What I think a lot of people are missing, however, is how important it actually is to be running at the front. I'm not sure Vettel's race pace, for example, was really any slower this time than in Bahrain, it was just impossible to tell because he was always in traffic. Being at the front allowed him to judge his race last time, even against someone with more sets of tyres, and he could push in clean air when given the chance.
Much as I don't think it helps Ferrari, I think being on the front few rows is going to become increasingly important because a consequence of the close running and strategy options the tyres give you is that unless you get away from the pack at the start significantly, you have a lot of problems with traffic after stops.
It is, in my opinion, an unrepresentative picture that Hamilton's qualifying has not yet yielded success, since a combination of penalties, weather and poor starts have made him unable to use it as he normally might. But unless Alonso can get close to the front-running pace in quali consistently, we may seem him unable to maxmise his relative good race pace.
Apologies for the length of the post, just a lot of thoughts to dump
