At last! I have got round to starting on my review of the Formula 1 season. Because it has taken so long for me to get round to it, I have had enough ideas gestating around for me to write several posts on this. So I will write one post every Sunday for a few weeks. Hey, somebody has to provide some F1 action on a Sunday!

Each post will focus on a different aspect of the season. Future posts will look at the performances of teams. I will also assess the various F1 media outlets — ITV, FOM, websites, blogs and podcasts.

But today I’ll start with a look at the drivers. This is the first of a two-part run-down.

It’s not easy to rank drivers. As I said a few weeks ago, they are all heroes really. But we all know that some drivers are better than others. No doubt there will be plenty of disagreements, but that is what it’s all about, huh?

26 — Sakon Yamamoto

I have seen some people say that Yamamoto compares favourably to Adrian Sutil. I just don’t get it. Why is he even in F1? He was rubbish last year at Super Aguri, and he didn’t do very much interesting this year at Spyker. Perhaps part of this is the fact that he is tootling round at the back pretty anonymously, and has therefore been overlooked.

But looking at the figures, Yamamoto was outqualified by Sutil in every single race. The books will say that Yamamoto started ahead of Sutil in Brazil, but only because Sutil started in the pitlane, presumably due to mechanical problems. In fact, looking at the qualifying times, Yamamoto set the 22^nd-”quickest” time in every single qualifying session. His blushes were only ever spared by other people’s mechanical failures.

He must have some really good sponsors.

25 — Christijan Albers

It’s a shame for Christijan Albers. He seemed like a really nice guy. Unfortunately, he simply caused too many embarrassing incidents. He was warned midway through the season by the Spyker team to clean up his act. Not long afterwards, he dangerously drove out of the pitlane with the fuel hose still attached. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

24 — Ralf Schumacher

Oh my goodness. What an awful season Ralf Schumacher had. Seemingly everyone had it in for him this year. The Toyota team finally lost patience with him and he appears to be out of a drive for next season.

Ralf Schumacher himself is going around telling everybody that he will be in F1 next season. If he’ll be in F1 next season, it will be driving in the Safety Car, although I’m sure the FIA would rather find someone faster.

Part of the problem with Ralf Schumacher is the fact that he is just so damn deluded. At the start of the season he declared himself to be one of the top three drivers (!) and the Toyota the fourth fastest car (!). So where were the results to back it up? Only five points all season.

And all too often he failed to cross the psychological barrier of Q1. For a team with such a huge budget and a driver with such a huge pay packet, that is simply unforgivable. Tragic. Once upon a time Ralf Schumacher was a steady pair of hands, and a proven race winner. That feels like a very long time ago now.

23 — Anthony Davidson

At last, Anthony Davidson finally got a full season in F1. What did he do? I can’t remember. A couple of impressive moments. I seem to remember one particularly unlucky qualifying session. Bad luck dogged him actually, most notably when he hit a groundhog while running 3^rd in Canada.

But he also had bad moments of his own making, like spinning during qualifying at Silverstone. Otherwise, Davidson was too anonymous for me to place him any higher.

22 — Markus Winkelhock

Markus Winkelhock’s début grand prix will surely go down in history as one of the most eventful débuts ever. The son of Manfred Winkelhock made his début where his father made his exit from F1, at the Nürburgring. It looks as though it will be Markus’s last F1 race too.

Were it not for Lewis Hamilton, Markus Winkelhock would have been the only person to lead in his début this year. In a way, Winkelhock’s achievement is all the more impressive given that he did it in the Spyker (the worst car) rather than the McLaren.

Of course, in reality luck played a huge part in Winkelhock’s race. A risky strategy was employed by Spyker as weather conditions worsened, and luck played straight into their hands. At one point, Winkelhock led by over 30 seconds and had made Kimi Räikkönen look rather silly. But it was all because of that risky strategy to put Winkelhock on extreme wets.

