A question

Am I the only one who is slightly disappointed that there won't be a breakaway championship with the big F1 teams? After seeing a tentative schedule yesterday I was rather looking forward to this.

The FIA/FOTA split

I've stayed pretty quiet on this issue as there are a number of other motorsport bloggers who are far more knowledgeable and insightful about it than I am. Let me just just share a few of my opinions on it...

• F1 has been pretty entertaining the last couple of seasons, although the novelty of Brawn GP winning everything will ultimately wear off. I worry that one way or another, F1 is going to get boring again.
• Max Mosley disgusts me. Everything he does, and every way he does it, I find offensive. If a shake-up in F1 is what it takes to depose the shrivelled old goat then bring it on, I say.
• A breakaway championship sounds all well and good, but 16 cars maketh not a particularly good race. However, if the championship is able to give a greater share of TV revenue to teams, it might actually be a cheaper option to get into a series with a higher budget cap but higher income than to go to the FIA's tightly-capped F1.
• Does this offer an amazing opportunity to the A1GP blokes to finally get something out of their massive spend? Sell it, with its schedule, contracts, staff and assets, to FOTA and BOOM, instant championship.
  
• I'd love to see more teams involved in F1. Back in 1991 I went to the British Grand Prix on the Friday and there were so many teams that there was a pre-qualifying session involving no-hopers like Fondmetal, Lamborghini and Coloni - 34 cars in total!
  
• The breakaway (which we'll call the "Grand Prix World Championship" for shits and giggles) could potentially run at tracks which have left, are leaving, or are threatened with ejection from F1, such as Montreal, Silverstone, Magny Cours, Indianapolis, Hockenheim, Imola and Fuji, since the GPWC is likely to offer more favourable terms to those track promoters than Ecclestone. It goes without saying that the GPWC would be unable to race at current F1 venues...
  
• However, these tracks face a serious issue - if they sign up to host a GPWC race, the FIA would almost certainly pull other FIA championships from those tracks - WTCC, FIA GT, and Formula 2 for example. This could affect "classic venues" like Silverstone and Imola, as well as GP-ready tracks like Brno, Portimao, Valencia and Oschersleben.
  
• The FIA ultimately sanctions ALL worldwide motorsport, via national ASNs, and if an ASN provides local sanctioning for the GPWC they themselves could face retaliation from the FIA. I see this as being the potential ultimate undoing of the GPWC. I think they'll struggle to find any promoters, tracks or ASNs willing to go against the FIA.
• The FIA is threatening legal action to FOTA teams. Fucking idiots. How about compromising on TV revenues and paying back revenue owed to teams in order to keep the lines of communication open? Any sane person would continue to work on resolving this. It seems to me that Mosley and Ecclestone are consumed by their thirst for power and influence rather than acting like motorsport management professionals. If this situation does anything, I hope it brings these two dickheads down to earth with a bang.
  

The diffuser thing

The FIA have decreed that Brawn GP, Toyota and Williams were within the rules when they ran with their "double-decker" diffuser for the first two F1 races of the season. This is great news, because it sets up much excitement for the rest of the season.

There is no doubt that those without the special diffuser will implement one, and that their performance will increase. McLaren in particular have much to gain, since their major issue was getting that rear wing to work, and with the extra rear downforce from the new diffuser that will become less of a problem. Ferrari are said to be ready to go with a new design, and they desperately need it after a shocking start to the season. Red Bull have looked to be amongst the "best of the rest", so in theory they could be right up at the sharp end. However, their car will not easily accommodate a change to the diffuser, so it may be some time before they can implement it. Renault might easily run something new as early as this weekend. What we can expect to see is the "Diffuser Three" become the "Diffuser Four" at China, then Ferrari and McLaren jumping on board at Bahrain, and (maybe) the remaining teams by Spain in May. This has effectively handed Brawn, Toyota and Williams a 2-4 race "head start" on the rest of the field, something that Brawn have best capitalized on. By the middle of the European season I can see the field being very evenly matched, which sets up a thrilling climax at the end as the powerhouse teams look to claw back their deficit from the early-season upstarts.

