Räikkönen confuses people a lot of the time with his apparent indifference. Often he simply does not seem to be bothered. But he always goes well at Spa. Indeed, he is the only current driver to have won there. His record includes a remarkable fight to the front from 10th on the grid in what was an otherwise barren 2004 season for him.

There are some parallels between that victory and this year’s one. Like McLaren in 2004, this year Ferrari began the season with uncompetitive machinery, but have developed the car into a winner for Belgium. This victory ends a 25 race drought for Räikkönen; the 2004 victory ended an even longer one.

In a lot of ways, Räikkönen’s victory was among the least surprising things to happen during an extraordinary weekend. The Finn usually gives a good performance in Belgium, but despite winning the race he was overshadowed by Giancarlo Fisichella, a man who would have been sacked at the end of last year if I had any say in such matters.

Question marks remain over a victory margin which perhaps ought to have been longer than one second. Then some say he wouldn’t have won were it not for kers — this is probably true. Others say that he gained an advantage by running wide and taking the run-off at La Source on lap 1.

However, David Coulthard says that Räikkönen will have gained no advantage from running wide, a fact which is apparently corroborated by the fact that Button took a similar line and lost places. It’s more likely that Räikkönen gained those spots by deploying his kers, the exit of La Source being the ideal spot to unleash that kers energy on lap 1 rather than the start itself. See Axis of Oversteer for a good debate on this matter.

Even so, the plaudits are going to Giancarlo Fisichella for his stunning drive to second place in the Force India. Is it a coincidence that he should up his game so much when there is a sniff of getting a Ferrari drive? I don’t think I have ever been so impressed by Fisichella, who I have always seen as a mid-grid sort of guy who only just about deserves his continued presence in F1.

Some of the upsurge can be put down to the car, which the team also expects to do well at Monza. In the sister Force India car, Adrian Sutil looked especially good through Raidillon, giving him an enormous advantage through the Kemmel straight, capitalising too on the grunt of the Mercedes engine, no doubt the best in F1. This led to him making a few impressive overtaking manoeuvres, though sadly for him it came to nothing and ended up in 11th.

Force India weren’t the only backmarkers to rise in Spa though. BMW, for the first time since Australia, looked quick. Both drivers scored points, and indeed Kubica did well to finish fourth despite picking up a substantial amount of damage in the lap 1 mêlée at Les Combes.

Lap 1 was an eventful lap all round, with Fernando Alonso’s race effectively ending at the start. But we were not to find that out until his first pitstop, when the Renault mechanics were unable to satisfactorily change his left front tyre. Renault didn’t want another controversy involving badly fitted wheels, so he toured into the pits to retire. A clever replay from FOM revealed that Alonso’s wheel was actually damaged in a turn 1 collision with Sutil at the start.

It is yet more bad luck for Alonso. Renault will not like the fact that in the Constructors’ Championship they are now behind BMW, a team which has been lamentably poor for most of the season. With the announcement that the FIA is investigating the unusual circumstances behind their victory in the Singapore Grand Prix, all-in-all it’s been a pretty torrid time for Renault. The move to the red car cannot come too soon for Alonso.

As for the sharp end of the championship, yet again three of the major Championship contenders failed to score a good result. This time, Vettel was the only one of the four challengers to have a good race. This makes Red Bull’s decision over whether it should start favouring one driver over the other yet trickier. Vettel now leads Webber in the Championship. But he still faces a massive 19 point deficit with only five races remaining.

Vettel actually had a strong race. In his analysis of the race, rubbergoat reveals that, when you consider competitive laps only, Vettel had the fastest average lap time of all the drivers. But he was hindered in the vital first stint due to being heavy on fuel.

Jenson Button had a DNF as he crashed out in that Les Combes pile-up. It is his first DNF of the season, making his sixth bad race in a row. Yet again, he has gotten away with it relatively unscathed. Another disastrous race, another two point dent in his lead which remains at 16 points. His main challenger is Rubens Barrichello who, with all due respect to the Brazilian, is not the most threatening of his three main challengers — not least because he is in the same team.

This has been a most strange season. Jenson Button couldn’t stop winning in the first half of the season. Now he can do nothing to help himself win. But his Championship chances remain high because the last six races have had six different winners. In stark contrast to the early Brawn dominance, you just don’t know who is going to be strong at a race and I would be a mug if I tried to predict what would happen in Monza. I daren’t even predict which car this week’s second placed man will be driving — I don’t want a wrap on the knuckles like Ian Phillips!

First, of course, is the performance of Rubens Barrichello, which was truly masterful. For once, the most experienced driver in the history of F1 has shown that the statistic doesn’t just mean he’s old — it means he can do the business as well. It is his first win for five years, and who would begrudge him this one?

