The other big news of yesterday was the sudden withdrawal of BMW from Formula 1. This season will be their last.

It can’t be called a complete shock. It had become very fashionable in F1 circles to say something like, “I am sure one or two or all of BMW, Renault and Toyota will pull out of F1 this season.” But the rumours were particularly centred on Renault and Toyota, and BMW were probably widely considered to be the team out of those three with the most stable future.

That made BMW’s exit a shock. In a way, though, it is not a surprise. It was well known that when BMW bought the Sauber team back in 2005, they set themselves very ambitious targets that were to be met within a matter of a few years. This was the basis for the team’s famously methodical (although too-clinical-for-some) gradual, targets-based approach.

So while it may seem a bit of an over-reaction for BMW to pull out so suddenly, it’s worth remembering that this was the year when they were supposed to be fighting for the championship (or regular wins, as the target appeared to become more recently). Instead they have one of the slowest cars in the field. Worse still, unlike with Honda in 2008, BMW fully expected to be fighting for the championship. They thought they had a great car.

Instead, 2009 has been a complete disaster for them. They put too much faith in their kers, a device which they thought would give them an advantage but proved to be anything but. Over the winter they were the only team favouring kers, but it turns out that Mercedes have a much better one while BMW’s is so useless that they will never use it again.

Now it seems as though the teams have agreed among themselves not to use kers for next season. Such technologies appeared to be a major motivation for BMW’s involvement in Formula 1. It was certainly an aspect they played up in their marketing.

Unfortunately, the way the FIA introduced kers to Formula 1 was a complete botch-job. Kers has been left with a seriously bad reputation, even though McLaren-Mercedes have now managed to make it work for them. Whatever happens to kers in the short term, it will be around for the long term. That was certainly the view of Williams Technical Director Sam Michael when he spoke to bloggers last week.

Perhaps as a result of focusing on kers, BMW’s F1.09 car is not up to the job. It must count as one of the biggest disappointments of the season. Even though Ferrari and McLaren also started the season poorly, those teams have fought their way back to the front. Meanwhile, BMW only seem to have fallen further away from the front as the season has progressed.

During the Hungarian GP weekend, Mario Theissen claimed that BMW had found the cause of the problems that had struck their car and that they would soon see an improvement in performance. The BBC’s commentators, Jonathan Legard and Martin Brundle, were both sceptical as they commented on BMW during the race. Legard said that if they think they’ve got a handle on the problem, they’ve got the wrong handle. Meanwhile, Brundle said that BMW’s statements about their performance sounded like PR-speak.

It is highly unlike BMW, and especially Mario Theissen, to make positive statements if they cannot back it up with evidence. Yet that was what they appeared to do when they said they knew what their problems were, while still qualifying 16th and 19th in a grid of twenty cars.

It wasn’t the only uncharacteristic behaviour from BMW over the weekend. Robert Kubica’s team radio transmissions on Friday have become famous for exhibiting the Pole’s grumpy and fussy attitude. He constantly complains about his car, even when it is setting fast times. Yet during practice in Hungary he actually sounded happy about his car. It was very unusual indeed.

Could it be that the BMW Sauber F1 team knew what was coming? Perhaps their statements about how good their car was becoming were a last-ditch attempt to convince the bosses that an improvement in fortunes was imminent. Obviously it convinced no-one.

Nevertheless, the BMW board deny that their exit from F1 is a kneejerk reaction to this season’s poor performances, with Klaus Draeger saying it was nothing to do with “our current performance or the general economic situation.” But it was obviously on his mind, as he saw fit to mention that, “It only took us three years to establish ourselves as a top team with the BMW Sauber F1 Team. Unfortunately, we were unable to meet expectations in the current season.”

It would be odd, however, for BMW to pull out on the basis of one disappointing season. BMW’s first season on 2006 was a solid start, and with the first car to be fully developed under BMW’s management they firmly established themselves as “best of the rest” behind Ferrari and McLaren. They remained so in 2008, bagging an impressive win in Canada along the way. Before the BMW partnership, Sauber were never so competitive.