I think it is still quite possible for Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello to be in the thick of the title fight as we approach the season finale.

I told you so

Check it.

I win.

Bookies everywhere agree - it's Jenson

I took a look at the betting lines on this weekend's Australian F1 Grand Prix over at Sports Interaction, and was pretty amazed at what I saw:

1. Button - 5:1
2. Raikkonen - 6:1
3. Alonso - 8:1
4. Massa - 8:1
5. Barrichello - 8:1
6. Hamilton - 11:1
7. Kubica - 13:1
8. Heidfeld - 23:1
   
9. Vettel - 26:1
10. Trulli - 30:1
11. Glock - 35:1
12. Kovalainen - 41:1
13. Rosberg - 41:1
14. Webber - 51:1
15. Nakajima - 71:1
    
16. Piquet - 81:1
17. Bourdais - 201:1
18. Sutil - 251:1
19. Fisichella - 251:1

Not sure why there's no odds on Buemi, but whatever. There's some fascinating insight here into what the public's perception is of how the weekend will go. After all, odds are generally calculated based upon bets received thus far, after an initial setting of odds by the bookies. Seems that Brawn's testing times have gotten everyone's attention, but what is remarkable is that Button is the one seen as the most likely to win, despite Barrichello's better record, and greater experience in a front-running team.

So there's some bargains to be had here and the one I've put a few dollars on is young Nico Rosberg. The German Swede posted the second fastest time at the Jerez tests, and third fastest at Barcelona, yet languishes at 41:1. An each way bet seemed like a no-brainer, since picking a winner in an F1 race (especially the first of the season) can be notoriously difficult. For a $5 stake ($10 each way) a win pays about $250, and 2nd or 3rd nets $45. Not bad at all.

Given BMW and Toyota's steady progress through the off-season, they all looked good too, bar Kubica, whose 8:1 odds can't justify the money. For anyone who wants to live closer to the edge, Webber and Nakajima are both wildcards at 51:1 and 71:1 respectively. The Williams in particular looks great.

Nothing like a flutter to make things more interesting!

The winner takes it all

Man, I've gone three years without quoting Abba on this blog. Damn you FIA!

Mornings for me, like most people I guess, are tough. I have to grapple with wardrobe decisions (something I hate), try to eat a bowl of generally disgusting high-fibre cereal, face up to yet another commute in the rain on my motorcycle, and do all this after being rudely separated from blissful unconsciousness by the alarm on my irritating and ineligible-for-an-upgrade-until-May cellphone.

It doesn't help when my well-intentioned and well-informed wife throws out a comment like "did you hear Formula 1 is going to decide its champion based on number of wins this year".

This is something we all feared - Mad Bernie's medals system. Surely this was too mad to ever make it? Well, welcome to F1, where madness is the norm and those with sanity are considered insane.

However, further reading on the topic slightly alleviated my unhappiness. Turns out that only the winner of the championship will be decided by number of wins. All other positions will still be determined by points. It's a huge roll of the dice by the FIA since a situation like last year could easily crop up again whereby the guy with the most points isn't the guy who won the most races. How will Joe Public understand that? The old system seems to work just fine in every other motorsport championship.

It works well beyond motorsport too. Imagine if the Tour de France used an equivalent of the new FIA system? Mark Cavendish would have won the 2008 Tour with four stage wins. Except he wouldn't, because he left the race to train for the Olympics. Which meant Stefan Schumacher and Riccardo Ricco would have tied with two wins and it would have gone back to the old system to determine which of them was the winner. Except it wouldn't, because Ricco was thrown off the Tour for a positive drug test. This would have elevated Alejandro Valverde, who came second to Ricco on stage 6 to two stage wins, now tied with Schumacher. Hang on though, Schumacher tested positive for drugs in a retest two months after the Tour ended, so Valverde in theory would be the only guy with two wins. Hang on again, because the organizers haven't officially undone the wins of Ricco and Schumacher, even though Schumacher was also later disqualified. So Cavendish didn't win because he withdrew. Ricco didn't win because he was thrown off the race. Schumacher didn't win because he was later disqualified. Valverde didn't win because Ricco's win on stage 6 still stands. That means that ALL other stage winners would have tied, so the decider would have been the old system, and finally we would have gotten the same winner, Carlos Sastre, after much confusion and many months of delay.