Brawn were forced to spend Friday experimenting with set-up in an attempt to get to the issues that have prevented them from being competitive since Turkey. Despite this, Barrichello put all the car’s troubles behind him and didn’t seem to put a foot wrong all weekend.

I heard someone say that an emotional Rubens is a quick Rubens. It appears as though Felipe Massa’s injury has had some kind of impact on Barrichello’s form, not least because Massa has apparently been giving Barrichello tips on which lines to take in Valencia.

Certainly, not all of the performance can be put down to an improvement in the car because Jenson Button was thoroughly outclassed. In fairness, Button’s race was immediately compromised by a disastrous first lap — fatal on a circuit like Valencia. Even so, the Championship leader was strangely off the pace compared with Barrichello.

Barrichello even seemed to have the upper hand before the race started, as he was heavy on fuel and could pit later. It was marginal though, and it took until the third stint for the advantage to finally be realised.

There is a slight debate over whether McLaren’s bungled pit stop handed Barrichello the lead on a plate, though most agree that Barrichello would have ended up ahead anyway. Who knows how he would have coped under pressure from Hamilton though if that pacey McLaren was closer to him.

Hamilton and McLaren must count this as a lost victory, not a good second place. After the race, Hamilton’s words said he wasn’t disappointed or upset about the team’s mistake. But for me, his tone of voice said it all. This wasn’t the relaxed and happy Hamilton that we saw after the race in Hungary, and I detected more than a bit of tension in his voice in the post-race interviews.

I think Hamilton thought he had the race in the bag. I remarked at one point during the first stint that it sounded like he was taking it easy. Soon afterwards, Martin Brundle said that Hamilton was nowhere near his limit. For much of his first stint he was lapping in the high 1:39s or low 1:40s. In both his second and third stints he ended up consistently lapping rather faster, in the mid 1:39s.

It’s strange, because Hamilton has traditionally been criticised for not being conservative enough. But this is one instance where I think if he had pushed harder he would have won. His lead was indeed fairly comfortable during the first stint, but I feel he could have pressed home his advantage further.

Kimi Räikkönen scored his second consecutive podium in a row, and it was another relatively bland yet quick performance. He was barely on the television and there was apparently nothing interesting about his race, apart from the fact that he finished third.

This is interesting bearing in mind all the silly season issues, particularly while a question mark remains over the future competitiveness of Felipe Massa. People constantly say they struggle to understand Räikkönen, and many speculated about how he’d react to having Michael Schumacher as a team mate. On the current evidence, you have to say that he appears to have reacted rather well to no longer having Massa as a team mate. Räikkönen’s oft-predicted move to rallying in 2010 seems less likely now.

Fernando Alonso was another one who had a relatively uneventful race. But he and the Spanish fans will take the three points over the lap one retirement he suffered last year in Valencia. Alonso still does what I expect him to do in mediocre machinery, but is not yet showing enough of his double World Champion class which we saw last year.

BMW Sauber will be relatively pleased with how their weekend unfolded. The upgrade seems to have worked, with the team having its best qualifying of the season and Robert Kubica scoring a point. They are no longer the underachieving tail-enders, though you would still expect more.

As for the other big-name underachievers, Toyota, they are scratching their head over the fact that they were actually quite quick during the race, but were neutered by a poor qualifying performance. This year’s Toyota has always been bad round twisty places (such as Monaco and sector three at Barcelona), but despite its supposed “street circuit” status, Valencia isn’t actually all that twisty.

True enough, Timo Glock set the fastest lap during the race. Pascal Vasselon says that all of Glock’s laps during the race were fast. Looking at the raw lap times it doesn’t seem that way, but Glock’s slow times in the early part of the race are said to be down to a heavy fuel load. All told, it must be pretty frustrating to be fast, yet finish a dismal 14th, ahead of just the three new drivers.

There is one big team I haven’t yet mentioned. Red Bull — could you get a much more disastrous race? Webber was off the pace all race, never looked like scoring a decent result and ended up finishing behind a BMW. Meanwhile, Vettel’s brand new Renault engine rasped its way into an escape road just a day after another one spewed all over half the circuit. That’s not good for Renault’s engine department, but more on that in a future article.

Vettel wondered aloud if he is a “killer” of his engines in his post-race interviews. He has now used up seven of his eight engines, and with Spa and Monza coming up he is almost certain to take a grid penalty at some point in the next few races. If his Championship chances weren’t severely dented already, this near-certain penalty surely hammers a sturdy nail into the coffin.

Red Bull’s capitulation this weekend means that yet again Jenson Button has got away with a dire weekend virtually unscathed. Despite only finishing 7th, his Championship lead decreased by just half a point. Yet again, Button looks as likely as ever to become World Champion despite not having any good results. In Turkey his lead was 26 points. But after four dire races, his lead has only been cut by less than a third of that amount.

