If Lewis Hamilton was an artist, he would paint with broad brush strokes and the brightest of colours. The one thing we have learnt to love and sometimes fear about him is that he is never dull on the canvas. It's either a black-and-white essay in misery or a triumphant celebration in colour. But not in Valencia yesterday.

The Briton delivered an almost featureless performance in the European Grand Prix around the America's Cup harbour, where he neither made any mistakes nor produced anything heroic. Instead, he drove solidly, dare one say it, unexcitingly, behind the pole-sitter and winner, Felipe Massa, of Ferrari, and brought his McLaren Mercedes home in exactly the same place as it started.

There were no attacks on Massa, no skirmishes, just a lightning-quick, metronomic display along the concrete-sided fast straights and tight turns of Formula One's newest track, which brought Hamilton eight valuable points. The message could not have been clearer. In his second season in Formula One, Hamilton is playing the long game and driving for the World Championship that should have been his last year.

Rather than try to win every race, a rookie's high-stakes philosophy that brought him such agony in the final two grands prix in Shanghai and São Paulo last year, when Kimi Raikkonen got up to steal the title from him for Ferrari, Hamilton is going for consistency and a steady accumulation of points. It is all part of growing up in the sport for the driver, who is showing that he can tame his youthful exuberance and virtuosity as he seeks out the main prize. While we may miss the fireworks of the “dream racer” that marked his early performances last year and drew such widespread comparisons to his hero, Ayrton Senna, an older and wiser Hamilton looks all the more likely to become champion as a result.

Martin Whitmarsh, the McLaren chief executive, said after the race: “Lewis is learning, we're still learning. He's getting stronger, mentally. He's been in one championship fight, now he's in another and I'm sure he'll learn throughout this one.

“The team shouldn't take any credit for it. Lewis is an intelligent driver, he's committed to winning every race, he likes to finish every session quickest, but I think he's becoming more confident and relaxed in his approach and realising that what really counts is winning World Championships, not every race.”

With six more grands prix this season - and with Hamilton enjoying a six-point advantage over Massa, in second place - we can expect more of the above, starting at the hillside test in Spa, Belgium, in two weeks' time.

Hamilton apart, yesterday's race was all about Ferrari, who enjoyed success with Massa - who drove fast and safe from pole to flag - but worrying failure with Raikkonen, who still looks out of sorts as a driver and who suffered the team's second successive engine failure after Massa's power plant blew up in Hungary three weeks ago.

Raikkonen was comprehensively beaten in qualifying by his team-mate on Saturday and, starting fourth on the grid, immediately lost a place to Heikki Kovalainen, of McLaren. At his second pit-stop, he jumped the lights and tried to leave with the amber light still flashing on the gantry - an incident that caused minor injuries to Piero Timpini, a mechanic in charge of the fuel hose. Three laps later, Raikkonen's engine went up in smoke. “Not much to say after a day like this,” summarised the taciturn Finn, who has slipped to third in the title race, 13 points behind Hamilton.

“It was definitely not the weekend I was hoping for, but I do not believe I am out of the running for the title.”

In the battle for power between the two top teams, the engine failures are big worries for Ferrari, who must run Massa at Spa with the same engine he used in Spain. McLaren, by comparison, have had excellent reliability with their Mercedes power plants, though tyre wear has been more of a problem for them. Either way, Ferrari have to sort this out, and fast. “Clearly, what happened is serious and we will have to do all in our power to make up the ground we have lost through reliability problems in the coming races,” Stefano Domenicali, the Scuderia team principal, said.

The new circuit, which consists of 25 corners and some very fast straights, had appeared to promise exciting racing, but - as some of the drivers had warned on Saturday - it flattered to deceive in this respect and Valencia's first taste of the big time in Formula One produced one of the dullest races in recent memory.

At the start of the race, there was some manoeuvring, during which Fernando Alonso was hit from behind, ending his participation, to gasps of despair in the packed grandstands. But, from then on, there were almost no passing moves. Not only that, the new track seemed to conspire against close racing and the field quickly spread out so that most drivers spent much of the afternoon circulating in relative isolation.

Among the few incidents of note was a dangerous few minutes for Robert Kubica, who did well to start and finish in third place in the BMW Sauber, his first podium finish since his victory in the Canadian Grand Prix in early June. Kubica was going well in the middle of the first stint when his car picked up a plastic bag that had fallen on to the track and became lodged in the underside of his chassis. It is a measure of the extreme sensitivity of modern Formula One cars to outside interference that this alone was almost enough to end his race, as the Pole revealed afterwards.

“I couldn't steer for two corners,” Kubica said. “It was extremely dangerous and I've never had this before. Fortunately, most of the bag flew away when I approached some high-speed corners, but my confidence was very low for the next sector and I lost around three seconds.”

The Pole was the only one to offer Hamilton any direct opposition all afternoon when he briefly took on the McLaren driver at the start before deciding caution was the better part of valour as the two drivers braked for the chicane at Turn 2. “In corner one, I went over a kerb and Lewis was closing. In the second corner, I was going to overtake Lewis, but saw Felipe braking early. It would have been too much of a risk as I could end up overshooting the braking point and crashing into him,” he said.