison said of the race, “but we were pretty close to Rosberg in qualifying and we’re normally closer in the race. So we were hopeful of giving Rosberg a run for his money.”

Vettel had a small but significant pace advantage of in the region of 0.2-0.4secs a lap over Rosberg in the first stint of the race. But Allison was right – the evidence is that, had Hamilton not sabotaged his own afternoon, the race would have been very different.

Hamilton had only a brief period of running in clear air at the same time as Vettel during the race – from lap 30 when he finally cleared Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull to lap 33, when he started to come up to lapped traffic.

His pace advantage over Vettel on consecutive laps was 0.79secs, 0.936secs, 0.828secs and 0.942secs, while Rosberg was still dropping time to the Ferrari at the same rate as in the first stint.

And when both Mercedes were in clear air during the race, Hamilton consistently had an advantage over his team-mate of up to a second lap.

In other words, if Hamilton had made a decent start, he would have walked it. But he didn’t. — BBC Sport