Obviously, the fact that the FIA is asking all teams to commit to Formula 1 until 2012 by signing the Concorde Agreement imminently was a crunch moment. We have all seen how a year, or even a few months, is a very long time in the volatile worlds of both F1 politics and the car manufacturing industry. It should be no surprise that, without a crystal ball, a company should be unwilling to make promises it is unsure it will be able to make. You almost sense that this was a deliberate ploy by the FIA to get a high-profile scalp, a theory made all the more likely by the FIA’s highly undignified “I-told-you-so” press release.

As has been widely noted, BMW’s press release is itself written largely in corporate jargon that seeks to hide the real reasons for BMW’s exit. My reading is that they would rather focus on motor sports where they can develop technology, particularly technology which is more road relevant. The political issues surrounding kers will therefore have not helped persuade BMW to stay.

It is not as though BMW wants to distance itself from the FIA either. It has pledged to stay in WTCC, which is an even worse example of FIA mismanagement.

But clearly talk of cost cutting or budget capping or resource restriction, whatever it’s called these days, is not the vision of F1 BMW had for the future. It was prepared to negotiate until the end. But come crunch time, with the Concorde Agreement sitting on the table waiting for the signature, BMW obviously found that the settlement was not what they wanted.

I can hardly believe it — this three week break marks the mid-point of the season. As such, it is a good opportunity to take stock, have a little look back and see how the drivers are doing.

20. Sébastien Bourdais

Last year he asked us to wait to judge him, and see how he performs on slick tyres. They were supposed to suit them better. But there is no real perceptible improvement in his performance. In fact, he may even be worse than last season. Bottom of the pile for me.

19. Adrian Sutil

This is his third full season in Formula 1 and we still haven’t seen what the hype was about. Sutil has not really come close to repeating the few flashes of promise we have seen during his career. The one moment was during the Malaysian Grand Prix when he was running as high as 6th — before spinning off (admittedly in treacherous conditions). After three years, I think we should have seen a bit more by now.

18. Kazuki Nakajima

The disappointment of the season. He spent much of 2008 within touching distance of his fancied team-mate Nico Rosberg in the Drivers’ Championship. You might have expected him to improve this year. Instead, we are seeing a more lacklustre Nakajima who has failed to score a point. Indeed, he is yet even to finish in the top 10 all year.

One of the real head-scratchers of Nakajima’s season include successfully completing 77 laps at Monaco, only to crash on the final one. A chink of light was in sight when he qualified 5th at Silverstone, only to drop like a stone through the field during the race, eventually finishing 11th (which is still his best of the season).

17. Nelsinho Piquet

Nelsinho Piquet’s season is unfolding in much the same way as last year did — a bit lacklustre in general, but with a couple of half-decent results here and there. This year’s Renault does appear to be a bit of a shed, but he has once again been comprehensively beaten by his team mate.

But given that Alonso is, in my view, the best driver since Schumacher, it’s an unfair comparison. Maybe it’s better to note that Piquet has indeed beaten Alonso once (albeit in Britain, where Alonso was chronically held up by an ailing Heidfeld). But Piquet has more to do if he wants to remain in F1 for a third year.

16. Sébastien Buemi

We should be careful when judging Buemi just now. He is the only rookie in the field. And we have seen some stunning rookie performances in recent years — Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel, Robert Kubica. So in that sense, at the moment Buemi looks a bit more plain than he may turn out to be in the long run.

In fact, I would say that it is a good thing that Buemi’s season so far has consisted of anonymity rather than idiocy (although crashing into Piquet in Monaco can be filed under ‘idiocy’). Plus, he has collected a few points, though we should bear in mind that he inherited two of them in Australia thanks to the joined-up brain-fade of two drivers in front of him. One slightly worrying thing is that he seems to have become worse as the season has progressed, but that may be a blip.

15. Heikki Kovalainen

Kovalainen races this season in difficult circumstances. His car is among the worst on the grid, and to add insult to injury his team-mate is a well-hyped World Champion. Even taking this into account though, Kovalainen’s performances have, in general, failed to meet expectations.

He started the season off with a first-lap crash in Australia, then unaccountably spun off on lap one in Malaysia. At the other end of this half of the season, he has been involved in a silly scrap with Sébastien Bourdais in Britain, and an unforced spin into the barriers at Monaco. A relatively good performance in China hasn’t made up for the rest of his poor season.

