The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix went green shortly after 5 p.m., and 22 cars charged for the first turn.

Sebastian Vettel got there first.

And that was, effectively, the end of the race, though they went ahead and drove 55 laps anyway.

So, where is Formula One racing, at this moment in history?

In the clutches of one man. Sebastian Vettel.

He clinched the 2013 drivers’ championship the a week ago, in India. Three races from the end of the season.

His victory in Abu Dhabi was his ninth of the season and seventh in succession. He is two off the one-season victory record, held by Michael Schumacher … and also two away from duplicating the longest winning streak in F1 history, set more than 60 years ago by the Italian Alberto Ascari.

Which is all fine and good for Vettel, but if F1 doesn’t catch up to him and Red Bull sometime soon, he and the Austrian team could do some serious harm to the sport.

When he got to Turn 1 ahead of Webber, to a chorus of groans, several people watching on TV, in the offices of The National, said: “The race is over.”

And it was. As the newspaper’s F1 correspondent noted, Vettel was 5.5 seconds after six laps and 8.2 seconds ahead after nine. At the end, he was a full 30 seconds ahead of Webber, who finished second.

A 30-second lead at Abu Dhabi is about one-third of a lap. An enormous lead, that is.

It was a processional race of the sort that would have Nascar executives calling an impromptu meeting to figure how to tighten up the competition.

F1 fans mock the Nascar rules that tend to bunch up fields, such as the occasional phantom caution flag, but Nascar’s tweaking tends to leave real doubt in the minds of fans over who is going to win. Which keeps them engaged.

After the first turn at Yas Island today, everyone could have gone to the movies and missed, essentially, nothing of significance at the track.

Abu Dhabi has a great facility, visually stunning, but races like this suck a lot of the life out of the event.

Real competition is needed in F1. And soon.