For much of the weekend, though, the focus was not on the track but on the frenzied activity in the paddock, where the FIA was making a dog’s breakfast of their attempt to limit off-throttle exhaust gases blowing onto diffusers. The real problem was not the clumsy way in which they gave concessions to Mercedes engine users, then to Renault engine users, only to revoke the latter. The problem was that the situation arose at all, given that off-throttle exhaust manipulation has been in use for a while.

Long ago the FIA had simply lacked the foresight to identify how far teams would use the technique, but by now the horse had well and truly bolted. This was not like the Renault mass damper ban in 2006 which basically outlawed one discrete part being utilised by one team. Rather, this affected the majority of the teams, and went to the heart of some teams’ design philosophies for 2011. No wonder teams were trying to bargain their way to concessions, which the FIA gullibly acceded to.

The sensible thing, which has now prevailed, was to wait until season’s end to ban the systems by mandating periscope exhausts out the top of side pods. The other issue this raises is that the governing body really needs people who have a better, quicker and earlier grasp of current design trends than Charlie Whiting and co, who can identify where developments are heading and what their logical extremes might be. At the moment, they are simply being reactive, and engineers will always be two steps ahead.

The FIA’s mid-season clampdown also left themselves open to accusations of trying to change the course of this year’s championship, by removing one of the areas thought to be at the centre of Red Bull’s advantage and giving a helping hand to the team everyone mistrusts - Ferrari - which was understood to have struggled to master the blown diffuser concept. The fact that Ferrari and Ferrari-engined Sauber originally vetoed the deferral of the ban would have only added to the suspicions.

And so most people will be taking Alonso’s form at Silverstone - and ultimately his win - with a grain of salt until we see how the Ferrari stacks up at the Nurburgring. But that would perhaps undersell where Ferrari are at. What recent times have shown is that Red Bull sets the pace in terms of design concepts. McLaren wax and wane in their attempts to keep up. Ferrari tend to set the bar too low at the start of the year, but find ways of maximising their package into a potent force by mid-season. It could be happening again.

We knew the Ferraris were relatively gentle on tyres, and at Istanbul and Valencia Fernando had already shown that he could match the RB7s in race trim. But in qualifying here, the inherent pace Alonso managed to extract was impressive. Put it all together on race day, and throw in the fact that the use of intermediates at the start meant that they didn’t have to run the hard compound on which Alonso had struggled at Barcelona, and the 150th Italia was always going to be a potent force.

The Spaniard was still relatively cautious at the start of stints, but he was able to maintain pace when it mattered. That is, when others’ pace started dropping. That is how he caught and passed Lewis Hamilton, who had overtaken him earlier. That is how he passed Mark Webber in the pits despite the Australian pitting earlier. That is how he took advantage of Vettel’s slow second stop. Even without Seb’s delay, Alonso was in with a chance of putting up a huge fight to Vettel in a battle to the finish.

Felipe Massa was still some way off in qualifying but his race was better than it looked, to underline what may be genuine improvement on Ferrari’s part. His race was arguably compromised by the team understandably giving priority to pitting Alonso at the optimal time, and accommodating the Brazilian around that. This meant he pitted too late at his first and third stops, but it also meant he had speed to burn in the last few laps when he caught and very nearly passed Hamilton in the final corners.

For Red Bull it was not an imperious weekend on Vettel’s side of the garage by any means. He seemed to be off Webber’s pace in practice and qualifying. Perhaps this was due to the off-throttle exhaust limits. He also seemed to struggle to find the limits on a dampish track at times, was a little more inconsistent than usual in terms of maintaining lap time on a set of tyres, and of course the rear jack mishap at his second stop cost him the lead. But the point is, he got ahead of Webber at the start and there he stayed.

And so Mark still hasn’t led a lap this year (whereas Vettel has led a whopping 435). Like in Barcelona, what advantage he had pre-race was thrown away at the start. Again he allowed Vettel to break free in the early laps. He used up his tyres too quickly in his second and third stints, and made a costly mistake coming onto Hangar Straight when homing in on Vettel and Hamilton. Only in the last stint did he manage his pace to reel in his team-mate in the closing laps.

Hence the saga of the “hold station” order which left Mark visibly upset, and which stoked the furore of his supporters. Afterwards, Webber stirred the pot even more by confessing that he deliberately ignored the order. Others have since come out in defence of Christian Horner but, curiously, Dietrich Mateschitz, rather than being angry, has voiced support for Webber’s racer’s mentality and wants to re-sign him for 2012! These dynamics at Milton Keynes are strange indeed.

