Fernando Alonso stood emotional on the podium in Valencia as he celebrated a victory that looked incomprehensible after a poor qualifying display.

The Spaniard started the race from 11th position yet managed to make some crucial overtaking moves which in turn allowed him to take first place when Sebastian Vettel retired from the race. 

Vettel's retirement was due to an alternator failure which occured shortly after the cars restarted from behind a safety car. Vettel was in a commanding position before the safety car was deployed, holding a 20 second lead over the rest of the pack.

Red Bull's pace during the race can be put down to a major aerodynamic upgrade. The duct in front of the rear tyres now connects to the diffuser, which consequently helps to draw air into the low-pressure area of the diffuser to create greater downforce.

The sidepod has also been lowered since the Monaco GP, as well as a modification to tunnel hot air from the cars radiator out from half-way along the rear tyres. This new tuneling system helps to dispose the hot air more quickly, which prevents it from interfering with the fast low-pressure air that is used to create downforce.

In short, Red Bull are trying to recreate a model of the recently banned exhaust-blown diffuser which helped them dominate the past two years of Formula One. 

The benefits of this upgrade was most apparent in the final run of qualifying on Saturday. Sebastian Vettel went out only once during Q3 and yet still landed pole position, 0.324 seconds ahead of second-placed Lewis Hamilton. Roughly that same time separated six other cars at the end of Q3 and as David Coulthard mentioned during commentary, Vettel would have been faster still if he had gone on to do a second run on the track. 

Vettel continued to dominate the numbers game on Sunday, even when the race was just two laps old; the German had managed to build up a four second gap between himself and Hamilton.

When the safety car was deployed due to an unnecessary collision between Kovalainen and Vergne, Vettel commanded a lead of around 20 seconds over second-placed Romain Grosjean and was in a frightening mood of control and dominance.

Vettel's pace before his retirement has concerned Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali, who admitted that Red Bull had done something very good this weekend which makes them the quickest.

After failing to score in the European GP, Red Bull's 'number one' driver now sits in fourth place in the overall standings, 26 points behind Valencia winner Fernando Alonso.

The defending champion however emerges from Grand Prix number eight with a smirk on his face. The points were never in doubt during the race, he was never fighting for the lead unlike Alonso who admirably fought from 11th place.

Even though the Valencia track craves the upgrades made by Red Bull, Sebastian Vettel's pole position and 35-lap race sent out a damning 'catch me if you can' message; a message that will strike greater fear into his closest competitors than a 26-point championship lead.

Silverstone awaits.