It was a decision that only Spyker — at the back — could afford to take. In the end, it wasn’t much more than good PR. The race was stopped because the conditions were so atrocious, and at the restart Winkelhock was swamped by faster cars. In the end, he was in the sort of position you’d expect a Spyker to be. Then in another position where you’d expect a Spyker to be — in the grass, smoking.

Still, it’s a neat thing to put on your CV. Winkelhock is the only driver in history to have started the same race at the back of the grid and at the front!

21 — Kazuki Nakajima

Another F1 son, Kazuki is the son of Satoru Nakajima. Drafted in at the last minute to replace Alexander Wurz, who went on early retirement, Nakajima had a pretty mixed Brazilian Grand Prix.

Most notably, he was involved in a horrendous accident in the pitlane where he basically crashed into two of his mechanics. Fortunately, nobody was seriously injured. Perhaps it can partly be explained by nerves and the fact that it was his first ever F1 pitstop. But it was nevertheless an unforgivable accident. He didn’t shine too much in qualifying either.

However, his race driving was pretty hot. He set the fifth fastest lap of the race, ahead of Fernando Alonso and fancied team mate Nico Rosberg. He powered through the field to finish 10^th. This has been a year of notable rookie performances, and for me, Nakajima’s Brazilian Grand Prix is up there.

20 — Rubens Barrichello

I know that the Honda was a shockingly bad car. But let’s face facts here. Jenson Button outperformed Barrichello all year. Whereas Button fought to get fast, Barrichello let the car’s poor performance get him down. It’s a far cry from his heroic days at Stewart. If he’s not over the hill, he’s certainly given up climbing it.

19 — Scott Speed

An F1 career wasted. Either Scott Speed simply wasn’t fast enough, or his career was ruined by Red Bull / Toro Rosso bosses. He had a few good drives, making a particularly good attempt at Monaco where the Toro Rosso car worked well. But of his retirements, more were down to accidents and driver error than mechanical failure.

It’s all water under the bridge now though as Scott Speed heads off to forge a new career in stock cars in the USA.

18 — Vitantonio Liuzzi

As Scott Speed, but with some points. Liuzzi also shone at Monaco. At one point in qualifying he was running among the front-runners — setting the fourth-fastest time in Q1 — until a set-up change ruined it all. He eventually qualified 13^th and had an unlucky race, being crashed out by Coulthard.

Things looked up a bit towards the end of the season. It became clear that the Toro Rosso was pretty handy in the wet, and Liuzzi was able to wring out some respectable results — almost scoring in Japan and finishing 6^th in China. However, he was still outperformed by team mate Sebastian Vettel towards the end of the season. Overall though, Liuzzi’s qualifying performances tended to outshine those of his team mate, whether it was Speed or Vettel.

Midway through the season it was clear that, as with Scott Speed, Liuzzi’s relationship with the management at Toro Rosso had broken down. So he won’t remain at Toro Rosso. Is this the last we’ve seen of Liuzzi? I feel as though he’s had a lot of bad luck in his career. It is only a few years ago that the F3000 champion was being talked about as a future Ferrari driver.

17 — Jarno Trulli

Toyota is like an old folk’s home. But a one where they pay you to stay there. I guess this was just like 2006 for Jarno Trulli, but with fewer jibes about the “Trulli train”, the phenomenon whereby everybody gets stuck behind Jarno Trulli and the leaders disappear off into the distance. I give him one more year in F1.

16 — Giancarlo Fisichella

It’s much the same with Giancarlo Fisichella. In fact, when you look at it, the careers of Trulli and Fisichella have followed extraordinarily similar paths. The broke onto the scene with Minardi, then had some promising stints at Benetton / Renault and some wilderness years at Jordan.

Since then they have diverged a bit, with Trulli going to the Panasonic Toyota Retirement Home and Fisichella constantly being given the benefit of the doubt by Renault. It is clear that Fisichella is not as fast as some people once thought. Outclassed entirely by Alonso and now by rookie Heikki Kovalainen, it is obvious that Fisi is on the wane, big time.