14. Timo Glock

Glock is another driver whose season began well, but has rapidly faded away towards the mid-point of the season. Unquestionably, his Toyota car has lost any advantage it had at the start of the season. But his team mate Jarno Trulli continues to make the most of the situation, and Glock’s season has been oddly anonymous.

He can be relied on to collect a steady haul of points when the car is up to it, but signs of his talent are reticent in revealing themselves. A super performance in treacherous conditions in Malaysia is the only notable moment of his season that I can think of.

13. Nick Heidfeld

Nick Heidfeld’s season has been greatly constrained by his poor equipment. On the plus side, he has scored more points than Kubica, mostly thanks to a haul gained at the shortened Malaysian Grand Prix. He finished 2nd there but if the race ran to full distance he certainly wouldn’t have been that high up. Indeed, he was lucky to even be there after what was, in truth, a flaky performance.

At least this year, unlike last year, he is beating Robert Kubica. But the design of the car does not disadvantage him as much as it does Kubica.

12. Robert Kubica

How the mighty have fallen. From challenging for the Championship in 2008, today Robert Kubica languishes at the arse end of the table, having just scored his first points in Turkey. To add insult to injury, he has already used up six of his allocated eight engines. In fairness, most of it isn’t his fault. By all accounts, his BMW car is awful, and it’s not helped by the fact that it was designed around a kers that was always going to disadvantage a driver of his size.

My overriding memory of Kubica’s racing this season has been his fight with Vettel at the front in Australia. That was back when the future still seemed bright. Mario Theissen said he would have won if he didn’t get tangled up with Sebastian Vettel. There was good and bad in that performance from Kubica, which maybe says it all about his season.

11. Giancarlo Fisichella

I am not the greatest fan of Giancarlo Fisichella. Indeed, if I was in charge at Force India, I wouldn’t have given him a race seat. He started the year badly too, after embarrassingly missing his pit box in Australia, an incident that is said to have tried the patience of his team to the limit.

Aside from incidents like this though, you sense that Fisichella is squeezing the maximum out of the Force India car this year. Given that this is a team on the up, that could mean he will be scoring points soon. He has come close twice already this season (unlike Sutil), with commendable performances in both Monaco and Britain.

My previous post was a more-or-less immediate reaction to the FIA’s 2010 entry list. I have allowed the dust to settle (sort of) over the weekend and see what the fallout was, and I now have some further thoughts.

Of the 25-or-so teams that are angling for some sort of F1 slot next season, only a maximum of five will be happy with the situation as things stand. It goes without saying that the three new teams that have been guaranteed a slot — USF1, Campos and Manor — will be delighted. Williams will also be content, having been the first of the Fota teams to jump ship.

Despite saying friendly words about Fota’s cause, Frank Williams has made it clear that being part of a championship with “FIA” in the title is of paramount importance to his team. Williams have been close to the FIA for years, having been the second team to sign a deal with the FIA to leave GPWC in 2005. Williams are also grateful for the FIA’s stance on customer cars, which mysteriously changed at some point during the past couple of years (much to the frustration of Red Bull). Williams have also designed the cars for Max Mosley’s vanity project, Formula Two. Moreover, Williams CEO Adam Parr is said to have a close relationship with Max Mosley.

Force India are also committed to the FIA’s side, but they seem to be a lot more grudging about it than Williams are. Vijay Mallya cites vague commercial reasons for his decision to jump ship from Fota. Many have noted that Force India must race in 2010 at all costs because it exists only to race, whereas the manufacturers exist to sell road cars. But Vijay Mallya won’t exactly starve to death if he exits F1. He is in F1 to showcase his other businesses, just as the manufacturers are. Sure, Force India F1 Team would cease to exist, but so to would Renault F1 Team if Renault pulled out, and just as Honda Racing F1 Team ceased to be when Honda pulled out. The cases seem identical to me.

Meanwhile, those aspiring new teams who have not been placed on the entry list have been left with a bitter taste in their mouths. It seems pretty clear now that Max Mosley is banking on some of the existing teams not being around by next season. There is no way that Prodrive and Lola would have been refused a slot otherwise. They — along with other teams — have instead been placed on a “reserve list”, a queue of teams waiting for a slot to become vacant.