Since his last win four races ago, there have been four different winners. The lack of any real challenger gives Button breathing space. And for the first time in a while, Barrichello has moved up into second place in the Championship, hammering home the fact that Red Bull have not quite done enough to prove they can win the Championship.

But Spa will be a very different race, and conventional wisdom suggests that it will suit Red Bull. But do they have enough in the tank? Webber needs to overcome a substantial 20.5 point deficit to Button.

The Brawn rout continues, and Jenson Button looked more untouchable than ever. Yes, Sebastian Vettel took pole position, but yet again it was with a light fuel load. Matters were not helped at all when Vettel ran wide halfway through lap one, handing the lead to Jenson Button on a plate. From that point, the race was effectively won.

Increasingly, Red Bull look like a team not yet capable of winning races. After Vettel’s unforced driving error, the Red Bull’s tacticians failed to adapt and Vettel was kept on a three-stop strategy which was only ever going to drop him backwards. Time and again Red Bull have given Vettel an unworkable strategy, which is allowing Mark Webber to gain the upper hand by the end of the race. It’s difficult to know which to blame more between Vettel and the Red Bull team for their inability to take the fight to Brawn.

One possible explanation for keeping Vettel on a 3-stopper was that the Red Bull could not handle the softer tyres as well as the Brawn can. Mind you, Webber managed on a two-stopper.

One of the most disappointing aspects of Vettel’s race was the fact that he once again demonstrated an inability to overtake when it mattered. He got stuck behind Hamilton in Bahrain and Massa in Spain. This time in Turkey he failed to overtake Button despite having caught up with him quickly as a result of being on a lighter fuel load. Now we are told that the Red Bull car is bad in dirty air (so much for the FIA’s new aero regulations then). But I have to admit to losing a bit more faith in Sebastian Vettel every race now.

It’s not only Vettel who is managing to mess things up. Rubens Barrichello had an absolute nightmare of a race. The Brawn made another one of its occasional sluggish starts, and Barrichello found himself down in 12th at the end of lap 1, having started 3rd. He made a valiant effort at climbing back through the field, with some optimistic overtaking moves. This provided the main entertainment of the race.

He had a particularly brilliant battle against Heikki Kovalainen. But when Kovalainen “kersed” him back, Barrichello just got frustrated and ended up getting in a tangle a lap later. That only left him further behind.

Having dropped down in 17th, he tried to charge back through. He easily dispensed with Lewis Hamilton and totally spooked Nelsinho Piquet into making a mistake. But he was rather too optimistic against Adrian Sutil. I actually couldn’t believe that the most experienced F1 driver of all time thought that was even remotely a goer. Perhaps it goes to show how frustrating Rubens Barrichello is finding this season, despite the fact that he has the best car.

Perhaps it is a sign that Barrichello is past it. The picture that is emerging is one that is similar to what we saw with David Coulthard last season — an experienced driver whose mind is not quite as sharp and is unable to think on his feet as well as he used to.

Apart from that, it is difficult to know what to say about the race. The one other notable on-track battle was Piquet against Hamilton, where against the odds the Renault driver got the upper hand (albeit on a much lighter fuel load).

Ferrari’s resurgence has come to nothing, with Massa finishing 6th and Räikkönen 9th. Toyota looked better than they had done, but not enough to challenge at the front. And BMW also improved, but only to the midfield. Their pet project, kers, looks like it might be dropped for the remainder of the season.

Let’s hope that someone can make the British Grand Prix more of a challenge, but I don’t see it happening.

After the Malaysian Grand Prix, regular commenter Andy asked:

How is Kimi viewed by the Tifosi? His apparent indifference at driving for Ferrari (and sometimes in F1) annoys even me (and I am not a Ferrari fan). We know the guy is quick, and can produce some stunning drives, but sometimes he just looks like he can’t be bothered if he’s not winning. We laughed at Massa’s ability in the Silverstone rain a couple of years ago, but at least the guy was trying to push, and has eventually come out as a more respected driver.

I have long been curious of the Tifosi’s attitude towards Kimi Räikkönen. Back in 2007, Räikkönen’s first year at Ferrari, Keith at F1 Fanatic ran a story about how the Tifosi appeared not to be warming towards the Finn.

Keith had attended the Italian Grand Prix and noticed that the fans’ affections were largely saved for Felipe Massa. Meanwhile, the famous Italian sports newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport was lukewarm about Räikkönen’s efforts. The attitude stands in stark contrast to the view that I would assume most non-Ferrari fans seem to hold — that it is Felipe Massa whose driving skills are rather variable while Räikkönen is a proven winner.

The Tifosi don’t always take well to Ferrari drivers at first. I read in James Allen’s book, The Edge of Greatness, that Michael Schumacher didn’t quite capture the imagination of the Tifosi straight off the bat. But once Schumacher got a grasp of quite what the history and heritage of the Ferrari brand means to so many fans, he quickly became an excellent ambassador for the team and the rest is history.

