Spanish Grand Prix in 90 seconds

By Mark Hughes BBC F1 commentary box producer

The astounding level of the Red Bull's dominance at the Spanish Grand Prix left rivals reeling and Formula 1 steeling itself for a title battle that might ultimately be composed strictly of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber.

The counsel of Ferrari, McLaren and others to see what the very different demands of this weekend's Monaco race bring before arriving at that conclusion sounds very much like straw clutching. But could those hopes prove accurate?

First, let's quantify the RB6's advantage at Barcelona.

The best of the rest - Lewis Hamilton's McLaren - was 0.834 seconds per lap slower than Webber's pole lap at the Circuit de Catalunya. That represented a lap time 1% faster than anyone - which may not sound much but in F1 terms it is massive.

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To put it in perspective, being 1% slower than the Red Bull at Barcelona qualified you third whereas at the previous race it would have got you only 10th. Their superiority over the best of the rest was now as great as it had been over the 10th fastest in China.

With everyone putting on their first big package of upgrades for Spain, rivals were hoping that the gap to the Red Bulls was going to be closed.

Instead, it had extended massively, illustrating the devastating effectiveness of an almost total reconfiguration of the car's aerodynamics.

Every single body surface apart from the front wing was different from how it had been at the previous race. It was a much bigger, more aggressive upgrade than anyone else managed.

In qualifying, Webber and Vettel were taking the uphill right-hander of turn nine flat out in sixth gear, a whole gear up on the other cars. Their exit speed of 160mph from that corner was about 12mph better than the others.

The downforce advantage required to do that was estimated by a rival team's engineer as in the region of 120kg.

ANDREW BENSON'S BLOG It is no exaggeration to say that Red Bull's electrifying pace on Saturday had left their rivals reeling

However, the downforce increases as a square of the speed and so the advantage will not be as great through the slower corners of Monaco but it should still be there.

Furthermore, the cost of all that extra downforce - particularly when a lot of it comes, as suspected, from the upper body rather than the underside, courtesy of the car's unique rear suspension layout - is a lot of drag.

This was why the car was one of the very slowest at the end of Barcelona's long straights.

With no straights worth speaking of at Monaco, that disadvantage will not be as significant.

Pros and cons but, on balance, the car's advantage will probably be reduced. But will it be by enough to change the order?

A driver can play more of a role in transcending the natural level of his car through the tight twists of Monaco than through the more technically demanding fast sweeps that are key to a fast Barcelona lap. The corners are slower and of shorter duration.

Because speed of direction change therefore becomes relatively more important to the lap time than speed through the corner, the driver has a greater part to play.

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The car's downforce largely defines speed through the corner but its handling traits and the driver's inputs of steering, brakes and throttle are very significant in speed of direction change.

Therefore, acrobatic drivers like McLaren's Hamilton or Ferrari's Fernando Alonso might be expected to excel. But then Vettel and Webber do not lack in that department either.

The Red Bull drivers currently languish third and fourth in the drivers' championship but that is a reflection of reliability and strategy issues in the flyaway races.

They are comfortably within striking distance of Jenson Button and Alonso ahead of them.

Hanging upon the question of whether the RB6's hugely increased advantage in Spain was down to a staggeringly effective upgrade or the nature of the track is the likely destiny of the title.

Monaco this weekend should play a very large part in determining the answer.

Mark Hughes has been an F1 journalist for 10 years and is an award-winning author of several books

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