He lucked in to an extension of his Renault contract with the departure of Alonso. Now it might happen again if Kovalainen moves. Expect Nelsinho Piquet to give him a pasting in 2008.

15 — Adrian Sutil

I am not sure if my placing of Adrian Sutil is a little on the high side. It is difficult to tell when a driver is in the worst car. But in a way, it is this very fact that makes me place him so high.

Sutil is a bit of a question mark. Some people seem to be quite impressed with him, while others think he is nothing special. But for me, the facts speak for themselves. He was only outqualified twice all year, and three different drivers were up against him in that Spyker.

It would be fascinating to see how he measures up in a better car. My gut feeling is that Sutil is a competent driver like, say, Button rather than a truly fast driver like Alonso.

14 — Takuma Sato

Takuma Sato has further cemented his reputation as the greatest driver ever to come out of Japan. He has outshone Anthony Davidson for most of the year, if not in qualifying then certainly in the races. Who could forget the moment when Sato overtook Alonso in Canada? I was jumping with joy. Certainly one of the best moments of the year.

That’s my view on the back half of the field. Next week I’ll post my thoughts on the other 13 drivers who competed this year.

I think Sunday was quite a bad day for media hype. A good thing, I’m sure you’ll agree.

First of all there was Jamie Murray’s victory at Wimbledon, which I find absolutely hilarious. It certainly puts the past two years of hype surrounding Andrew Murray to shame a bit. Of all the people who could usurp saintly young tennis genius media darling Andrew Murray, it would be his brother who has not received even a fraction of the attention. Well done MSM!

Then of course, there was the British Grand Prix, where Lewis Hamilton put in a frankly lacklustre performance. It was by far his worst of the year, which is also absolutely hilarious because the media was getting into a frenzy over the prospect of a Brit winning the British Grand Prix. Ha ha!

My favourite part of the British Grand Prix coverage was actually just before the race started. The usually bearable Martin Brundle had fallen into the Lewis lovey-dovey-vortex. “There is a massive crowd here at Silverstone,” he said, “and they are all hoping for a…” Just in time, a man with a Spanish flag stood up to dominate the camera shot. Brundle battled on. “Errr. Err. Man with a Spanish flag there. Brave man.” Hahahah!

Of course, Hamilton’s poor showing at the British Grand Prix could not possibly have had anything to do with Hamilton himself. The media were already making his excuses for him — even before the race was finished. After the race, ITV pundit Mark Blundell was adamant that Hamilton must have had a problem with his car.

Well, I have not heard anything about what this problem with his car is — probably because it didn’t exist. That was just the media trying to cover its sorry arse.

There probably was an issue with the set up of the car. But guess whose job it is to set up the car? That’s right, Lewis Hamilton’s. Fernando Alonso didn’t have any trouble setting up his car, did he?

We have also seen that Lewis Hamilton does crack under pressure. To be honest, the fact that he could stick to the racing line when he was put under pressure by, say, Alonso, was the most impressive thing about Hamilton. Alonso could have stripped naked and Hamilton wouldn’t have batted an eyelid.

Not so at the British Grand Prix, where Hamilton got so wound up that he ended up trying to leave the pits far too early. He managed to stop before causing an Albers-esque situation, but he was close to doing that. (Incidentally, Albers has lost his job — but it’s nothing to do with the pitlane incident, oh no!)

The media’s story is that Hamilton had lightning-quick reactions to stop his car before anything worse happened. But the point is that he shouldn’t have had his car moving in the first place!

The rest of Hamilton’s race wasn’t much better, and once again he had a fair bit of good luck on his side. If Felipe Massa hadn’t stalled his engine and had to start from the pitlane, there is no way Hamilton would have finished on the podium. Imagine that. The first time he would have failed to get on the podium. Golden boy Lewis had his worst race at the British Grand Prix!