I could well imagine that Schumacher’s apparent aloofness may have rubbed some people up the wrong way. But I wondered quite what it was that turned the Tifosi off about Kimi Räikkönen. Was it the fact that he was a former McLaren driver? Not likely — plenty of Ferrari drivers also raced for McLaren, notably Alain Prost. Maybe it was his reluctance to learn Italian, or his nonchalant demeanour.

Stories about the Tifosi’s apparent indifference towards their new driver unsurprisingly took a back seat immediately after Räikkönen won the World Drivers Championship in 2007. But over the past year or so they have gone into overdrive, and now most onlookers openly question the driver’s commitment to the sport.

Even the team itself sometimes appears to have little patience with their expensive big-name star. And every so often rumours that he will be replaced by Fernando Alonso resurface. We’ve heard those rumours before of course. We were told that Alonso was headed towards Ferrari for 2009 — then Räikkönen signed a contract extension until 2010.

Today James Allen wrote on his blog about the fresh rumours. Alonso is becoming a bit more effusive about Ferrari and Italian culture. He has also moved to the Swiss / Italian border — handy if you want to work with Ferrari.

Rumours that Alonso is arriving at Maranello now go hand-in-hand with the question marks over Räikkönen’s role at Ferrari. It used to be assumed that Alonso moving to Ferrari would be unworkable because he would replace Massa, and having two high-calibre drivers at a top team would not work. On the back of a seriously impressive 2008 campaign though, it doesn’t look like Massa will be the one who has to walk the plank.

Says James Allen:

The word I’m hearing is that these next few races are pretty important for Kimi Raikkonen. Although he has a contract for 2010, the suggestion is that he has certain criteria to meet and that an agreement, which is in place with Alonso for 2011, has a clause which could bring it forward to 2010. The next couple of months will be decisive.

One GP driver I spoke to recently said that in the briefings and at moments when the drivers are all together, Kimi seems like he doesn’t care any more. It’s as if he’s going through the motions. It’s a shame if this is true, as Raikkonen is one of the most exciting and most talented drivers in F1.

That sort of thing is what we hear about Räikkönen all the time — that he is lazy, can’t be bothered and no longer cares. The implication, though, is that this is now even more the case.

Kimi Räikkönen’s qualifying session in Monaco today goes a fair way to dispel that notion in my view. Ferrari have not looked close to getting pole position all season, but it was only a scarcely-believable lap by the ever-improving Jenson Button in the vastly superior Brawn that prevented the Finn from grabbing pole today.

Meanwhile, Felipe Massa, who took pole last year, looked a bit lost during qualifying. He spun in a low-pressure situation during Q1, damaging his car. Massa only qualified 5th on a very similar fuel load to Räikkönen.

Could this be Räikkönen’s resurgence? He badly needs it, and although his performance today is a good sign there were also a few false dawns last season.

It could be, though, that Räikkönen’s reputation is irreparably damaged. Here is one sign that he simply does not have the respect of the Tifosi. This is a video which I saw over at Axis of Oversteer. It is an advert for a Ferrari branded mobile phone.

Schumacher is depicted as the flawless ambassador. Räikkönen is depicted as a slow, unintelligent dork. And this is an advert aimed at Ferrari fans!

But already in Sepang there were signs that the Brawn supremacy was not quite as large as it had seemed. Although Jenson Button won the race, Rubens Barrichello rued his 4th place finish. Then in China Brawn had to make do with a 3-4 rather than the 1-2 they will have been aiming for.

It is easy to write this off as a temporary blip. The Red Bull is clearly an awesome car in the wet. We saw this also in Sepang, when Mark Webber absolutely flew once it started to rain. This has been a trait of Red Bull cars for a few years now, and it even continues in spite of the radical changes to the technical regulations this year.

Fuel-corrected qualifying times show that Brawn still had the advantage over one lap in the dry. But nonetheless, Red Bull’s pace must be giving Brawn cause for concern. The car is also nifty in the dry, as we saw in Melbourne where Sebastian Vettel was running in 2nd for almost the entire race until his crash with Robert Kubica.

What’s more, Red Bull are now hard at work creating a double diffuser which will probably be on the car come Monaco or Turkey. There is already a question mark over whether Brawn will have the resources to continue to develop the car. Red Bull have a big area that they still haven’t exploited, yet they are already in a position to win races.

So congratulations to Red Bull, Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber. What a transformation from last year’s damp squib. To think that there were rumours that Christian Horner was going to get the sack. Not any more!

Red Bull are among the most likeable teams, and Seb and Mark are two charismatic drivers. It has been noted before that this year’s press conferences are much better now that there are personable, chatty drivers finishing in the top three.

