Fernando Alonso's win at the Chinese Grand Prix last night announced the Ferrari driver as a strong contender for the Formula One championship after a comfortable victory in which he claimed to have plenty to spare.
Alonso took the lead for good with 13 laps to go and won by 10 seconds from Lotus' Kimi Raikkonen, with pole sitter Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes finishing third, just two-tenths of a second ahead the hard-finishing Sebastian Vettel.
Red Bull's Vettel retains the championship lead after three of 19 races, but his advantage is now just three points over Raikkonen, with Alonso moving into third, ahead of Hamilton.
So authoritative was Alonso's performance that his team were cautioning him in the closing stages not to push too hard, only for the Spaniard to reply that he wasn't. After the race he likely put a chill through his rivals by saying he won while retaining "some pace in the pocket".
"It was a fantastic race for us from the start," Alonso said. "There were no big problems and the tyre degradation was better than expected.
"In the two races we've finished we have got second place and victory so our start of the 2013 season is very good. We are very optimistic for the rest of the season."
In a race dominated by tyre strategy, the front three runners all used their strong early pace on the softer tyre to establish an early advantage and all pitted inside six laps.
While the likes of Vettel, McLaren's Jenson Button and Sauber's Nico Hulkenberg, who all started on the harder tyre, profited initially by moving to the front of the field, the early leaders used fresher rubber to reclaim the advantage and fought out the latter half of the race.
Button finished fifth ahead of Ferrari's Felipe Massa. Toro Rosso's Australian driver Daniel Ricciardo put in a strong performance for a career-best seventh place, finishing ahead of Force India's Paul di Resta, Lotus' Romain Grosjean and Hulkenberg.
Hamilton carried little expectation of victory into the race despite his pole position because the Mercedes cars had quickly degraded their tyres all weekend, so the Briton was thankful to finish on the podium.
"They were a little bit too fast for us," Hamilton said. "My tyres were shot at the end so there was nothing I could do to hold off Seb."
The two main casualties of the race were last year's winner, Nico Rosberg of Mercedes, and the luckless Mark Webber of Red Bull.
Rosberg came into the pits four times and was forced to retire before reaching the halfway point of the race, while Webber retired after he lost a wheel.
Top finishers: 1. Fernando Alonso, Spain, Ferrari, 56 laps, 1 hour, 36 minutes, 26.945 seconds; 2. Kimi Raikkonen, Finland, Lotus, 56, 1:36:37.113; 3. Lewis Hamilton, Britain, Mercedes, 56, 1:36:39.267; 4. Sebastian Vettel, Germany, Red Bull, 56, 1:36:39.470; 5. Jenson Button, Britain, McLaren, 56, 1:37:02.230 ; 6. Felipe Massa, Brazil, Ferrari, 56, 1:37:07.772; 7. Daniel Ricciardo, Australia, Toro Rosso, 56, 1:37:09.636; 8. Paul di Resta, Britain, Force India, 56, 1:37:18.029; 9. Romain Grosjean, France, Lotus, 56, 1:37:20.368; 10. Nico Hulkenberg, Germany, Sauber, 56, 1:37:23.543.
-AP