You know you're in trouble when the controversy-riddled Tour de France is used as example of how things SHOULD work....

Brawn can do it

I'm going to go out on a limb here...

The former Honda F1 team might actually not suck this year. Here's why:

• Two drivers who are proven race-winners. Being stuck in that awful Honda for so long might have shortened some peoples' memory as to how talented Button and Barrichello actually are
• Ross Brawn, he's good. I seem to remember he did rather well when he was in charge of a team running a wonky-mouthed German chap.
• KERS. Those that have it, and have it working, have a distinct advantage. Sounds like Brawn do.
• Mercedes engines. There's not a bad engine in F1 at the moment, but an engine that propelled the world champ last year is surely a better bet than one that propelled the Honda team.
• The new regs. Everyone starts with a clean sheet this year. That has to be a distinct advantage to anyone who struggled with the previous regulation set.
• It's not a new team. F1 has seen a myriad of new teams arrive, fail and leave. Brawn is not in this category, despite the general feeling of "newness". Having an established staff, facility and a complete understanding of all facets of the series (sporting, technical, commercial, political etc.) means they are at least on the level of Force India, as opposed to, say, Stupid Aguri.

Button for champ? Not likely. But Brawn being the laughing stock of the paddock again? Also not likely. And who doesn't love an underdog?

The Onion meets Jalopnik

How the fuck did I miss this? From the depraved mind of Evo columnist and Top Gear script editor Richard Porter, Sniff Petrol is like The Onion for the automotive world. I've already wasted many minutes this afternoon trying to catch up. One of my favourite features is David "Crazy D" Coulthard's column in which he's talking like Ali G. Check it yo...

BMW: Toyota's worst nightmare

Back in December 2006, I wrote a post about how Toyota should really be so much better than they are, not just in F1 but in all forms of motorsport. Here we are, 18 months later, and Toyota's generally poor showing in F1 has been brought into stark contrast by the remarkable first win for the BMW F1 team in Canada.

BMW seems almost to be the opposite of the behemoth that is Toyota. Perhaps the most successful "small" independent carmaker, they've made a point of generally kicking tail in every motorsport they've been in. Robert Kubica's win today is simply the latest in a long string of racing successes for the Munich-based manufacturer. Back in 1998 after a failed two-car Le Mans effort they radically revamped their V12LM prototype, realizing that revolution, not evolution was the way to go, and brought in the expertise of the Williams F1 design and engineering departments to help out. Whilst requiring more work, and representing greater risk of failure, it was this move that set the ball rolling for a victory at the Sarthe in 1999.

Since the return of the World Touring Car Championship in 2004, BMW has taken both drivers and manufacturers championships, always in the face of very stiff competition. Between 1973 and 1988 they won seven European Touring Car Championships, and the '88-'91 E30 M3 is often considered the most successful production-based racing car of all time.

When BMW brought their E46 M3 to the American Le Mans Series it was utterly dominant. It's not often that you see Porsche crying foul about another manufacturer cheating, but the success of the M3GTR drove them to such action. The car was swiftly banned for not complying with homologation numbers requirements. Next year sees the return of the M3 to the ALMS. I wonder how it will do? They're also going World Superbike racing in 2009 with a clean-sheet design, no doubt with series designs on the title.

And there's always the small matter of two Nurburgring 24 Hours victories with the aforementioned M3 GTR in 2004 and 2005.

