At Interlagos the result, as so often - too often - these days, was settled in the opening seconds, when the pole position man got too much wheelspin, and Sebastian Vettel asserted himself into the first turn, going on to a superbly measured victory.
Throughout the afternoon, he was never very far in front of Valtteri Bottas, but so evenly matched were the Ferrari and Mercedes that it would have taken a mistake by Vettel for the order to change.
Had it been Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes on pole, who knows what kind of scrap we might have had, but when the lights went out Hamilton was not so much as on the grid, instead starting from the pitlane, after crashing on his first run in Q1. "It just shows we're all human," he modestly observed, but the goof guaranteed a memorable drive on race day.