Some timely Shanghai showers helped produce another enthralling grand prix, with overtaking galore and a host of impressive drives.
ITV.com/F1 columnist James Allen analyses all the key performances and the decisions that shaped the outcome in his regular post-race verdict.
Remember that furore after Bahrain about Formula 1 being boring? No, neither do I.
The fundamental problems of F1 remain – cars find it hard to overtake in dry conditions, compounded by the absence of refuelling.
And these issues still need to be addressed. We will have dull races like Bahrain again; Barcelona is often pretty tedious.
But for the third time in a row since Bahrain, we have enjoyed a cracking grand prix full of overtaking, drama and well-judged performances.
Top marks to Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg, Robert Kubica and Fernando Alonso in particular.
For Button this was another strong drive, which was built on his early decision to stay on slick tyres on a damp track.
Thereafter he still had plenty of work to do, including passing Rosberg for the lead as the rain started falling more heavily and the pair were still out on their slick tyres.
Rosberg and the two Renault drivers benefited from making the same tyre call as Button, and it gave them a huge lead when the rest were forced to pit for a second time to replace the intermediates they wrongly thought were essential for the conditions.
It was pretty tough on the leading drivers when they were later forced to fend off challenges from the big names, who were brought back into the race by a fortuitous safety car period.
Hamilton was one of these, along with the two Red Bull drivers, the Ferraris and Michael Schumacher.
Fans have been waiting to see Hamilton and Schumacher racing each other and two battles came along today.
The first came about because Hamilton was two seconds per lap faster than Schumacher but took a couple of laps to pass him, giving the great champion plenty of respect.
Red Bull had a horrible day, turning a front-row lockout into sixth and eighth places.
At the start, Mark Webber avenged the pass that Sebastian Vettel made on him at the start in Malaysia, but it amounted to little because both made the intermediate tyre call on lap three.
Webber came in first and damaged his wing and the front jack. Vettel lost a lot of time because he was queuing behind and the team had to get a new jack.
After that they battled their way through the field but, as Vettel observed after the race, they struggled to get the tyres up to temperature after the safety car and the pit stops.
In the closing stages their pace was nowhere near as good as the McLaren. And yet they had enjoyed a significant margin over the others in qualifying once again, taking their fourth pole position in four events.
Rosberg has now taken two podiums and has well and truly shaded his team-mate Schumacher, who is not enjoying an auspicious comeback.
Rosberg is another, like Button, who is forcing people to re-evaluate his quality.
He did a great job in qualifying to get ahead of Button on the grid in fourth place, which gave him the lead after the Red Bulls’ early stops.
Although he couldn’t resist Button’s pass once it started raining again, he nevertheless did a fine job once again to take another podium and he now sits second in the world championship.
Kubica also built on a strong qualifying performance with another clean race and the right tactical calls en route to fifth place.
Like Button and Rosberg he made just two pit stops today, compared with four for the Red Bulls and Schumacher.
His Renault team-mate Vitaly Petrov also had a reputation-enhancing day, with some strong overtakes, including one on Schumacher, to take seventh place.
But the most remarkable story is probably Alonso, who finished fourth despite five visits to the pits, one of them to serve a drive-through penalty for jumping the start.
This was entirely his own fault and one can only guess what the result of the race might have been had he not done that.
Felipe Massa was with him for much of the race, apart from the drive-through of course, and yet finished down in ninth place, 45 seconds behind.
The safety car made a big difference to Alonso’s race. He was 10th and over 40 seconds behind the leaders when it was deployed.
The race restarted on lap 26 and three laps later Alonso was passing Adrian Sutil for sixth place and was up to fourth by lap 40.
One final thing to mention is that the stewards again took a more conciliatory line with drivers today, as in Malaysia.
Once again Hamilton was in the thick of the action, this time battling with Vettel on the way in and out of the pits.
The exit was the dangerous one; McLaren released Hamilton a second after Red Bull and as Vettel rolled alongside the McLaren box, Hamilton came up on his right.
Hamilton didn’t yield and Vettel squeezed him to the right, towards the pit apron and mechanics.
The stewards gave both drivers a reprimand, rather than a time penalty added to their race time or a grid penalty at the next race.
It marks a change of style from the last few years where stewards upset fans and drivers by being overly harsh at times in judging close driving calls.
Perhaps the presence of ex-drivers on the steward panel is having an effect. Here it was Alex Wurz whose voice was being heard in the stewards’ room.
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