I too will plant my flag in Horner’s corner. Viewed objectively, any team where both drivers are free to race would have issued the same directive to protect a sure bag of points. Mark, too, has had the benefit of a “hold station” order in Turkey in 2009. I am certain that this had nothing to do with favouritism towards Sebastian, even if he is the team’s golden boy, and the fact that the German is already miles ahead in the title chase and did not need to be gifted any extra points over Webber was not a consideration.

The team appreciates Webber’s never-say-die attitude because it brings out the best in him, which is fast enough to also bring out the best in Vettel, so it’s a win-win for all. And so they can take some of Mark’s flame-baiting in their stride, hence Mateschitz’s comments. But Mark also needs to be careful and get a grasp of what’s going on in his own mind. For this was not really about team orders and his freedom to race. This was about his frustration at losing to Vettel again, at a track where he felt he had a chance.

He had already missed out at Barcelona, but Silverstone is Mark’s real “home” race, it is where he planted the unfancied RB4 on the front row in 2008, it is where he willed himself to victory last year. After another race of making minor errors at crucial times and proverbially staring at Vettel’s rear wing, after yet another race of never hitting the front, there is a point at which determination becomes obsession. But rather than ramping up the war cry, I wonder if Mark actually needs to relax about the situation.

It may be a stretch too far for a driver with as much self-belief as the Aussie, but what he may need to realise is that he is in a situation where, he is lined up against three drivers who may well be all-time greats in Alonso, Vettel and Hamilton, and one of those happens to be his own team-mate. In that sense he’s a bit like Gerhard Berger, being Ayrton Senna’s team-mate at McLaren from 1990-92 when he was also up against Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell, Nelson Piquet and eventually Michael Schumacher.

Initially hoping to match Senna, he quickly saw that it was unlikely and, instead of getting frustrated and trying to fight it, he relaxed, knew that the team appreciated him in a supporting (note, not subservient Rubens Barrichello-style) role, and that allowed him to enjoy racing and out-qualify and out-race Senna on occasions. I think Mark could learn from that example, simply enjoy driving the best car in the field in the RB7 and maximising his results, and securing 2nd in the championship against a surging Alonso.

McLaren seemed to suffer more from the off-throttle exhaust ban than Red Bull, which would have been ironic if the intention of the ban was to bring Red Bull back to the field, or was it just a continuation of their mediocre Valencia form and a sign that, just like last year, they can’t keep up as the season progresses? The combination of fading form, off-track politics and growing impatience on Hamilton’s part noticeably affected the team’s on-circuit performance in numerous ways.

For Hamilton, there was the bizarre decision to run a set of options in Q1 when it was unnecessary, and when it started to rain, followed by the equally weird decision to use that set at the beginning of Q3 when putting in a solid banker on the first run was imperative. Lewis recovered from his 10th place grid spot quickly but then proceeded to wear out his tyres rapidly in all three stints on options, as if he was just going to charge, to hell with the consequences. Hardly the approach of a focussed champion.

Conversely, Jenson Button unusually struggled in the early semi-wet conditions and spent most of the race running a net 5th or 6th before his Silverstone jinx hit again at his third stop. Teams spend so much time practising stops, should they not also practise contingencies (like randomly selecting one corner to have a pretend problem) to give the lollipop man practice at recognising that one tyre is not complete so that this kind of error will not arise? One would expect McLaren of all teams to practice that kind of thing.

Behind Massa in 5th, it was more than 30 seconds back to the rest, with only 20 seconds covering the next seven cars in what was largely a battle of two-stoppers. Nico Rosberg emerged at the front by default more than anything else after a poor start, capitalising on the problems for Kamui Kobayashi, his own team-mate, and the Force Indias, but the works Mercedes cars continue to show no signs of being able to challenge the top three teams in normal conditions, like in China and Turkey earlier in the year.

Schumacher, though, continues to be his own worst enemy. Firstly he missed Q3 (albeit in Q2 under 0.5s split 4th to 14th), before clattering into Kobayashi in the race. It may not have been entirely his fault, but it still looked clumsy. A stop-go penalty seemed a bit harsh but Michael clawed back to 9th with assertive moves on Vitaly Petrov and Jaime Alguersuari. However, his suggestion that he could have finished 4th or 5th seemed rather ambitious - 6th would have been more realistic.

Sergio Perez put in a solid performance to run within sight of Rosberg all race which resulted in an eventual 7th, but if Sauber were capable of that kind of pace then it was a missed opportunity for Kobayashi. The Japanese driver qualified a fine 8th and was his usual combative self (especially when battling Pastor Maldonado) and running ahead of both Mercedes, but the damage from his clash with Schumacher was exacerbated by the stop-go penalty for an unsafe pit release before his eventual retirement.