Hamilton still has an intimidating lead in the Drivers’ Championship. But all of his main rivals — Fernando Alonso, Kimi Räikkönen and Felipe Massa — have had more than their fair share of bad luck. The second half of the season will be much more difficult for Hamilton. It will be very interesting to see how he copes with the pressure from now on.

Anyone who saw the French Grand Prix will probably know who I’m talking about.

Briefly, though, I will say that I am glad that Kimi Räikkönen won the race. I think it is better for the reputation of Formula 1 as a whole if Felipe Massa does not win so many races. Ferrari also look as though they have the upper hand now, which is just as well because the championship was threatening to become a little bit one-sided.

Still, even though Lewis Hamilton finished a distant 3^rd, the Brit actually extended his championship lead because his closest rival, Fernando Alonso, had a bit of a hellish weekend. Gearbox woes left him way down the field today.

But Alonso drove very well today. He had a couple of amazing overtaking manoeuvres against Fisichella and Heidfeld. The overtake on Heidfeld, at the Imola chicane, where a move was surely deemed impossible, will surely go down as one of the very best of the year.

But despite pushing hard to make those moves, Alonso still ended up behind both of those drivers thanks to some woeful McLaren strategies.

As for the championship, I was emailed this interesting link by Ken Roberts. It purports to show you the chance each driver has of winning the championship if the rest of the season’s results are determined at random. Hamilton’s chance is astonishingly high — 77%. Wow.

And as you can see, despite finishing 3^rd, Hamilton was the main beneficiary today, while Alonso lost a great deal and the Ferrari drivers made minor gains.

Another point to note is how much Honda seem to have improved. Button scored their first point of the season, and it was a much-needed one. It really looks as though Honda have turned the corner, although they will not be able to challenge near the front for a long while yet.

And now onto the chump. Christijan Albers — what were you thinking?!

How many pit stops has Albers done in his racing career? The lollipop man isn’t to blame for this one, which is the usual excuse. Albers just stepped on the throttle for seemingly no reason, and dragged a fuel rig halfway down the pit lane. Luckily (yet again) nobody was hurt. But that was Albers asking for a massive fire to happen.

This year’s Japanese Grand Prix left be absolutely floored. To think how boring this season started off being. Fernando Alonso totally dominated the first half of the season. Up until Canada (round 9) Alonso had finished either first or second in every single race, including a run of four back-to-back victories. His championship lead was 25 points, and it looked as though it was in the bag.

And then it all came crashing down. The resurgent Ferrari took advantage of Renault’s various mishaps. Infact, until today Alonso hadn’t won a race since Canada. It’s incredible how much this season has turned around. This morning all of the momentum was with Ferrari. That 25 point gap had been whittled down to zero, and Michael Schumacher had won more races than Alonso.

One (admittedly unlikely) possibility was for Schumacher to have actually won the championship today. To do that he needed to win the race and he needed Alonso to retire. But the reverse happened: Michael Schumacher — in the lead, with just 17 laps to go — retired with an engine failure. Alonso went on to win the race.

It’s so unusual. Ferrari’s reliability is usually bullet proof. But today we saw Michael Schumacher’s first engine failure in five years. What a time to have it! And it was truly unbelievable to watch. How many insects flew into my mouth while my jaw was on the floor?

It is difficult to express just how unpredictable the back end of this season has been. At the last race in China it looked as though Renault had it sewn up, but Schumacher was able to drive a fantastic race against all the odds. Today it looked as though Ferrari had all of the momentum — and they did, but only until Schumi’s engine expired.

With just one race to go, it effectively puts the World Championship out of Michael Schumacher’s reach. He can still win the championship, but only if there is another spectacular reversal and Schumacher wins in Brazil while Alonso fails to score. Schumacher has already effectively conceded defeat saying that he doesn’t want to go to Brazil effectively pinning his hopes on an Alonso retirement. But given the way this championship has turned out, it might not be such an unlikely situation!