You get the sense that Prodrive and Lola are not to keen on being used as political pawns like this. They wanted a fuss-free entry into the 2010 season, but obviously forgot that this involves dealing with the FIA and its vindictive style of operating.

Lola in particular have been spitting feathers. They aren’t keen on being messed around, and are considering pulling the plug on their F1 project before the FIA get another chance to play games with them. Furthermore, Lola boss Martin Birrane has criticised the standard of the three new entries, saying: “one of three that has been chosen is worthy in my view. They will have a proper car. The other two – who knows?”

That sentiment was very closely echoed by Epsilon Euskadi’s Joan Villadelprat who also turned his nose up at the FIA’s vision of F1 2010-style: “I’m a bit surprised because I thought we were fighting against Aston Martin, and Lola, and companies with a pedigree, if you will.” The implication, of course, being that the new teams that have been guaranteed a slot do not have a pedigree.

The FIA may think that new teams will be enticed by a budget cap. But given these grumbles about the standard of the teams currently set to take part this season, they were rather expecting to be competing against the big names with world-famous brands like Ferrari and Aston Martin (manufacturer brands), not a couple of F3 teams.

Another entrant, which is said to be strong by those in the know, has gone as far as to explicitly state that the new teams have been used as pawns. N.Technology’s Mauro Spisz said: “The applications have been used by the Federation as pawns to move in the fight against the teams… We are victims of their war.”

Moreover, N.Technology appear to have been victims of the FIA’s well-known gross mismanagement, alleging that their application was not properly processed, with documents being lost. This would not be a major surprise. The FIA is well-known for being an incompetent organisation. Most famously, it once inadvertently revealed sensitive information about Ferrari and McLaren’s cars due to its own techno-incompetence.

If these strong teams are to enter F1, existing teams must leave. The FIA is banking on it. At the current rate, that actually seems like a fair assumption — though probably only because Mosley himself seems intent on driving them out.

In fairness, people talk a lot about the rumours that both Renault and Toyota are on the brink of exiting F1 anyway. From time to time, it is also said (even by Mario Theissen himself) that BMW may pull out. These three teams are probably the most disposable to F1, and I find it very interesting that it is these three very manufacturers whom the FIA cite in one of its press releases today (I will cover today’s developments in more detail in a separate article). All of these teams are peripheral players in this year’s Championship, and none has a particularly strong pedigree. But to lose all three in one year would be careless.

Renault have won the Championship twice in recent years, but it would not be unlike them to leave the sport. Indeed, with the famously motorsport-phobic Carlos Ghosn in charge of Renault, in a way it’s a surprise that they have not pulled out before.

I could easily imagine the Renault team surviving in one form or another though without the political crisis. The team’s history can be traced back to 1981, when it was Toleman. It became Benetton in 1986 before being bought by Renault in 2000. In this sense, the team has one of the richest histories in the sport, which stretches to half of Formula 1’s history.

For much of the team’s life, the team has rather successfully been run by Flavio Briatore. It is not outside the realms of possibility that, should Renault decide to pull the plug, Briatore could buy the team in an emergency measure and run it as a privateer entry, Brawn-style. But given his acrimonious relationship with the FIA (which is ironic given that he works with Bernie Ecclestone on other business endeavours), that now seems like a distant possibility.

Of the five teams with asterisks next to them on the entry list, McLaren and Brawn are the ones that the FIA cannot afford to lose. McLaren must be kept on board because of their history in the sport, which is rivalled by no-one’s except Ferrari’s. Meanwhile, to lose Brawn — who will almost certainly be World Champions this year — would be a major disaster for the FIA, and would only serve to underline the point that the new teams cannot compete with the best in F1 on merit.

In a way, then, McLaren and Brawn hold the aces. Interestingly, both are a strange kind of beast that is neither privateer nor manufacturer. This gives them a different perspective to the Renault / Toyota / BMW triumvirate — but it also distances them from being enticed by gimmicky budget cap proposals. Brawn could be seen as a full privateer from next season onwards. But the FIA must keep Mercedes happy to keep McLaren on side. Interestingly, Mercedes also plays a major role in Brawn’s success.

