Grapevine: Straw Poll: Sunday at Monza

There was a real sense of intensity surrounding everyone at Scuderia Toro Rosso on Sunday morning. With Sebastian Vettel on pole and Sebastien Bourdais on the second row and the track damp, they could actually win this thing.

The stars - or at least some of them - had lined up. And if you spent even a few minutes in the midst of the STR pits or their half of the gargantuan Red Bull Energy Station (or motorhome) you could feel that this was serious. They could win and were going to damn well make sure they didn't throw it away.

And there was a real willingness among the media to put up with getting a little damp on their paddock wanderings if it was to create a classic race. But it wasn't until three quarters of an hour or so before the start of the race that the weather played ball and started to soak the track again.

It was more than the normal anticipation of a wet race, because with a completely scrambled grid there were plenty of storylines to follow.

Could Vettel really take a victory for the team formerly known as Minardi? Would pre-race favourite Heikki Kovalainen be able to capitalise on his place on the front-row of the grid and take a second win? How would Massa fare in the wet in a race which could potentially give him the lead in the world championship? And what would happen between world champion Kimi Raikkonen and current points leader Lewis Hamilton down in the lower reaches of the grid?

It's race to have this kind of anticipation ahead of a race in the press office - and although the Italian Grand Prix that was to follow may not have been quite as incident-packed as expected, there was plenty of wheel-to-wheel racing to get excited about.

Now plenty of media outlets have their favourites, but Vettel proved to be a suitably bi-partisan choice for much of the press office, as proved by the round of applause that he received when he crossed the line to become the youngest driver even to win a world championship Grand Prix.

Heading straight down to the STR garage after the race, the delight was palpable. Team members who could remember the Minardi days when scoring a point was like winning the championship celebrated something they probably thought they would never get to experience with the Faenza team, while the leading architects of the triumph - Giorgio Ascanelli, Gerhard Berger and Franz Tost - revelled in the attention.

It was an atmosphere as jubilant as it had been intense just a few hours earlier as even former Minardi driver Fernando Alonso headed down to congratulate his old team.

Outside of the camp, it was the rare universally popular win - and it was hard to find anyone in the media centre who had a bad word to say about Vettel and STR. Whether that changes if and when he becomes a title contender in the future remains to be seen.