The Brawn cars were firmly beaten by Red Bull in last weekend's British Grand Prix - but are they as far ahead as their Silverstone race pace suggests?

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German Sebastien Vettel (pictured) raced away to an unflustered victory on Sunday, running one second a lap faster than second-placed Rubens Barrichello on the opening stint then protecting his lead with ease for the rest of the race against frustrated team-mate Mark Webber.

Red Bull benefited from what was virtually a 'b'-spec car with a new rear wing endplate and a dramatically different front nose making the noticeable visual impact - but their new floor and overall vehicle layout, which saw the rear axles pushed rearwards to provide a greater space for the double rear diffuser, was perhaps even more influential.

The new modifications certainly increased the pace of the car and although the Q2 times from qualifying show that Rubens Barrichello's Brawn and Jarno Trulli's Toyota were both within a 10th or two of the fastest time from the Red Bulls, come race day the Red Bulls were in a league of their own.

The true performance differential between Red Bull and Brawn, however, is actually much smaller than it appeared at Silverstone - because two unique factors specific to that race combined to increase the gap much more than the &lsquonormal running' pace likely to be seen in future races.

The Brawn has been famously kind on its tyres since the start of the season - but in this race that proved to be its downfall.

Firstly, the temperatures were the coldest yet for a dry race this season and with low temperatures it is much harder to get the tyres to warm up to their optimum operating temperature.

That was proved by the Brawn's lack of pace in the first and second stints and only on the final stint did they get anywhere close to the lap times the Red Bulls had been consistently setting all race - but that was when the Brawns were on the soft tyres and the Red Bulls were on hards.

The second factor is the nature of the track, with Silverstone's fast-flowing layout highlighting the superior high speed aero balance of the Red Bull cars - which enabled them to go faster through the high speed corners and take that extra speed advantage all the way down the following straight - and, perhaps more significant, the lack of braking that had a major effect on the way the Brawns tyres failed to perform.

Normally, heavy braking will heat up the brake disks inside the wheels and that heat will work its way through the rims and into the tyres. But with a limited amount of braking around a lap of Silverstone, there was less braking energy available to heat the tyres, making it doubly difficult for the Brawn drivers to get them up to temperature.

So while Brawn are now looking back on last weekend's race with some concern, they can at least breathe a sigh of relief that the kind of circuit and the levels of temperature seen at Silverstone are unlikely to be repeated in many other places this year.

Award-winning sports journalist Will Gray has worked in and around Formula One for more than a decade, providing detailed technical insight as well as live news reports and features for newspapers such as the Daily Telegraph and Daily Star, AFP and Reuters news agencies and a variety of magazines. He has also worked as an F1 expert on TalkSPORT and Irish radio.