F1: Webber's Tweet raises spectre of processional series

"Followed Mercedes power for the whole race, no chance to overtake - again."

Let's look behind that: Red Bull's Vettel got pole position in a thrilling qualifying - and proved that his car had pace over the Ferraris as soon as the lights went out. With pit stops taking more or less the same time for each team - unless something goes wrong - if the pole sitter can build a cushion by the time of his first stop, and avoid running into back markers later in the race then the only thing that is going to lose him the race is a silly mistake, a bad restart after a safety car or a mechanical failure - as happened to Vettel on Sunday when a spark-plug failed (originally mis-diagnosed as an exhaust problem).

Button is complaining that he was not as fast as Hamilton - but in truth it would have made no difference: once he was bottled up behind the two Mercedes GP cars, there was no way around them even though they were - marginally - slower. As soon as the only round of pitstops was finished, the result was settled.

Webber sat behind four Mercedes powered cars until the last couple of laps when his Renault powered team-mate, limping, was overtaken by Hamilton.

Bernie Ecclestone says that the way to improve overtaking is to reduce downforce. But Bahrain is a low-downforce circuit: the only reason the cars did not run with virtually flat wings was the new twiddly bit. That section did little to add to overtaking and although it led to bunching within the section, once released onto the circuit's long straights, the car in front shot away from those still winding their way around the new snake. So lower downforce alone cannot be the answer.

The pit-car radio chatter gave away much of the reason for the procession - as did lap times. Lap times at the start of the race were more than five seconds off qualifying times. This is entirely due to the "qualify light, start heavy" regulation changes. Last year, cars started the race on their qualifying fuel load; this year, because of the no-refuelling regulation, they qualify with fumes in the tank and then add as much as 160kg in fuel. That's the weight of an obese person. Drivers try to lose fractions of a kilo to improve performance so it's easy to see why this is a problem.

The additional weight causes brakes to work harder: McLaren told their drivers to look after their rear brakes about half-way through and Button's pit-stop produced a cloud of brake dust. Looking after the brakes means not diving into corners, which means less opportunity to overtake.

Ferrari told their drivers to stay out of the hot air coming from cars in front: overheating was a concern on both cars.

So, if you can't follow a car down the straight because it's too hot and can't dive under the car in front on the corners, where does the overtaking come from?

The answer, as was so plainly obvious on Sunday, is that it doesn't come from anywhere.

And then there's the question of tyre wear: teams were as conservative as possible on their tyres : no imperative to stop to refuel meant that tyres, which have a sweet-spot lasting about five laps of most tracks, were the only variable in the consumables department. With stops needing about 28 seconds (as predicted by Williams) from leaving the track to rejoining it (the FOM produced times between the pit-lane speed limit lines which is shorter than the full pit lane) stopping just for tyres means that new tyres would have to give an advantage of more than five seconds per lap for those five laps to make the stop worthwhile. But during that 28 seconds, the field is streaming past: it did not spread out much - most of the top finishers were within half a lap of each other at the end - that's roughly a minute at Bahrain which is now F1's second longest lap after Spa. Sure, there are some benefits in having newer tyres at the end of the race, but it's never going to translate into a 28 second gain and sufficient extra pace to retake cars that passed in the pits. So slinging the car at the corners is counter-productive as the tyres will go off but the benefits of changing them will not be felt. That's advantage Button - but only if he isn't stuck behind a lower car.

In addition to this is the destabilising effect of following another car.

Front wing aerodynamics, in particular, are susceptible to changes in the air that flows above and below them. In still air, they hold the front down, improving turn-in and making the car go where the driver points it. In turbulent air, the rush over the top of the wing is disturbed, reducing the air pressure over it and - while falling far short of generating lift, reduces the downward forces. The front of the car goes light - think of it as like having too powerful power steering on a wet road: the car does not respond as sharply or predictably as usual.

A similar but less pronounced effect happens over the rear wing - and going into corners, that can mean that the tail slides unexpectedly.

Both of these mean more lateral movement and that means more tyre wear.

Add to that that driving off-line in Bahrain means driving on sand, compromising grip not just at that point but for several corners afterwards as the sand sticks to and is then thrown off the tyres, a fact borne out by the clear difference in colour between the racing line and the rest of the track by the end of the race, and it's clear that there was, quite simply, no chance that the first race of the season would be anything but a procession after the first corner.

The Bahrain race was not boring if one wanted to see how the new teams performed, what the relative strengths of the cars were and how the regulations would pan out.

But we've done that now.

And, to be truthful, it wasn't really a race for most of the drivers - some have said that it was not a tiring race. Almost two hours under the desert sun with cockpit temperatures reaching an estimated 80 degrees C and the drivers were not, by their standards, tired? That speaks volumes about the standard of racing. And one can't blame the drivers: their whole life is focussed on racing, not driving around reading the adverts on the back of a rival's car. A couple of battles were fought out at the back before most of the new cars were parked and a Lotus / Williams spat provided some late interest.

But this is the season where four - count 'em - world champions are lined up against each other. It's the season where we were supposed to see late braking, slipstreaming for daredevil dives, wheel to wheel racing between evenly matched teams and drivers pushing themselves and their machines to the ultimate.

It's looking as if the only way we'll see any proper racing is if some of the lower teams decide they won't make it to the finish or score points regardless of what they do and so fuel their cars light to provide deceptive speed for half the race, use soft tyres, get some attention and valuable data - and then drop out after their first pit stop. Facing another procession, that option seems good for anyone starting below 15th - so as to allow for some attrition amongst the top cars.

The non-race information gathering that Bahrain provided was fascinating.

Now we need to see racing.