SofaF1

…do you do if a slow, woman driver won’t let you overtake her?

Schumacher.

But of course in China, they just call it food. Anyway, why has Michael been incapable of performing at this circuit? Or why do we (or the media) think he is? There have, after all, only been two races held here. Once Michael made a mistake in qualifying, but Rubens won, and twice Michael was in a bad car anyway, but was crashed into on his lap to the grid just for fun. Michael, in fact, holds the lap record for the track.

I always get confused between this circuit and Bahrain. They are quite similar in layout, but I guess the point of this post is, what makes a circuit good for one driver and not good for another? The car has some impact, of course, but the car can be set-up by the driver. A champion should be good everywhere, and I think that’s what we’ll see this weekend: Michael winning from pole.

As the announcement comes that we will be seeing at least one more race next year I wonder what can be done about the breaks. I understand that they need a break at some point but is it my imagination or are there more breaks between races this year? Given a choice of more races or more breaks which would you choose?

Well I would love to have more races and fewer gaps but I know that’s probably out of the question. But some of the gaps seem to be bad for the sport. We’ve got a three week gap now which dampens down the excitement. Then we have two races back to back. And then three weeks until the final. Now this year it may well go down to the final. But with big gaps like this there’s a chance the last few races wouldn’t be noticed.

Swiftcover were swiftly, and mysteriously, replaced by Shell as sponsors to itv-f1 – I don’t think anyone here mentioned it. So what happened? I’m guessing that because the championship was attracting more and more viewers, due to the closeness of the battle between Alonso and Schumacher, a bigger sponsor stepped up and took over. But isn’t it suspicious that they’re also a sponsor and close ally of Ferrari?

I’d like to suggest to all interested, or otherwise, parties that they try to catch this weekend’s MotoGp race in Phillip Island, Australia. The circuit is one of the most amazing I’ve seen, and would be a really great addition to our calendar: flowing up and down along the ocean coast, always in beautiful sunshine, and always producing great races. Hayden (the championship leader) is on pole ahead of Rossi (his rival) third. Pedrosa (Hayden’s upstart young team-mate, and another rival for the championship) is down in tenth and ready to storm through the field. Watch live tomorrow at 5:45-7:00am on BBC interactive, or catch the lunch-time repeat on BBC2 at 1:00-2:00pm.

People have talked about how Michael was unprepared to retire because in one of the after race interviews he was unable to remember what the word for retire was in Italian.

People have talked about how he’s actually known since the 2nd July that he was going to retire because when asked he said “in Indianapolis”.

My thought was couldn’t he have actually decided at Indy last year? When despite being possibly the greatest sportsman in the world, and being the only one of the F1 superstars to actually get his car out on the track he still got things thrown at him and booed? Perhaps it was that terrible experience that made Michael start to fall out of love with F1?

Along with Ferrari’s driver line up changing next year there is a chance that Ferrari will also be moving its engines over to Torro Rosso. This is what Red Bull want for a variety of performance reasons. And Red Bull are trying to make it seem like it was Ferrari’s idea all along by saying that Ferrari should want their engine in the back of the only Italian team with an italian driver. When all it’s really about is that Red Bull want Renault engines.

But it wasn’t always like this. In the old days Ferrari never wanted to dilute the brand so they badged their engines Petronis and sold them to Sauber. But despite the more prominent name in the deal with Red Bull the relationship is very different. For a very long time Sauber was seen as a fully fledged Ferrari b team. Now that we see real b teams like Super Aguri and Torro Rosso we mark it down but it was certainly considered it at the time. On several occasions it was suggested by commentators that they would be subject to team orders even.

But the signs are that Ferrari and Red Bull are nowhere near as close. And maybe that’s not a problem now. But I think it will be in the future. Because although I haven’t seen anyone really talk about it Ferrari are now going to be sporting an all Sauber team line up.

So maybe they should switch to Torro Rosso. At least the driver line up there says future more than at Red Bull.

So I haven’t done this since the beginning of the season, but I think now’s a good time to test your knowledge of what’s been happening this year – especially since we have another three week break.

You can obviously see Fisichella here, but where is he, and who, and what, is happening in front of him? Try and guess first, but after that you’re allowed to use any resources at your disposal to find out.

Formula one seems to be missing a trick in the world of sponsorship and it’s a really big one. In formula one personal sponsorship is almost unheard of. What trainers does David Coulthard wear? Well we don’t know. We actually do know that Michael wears Filas but that’s because they sponsor Ferrari.

Red Bull tried it but in the end got so frustrated that they had to buy a whole team (or two) just to get their message heard.

Much as the formula one establishment would like us to believe otherwise people really care about personal struggles. And to that end they care who wins the drivers championship but don’t mind who wins the constructors (except in Italy).

Because of this the sport has somewhat withered under Michael Schumacher. Okay so the winning all of the time was a factor certainly but the fact that nobody outside the sport knew who anyone else was was probably relevant too.

Personal sponsors do this job for the sport as they get the story out there. And I’m not talking small concerns here. Why doesn’t Nike sponsor anyone in Formula one? The reason is that no team boss will let them. Because Nike would want to put the swoosh on the car. And Ferrari wouldn’t like it if there was a swoosh on one car and not on the other. And they especially wouldn’t like it if there was a swoosh on one of the MaLarens too. And of course they won’t like it because it takes away some of their power and also they wouldn’t get a cut of that advertising space on their car.

In football the team owns the ads on the kit but the player gets to pick his own boots. And that difference is huge. So at the very least you might think the driver should get to control the ads on his helmet but no.

Why is this important now? Well next year or the year after a lot of people are going to be talking about Lewis Hamilton. A lot of people are talking about him now. But they are in the sport. And in the sport people are already refering to him as “our Tiger Woods” without seemingly realising that without Nike and Accenture we probably wouldn’t have heard of him. It was them who latched on to him and made him the global brand. But in Formula One it might never happen. If he wins British people might watch more Grand Prix and perhaps black people worldwide too. But he’ll never make the big leap for the sport without the billboards saying “go on be a Tiger”.

It seemed irrelevant after Alonso’s engine blew up, but why wasn’t he punished for cutting the corner at the first chicane? James kept referring to Michael at Hungary, but that was a different story: Michael was in front and being overtaken, and was possibly pushed wide by De la Rosa’s move. Alonso was trying to overtake, and went wide due to his own mistake of braking too late. You can clearly see from the on-board footage that they are side-by-side when they reach the braking zone – surely Alonso had to yield the place back?

Also, his relegation to 10th place was not cancelled out by the engine blow-up but may in fact have caused it since Alonso had to push very hard with his engine to get back the places. Interestingly, this was the first Renault engine blow-up since 2003.