David Coulthard's Singapore preview

Whether Sebastian Vettel becomes champion this weekend or not is irrelevant. He's already got it in the bag and besides, titles have been won much earlier than September in previous years. The fact is Mark Webber's already conceded and the rest are just doing what they do best and fighting for race wins, regardless of what they mean for the championship positions. It should make for some great viewing as Fernando Alonso and, to a lesser extent, the McLaren boys, give him a run for his money.

Seb is in an amazing position. He knows that he'd have to have the most cataclysmic bad luck to not win the title, so he can just go hell for leather and not worry too much if he has a crash or a mechanical DNF. I can only imagine how good that must feel - certainly better than last year when he knew that one mistake would blow his championship chances.

The action may be nocternal, but it's all on European time, so no jet-lag © sutton

Street circuits are fantastic because they allow the drivers to make more of a difference to the overall performance than at regular circuits. In the case of Singapore, only three of the 22 corners are taken in third gear or higher, so mechanical grip at low-speeds is far more important than that generated by aerodynamics.

As a result, the car with the best aero - the Red Bull - should have less of an advantage than at most regular tracks, but I'd still expect it to be the class of the field.

Time travel

Perhaps the weirdest thing about Singapore is that its grand prix operates on European time, and so does everyone there, so it can be a bit surreal walking about in the dead of night looking for an open restaurant, because to you it's only seven o'clock. The positive element is that you don't need to set your alarm to wake up in the morning; the bit of natural light creeping under the blackout blinds is enough to get you up quite calmly. It's far less brutal than an alarm going off.

You need that though because the race itself is so demanding on the drivers; mainly because it's so long - very close to the two-hour limit actually. I remember when I raced there I hurt my heel a lot because the track is quite bumpy and just holding yourself in the car becomes difficult. If there's a safety car - which is a reasonably likely occurrence - then you can catch your breath. All the drivers are ultra-fit by this stage of the season, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem, but someone like Bruno Senna, who doesn't have much race experience this year, might struggle a little.

Button's confidence is sky-high at the moment © sutton-images.com

Button: McLaren's team leader?

It was interesting to hear Jenson Button's comments ahead of the Italian Grand Prix during a BBC TV interview. He said that he believes himself to be the team leader at McLaren now. Personally, I think that both he and Lewis Hamilton can claim to be the leader of that team in various different ways and reasons.

What Jenson's comments show is that his confidence is sky-high at the moment and he obviously feels that anything's possible; that pass on Michael Schumacher at Ascari was not the kind of move a guy with low confidence makes, was it?

I think he knows in his heart of hearts that Lewis has a little edge on speed in qualifying over the course of a season, but he also knows he's a brilliant racing driver. He'll have thought that when he was at Brawn too, but now, after being paired with one of the best drivers of the generation, he's proved it to the world.