At the opposite end of the grid, an equally novel presence — Ferrari. Although the Scuderia can seek solace from the fact that Massa was running quite well until his retirement, the fact is that Ferrari are currently dogged by reliability problems and are not in a position to win races, never mind the championship. Now they have failed to score a point, though they have at least leapfrogged Force India. Nonetheless, this their worst start to the season since 1980. Ominously, that was the start of a 21 year long Championship drought for Ferrari.

Once again I must make the point that this makes McLaren look as though they are having a great season. Lewis Hamilton was racy in the first half of the race in China, no doubt using his kers to good effect. But later on he dropped off, constantly falling off track and spinning. This seems to be a return of his trait of poor tyre management.

In the end, the steadier Heikki Kovalainen leapfrogged him while he was off-track — the icing on the cake of a lacklustre race for Hamilton. 4th in the Constructors’ Championship is not quite the unmitigated disaster this season promised to be for McLaren. It seems as though the car is dire over one lap, but its race pace is not so bad.

One of the teams that McLaren has unexpectedly outshone so far is Renault. I feel deeply sorry for the way Alonso’s race unfolded. Renault opted for a bold and aggressive strategy by filling Alonso light. But this unravelled as the race was — unnecessarily, in my view — started behind the safety car.

This gave Alonso no chance to build up a gap as intended. Indeed, matters were compounded by the fact that Alonso took a pit stop at just the wrong time. This meant that effectively Alonso started the race from the back, rather than second as intended. The fact that Alonso made it back up to 9th by the end of the race is to be applauded.

Alonso’s team mate Nelsinho Piquet provided an excellent demonstration of just why he is not Formula 1 material. It is difficult to guess which F1 driver will get the sack first. There are two other prime candidates in my view.

First is Giancarlo Fisichella, who rumour has it is beginning to try the patience of the Force India team. Fisichella has been largely anonymous so far this season, apart from the moment where he forgot where his pit box was, to much embarrassment. In comparison, Adrian Sutil was running a highly credible 6th on merit when he aquaplaned off the circuit in Shanghai. Had he finished, it would have caused major embarrassment for Ferrari, who would have been the only team yet to score a point.

The third driver who must be hoping to improve soon is Sébastien Bourdais. I thought he should have been given another year to properly assess his abilities. The Frenchman promised he would be better on slicks. Well, now we have slicks — and he has failed to up his game.

He is being totally outclassed by this season’s only rookie, Sébastien Buemi. He showed moments of serious talent in Shanghai, including a bold overtaking move on Kimi Räikkönen. In the end, Buemi could not stop himself from having the occasional off, but he still managed to finish 8th.

Not many suspected that Buemi would be a star of F1 based on his GP2 performances. Mike Gascoyne (who, incidentally, was excellent on the BBC this weekend — could he be our Steve Matchett?) said something to this effect. I was first seriously impressed by Buemi after watching him in last year’s GP2 sprint race at Magny Cours. During that race he ploughed his way through the field, making Bruno Senna look a bit ordinary. That was also a wet race. Is Buemi therefore a wet weather specialist, not unlike his fellow Red Bull protégé Vettel?

Final word — what on earth happened to Toyota’s pace? And Williams for that matter. So much for the advantages of the double decker diffuser!

Points

The points system for 2009 has been amended, and the result is a compromise between Bernie Ecclestone’s controversial ‘medals’ proposal and the current points system. Basically, the current 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 system will remain in tact, but the Drivers’ Championship will be awarded to the driver with the most wins.

I have long been in favour of a radical change to the points system, and I am quite receptive to a “medals-style” system. But many other fans were not so keen.

This compromise solution isn’t one that I have seen suggested before. But on the face of it, it seems like a fair enough compromise. I would still prefer a more radical change to the points system, rather than having the championship automatically going to the driver who has had the most wins. But this could have been much, much worse.

Testing

From now on, teams will be allowed three young driver training tests between the end of the championship and the end of the year. I believe that such tests were unlimited before (correct me if I’m wrong). This represents yet another barrier to the young drivers that Max Mosley purports to be helping.

Straight-line testing is also facing further restrictions. Between 1 January 2009 and the end of the championship, teams will be allowed only eight days of straight-line or constant-radius testing. As pointed out by @sidepodcast on Twitter, this could leave McLaren in trouble given the amount of straight-line testing they have already done this year.

I’m not opposed to limits on straight-line testing. It seems fair to limit it just as other testing is restricted. However, applying this retrospectively does seem to be rather underhanded, and is especially unfair on those teams that took advantage of straight line testing a lot over the winter. Is it yet another FIA anti-McLaren conspiracy? Don those tin foil hats! Say what you like about Max and Bernie, but they sure know how to stir up a fuss!

Qualifying fuel loads

The weights of all cars after qualifying will now be published. This will give the geeks (like me) a lot of interesting data to analyse on a Saturday evening. But I’m not sure how this will improve the show. Personally, the suspense surrounding a driver’s fuel load is the only good thing about having race fuel loads during qualifying. I quite like not knowing when the leaders are going to take a pitstop.

