The German's closest challenger at the controversial desert race, held against a backdrop of political turmoil, was the Lotus of Kimi Raikkonen, who had returned to F1 after two years in rallying.
Raikkonen's ultimate pace was not quite there in the first half of the season, the Finn more often than not being beaten in qualifying by team-mate Romain Grosjean, but he showed admirable consistency in the races.
In the end, Raikkonen did not win in Bahrain - coming from 11th on the grid had taken too much out of his tyres and in the one chance he got to pass Vettel he hesitated and chose the wrong side.
BBC F1 co-commentator David Coulthard believes this was a result of a specific and very deliberate approach to the year by his former McLaren team-mate.
"He weighed up the situation and, risk versus return, he knew he didn't have the fastest car and he was going for consistency," Coulthard says, "and there will be a few people who didn't take two years off to go rallying might look at their own performances and just question, actually, Kimi did an amazing job on his comeback."
Third in the championship was the well deserved result.
By Bahrain, another theme of the season had been established - McLaren's inability to make the most of what was on the balance of the season the fastest car on the grid.
All the potential demonstrated by a dominant victory for Jenson Button in the season-opener in Australia and two consecutive poles for Lewis Hamilton was thrown away by a series of operational failures in the early races and then poor reliability later on.
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