What's truly scary about Vettel is that despite his Red Bull Renault's mechanical problems in the first two races, he's just two points shy of leader Felipe Massa. The young German has now led well over 50 percent of the laps turned this season as well.

Vettel will almost certainly score a top-5 finish at China on April 18; he won the event last year in wet conditions and is historically good at backing up race wins. In five career races following a victory, Vettel has not won but has never finished worse than fifth. Indeed, his third-place average finish in the next event following a victory is certainly on par with other F1 superstars since 2008, the season of his first win.

The best average finish in races following a win since 2008 (minimum three wins, active drivers only):

Granted, it is a small sample size, but it should not take away from Vettel's ability to defend a race win.

As impressive as Vettel's run was at Malaysia, Hamilton's performance was arguably as good or a close second. After starting 20th on the grid following McLaren's disastrous qualifying effort, Hamilton sliced through the field on the opening laps, placing himself in 10th within five laps.

Teammate Jenson Button and the Ferrari duo also started the race around Hamilton, but were nowhere near as quick in relation to him in the opening laps. The feat is even more impressive when you consider that Hamilton was running on hard tires, not the softer options like many others.

If you had not seen the race and viewed only lap-by-lap positions, you might have thought the race was run in the rain, as few are better than Hamilton in those conditions and it read much as if he was easily overtaking drivers who weren't as confident in the wet. But, alas, there was no rain and Hamilton performed admirably on a dry track.

Elsewhere Sunday, reliability issues with Ferrari's engines were brought into the spotlight. Fernando Alonso's blown engine with a lap remaining added to the list; both Ferrari-powered Saubers saw their engines fail. Pedro de la Rosa failed to make the start, and teammate Kamui Kobayashi failed to make it 10 laps into the race before his engine let go. Recall that Ferrari had changed engines prior to the season opener at Bahrain. It should be noted that both Toro Rosso cars, also powered by Ferrari, seemed to have no engine issues.

After a fairly processional Bahrain, the past two events have certainly provided thrills. Three teams have won the first three races, the first such occurrence since 1990. That season was a memorable one, as Ayrton Senna was able to best former teammate and bitter rival Alain Prost in the world championship standings, in Prost's first year after departing McLaren. Although that season had variety at the start, with Ferrari, McLaren and Williams sharing the first three race wins, only one other team was able to score a victory the rest of the season (Benetton in the final two races).

The most consecutive races won by a different team to start a season (since 1975):

Spanning to 1975, there have been just five occasions when three teams won the opening three races, and McLaren has been involved in all of them.

Michael Schumacher's comeback has gotten off to a rocky start, but few expected him to be competing for race wins this early in the season. While there's no reason to think that Schumacher cannot or will not find more success down the road, he must be frustrated with the difficulties encountered thus far.

Said Schumacher after Malaysia, "It was a shame that I could not finish the race, but unfortunately the wheel nut on the left rear wheel was lost. ... I would have obviously wanted to finish the race, and I think it could have worked out quite reasonably well. But in the end that is motor racing, I remember that very well. It makes no sense to get angry about it -- you have to accept it as part of the game and look ahead."

Schumacher has remained calm while weathering the early storm, despite his 10th-place position in the points. It's rather unfamiliar territory for him, as he hasn't been in a similar position since his first season with Ferrari in 1996, when he was battling an unreliable car (two retirements in the first three races).

While he struggled out of the gate in the first three competitions of several more recent seasons, those were with a strong Ferrari squad, and Schumacher was able to quickly bounce back. Teammate Rosberg has shown that Mercedes has a pretty high potential this season, however, so only time will tell.