People need to get over this driving off in the distance as not being a sign they were dominant. There is no benefit to him putting an extra 10 seconds gap onto his followers. It takes too much out of the car, fuel and runs the risk of taking too much out of a set of tyres. They just peg the gap and hold it leaving plenty in the car and tyres to react if needed.
If the RBR car was so dominant and so far ahead of the rest, why didn't Webber take 2nd place sooner? Why was he only able to do it in the dying laps of the race? Reason: the RBR car is fast, but its not so far ahead that the other cars have virtually no chance of a win or beating the RBR car.
Vettel is very good when he is leading for the entire race, but deny him the opportunity of leading on lap 1 and I think you will find he struggles to win from that position. It would be a very interesting statistic see just what percentage of his wins have come when he is not leading on lap 1. Perhaps someone can look into this?
You mentioned Senna as being the master of strategy, well there was a 10th of the strategy in his day and far less variables to think about.
I think we shall have to agree to disagree on this. I hardly ever remember Senna losing places on strategy but always remember him making gains. The best examples of strategy is in wet/damp/changing conditions races. Senna would almost always dominate these - not only because he was a fast wet weather driver, but also because his strategy was fantastic.
As for tyre wear it doesn't matter how soft you are on the tyres with these compounds it makes little difference.
If this is the case why have we heard in all 4 races, the pit wall saying to the driver, over the radio, "look after your tyres". This message is repeated umpteen times. If tyre wear/management is not important, nobody seems to have told this to the teams/engineers.
The fact is that teams believe that if a driver manages his tyres well, over the course of the entire race distance, the driver will complete the race in the shortest time possible. Tyre management is still, very important. Just because Button is unable to manage his tyres significantly better than other drivers does not mean that this is not the case.