Unfortunately, not an awful lot else happened during the race. Christijan Albers had one of the scariest car failures I’ve ever seen. And there were a few driver errors — notably from Liuzzi, Speed, Webber and Kubica — but that is to be expected on a circuit as challenging as Suzuka. It’s the last time, for the moment at least, that F1 will be paying a visit to one of the greatest circuits in the world. What an absolute scandal. Somebody needs to give Bernie and Max a clue.

Well, that turned out to be not a bad race! Yesterday’s Schumacher incident provided an interesting talking point to frame the race in, and the race did threaten to become a procession at one point.

In a way, it still was a procession, as Alonso led the race practically from start to finish. But what happened behind him was still thrilling — and when I mean behind him, I mean right behind him.

Drivers who really deserved better were harshly treated by luck today. Mark Webber had an amazing qualifying session yesterday, and he was driving well today before his Cosworth engine expired. The Williams car appears to be capable of scoring points, but that Cosworth engine is still a massive liability. I’m not a great fan of Webber, but he was impressive over the weekend, and a podium finish would have been a fair reward.

A pity too for Kimi Räikkönen, who at last was able to challenge Alonso at the front — and he was really threatening at one point. We haven’t really seen this all year. The McLaren car doesn’t have the pace of the Renault or the Ferrari, and Räikkönen seems to have lost a little bit of his drive, but he looked good for at least second place today. He was able to take advantage of Webber’s little error at Ste Devote in a thrilling, brave move. Unfortunately, during the safety car period caused by Webber’s failure, the McLaren’s reliability glitches kicked in again — the story of Räikkönen’s life.

By this time the pack seemed to have well and truly mixed up after the safety car, and Rubens Barrichello in the Honda was in third place! It truly is a remarkable reversal of fortunes at Honda. Button really is struggling at the moment. The Honda team keep on talking up their chances, yet the performance they really need never materialises. This is a weekend that Button will want to forget — Barrichello is now much more confident in the Honda. Unfortunately for the Brazilian, speeding in the pit lane isn’t the way to go about finishing in the podium.

After Barrichello’s drive-through penalty, it was Jarno Trulli in the Toyota which Martin Brundle said looked so bad it was like a pogo stick (!) during practice who was in line for a podium finish! But towards the end of the race, his car gave up as well, on the hill after Ste Devote. Clearly, third position was not a lucky place to be in today!

So when David Coulthard in the Red Bull inherited the podium position, he might well have been worried about Barrichello and Michael Schumacher catching up with him. Luckily for Coulthard, he only had to maintain his position for a few laps, and he scored a great podium finish — Red Bull’s first. It’s good for them as they have had a moderately disappointing season so far. I absolutely loved the Superman cape stunt! It might even beat last year’s pit crew of Star Wars stormtroopers. Fantastic.

Yes, Michael Schumacher was in fifth position. After yesterday’s scanda, Schumi went some of the way towards redeeming himself with some clean, impressive overtaking manoeuvres. He left his team mate Massa behind.

Who was second you ask? Juan Pablo Montoya with yet another anonymous race, quietly collecting a helpful handful of points.

Today’s troublemaker was Christijan Albers, who unwisely squeezed his team mate Monteiro into the wall at the otherwise unusually clean start. That was unnecessary enough, but then he decided to ram into a Super Aguri later on in the race. Come on Albers, this isn’t a computer game!

I have to say though, all of the drivers were largely impressive. There was little in the way of driver error or crashes — Nico Rosberg’s was apparently caused by his throttle being stuck open.

All-in-all, it was a good race, but even this early in the season it looks as though Alonso has the championship well and truly wrapped up. Silverstone next!

• Full race result

Update: “Horner goes for a swim… But did he take a dip in the nip as advertised?”