People talk about F1′s script writers. Well now we will have a “spoiler” long before the race has even begun. This is a shame.

I assume this is a response to those who lament the fact that qualifying no longer shows who the fastest driver is. But the real solution to this would be to get rid of the ridiculous race fuel load idea altogether. It has never worked, and it adds nothing to the show.

Tyres

Just a small one this. Wets are now officially “intermediates” and extreme wets are “wets”. This seems rather uncontroversial to me, because I normally refer to inters and extreme wets. Since inters became such good all-round wet weather tyres, this problem has existed, and it’s good that the FIA has tried to inject a rare bit of clarity into the regulations.

Media

Drivers will now have to make themselves more available to sign autographs. And there will be no running away in a fug of embarrassment after a poor performances. All drivers must make themselves available to the media for interview after the race or after they have retired.

Senior team personnel will also have to make themselves available to TV crews. Fota had proposed a similar idea anyway, and it’s a good idea to ensure that the fans get more out of the sport.

Changes to the 2009 Technical Regulations

You what? Yes, apparently the FIA have changed the 2009 Technical Regulations, details of which will be published later today. Haven’t they left it a bit late?…

The batshit-crazy zone

Mind your step. This is where we enter the realms of nonsense. It wouldn’t be the FIA without a nice dose of nonsense, and they certainly haven’t disappointed this time round.

From 2010 onwards there will be a budget cap of £30 million per season. But it’s a voluntary budget cap. So to give teams an incentive to stick to the magic limit, the FIA will allow these teams to have more technical freedoms. Essentially, there will be not one but two sets of Technical Regulations. Maybe from 2010 onwards the sport will become known as “Formulae Ones”, “Two Formula Ones”, “Formula One.1 and Formula One.2″.

In all seriousness, I think this is a recipe for disaster. For one thing, the FIA reckons it will be able to work out when “the cost-capped cars have neither an advantage nor a disadvantage when compared to cars running to the existing rules.”

Now I don’t know about you, but I quite like the idea that in F1 some cars are better than others. It’s called competition. It’s what sport is made of. And too often motorsports go down the route of trying to equalise performance between the cars by restricting the best cars. Then that series goes down the pan (hello, BTCC). That’s because people watch motorsport for the competition between teams and drivers. The moment you try to neutralise that, you start to alienate the core audience.

Besides, it’s all very well to do what they do in Touring Cars and add extra ballast to race-winning cars. But it’s a different thing altogether to try and work out how to manipulate cars when they are being run to separate sets of regulations. The FIA can’t even create one decent set of unambiguous technical regulations, never mind two of them, and with the aim of having the two types of cars performing equally!

For me, this just stinks. The FIA would be able to penalise cars for very little good reason, other than something vague about equalising performance. Decisions would probably be made in smoke-filled rooms, obscured from the fans’ view.

Believe it or not, F1 just got even more political.

Fota carried out a “global audience survey”, with participants from 17 countries and encompassing committed fans of Formula 1 as well as marginal fans and those who don’t watch F1 at all. So there is clearly an eye on trying to expand F1′s appeal without alienating the existing fanbase. The key findings of the survey are not too controversial and I expect most fans will be nodding sagely as they read the list:

1. F1 isn’t broken, so beware ‘over-fixing’ it

   Quite right. Amid all the doom and gloom, we are all fans for a reason and that reason is because we love the sport. It is worth remembering that there isn’t much wrong with F1. Indeed, most of what is wrong with F1 stems from ill thought-out rule changes over the past decade or so.

2. F1 needs to be more consumer-friendly

   There is little doubt about this. F1 fans are somewhat short-changed compared to other fans. Internet coverage is woeful while the fact that HD broadcasts are not yet available is nothing short of a scandal. You cannot escape the feeling that Bernie Ecclestone simply should be doing a better job catering to the fans.

3. Major changes to qualifying format are not urgent

   For all the hand-wringing about the qualifying format, the reality is that it’s the race that matters. Attempts to make qualifying more entertaining over the past few years have only backfired, and the last thing qualifying needs is yet another strange new format. The grid would be more meritocratically formed by ditching the ridiculous “race fuel load” concept.

4. Revisions to the points-scoring system

   There is a clear consensus that the current points system simply does not reward winners enough. The only thing that has prevented a change so far has been disagreement over what the new system should be.

5. Evolution of pit stops and refuelling

   There is a hint that refuelling should be banned (which is will be from 2010 onwards anyway), which makes sense given the dramatic reduction in overtaking which has occurred since 1994. Pit stop strategy does add an interesting dimension though, and it would be wrong to do away with pit stops altogether.

As for Fota’s actual proposals, my reaction is more mixed.