Therefore, as much as it (apparently) wants to drive the manufacturers out of the sport, Mercedes is ostensibly the one company which the FIA can’t afford to mess around. But, McLaren-Mercedes has been successfully neutered by the umpteenth high-profile hauling over the coals by the FIA. The FIA therefore have the whip hand, and Mercedes may be happier to defer to the FIA’s will than it otherwise would have been. Funny how it works out like that, isn’t it?

By now, it is abundantly clear that last week’s publication of the entry list was not designed to clear up the situation. Every single line in that publication was designed to wind someone up. It’s the way Max Mosley does his business: personality politics, vindictiveness and grandstanding. He clearly gets a thrill out of putting people in painful situations.

After the controversy of Spa, which I described at the time as being among the darkest days of F1, the Italian Grand Prix has provided the sport with its best day for a very long time. It’s the good news story F1 craved.

Sebastian Vettel has become the youngest ever Grand Prix winner at a scandalously young 21 years and 74 days. He is so young, he is the first person younger than me to ever win a grand prix. He becomes the sixth race winner of the season, and the third new winner. It’s a rich year for new talent.

What’s more, unlike the other first-time winners this year, Vettel did it on sheer skill. There was not a hint of a fluke about this. The normal front-runners were out of contention after they messed up in qualifying while Vettel sat his Toro Rosso on pole.

Heikki Kovalainen should have been able to challenge from second place in the vastly superior McLaren. As it was, the Finn never came close to challenging for the lead. On the podium, Kovalainen had a face like he was chewing a wasp, and quite rightly. He’s got a lot to be ashamed about. He was trounced today on merit.

But it wasn’t other people’s mistakes that allowed Vettel to win. The young German was simply mesmerising on the challenging Monza circuit, the fastest circuit on the calendar. In treacherously wet conditions where most other drivers slipped up, Vettel only deviated from the circuit once as far as I could tell, and it was just a harmless little trip across the chicane.

Vettel was absolutely in the groove. His composure just astounds me. When you think about his age, so many other people would have chucked it in the wall. But Vettel maintained a laser-like focus on the racing line and never looked in danger of losing this race.

Without a doubt, this has been one of the most impressive drives I have ever seen since I started watching Formula 1 almost a decade and a half ago. The magnitude of what we have seen at Monza can scarcely be described. It is a true giant-killing in every sense.

Toro Rosso are not supposed to win races. They are supposed to be the second string team. They are subsidised by the Red Bull team that is supposed to be further up the grid. They get Ferrari engines that are supposed to win races when they are placed in red cars.

Today Toro Rosso leapfrogged Red Bull in the Constructors Championship. And Sebastian Vettel comprehensively outperformed the Ferrari team whose cars could only finish 6th and 9th.

I am actually struggling to comprehend quite how Toro Rosso have pulled this off. Red Bull driver Mark Webber has talked about how they have the “new big red engine”. But Force India have a big red engine too. Heck, Ferrari have a big red engine. And Sebastian Vettel and his Toro Rosso team were the only people able to do anything with it in Monza.

The Toro Rosso team has been steadily improving as the season has continued. It has been slow but steady progress. Vettel’s team mate Sébastien Bourdais has also been performing well. He finished 1st in Q2 in Belgium and was on for a podium finish there until a disastrous final lap when he fell back through the field as conditions worsened while he was on the dry tyres. I felt very sorry for the Frenchman who struggled to hold back the tears when he was being interviewed about it.

I felt sorry for him today too as he stalled it on the grid having qualified 4th. He could only sit back and watch as Sebastian Vettel gave the world a demonstration of what the future of Formula 1 looks like. This man — who only has 22 grand prix starts to his name — has today shown the old hats and the young pretenders how it’s done.

The combination of national anthems that were played out on the podium today were familiar. The German national anthem followed by the Italian national anthem. That is the combination that greeted dozens of Schumacher victories for Ferrari. What an omen.

What is great, though, is the fact that Vettel is not a Schumacher. On the face of it, Sebastian Vettel is an unlikely grand prix hero. He’s not a bulky Webber or a square-jawed Coulthard or a 16-hours-per-day-in-the-gym Schumacher. Nor can I remember him playing one single dirty trick in his F1 career.

