A battle for the win is the icing on the cake. However there can be only one winner and since there are currently 22 cars fielded in each Grand Prix we'd have to assume that most of the racing is going to take place outside of P1.
A race can still be greatly exciting regardless of the dominance of the leader if there are some good fights behind.
The Schumacher era wasn't always boring, perhaps the ease of his dominance in 02 and 04 got a bit tiring but there was still some good stuff going on behind between the likes of Raikkonen, Alonso and Montoya. I think today seems better because overall we have more drivers at the top of their games in cars which enable them to challenge.
I enjoyed the race yesterday. Sure, after about lap two we knew who was going to win, but very little was certain behind. Obviously Kimi and Lewis provided some excitement with their fightback after their enforced two stop strategies, but there was a decent scrap between the Toro Rossos, McLarens and Grosjean going on behind.
I think one of the most impressive parts of the race was Red Bull in the pits... they turned Vettel around in 2.6 seconds.. and they brought Webber in on the same lap
(and he wasn't all that far behind to be fair) and they did his stop in 2.7 seconds. That's seriously impressive when you consider they only had seconds to get ready for Webber.