In general, Fota are promising a more fan-friendly environment. The technical and sporting changes must be approved by the FIA first (so you can be sure they will end up being a mess anyway). But as far as I know there is nothing to stop the teams from deciding among themselves to create a more fan-friendly environment. So it is very promising to see that this is exactly what they are promising.

Fota’s suggestion of increased media access to data is a must, and I can’t wait to see what the teams will reveal to the fans this season. Nominating senior team spokesmen is also a good idea. In my view, teams are sometimes quite good at talking to the media during races. ITV certainly managed to get a lot of senior figures doing live interviews during races over the years. But to guarantee this sort of access is of course a good move.

By now, further technical restrictions (such as increasing the life of engines, gearboxes and so on) are expected and uncontroversial. The move to reduce the use of exotic materials will no doubt reduces costs considerably without spoiling the show. But beware any moves that will make F1 seem too much like a spec series. Originally kers was supposed to be a performance differentiator. Already, just one year on, all sides seem determined for there to be a standard unit. What a mess.

I am unsure about a further reduction in testing. Fota has proposed a 50% reduction. This will save money, but there are a host of disadvantages which I have already outlined in my previous post on the subject.

Fota’s proposed new points system is 12-9-7-5-4-3-2-1. Put simply, this is not enough. A two point difference between 1st and 2nd place is far too low. Three points is hardly any better. In my view, 1st place should be worth around double what 2nd place is worth.

I am sceptical of the move to share data about starting fuel loads. The real solution is to get rid of race fuel loads in qualifying. But to publish the starting fuel loads would spoil the surprise element of the strategy, which is the only decent aspect of refuelling. Tyre compounds are already public via the medium of strange green markings on the tyres, so I’m not sure what Fota are proposing that’s different.

The suggestion that one point should be awarded to the constructor that makes the fastest pitstop during the race is absolutely stark raving bonkers. Fast pitstops are rewarded anyway by on-track advantage, and should not count for anything else. I can already envisage Force Indias and Brawns that are well out of the points coming in for unnecessary pitstops, stopping for a quick half-second wipe of the visor or something, just in order to make the fastest pitstop. What a joke. I’m amazed this idea is even being taken half-seriously by Fota.

I am not so sure about the reduction in the duration of the race to 250km (from the current 305km). The key findings note that “the current race format is not viewed as fundamentally broken”, and that concepts such as sprint races would debase the F1 experience. As such, it is completely unclear on what basis Fota wants race lengths reduced. It is completely contradictory.

I wouldn’t rule out shorter races completely. It is true that often very little happens after the final pitstops have shaken out. But 90 minutes is a good length for a major sporting event and part of the essence of Formula 1 is that there is the element of endurance to it.

I think it would be a good idea for there to be a mixture of different race formats throughout a calendar. Nothing too radical. But there’s nothing wrong with having some races shorter than others. And why not have some races where refuelling is allowed, and others when it is banned? Different drivers could demonstrate their varying skills, and different cars could take advantage of their peculiar characteristics.

I suppose there could be a risk that teams will start constructing special cars (with different fuel tanks, weight distributions, etc) for different race formats. But how about having a limit on the number of chassis that each team can use in a season? After all, it worked for engines.

You probably don’t need to be told that Lewis Hamilton is the 2008 Formula 1 World Drivers’ Champion. At the age of 23 years and 300 days, he eclipses Fernando Alonso to become the youngest ever World Champion. He has done so in just his second season.

No matter how well-protected Lewis Hamilton has been by the McLaren team, you don’t achieve that sort of thing by luck. Hamilton is lucky in that he has always been in a great car. It is unprecedented for such a strong team to offer a race drive to a rookie. As such, the statistics flatter him.

However, it is highly questionable that this year’s McLaren MP4-23 was the best car in the field. Ferrari did, after all, win the Constructors’ Championship. Certainly, the McLaren car put in some dominant performances, most notably at Silverstone and Hockenheim. But in both races Hamilton truly overshadowed his team mate, Heikki Kovalainen.

The Finn finished a distant 7th in the Championship, a massive 43 points behind Hamilton. No other inter-team battle has been so comprehensive in its outcome — not even in Renault. Whether the gulf was caused by Hamilton’s superiority or Kovalainen’s inferiority is a matter of interpretation. I suspect it was both.

Kovalainen will point to the fact that he was always put on the more unfavourable strategy, giving him a heavy car during qualifying. This makes his pole position in Silverstone all the more special. But Kovalainen had only one race win which, let us be clear, was a fluke.

Other drivers on the grid have been more flawless. Fernando Alonso, Robert Kubica and Sebastian Vettel spring to mind. But impressive though those drivers have been, the spotlight does not shine so intensely in the midfield. Nor were any of those drivers regularly in contention for wins like Hamilton and Massa were.

In the end, the Championship battle rightly came down to a showdown between Felipe Massa and Lewis Hamilton. Both drivers have made their fair share of mistakes. While Massa had a few spins throughout the season (Malaysia, Britain), Hamilton had a couple of unforgivable crashes (Bahrain, Canada).

