SUZUKA, Japan -- Since the Singapore Grand Prix three races ago, there has been an inevitability about the collapse of Sebastian Vettel's title campaign. Poor qualifying performances led to strategic errors, which in turn bred more mistakes and cranked up the pressure.
As the mistakes snowballed, the gap in points to Lewis Hamilton got bigger and the burden on Ferrari to succeed grew heavier. In the space of those three races, the persistent errors shrunk Vettel's championship chances from slim to microscopic and, just when he needed it most, Ferrari's performance advantage disappeared. Ferrari will now return to Maranello ahead of the final four rounds of the season and, as it did last year, will start dissecting what went wrong.