Rosberg beaten by the 2008 Hamilton

When terrible events strike, such as the accident that left Jules Bianchi with a severe head injury, it is customary to say they put trifles such as 'who won and how' into their true perspective.

This is true to an extent, and nothing now is more important that his treatment. But Bianchi's dedication to his very promising Formula 1 career proves that grand prix racing mattered hugely to him, enough to put his life on the line. So he would undoubtedly have appreciated the race-winning pass by Lewis Hamilton on Nico Rosberg had he been able to jump out of the car in parc ferme after the race and watch the replay.

No matter how horrifically it ended, even under the long shadow cast over it, the Japanese Grand Prix was still a gripping race and another potentially decisive moment in the world championship, not simply one of the mercifully dwindling number of days in which a driver's life was put in peril.

For the first time in 2014, in a straightforward racing situation, one title protagonist overtook the other on track. It was Hamilton who prevailed and who, in wet conditions, was simply a cut above Rosberg.

After the race, speaking in subdued terms amid the widespread and heartfelt concern for Bianchi, Hamilton compared his ease in the conditions to his famous victory in the 2008 British Grand Prix, which stands as one of the great wet-weather wins.

"I really got into a groove," he said. "In terms of feeling it was very reminiscent of Silverstone 2008."

His official margin of victory was only nine seconds, almost a minute less than the advantage by which he crushed the field at Silverstone. But it was a very different type of triumph. After not feeling at home in the dry in practice and qualifying - he crashed after running wide at Turn 1 on Saturday morning, then lost out on pole position to Rosberg by a couple of tenths - it was a transformed Hamilton who took to the track on Sunday.

Poor conditions meant a safety car start © LAT

The safety-car start guaranteed that Rosberg would retain his advantage when the race got under way, after nine laps of the field traipsing around behind three Mercedes, with the SLS AMG safety car piloted by Bernd Maylander in the vanguard.

As is often the case, when the race proper did start the circuit conditions were already such that intermediate rubber could be used. Jenson Button capitalised on this by following Maylander into the pits and making the change. The reward for his bold call was that he jumped from seventh to third once the first pitstops had shaken out.

This meant that there was no time for the Rosberg-versus-Hamilton battle to develop in the first stint. Most of the field pitted on laps 11 and 12 and, with the lead pair still circulating rapidly, Mercedes was able to defer its stops until there was no chance of emerging from the pits in traffic. Rosberg had priority on the tyre call, so headed into the pits at the end of lap 13. His advantage was only 1.236 seconds when he peeled off the track, and after a 2.6s turnaround he returned to the circuit, knowing he had to press on.

Hamilton was now on the attack, setting the fastest first sector of the race on his way to the pits, almost half a second faster than Rosberg managed on his in-lap. But at the long Spoon Curve left-hander, Hamilton pushed too hard and ran wide onto the runoff.

It was a small error, but one that cost him time not only in that corner, but also up the long straight to 130R. When he returned to the track from his stop, which lasted 2.8s, Hamilton fell in a couple of seconds behind his team-mate. Without the error, there's every chance that he would have been able to at least give Rosberg a run for his money through the first couple of corners.

But Hamilton immediately started whittling away at Rosberg's lead. At the end of lap 15 the gap was 2.181s. Three laps later it was just one second. The key moment in setting up Hamilton's eventual pass was on lap 24 when the DRS, disabled for wet conditions, was reactivated by race control.

It proved to be Rosberg's undoing, but it came very close to being his saviour. After looming large in his team-mate's mirrors several times using the DRS, Hamilton made a careless error on the run to Turn 1 on lap 27.

"I went into Turn 1 with the DRS open and there's so much less downforce when that wing is open," said Hamilton. "You've got to remember to close it again [DRS shuts automatically when drivers brake, but they usually close it manually by releasing the button beforehand to stabilise the aerodynamics]. Then I started to turn and brake and it was still open, so the back end stepped out. It was very, very close but I kept hold of it and didn't really lose too much time, so I was fortunate."

Silverstone 2008 victory was Hamilton at his wet-weather best © LAT

Fortunate indeed, but to his credit the save was excellent. Thanks to the comforting presence of an asphalt runoff area, he only lost a few tenths and was back on top of Rosberg only a few corners later.

Hamilton knew Rosberg was in trouble. A few laps earlier, the German had been asked over the radio how hard he was pushing. Rosberg's reply was a perfunctory, "I'm flat out!". He complained about struggling with oversteer, and the evidence that he was struggling with the rear end was clear. There were several tell-tale wobbles at corners such as 130R and the final kink that showed he was struggling. Hamilton had seen it and sensed his imminent opportunity. Rosberg knew he was fighting a losing battle, complaining over the radio there was "so much oversteer."

Inevitably, on lap 29, Hamilton finally prised open Rosberg's stoic defences. The leader had another oversteer moment in the Turn 18 kink. As a result, he took a defensive line on the run to Turn 1. There, the track was wetter and Hamilton knew that this was his chance. But it did depend on him going around the outside at a corner where he had twice gone off during the weekend. In that context, it was a spectacular piece of driving.