For such a relatively small company, BMW have generally done a splendid job whenever they've gone racing. Toyota on the other hand have nothing but a string of failures to show for the ungodly amounts of money they've spent on their racing activities. The only bright spot in their racing portfolio is recent success in NASCAR, but based on this season's results, much of that is due to a certain Mr. Busch.

Shuntorama

What a weekend for big accidents. We saw two entirely different yet highly disturbing crashes, both of which illustrated the potential danger of the sport, as well as the incredible ability of modern race cars to protect its occupant when things go wrong.

Here's exhibit A. Stephane Ortelli's LMP1 class prototype experienced some kind of mechanical failure during the Monza 1000km and veered abruptly to the right. At this point the aerodynamics, which are designed to prevent a car getting air (like the Mercedes CLRs at Le Mans in '99) took over because the car was sideways, and aero is not designed for sideways travel. The car launched into a massive barrel roll. As with most accidents of this type, they look far worse than they are - the gradual release of energy throughout the crash ensured that Ortelli never experienced life-threatening G-loading. The scariest thing about this one is how close the flying Oreca came to decapitating Allan McNish in the Audi:



Onto Exhibit B. In the Spanish Formula 1 Grand Prix, McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen also experienced a mechanical failure that forced the car to go somewhere it shouldn't. In his case, the car speared off the track and he made contact with the tyre wall at an angle of about 30 degrees whilst doing 137mph. Unlike Ortelli's crash, Kovalainen DID experience massive G-loads, perhaps equalling Robert Kubica's record-setting 75G load during his accident in Canada last year. It's worth noting that 100G is enough to kill most people. An additional aspect of this shunt that was scary was the fact that the car dived UNDER the tyre barrier, and no matter how low down the driver sits, his head is very much at risk in that kind of situation.


I'm not that surprised that Ortelli was relatively unharmed (save for a broken ankle) but the fact that Kovalainen survived with nothing more than concussion and some bumps and bruises is incredible. I have no doubt that the HANS device played a key role in his survival.

The gains in safety since the Imola '94 have been remarkable and it's weekends like this, where we could easily have been mourning the loss of one, perhaps even two, professional racing drivers, that are testament to the work put in by many on this critical issue.

Max Mosley - it is my OPINION that you are a piece of....

....shit.

This is disgusting

For a less inflammatory version, go here.

Okay, let's be perfectly clear, just so I don't have lawyers on my admirable-helping-underserved-youth-non-profit-job-salary-earning ass: in no way am I representing any of this post as FACT, but I personally FEEL that Max Mosley is a stinky dog turd of a human being. I would rather have my genitals slashed with broken glass than have him continue as the most powerful man in my favourite sport, although I wonder if something like that might actually get him off...

What people do in their own bedroom is their business. S&M doesn't freak me out, and I'll staunchly defend the rights of people to engage in sexual behavior of their choosing. However there's two additional issues here:

The first is that elements of what Mosley has been accused of doing, if proven to be true, constitute a serious criminal offence: it is alleged that he paid women for sex.

The second is that the scenario used in this particular mode of sexual expression is derogatory to a large group of people. Since Mosley is in charge of an INTERNATIONAL federation, he cannot be seen to insult any cultural group. If he does, it undermines his position and authority in a manner that would appear to make his continued work utterly untenable.

Up until now, I, like many, many others have vehemently disagreed with how he runs the FIA, but like it or not, it's his toy and he can play with it how he wants. Whether this sequence of events is true or not, the fact that he put himself in a situation that can produce such damning evidence, even it ultimately proves to be untrue (not sure how that can be, but anyway...) should be enough to make him step down. That would be the right and honourable course of action.

Although "right" and "honourable" don't seem to be concepts Max grasps very well, given his alleged behavior in that Chelsea dungeon.

One last thing: how sad is it that I had to spend significant time reading up on California defamation law before publishing this post? So one last time - I don't represent anything in this post as truth, it is all entirely my opinion.

