F1: Technical issues confound teams as Abu Dhabi 2011 opens up championship's second place

Saturday's qualifying was yet another display of outstanding strategy and competition. With only one fast car left on track, the pending result was Hamilton on pole, having beaten Button by an almost incalculably small margin: 0.009 of a second. But Vettel was on a mission: to match Nigel Mansell's almost 30 year old record for the most pole positions in a season and, with almost one and a half tenths in hand, he snatched it with another of the metronomic drives that deliver his results. But Hamilton was disappointed: he had set a faster time in Q2 and, had that been in Q3, he would have retained pole position.

And so, the race started with the expectation that Vettel would race away and somehow, as everyone else scrambled, find at least half a second over the second place man (whoever it was) in the first two laps before the DRS zones were enabled.

And for the first few hundred metres, things went according to that expectation. Then, in Turn 2, when he was already about a hundred metres ahead of Lewis Hamilton, Vettel's right rear tyre fel off the rim and burst under load into a fast left-hander. The right front wheel lifted high off the ground. Traction disappeared and the Red Bull snapped around, diving backwards off the track onto the wide run-off area. Vettel's car control is - and this is no hyperbole - incredible. He brought the car under control within a couple of dozen metres and, because the rest of the field was bunched up so soon after the start, waited until the last car had passed then drove back onto the track. He limped the car home - almost an entire lap of one of the longest tracks in F1. But the exploding tyre, the bump over the kerb and the journey back had damaged the back of the car. Vettel retired, showing a degree of frustration and emotion that he usually reserves for the big wins.

As Vettel spun off, Hamilton didn't lift: he sped by and from that moment on did not relinquish the lead except for the place-swapping that happens in pit stops. Button hared off after him but soon began to drop back. Alonso, once more driving far beyond the capacity of the car, pounced on Button and sat in a comfortable second for almost the whole race.

Webber led briefly due to everyone else's pit stops and as the race came to an end set fastest lap after fastest lap with a flawless drive. Third place was assured. Or not, as it turned out: a strategic decision had been made that Webber's car was working so well on its second set of soft tyres that he would remain on them for as long as the rules allowed. Webber's determination not to allow the fact that another pit stop would be required shows why the F1 community has so much respect for him. He was nibbling bits of a second out of fourth place Button and fifth place Massa with each lap. But he needed a 25 second gap to both. In the event, he had less than ten seconds back to Button when he had to pit with only the last lap to go.

Coming out of the pits behind Button and ahead of Massa, his work paid off with a fourth place.

Button was decidedly unhappy: he knew that the McLarens were the fastest cars on the day and that he should have been battling with Hamilton for the lead - and the points needed to secure his second place in the 2011 World Championship. But soon after the race started, Button's KERS stopped working. As he said after the race: the team worked out after a while how to reboot it and he could get it working, but it would go off again after a couple of laps. While not having KERS means less power is available for part of the lap, it also means that the engine braking that recharges KERS was absent. It was difficult, said Button, to know how the car would slow down from corner to corner so he had to be much more cautious than he would have liked.

Caution was not something Button had exhibited during qualifying: his characteristically smooth style had been supplanted by aggressive car control that he rarely displays: he had thrown the car at corners, slinging the tail wide and powering out in a spectacular fashion and it had paid off. After proving that, to himself and his detractors, it would have been more than a disappointment to have to nurse the car home for almost the entire race distance. But it's Button and he simply slotted into his smooth style, drove the car within its new limits and his confidence in it and eventually finished third.

The result means that McLaren have secured second place in the Constructors' Championship but that second place in the Drivers' Championship remains open.

Even a win for Hamilton and no points for Button in Brazil will not give Hamilton second place. But with Button on 255 points, Alonso on 245 and Webber on 233 the permutations are complex. And it's not helped by the big numbers of the new F1 scoring system which looks rather too American, and far too complicated, for many tastes.Certainly, the numbers show a ridiculous disparity that does not reflect what happens on track.

For Button the equation is simple: finish ahead of every one except Vettel and Hamilton and pick up second place. Hamilton, seemingly with some clarity in his head after a tough few months in his personal life, may be obstructive: he has a lot to prove, including his feeling that he is superior to Button. He might let Button through on the last lap in Brazil to give him an extra few points, if they are in that position, but he will not aid him earlier in the race.

With only ten points separating Alonso and Button, that one place - especially at the front of the field, will be decisive.