Rosberg could perhaps have squeezed his team-mate and made it harder, but ultimately he knew the fight was lost. Hamilton swept into the lead and pulled out a lead of two seconds by the end of the lap. Barring another mistake, the race was won.

"I was fairly confident with the balance of the car, so I put it there and stuck it out," said Hamilton. "After that, the whole approach changed because I was attacking, attacking. I took different lines and managed it differently. It felt very reminiscent of a time years and years ago, of 2008. It was a great feeling."

Hamilton had pulled six and a half seconds clear by the time Rosberg pulled into the pits at the end of lap 32 in search of a new set of intermediates and improved balance. The front wing was trimmed back a little, but the balance never improved.

This was because it was more the conditions than the car set-up itself that were behind his struggles. For just as Rosberg had the edge in the dry, Hamilton was much stronger in the wet.

"We had pretty much the same set-up, so I'm sure the balance was similar for Lewis," admitted Rosberg. "I just struggled more with it, I suppose. A lot of oversteer, and I don't like that."

Hamilton, who has always been comfortable with the rear of the car moving around under him, said much the same. While his team-mate was hanging on, Hamilton was revelling in the low-grip conditions.

Rosberg had to admit he simply didn't have Hamilton's pace © LAT

"We had pretty much exactly the same set-up so, as Nico said, maybe he he took out some wing later on in the race," said Hamilton. "I didn't really have any problems with the balance of the car. It was oversteery, but it was manageable."

The official margin of Hamilton's victory was 9.180s, taken at the end of lap 44. But that was when the safety car had already been deployed. Hamilton's lead was just about to hit 15 seconds when the race was neutralised. Bearing in mind he had only taken the lead on the 29th lap, that's an average advantage of nearly one second per lap over Rosberg.

Rosberg was never really the closest challenger to Hamilton in terms on pace, because the two cars that finished behind the Silver Arrows were both seriously fast. Red Bull opted to run more wing that it would normally have done for the dry conditions of qualifying and Sebastian Vettel, in particular, thrived.

He started ninth, but rose to sixth once the first round of pitstops shook out. He then dispatched the two struggling Williams drivers, Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas - first squeezing inside the Brazilian at the hairpin on lap 16 and then going around the outside of Bottas at the same corner two laps later - to climb to fourth.

Team-mate Daniel Ricciardo, who Vettel had earlier jumped ahead of by stopping a lap later, then pulled off bold moves on both Williams drivers around the outside of the esses, meaning Red Bull had annexed fourth and fifth places. Inevitably, they eventually both got ahead of Button, who had lost around four seconds in the pits with a steering-wheel change to tackle an electronic problem.

That said, Ricciardo's pass came shortly before the race was neutralised, at which point the McLaren driver pitted for wets, safe in the knowledge that he was so far clear of Nico Hulkenberg - who was in sixth but ended up classified eighth after grinding to a halt at the pit exit after a late stop - that he could not lose a place.

Vettel was eventually classified 29 seconds down, with a fastest lap only three tenths shy of Hamilton. It's a moot point whether the Red Bull duo could have posed any serious challenge to Hamilton had they not both been over half a minute down by the time they had cleared the Williams blockade. Certainly, they could have given Rosberg a lot to think about had they been up there from the off.

It was probably with that in mind that Vettel opted to pit for a fresh set of intermediates under the late safety car in anticipation of attacking at the restart. That relegated him to fourth behind Ricciardo, but on countback he regained his podium position.

Vettel joined the title contenders on a subdued podium © LAT

"Just before the safety car, it started to rain with a little bit less intensity," said Vettel. "When the race was stopped it was just a drizzle, and a couple of laps before it was getting quite bad - that's why we decided to pit and go to intermediates again."

Had there been a restart, it would have been set up intriguingly. Hamilton, leading on intermediates, would surely have been safe, but Rosberg would have had Ricciardo (on intermediates in the middle of their life), Vettel (on fresh inters) and Button (on full wets) lined up behind him.

Given that Rosberg talked of damage-limitation after a race in which he finished second and ended up just 10 points behind Hamilton in the standings, a few more laps of racing might have proved a big blow to his championship hopes.

But Rosberg, like Hamilton and Vettel, was more concerned about Bianchi's condition than his own title hopes. As the trio went through a strained podium ceremony, knowing only that Bianchi's accident had been, in the words of Rosberg, "very, very serious", rivalries were set to one side.

And in the paddock after the race, away from the spotlight of the cameras, the harrowed looks of Bianchi's rivals were a reminder that, for all the politics and enmity, the drivers who fight it out in grand prix racing are united by a mutual respect for what they put themselves through, and the risks they take.

They all do it for the same reason, for the love of it. That was what Bianchi was doing when he crashed. That is why to say the racing doesn't matter in light of such an accident can never quite be true.