Hey, even one more thing: all this goes down two days after Max's FIA predessor and one-time nemesis, Jean-Marie Balestre, dies. Weird. The ghost of JMB is already hard at work.

Max

I wrote a post earlier today about the story published in News of the World in which they alleged that Max Mosley was involved in a sordid S&M and Nazi-style roleplay session with prostitutes . I even published the post, stuffed full of as many disclaimers as I could think of.

However, until the story develops further the post returns to unpublished status. I'd hate to be made an example of. How fucking sad. Freedom of speech and all that...

Formula 1, Top Gear-style

Rumours are flying in the UK that with the switch of F1 coverage from ITV to BBC next year, Top Gear's Richard Hammond is set to anchor the broadcasts. Furthermore, Jeremy Clarkson and James May, Hammond's co-presenters, may also wind up being involved.

I cannot decide how I feel about this idea. I love Top Gear. Despite all its chest-pumping, anti-American vitriol and Clarkson's brainless pontificating, it is a genuinely enjoyable TV show with rich content and extremely high production values. People complain about how TG emphasizes impractical, expensive cars and engages in childish stunts but if you took Top Gear and made it more "practical", less fancy, and with less cartoonish presenters, you'd have Fifth Gear. That show is still enjoyable but is nowhere near as compelling as Top Gear. Thinking about it though, it's the stories in TG that I find most compelling, not the personalities. In F1, we'd be subjected to more personality and less story, so it might get very irritating, very quickly. Even more worrying, despite winning an Emmy for "best unscripted documentary" or something, Top Gear is very tightly scripted, even the road tests, something that the F1 coverage won't be. How will they do without time to work out what they're going to say?

Still, it's an interesting idea. I'm curious to hear from those in the UK what they think of this...

Mad as a brush

The antics of FIA boss Max Mosley continue to astound just about everyone. He's now gone off and sued Britain's Sunday Times over an article penned by F1 commentator Martin Brundle in September, critical of the whole McLaren spy affair.

I know it's been said many times before by many other people, but this man simply has to go. There's no doubt that his antics have harmed the sport in the past year and I'm sure will continue to do so. I remember back when Jean-Marie Balestre was ousted - the sense of relief in the racing world was palpable. When Mosley is finally given the chop you can expect the same.

But what others are tending to miss is the fact that Max is not just in charge of Formula 1 rule-making. He's responsible for ALL FIA-sanctioned motorsport, and perhaps more importantly the organization's automobile advocacy worldwide. What concerns me is that if he seems this nutty in regards to F1 rule-making, what kind of an effect is he having on road-safety efforts? What bizarre schemes is he dreaming up, and which other safety advocates is he suing for daring to question his decisions?

Fernando Alonso

Just decide already. You bore me...

Live timing = more interesting

Shock horror: I watched an F1 race yesterday (Clive, you'd be so proud...)

Call me a fairweather F1 fan, you'd be right, but this race was rather important, and had the added bonus of not being at the bum-crack of dawn. When you watch live you can pull up the live timing and scoring from the Formula 1 website and I won't lie when I say that watching this was in some ways more interesting than watching the TV. I'm not trying to bash F1, but I say this to illustrate something that's critical for those involved in racing to realize:

Beyond the spectacle of cars or bikes moving fast, what draws people to racing is the competition, and a genre of racing that best highlights the competition is a genre that will be successful.

This is easy for some racing: World Superbike or British Touring Cars for example have constant action between leaders, and the battles are clear to see using nothing but TV as a communication medium. But in something like the American Le Mans Series, or even Formula 1, where large gaps open up between competitors, live timing and scoring can be a lifeline. As I watched the F1 race yesterday I was completely captivated by the scoring, letting out of whoops of joy every time a purple number showed up indicating a fastest sector time, or even seeing green numbers that showed a driver was putting in their personal best times. Such simple presentation made it much easier to follow how the race was unfolding, and instead of watching 90 minutes of cars that appeared to be one long unchanging train with large gaps, the subtleties of the drama became obvious.