He is a lanky, gangly, goofy-looking kid. And despite his obvious raw talent, he doesn’t display a hint of arrogance. Of course he believes in himself. But he is polite and funny when being interviewed. Apparently he is very friendly in person. Unlike your Kubicas or your Räikkönens, charisma drips off this star. These people are not supposed to be so talented, they’re not supposed to have that drive to win.

In a lot of ways, it’s zero to hero in less than a year. In one of his first races he impressively ran in 3rd place before infamously crashing into his Red Bull team mate Mark Webber, prompting the Australian to launch into a foul-mouthed tirade on live British breakfast television.

Today, Webber and Vettel appear to get on very well. They will be team mates next year as Vettel is all set to move to the proper Red Bull team (whether this is the right choice for his career just now is debatable). And now Vettel is a race winner. An incredible rate of maturity.

Let us not forget the role of Mario Theissen in Sebastian Vettel’s career. The BMW boss gave the then-19-year-old his first shot in an F1 race in Indianapolis last year. Vettel ran across the chicane at the first corner, but otherwise stayed out of trouble and scored a point in his début.

Following today’s performance though, that other BMW protégé Robert Kubica now feels like old news. This even puts anything Hamilton has done over the past two years firmly in the shade. To win a race for a tiny team as Vettel has done is very different to winning a race in the fastest car as Hamilton has done.

Let us not forget that the Toro Rosso team is essentially the old Minardi team. They may be bankrolled by big Red Bull cash these days. But most of the team is still the same and it is still based at the same Faenza location. Every fan of F1 has a soft spot for these guys. They are an Italian F1 team that you can actually like.

You would dream of a Minardi win, but you would never believe it would happen. But today it has happened. Moreover, they did it in their home grand prix, the Italian Grand Prix, at that most historic of circuits, Monza. They’ll be dancing in the streets of Faenza tonight.

There is a lesson in there. Minardi were the bravest of the backmarkers. They have lasted for decades without winning a race. They could go for years on end without ever scoring a point. Yet they stuck at it and survived as a thousand and one other backmarkers came and went. And today, the years of hardship have paid off.

This is why we watch motor racing. These people do it for the love of the sport. Instead of dreaming of working for Ferrari, these guys dreamt of becoming Ferrari. And they were never deterred.

Thank you Giancarlo Minardi. Thank you Paul Stoddart. Thank you Dietrich Mateschitz. Thank you Gerhard Berger. And most of all, thank you Sebastian Vettel! Thanks for reminding us why we watch grand prix motor racing. Forza Minardi!

About a month ago Craig at Craigblog wrote a post about F1 merchandise. It was quite a coincidence because at the same time I was on the verge of buying the first piece of F1 merchandise I had bought for a very long time.

Since the turn of the decade I have watched Formula 1 pretty much as a neutral. Of course, I prefer some teams and drivers more than others. In case you’re wondering, my favoured teams are BMW, Red Bull, Renault and (at a stretch) McLaren. Out of the drivers, I like Räikkönen, Heidfeld, Kubica, Alonso, Coulthard, Webber, Barrichello and (at a stretch) Kovalainen.

When I was younger my attention was grabbed by Stewart Grand Prix. Jackie Stewart’s was a famous name that I could latch onto, and the Scottish iconography appealed to me as a young Scot. I also loved the fact that they were a new team, seemingly with the odds against them, but did a fairly solid job.

Rubens Barrichello’s drive to 2nd in Monaco in 1997 was exciting to watch, and for a second I thought they were going to win when Michael Schumacher briefly ran off the road at Ste Devote. Mostly though 1997 was a year fraught with reliability problems. 1998 brought a further dip in form.

But the 1999 season as a whole was brilliant for Stewart GP as Barrichello once again shone. Who could forget Barrichello leading at the Brazilian Grand Prix? And then Johnny Herbert took a fantastic win at the Nürburgring. This team was only three years old, yet was in a position to fight for good points hauls, finish 4th in the championship and even win a race. That’s more than the team’s subsequent owners, Ford (as Jaguar) and Red Bull can say for themselves.

