That’s it, Formula 1 2010 is done and dusted. Or done and sanded, given that the last race was the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

The Good

• Sebastian Vettel. He’s a deserving champion, but really any of the top four men in the championship would have been deserving. All have had moments of brilliance, all have had moments to forget. But shake it all up, and it’s Vettel who’s come out on top.
• More personally, it’s good because my main bet of the year – Vettel to win the championship at about 8-1 back in February – came off. So I can’t really help but class it as a good day. It’s not the money, it’s the being right that’s so damned pleasing. We won’t mention the smaller bets I had on Hamilton and Massa.
• But probably most importantly, it was a good race. Not action packed, but heaps of strategy to keep on top of – more than any other race this season, perhaps?
• The early safety car led to a few rolls of the dice, and early stops worked out well for the likes of Nico Rosberg and Vitaly Petrov.
• Robert Kubica staying out very late, to leapfrog Alonso, was an interesting development too. Not to be smug or anything, but I saw it coming before Brundle mentioned it in the commentary. Nope, not smug at all.
• The podium was quite a sight, with Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button joining Vettel for a display of the three most recent world champions. It was as good a day for McLaren as it could have been; Vettel was clearly not going to be stopped.

The Bad

• Needless to say: Fernando Alonso. He didn’t do anything hugely wrong, but Ferrari pretty much pissed his chances away with their strategy – which could of course have gone the other way, but didn’t. Alonso wasn’t able to overtake Petrov – which is pretty watertight justification for him not winning the title.
• Alonso was giving it a good go at times though, as evidenced by his many off-track excursions. Unfortunately, the overly generous tarmac run-off areas of the Yas Marina circuit meant that he lost absolutely no time as a result of his mistakes.
• It’s fair to say that Mark Webber should have been closer to the back of Alonso to take advantage of any errors, but when those errors went unpunished it’s a moot point. Webber certainly didn’t have the weekend he needed though, qualifying 5th and finishing 8th. Again, strategy didn’t go his way, but neither did he seem able to make anything go his way.

The Ugly

• Eddie Jordan on the grid walk. Never have I seen such shameless arse-kissing on television – most sickeningly of Bernie Ecclestone. At least Ecclestone was clearly as reviled as the rest of us. And if Jordan wasn’t brown-nosing, he was blathering away about nothing when there were more relevant people to listen to. Admittedly they’d only go on to blather away about nothing too, in that non-committal way people being interviewed tend to. But that’s not the point. Eddie Jordan needs to be on a short leash at all times.
• Is that the last we’ll see of the unforgivable grey and mint Mercedes GP livery? I have a horrible feeling it’s not.