Following the progress of young Lewis Hamilton as he clawed back from 18th place was much like what I'd been doing the day before, when I sat in the media centre at Laguna Seca watching the ALMS race. My focus was on the dramatic recovery of the Andretti-Green Acura which came from two laps down to just 30 seconds off the lead of the race in four hours. It was a picture best painted by timing and scoring, and the advantage of being in the media centre was that it was real-time, as opposed to the aggregated version that's online and is often delayed.

MotoGP timing is a model for many other racing series, especially in qualifying, where fast sector times are illustrated by coloured "helmets", and online users can check the progress of riders in real time, sector by sector.

Whatever the mechanism, any technology that more clearly communicates the competition is going to make for a more compelling product. It's an area I expect to see utilized ever more comprehensively. For any race series that wants to see the possibilities, NASCAR's system is perhaps the most highly developed, with GPS tracking in every car allowing for a computerized image to be presented, along with driver communications and timing that shows the progress of the driver in a plus or minus format over the current fastest time or leader. Fascinating stuff indeed, although perhaps edging into "information overload" territory. For now, Formula 1's simple yet effective system is for me the benchmark if for no other reason in that it made the race more enjoyable to watch. And that has to be the bottom line for any such system.

The day after yesterday, in racing blogs

After my unashamedly immature outburst on the McLaren spying issue yesterday (I'm not the only one either, Ian at Suitcase of Courage is similarly incensed), leave it up to Clive over at F1 Insight to come up with a coherent post about why this decision is so unjust. Check it out...

The world has gone mad

$100 MILLION DOLLARS????

My jaw has hit the floor. A team has been fined $100m and lost all its constructors points because a rogue employee received confidential materials from another team but clearly didn't end up using them. McLaren almost certainly didn't benefit in this whole thing. If anything Ferrari should be the ones most concerned and should be getting their own house in order. Luckily for them, the FIA has its tongue lodged permanently in their collective behind.

I mean, I always knew Formula 1 was a ridiculous "sport", sucking capital away from other (perhaps more worthy) forms of racing, forging no technical advances apart from those that serve itself, and generally making a mockery of the fundamental spirit of competition that fuels most motor sport.

But this stupid, brain-deadening, faux-spy-novel, Hollywood-film-star-level-of-drama drama is just one more nail in the coffin of a sport that seems intent on destroying itself from the inside out, under the tutelage of one psychotic man with a voracious appetite for power at all costs and another with a similar appetite for money (sorry for the run-on sentence, my anger precludes me from utilizing proper grammar right now)

The whole thing makes me sick. Stupid F1, you suck, I hate you, I can pretend I don't care but clearly I do, because this thing is bad for motor sport as a whole.

Would you ever see this kind of thing in MotoGP? No.

Get me to a club race, I need to see some PROPER racing...

Do you know the way to San Jose?

Champ Car did, but doesn't want to anymore. The series announced today that they will not be returning to San Jose for a third time, discarding the track in a very large bin named "street circuits of the past" alongside defunct tracks like Birmingham (England), Caesar's Palace parking lot (Las Vegas), Miami and Vancouver.

The question is: will it be missed? The drivers for the most part hated it, with its tight confines, single passing zone, shortness and those VTA tram lines. Fans flocked to the race, but none can claim to have had a particularly good time with the poor sightlines, ridiculously crowded bridges and processional racing. The city of San Jose was indifferent, with the additional sales tax revenue offset by the cost of policing, road closures and cleanup much of which was not covered by the organizers. The political cost of displacing angry residents was also not insignificant.

