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Lady Luck favoured Spain's Fernando Alonso and handed him what turned out to be an easy victory in a rain-soaked, incident-packed Korean Grand Prix; the Ferrari driver took his fifth win of the season by almost 15 seconds over second-placed Lewis Hamilton and his McLaren-Mercedes.
At first it seemed doubtful that the race would be run at all when the heavy rain brought out the red flag after the first two laps were run behind the safety car. However, after a long delay the race restarted in slightly better conditions, and it was Sebastian Vettel in the Red Bull who shot into the lead followed by his teammate Mark Webber, with Alonso and Hamilton in hot pursuit.
The race took on a new complexion on lap 19, however, when Webber spun and hit the wall on turn 19, taking Mercedes GP's Nico Rosberg with him, and out came the safety car again.
Five laps later the race resumed at full pace, with Vettel still in control - and then the pit stops for the mandatory tyre changes began. Here Lady Luck at first favoured Hamilton, who got out ahead of Alonso as the Spaniard had parked badly, making it difficult for his mechanics to change the right front wheel.
But then the fickle femme switched sides again. The safety car came out once more on lap 31 after Toro Rosso's Sebastien Buemi ran into Virgin's Timo Glock, and when race pace resumed Hamilton discovered his front wheels were locking, allowing Alonso to get by as the McLaren ran wide.
By this time Vettel had built up a lead of nearly three seconds, but Alonso and Hamilton started to hunt him down, with Alonso finally catching him on lap 46.
He dived the Ferrari's nose on the inside of the Red Bull to take the lead - and on the exit of the corner Vettel's engine capitulated, the Red Bull rampage over.
Now it was Hamilton's turn to attack, but Alonso is a hard man to overtake, and soon the locking wheel began to take its toll on Hamilton's right front tyre, and he was forced to back off to get to the finish.
However he still had more than enough space before third-placed Ferrari driver Felipe Massa, though the two podium places have done lots for Ferrari's constructors' title hopes.
Fourth place went to as worthy Michael Schumacher in the Mercedes GP, the old head mastering the conditions, while another worthy race from Renault's Robert Kubica saw the Pole finish fifth.
Tonio Liuzzi in the Force India drove his best race of the season to finish sixth, with Rubens Barrichello in the Williams seventh, ahead of the BMW Saubers of Kamui Kobayashi and Nick Heidfeld.
Nico Hulkenberg in the second Williams snatched the final point from Toro Rosso's Jaime Alguersuari on the last lap.
Next up was Britain's Jenson Button in the second McLaren. He had brake problems from the start, then was pushed off the road by a hard-charging Adrian Sutil in the second Force India - one of many incidents involving the German during the race - and suffered some body damage.
Lotus's Heikki Kovalainen was the first of the "new" cars, in 13th, ahead of the HRTs of Bruno Senna and Sakon Yamamoto.
Sutil was the first non-finisher. First he spun on lap 29, then had incidents with Button and Kobayashi, ran wide in turn one and lost a place to Alguersuari, then hit Kobayashi and brought about his own retirement on the 47th lap with damaged front suspension.
The result puts Alonso into an 11-points drivers' championship lead over Webber, 231 to 220, with just two races left. Third is Lewis Hamilton with 210 and fourth Sebastian Vettel on 206.
Red Bull still leads the constructors' on 426 points, followed by McLaren on 399 and Ferrari back in the hunt with 374.