Besides Stewart, I developed a soft spot for Jordan. I loved the way they came back from a disastrous start to 1998. Halfway through the season they hadn’t even scored a single point. Then things started to look up during the British Grand Prix. I can remember watching a fly-on-the-wall documentary about Jordan’s 1998 season. Eddie Jordan was nervously pacing around the Jordan pit area mumbling, “I need this feckin’ point… Come on, I need this feckin’ point so much.” He got that feckin’ point.

Just a few races later Jordan Grand Prix scored a magnificent 1–2 in Belgium, with Damon Hill heading Ralf Schumacher. It was the team’s first win and it ushered in a new, though fleeting, era of competitiveness for the team.

The 1999 season was a joy to watch, not only for Stewart but for Jordan and Heinz-Harald Frentzen in particular. The German driver took an amazing six podiums including two wins, particularly memorably in France. For a long while it looked as though Frentzen was a genuine championship contender, though in the end it was not to be.

In retrospect, the work the Jordan team put into the 1999 season diverted their attention away from the future. Ian Phillips said as much in the latest Inside Line podcast — the championship run burnt the team out, and they never recovered.

In subsequent years the Jordan team drifted ever further into mediocrity and it became more and more difficult for me to like the team. 2003 was particularly painful. Giancarlo Fisichella took a flukey win in Brazil, but that disguised a truly awful season in which the team otherwise scored the miserable total of three points. If the previous year’s scoring system would have been in use, the win would have been their one and only points score.

To compound matters, in 2003 Eddie Jordan got into a needless legal fight with Vodafone which he was seemingly never going to win. From then on Jordan struggled financially. That team is now known as Force India and has had four different owners in the past five years.

However, the late 1990s were great Jordan-supporting days. And along with supporting the team comes the merchandise. I had two Jordan caps (one generic Jordan and the other Damon Hill, mimicking the Hills’ famous helmet design). I also had a Damon Hill t-shirt that commemorated the “place in history” that Hill took by taking the first win for the Jordan Grand Prix team. I also have a 1:43 diecast model of Damon Hill’s Jordan 198, the car he drove in 1998 and helped secure Jordan’s famous 1–2 in Belgium.

That is not the only F1 merchandise I bought when I was younger. I also had an Orange Arrows cap. I think I got it because I liked the colours. I am sometimes surprised to see people still wearing Orange Arrows gear from time to time, around six years after the team folded. I also had a rather colourful Ferrari t-shirt commemorating their 1999 Constructors Championship victory. What can I say? The folly of youth.

In addition to the Damon Hill 1:43 diecast, for a period of five years I decided I was going to collect 1:43 scale models of every single Formula 1 world champion. So in 1998 and 1999 I bought two Mika Häkkinen McLarens and from 2000–2002 I bought three Michael Schumacher Ferraris.

To spice things up a bit I bought models of Alberto Ascari’s 1952 Ferrari 500 F2 and Nelson Piquet’s 1981 Brabham BT-49C. But I got bored after that.

Grand Prix Legends were looking for excuses as to why diecast models don’t sell so well nowadays. I think the reality is that 75 quid for a 1:18 model that will only gather dust on a shelf is a bloody rip-off. Back in the day I think I spent around £20 per 1:43 model. I don’t think that’s something I would do today.

Aside from the normal annual purchases of video games (when available) and the season review DVD, I have not bought any Formula 1 merchandise for a while.

Until now.

I have bought this jazzy BMW Sauber t-shirt to express my support for the team. Like many, I have been wooed by the methodical, grounded approach of the team’s principal Mario Theissen and its drivers Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica.

The win was coming for a while, and the fact that it was a 1–2, just like Jordan’s maiden win, was the icing on the cake. The team’s recent dip in form won’t deter me. Now, for the first time for several years, I am not a neutral. I am supporting BMW Sauber.

It’s strange because I was never a supporter of the Sauber team at all. Nor was I keen on BMW when they were in partnership with Williams. But the magical combination of BMW and Sauber under the leadership of Mario Theissen has attracted me to them to the extent that I am a card-carrying, t-shirt wearing fan.

So which teams do you support, and do you buy merchandise to show that support?