There is a place in the grand pantheon of motorsport for street circuits. Staging a motor race slap-bang in the middle of a major city, whilst a logistical challenge, brings significant recognition to racing in general and the specific genre in particular. The Monaco Grand Prix is a perfect example of this. F1 puts up with all the extra BS and headache for one weekend in order to stage a remarkable event that serves as the "jewel in the crown" of the championship. Safety standards are "relaxed", teams suck it up and park and their transporters offsite, drivers accept that qualifying becomes the most important part of the weekend and fans eschew traditional spectating approaches simply for the pleasure of "being there".

But Monaco is unique on the F1 calendar. Yes, there are other street races such as Canada and Australia, but neither of those are to be found in the typically urban environment of a major downtown area. Champcar on the other hand has four races in just such a venue, and eight that can be classed as being on temporary courses. That leaves only six races at permanent, legitimate race tracks.

At some point, the advantages of street racing (exposure to new fans and sponsors) are outweighed by significant disadvantages. Too may street courses tend to undermine the credibility of a championship - "well if they're not racing on a track, surely it's not proper racing" being a thought process of a typical casual fan. It also means you don't get such committed, hard racing, as drivers spend much of their concentration avoiding walls instead of racing each other. Compare the terrific Mont-Tremblant race with such snoozefests as San Jose....

Next year Laguna Seca will take the place of San Jose. Consider this a victory for real racing, and not much of a loss for Champcar, which will still be able to showcase itself in the downtown parts of Toronto, Surfers Paradise and (probably) Las Vegas. Furthermore, it will probably still race close to Cleveland's downtown at the kooky (but good for racing) Burke-Lakefront Airport, right in the middle of the Southern California sprawl at one of the world's best street circuits, Long Beach, and within the conurbation of Houston at Reliant Park.

Formula 1 is exciting (except on track)

In what I can only describe as an "inspired" decision, I chose to not watch the Hungarian Grand Prix. Instead I had to "make do" with some terrifically engaging racing in the form of World Superbikes from Brands Hatch, the X Games rallycar super-special and AMA Superbike (and even though it's not racing, the fascinating skateboard vert competition from the X Games).

By all accounts the F1 race was as dull as I expected it to be. In a form of motorsport where passing is as rare a filthy race transporter, a track where passing is virtually impossible pretty much consigns the race to Dullsville from the get-go.

However, when I came to check the news this morning it appeared as though it was a weekend filled with drama, centered around the English tabloids' favourite sportsman, Lewis Hamilton.

By all accounts, Lewis made an error in the final session of qualifying, when he ended up being first on track, against the wishes of the McLaren team. This messed up Fernando Alonso's strategy for the session, potentially bagging Lewis an extra lap (I'll admit I'm unclear on this point so hopefully someone more familiar with the story can fill me). During the final pitstop of the session, Alonso waited an extra few seconds in the pitbox, even though Lewis was waiting. Alonso was thus able to get one more flying lap, and Lewis was not. What followed was a delightfully colourful radio exchange between McLaren team boss Ron Dennis and his young protege that ended with Lewis telling Ron to "go fucking swivel." Nice.

Damage control was immediately in order and Ron rushed to the driver weigh-in, determined to alleviate the situation. Sadly for F1 pundits who live for this stuff the two drivers simply ignored each other. A dose of Senna/Irvine-style scrappage would have added to an already dramatic story.

Ron and Lewis apparently made up but Fernando refuses to talk to his team-mate. Stories are already circulating about how the Spaniard is talking to Renault about returning to them for 2008. It seems safe to say that in this war of egos, Lewis seems to be winning.

As a result of his pitlane activities, Alonso was docked five places and started the race from sixth. Unable to challenge for the win, he had to make do with watching his nemesis Hamilton take victory and extend his lead in the championship.

Once again, F1 proved to be truly compelling, a place where money, ego and technology are the three main driving forces. The racing thankfully took a backseat (again), which is good given that even when it is exciting, it is far less exciting than most of other forms of motorsport. I'm now convinced you can be a fan of the sport without ever watching a race, especially if you enjoy spy novels, boxing, CAD/CAM software and/or reality shows.