Kobayashi’s penalty was also questionable because it wasn’t the release by the Sauber crew that was the problem, it was Kamui’s slow getaway that put him on a collision course with the in-pitting Williams. Having said that, perhaps Kamui should have let the Williams go more readily. But after his impressive run of top-ten finishes in the first seven races of the season, Kobayashi has now had two average outings at Valencia and Silverstone, and he will want to reassert himself at the Nurburgring.

Given that exhaust trickery was a fundamental part of Renault’s philosophy for 2011, the off-throttle limits hurt them as much as anyone else, and it showed as they slid further back into the midfield and watched Mercedes overtake them for 4th in the constructors points. Nick Heidfeld rode his two-stop strategy to 8th having been behind Perez all race, while Petrov struggled on the intermediates and ran an extremely long second stint (27 laps) for no particular benefit.

Alguersuari also utilised his two-stop plan to score points for the third race in succession in 10th. It was a good recovery after both he and Sebastien Buemi had failed to set a fast enough banker in Q1, which meant both Toro Rossos were eliminated when the rain came. Buemi had already lost ground to his team-mate before the collision with Paul di Resta which put him out, and worryingly for him, after his impressive start to the year, Alguersuari is coming on strong and seemingly getting the upper hand.

Jaime was the last of the two-stoppers to beat home Adrian Sutil on a three-stop strategy. That tactic was never going to work for the German once it became clear that, with a stop remaining, he was already behind Rosberg and Perez who would not pit again. Di Resta would probably have been in the same boat as he was on the same strategy, despite qualifying a fabulous 6th, making a terrific start, and running with Button in the early stages on intermediates.

But the Scotsman’s fate was sealed when he came in for his second stop when the team was expecting Sutil, and in his haste to make up for all the time lost he collided with Buemi straight away. It was another half-hearted move resulting in a broken front wing for the rookie. Whilst he has stolen the headlines for Force India this year, Sutil is ahead in the points because Paul has not been able to convert promise into results, and that is increasingly becoming a blight on his year.

At Williams, Maldonado once again starred on Saturday by qualifying 7th, and whilst that is starting to earn him some real credit, the race is on Sunday and not for the first time the Venezuelan and his team were found wanting. Pastor was something of a sitting duck in the first stint as his dry set-up was particularly unsuited to the semi-wet conditions, and like in Spain he also found himself making one more stop than his rivals when he was already behind on track position. That’s no way to score any points.

In truth, Williams probably didn’t have the pace to challenge for a top ten result anyway, as evidenced by the fact that Barrichello, having made a poor start from 15th on the grid, in the end made barely any headway on a two-stop strategy, only finishing ahead of his team-mate and the delayed Di Resta. What a far cry it is for Williams at the moment from the famous Mansell British GP victories of 1986, 1987, 1991 and 1992, and the mid-90s triumphs of Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve.

But in terms of home team disappointments, probably nothing could surpass the Team Lotus disaster. As the tension between Group Lotus and Team Lotus essentially remains unresolved despite their litigation, and as Team Lotus haven’t really made the headway into the midfield that they had hoped for, it is important for them to continue building fan support and a good home race would have done just that. Instead, both cars were out within the first ten laps.

It had been so promising up to that point with Heikki Kovalainen making Q2 even though Jarno Trulli had struggled. Whilst the FIA’s shenanigans over the off-throttle exhaust issue arguably deserved an ROTR award, we’d prefer to not make the award too political and focus more on what happens on the track on race day. After a race in Valencia that saw no retirements at all, for both Lotuses to DNF so early in their home race made them a stand-out choice for "Reject of the Race".

It was a lonely race for the Virgins towards the tail of the field. Timo Glock started ahead of Trulli and was unchallenged at the front of the newer teams after both Lotuses disappeared. Jerome D’Ambrosio ran behind Vitantonio Liuzzi’s HRT in the opening segment of the race on intermediates, but got ahead on lap 19 and stayed there. Nevertheless, the gap between Kovalainen and Glock in Q1 was a gigantic 1.3s, which was galling deficit on this aero-dependent layout.

The story at HRT was the debut of Daniel Ricciardo, but after showing a good turn of speed against Liuzzi in practice, in qualifying and the race the Italian’s experience showed. The Australian rookie was too cautious in Q1 and didn’t get a chance at a second run, and although he kept pace on intermediates, once the track dried during the race, Ricciardo lost too much time especially whilst being lapped, and eventually wound up a full lap behind his team-mate. That was a touch embarrassing.

Admittedly it was understandable given that he had not sat behind the wheel of the Hispania racer before the weekend, and he had had minimal dry running in the lead-up to the race, and his stated ambition was simply to reach the finish, which he did. But Red Bull has placed him at HRT partly to see how he fares against Liuzzi, so it is important that he keeps closing the gap against Tonio as the rest of the year progresses. Caution is OK on his first weekend but ultimately it is not what will reap rewards.