Form guide: Only Grosjean can stop Vettel

Romain Grosjean holds the key to injecting some stress into a Red Bull celebration party in Abu Dhabi.

A brake disc problem prevented the on-form Lotus driver from completing his Friday practice programme, but intriguingly subtract the theoretical one-lap advantage of the soft tyre from the laptime he did on the medium and he's potentially somewhere near a Red Bull time.

That's all without knowing respective fuel loads, of course. So a lot hangs on whether Grosjean's disrupted preparations can be shrugged off tomorrow. Otherwise, there does not appear to be anyone capable of living with the two RB9s, particularly that of Sebastian Vettel.

Lewis Hamilton was actually closest on one-lap pace, his best single lap being 0.355 seconds adrift of Vettel's and he was, as usual, quite brilliant in the final acrobatic sector.

But in the longer runs he was over a second adrift of Seb on the softs and 1.5s off on the prime medium tyre.

Grosjean did not get to complete a long run but team-mate Kimi Raikkonen - 0.391s adrift on one-lap pace - did a very respectable-looking long run significantly longer than any of the other top cars, during which he was comparable with the Mercedes pair Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.

On current form Grosjean might be expected to be a couple of tenths ahead of that. But that would still leave him at least half a second adrift of the Red Bulls on race pace.

Ferrari is in for a tough weekend © XPB

Ferrari looks its usual uncompetitive Abu Dhabi self, the car's poor traction a particular handicap around a circuit with so many stop/go bends.

This disadvantage is masked somewhat on the soft tyre over a single lap but on the medium tyre Fernando Alonso appears to be around half a second adrift of the Mercedes/Raikkonen group.

Furthermore, the Ferraris could be facing a stern race challenge from McLaren pair Jenson Button and Sergio Perez. The team opted to run the practice two session in very low-downforce wing trim and its straightline speed was mighty as a result.

It means the MP4-28 is hopelessly slow through the final sector but that still left Perez and Button sixth and seventh on one-lap pace (which might be expected to have been seventh and eighth had Grosjean had a trouble-free run) and in the race this combination should allow them to pass any cars they can get within reach of in the DRS sections.

They will then be near-impossible to overtake in the slow sector simply because of the layout of the track in the final street-circuit section.

An unusually high number of cars suffered mechanical and/or tyre problems. In addition to Grosjean, Paul di Resta's Force India had some sort of failure on the left front, Button had a suspected tyre problem, and Max Chilton lost a brake duct.

Maybe some are hoping something similar might afflict Vettel - for there seems to be little else to threaten what would be his sixth consecutive win, not even team-mate Mark Webber who on the long runs averaged 0.4s off his team mate on the mediums and 0.9s off on the softs, even if his one-lap pace was comparable.