Patronise F1

You know, winning a world championship is very much like making love to a beautiful woman. You have to keep up a good and consistent rhythm, you can on occasion choose to finish second, and most importantly, you need to make sure you look after your rubber. Sadly for Lewis "Tyler" Hamilton, he failed in the lattermost of those respects in Shanghai, and allowed his two rivals for the crown to put themselves right back into contention, despite having been written off by just about everyone last week. Though not by us, oh no. We would never allow ourselves to do something like print a photo of Alonso retiring in Japan with a "Game over" caption. Nope, you must have Patronise confused with a different overly shambolic random F1 reviewing website.

The failure to call Hamilton in for a tyre change before it was too late, even despite Hamilton visibly losing stacks of time on the preceding laps, was the latest spectacular cock up in a season-long litany of spectacular cock ups from the McLaren team, and goes to affirm that the team has lost little of its ability to throw a race away, an ability practised a number of times throughout the Mika Hakkinen/Kimi Raikkonen years of the team. Ironically (n.b. not really ironic), Kimi was the man to benefit as he romped home for the win.

The race was intriguing, if never particularly thrilling. The weather was enough to confuse and disorientate the new-ish weather prediction graphics that occasionally flashed very specific, if entirely inaccurate, times for when the rain would start, or the rain would stop, or we'd get some snow, or the apocalypse would happen. It was "damp", if not wet at the start, but Hamilton started off controlling things fairly easily, pulling out a decent lead over the disconsolate Kimi, Massa and Alonso. DC was somehow in 5th, having qualified remarkably well. His teammate Mark Webber had a stunning excuse all lined up, after he decided to make a number of contrary pit stops at around half distance. It is worth reminding, however, that DC was at the disadvantage of having qualified on a full dry setup, and it was remarkable that by the end of the race, the circuit announcer could proudly proclaim that DC was 8th, and hence point to David!

As the track conditions changed from damp to dry, it became rather obvious to everyone apart from the McLaren strategists that Tyler's tyres (there's a tongue twister for you) were entirely knackered. First Kimi mumbled his way past, and then Alonso began to close up at a fair rate of knots. For some reason though, the call wasn't made until it was too late, and Tyler ended up parked in an undignified manner in a gravel trap, much to the anguish of ITV, and indeed Tyler himself who went all narky and initially refused to speak to Louise Goodman, which was rather funny.

Anyway, with Tyler out the way, and Kimi and Alonso holding station at the front, both clear of a rather tepid Felipe Massa, who hasn't really figured in a race for a good few events, the fun switched to a fairly titanic scrap for the lower points places.

Oddly, after the outrage of all the points he denied the team by taking himself and Webber out in Japan, odd-face Sebastian Vettel was the "best of the rest", occupying the BMW place. As for the BMWs, Ickle had an odd off day, and could only manage 7th, but Bignose hit a winner on the strategy, though sadly not on the reliability. He retired from the lead just after Lewis popped his car into the gravel, and rumour has it that he wasn't scheduled to stop again. T'could have been BMW's first win since a certain chunky legend took the flag in the 2004 Brazilian GP. Oops.

Behind Vettel was Jenson Button's Honda, to prove what a slightly odd finishing order we were given. Ironically, the points Button got here finally lifted Honda above The Goo in the Constructors standings, but they also dropped behind STR at the same time, as Vettel was joined in the points by overweight beard model Vitantonio Liuzzi.

Elsewhere, the Renaults and Toyotas were fairly invisible, Spyker slipped back to the role of "slowest team" after a couple of intermittently promising looking weekends in Spa and Fuji.

Nico had a bit of a 'mare, which we managed to ignore by concentrating intently on typing vague commentary quips a few seconds after The Elbow managed them.

Still though, the season is nearly at an end. Just one more Grand Prix between us and a lengthy off-season of boredom and intrigue and occasional car launches. And NOT ONLY do we have the nailbiting scrap between Williams and Red Bull for 4th place in the Constructors Championship to look forward to seeing decided, but we also have the little matter of a three-way fight for the WDC.

So, will it be the mumbly Finn, the prissy Brit or the petulant Spaniard?

You'll have to wait and see, won't you. What do you expect? That we know the answer? It can do many things, but look into the future is not one of them. Honestly, some people are never satisfied, are they. What is the world coming to? The moon on a stick, some people want.

Drivers Championship Standings -
1 Hamilton 107pts, 2 Alonso 103pts, 3 Raikkonen 100pts, 4 Massa 86pts, 5 Heidfeld 58pts, 6 Kubica 35pts, 7 Kovalainen 30pts, 8 Fisichella 21pts, 9 Rosberg 15pts, 10 Coulthard 14pts, 11 Wurz 13pts, 12 Webber 10pts, 13 Trulli 7pts, 14 Button, Vettel 6pts, 16 Schumacher 5pts, 17 Sato 4pts, 18 Liuzzi 3pts, 19 Sutil 1pt.

Constructors Championship Standings -
1 Ferrari 186pts, 2 BMW Sauber 87pts, 3 Renault 48pts, 4 Williams 26pts, 5 Red Bull 24pts, 6 Toyota 12pts, 7 Toro Rosso 8pts, 8 Honda 6pts, 9 Super Aguri 4pts, 10 Spyker 1pt.
McLaren removed from constructors championship.