China

Justin: Hmmm, I really should come up with better subject titles!

Anyway....

I think this year will be the closest ever.

We've always known Nico Rosberg was good, but just how good was ultimately unknown. He's a bit like Button in a way, in that he'd always been in non race winning cars. Button took 113 races to get his first victory, Rosberg 110. I've always thought Rosberg was good, capable, but not great. Perhaps now with his first win under his belt he'll mature and improve in the same sort of way Button did.

Give him a race winning car, as Mercedes have done this year, and today shows just how good he is. In fact, qualifying was a blur.....Nico was half a second quicker than anyone else, which is almost unheard of in 2012! You only need to look at Q2 to see how close the grid is this year. Vettel didn't make it into Q3 and the gap between 1st and 10th in Q2 was just 3 tenths of a second. Amazing!

The race in China was frankly frantic, beautiful, amazing and intense. There were so many things going on that it's hard to recall exactly what happened where and between who! Do we need the legendary subheadings system again? I'm going to read over the race report on the BBC website first before proceeding.

Incidentally, I emerged at 6am for yesterdays qualifying show and 7am for todays race. I received a text from my esteemed colleague yesterday afternoon asking if I wanted to watch the race with him as he was back in town. I replied, asking if he meant the live show or the repeat at lunchtime. I suspect he may have watched the lunch version :-).

Race Overview
As already mentioned, it was an utterly frantic race behind Rosberg. There were so many scraps and overtakes along with wheelbanging and sparks flying ( Maldonado and Grosjean...boy those guys went at it tooth and nail!) it was just insane. So much fun to watch and as Button said, so much fun to drive in too! Rosberg dissapeared, Button may have had fun trying to catch him but for a slow pit-stop which fed him into the chasing queue of cars. Near the end Kimi was 2nd, but in one lap he plummetted down to 10th. That will be the tyres then!

Nico Rosberg
Son of 1982 Champion Keke, Nico couldn't have done anything any better for the weekend. The Mercedes has looked fast in quali since the start of the year, more in the hands of Schumi. They have usually struggled for race pace as their car has a small window of ultimate use with the tyres.

Let's not piss around here. Rosberg was half a second quicker than anyone else in Q3! That's a gap and a half.

In essence, he did what Vettel did a lot of last year - get pole then dissapear. Though, it has to be said, Vettel never really dissapeared like Rosberg did today - he was a full 20 seconds ahead at the end!

A beautiful weekend for Rosberg which catapaults him up the driver standings.

JB & Lewis
They now have a championship winning car. They sit first and second in the title race seperated by just two points.

Lewis has clearly taken a leaf out of JB's book by being more consistent this year.

JB is driving absolutely at the top of his game and I suspect he will only get better.

I would put a lot of money on their "relationship" fracturing big time as the season evolves - only one of them can win the title. End of.

Webber and Vettel
Vettel seems generally unhappy with this years car, opting to use a slightly older spec version of the RB8 this weekend whilst Webber had the upgrades.

Webber has gone on record saying this years car feels like a more conventional F1 car as opposed to last years blown diffuser layout which changed the handling somewhat.

So, if we look at last year as a blip for Webber, we can clearly see this year that these two are back to a level playing field ala 2010 when they literally raced each other off the road.

Webber drove a great race today, as did Vettel - but with one lap to go they found themselves 5th and 4th repsectively and line-a-stern. I was half thinking Red Bull would tell Webber to stay behind....They didn't, and he didn't.

To be fair, Vettel's tyres were shot and when interviewed about it neither of them played it up - it was what it was. Doesnt appear to be any bad blood on either side just yet.

We wait until Vettel starts getting rather upset about being beaten by his team-mate. You always need to beat your team-mate first.

DC
Needs to rest his voice after nearly losing it through getting so excited in the race. Are you Murray in disguise??!!

BBC
If you watched the forum, you will know that a lot of people despise Sky Sports. The team's interview with a fan known as Lao was amusing, but at the same time cringeworthy hehe.

Grosjean and Maldonado
What a fucking battle that was! Sparks flew, literally!

Alonso
Back to reality with a P9 start and a P9 finish. Those upgrades cannot come soon enough!

Bruno Senna
Anyone else actually notice him sliding up the field from 14th to 7th? I thought not. Beautiful stuff yet again from this guy.

Actually, listening to the repeat now, Ben Edwards gets just a tad excited and high pitched too. Nice.

Co-blogger, I suspect I have missed plenty. Over to you!