Both drivers have also had some bad luck. Ferrari’s pitlane blunder in Singapore cost Massa a sure win and was completely out of Massa’s control. Meanwhile, Hamilton found himself at the rough edge of a suspiciously high number of stewards’ decisions.

It would have been unfortunate if Massa had won the Championship for that reason alone. There is enough anger surrounding the stewards’ decisions this year that had Massa won the Championship many people would regrettably have viewed it as a tainted win. As Clive says, just like Räikkönen’s triumph last year, Hamilton’s Championship victory is the best for international relations.

In the end, I think across the year Hamilton has shown that he deserves to become World Champion. He demonstrated that 2007 was no fluke. Mind you, in a lot of ways Hamilton’s 2008 season was a great deal worse than 2007. It was certainly less consistent. Hamilton never looked even close to equalling his staggering run of nine consecutive podiums achieved in 2008. The problem with 2007 was that Hamilton’s season completely collapsed right at the end. This year the foul-ups were interspersed all across the season — and they weren’t as severe for the most part.

This is key to why Hamilton has won this year when the title eluded him last year. He could afford the odd blow here and there as long as he didn’t let the whole thing unravel at the end. His approach towards the final two races was a world away from the immature hot-head that went to China and Brazil last year. ‘Discipline’ was the keyword emanating from the McLaren camp.

Hamilton’s Championship victory was calculated. The McLaren team’s preparations were so meticulous that it all came down to a confident weather call. Hamilton did not lash out at Vettel once the German had overtaken him, as the Hamilton of old may have done. Instead, he waited for the rain to come and spoil Glock’s final lap.

It was a calculated gamble, and it almost didn’t pay off. But McLaren and Lewis Hamilton knew exactly what they were doing. What a contrast to last year’s bungle which saw McLaren leave it too long to change Hamilton’s tyres in China and Hamilton being too eager to needlessly make up positions in Brazil.

Even though Hamilton’s performance in Fuji this year caused some raised eyebrows, that looks like it was a one off. The overall picture of Lewis Hamilton this season is one that has learned from the mistakes of last year. He has reined in the impatient streak and has learnt not to needlessly go for the win.

For me, it would have been a shame for Hamilton to have lost out on the Championship for a second time, having come so agonisingly close twice. Massa showed that he has what it takes to be a Championship contender. But Hamilton has now done it twice. And even though he couldn’t make it stick in 2007, it would have been cruel to let all of his effort and now obvious talent go unrewarded for a second year.

Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen have rightly been punished for blocking Nick Heidfeld. While other drivers were going slowly as well, it was the McLaren drivers who stuck to the racing line, thereby impeding the BMW.

But it would have been dangerous enough even if all of the drivers avoided the racing line. It is simply unacceptable for a sport that supposedly puts safety at the top of its agenda for cars to be going at radically different speeds at any one time.

This was a foreseeable — and foreseen — consequence of the new rules whereby cars in the top 10 are not allowed to refuel between qualifying and the race. Yet again, scandalously, the FIA have let it go ahead regardless. We don’t even know if they plan to rectify it. You would hope so.

Many people — particularly journalists — are saying that the remedy is to enforce a minimum lap time to ensure that drivers do not baulk on their way back to the pits. But this is just adding yet another layer of complexity to an already ridiculously convoluted set of qualifying rules which are now near impossible to follow.

We have ridiculous engine penalties. These are supposed to cut costs to help the smaller teams. But in reality it gives the smaller teams more incentive to change their engines because they are at the back anyway, so do not feel the penalty. Even though this did not work and is a bloody nightmare for fans to follow, the FIA decided to introduce a similar rule for gearboxes. And you can change your engine once without getting penalised. This is now a mad web of rules which is now so convoluted that even the intention behind them is not clear any more.

But the worst rule of the lot has been the set brought to us by the introduction of “parc fermé conditions”, whereby mechanics cannot touch the car between qualifying and the race. Gradually, some of these restrictions have been dropped over the years. But one confusingly remains resolute — race fuel loads during qualifying.

The race fuel load rule has existed in a variety of guises. It was relatively innocuous when it was used in the one lap qualifying format. Then, drivers would drive their one lap with the fuel load they would carry into the race. It mixed up the grid a bit and was relatively fuss-free, with not much opportunity or incentive for the drivers to mess about.

But the rule should have been dropped when the qualifying format was changed to the knockout system. But, for reasons that I still cannot reach, the FIA decided it would be a good idea to keep race fuel loads during Q3. Not only this, but a layer of complexity was added with “fuel credits” whereby drivers could have their fuel levels topped up after qualifying according to the number of laps they completed. I still don’t understand why.

This led to the patently ridiculous “fuel burning phase” of Q3 whereby cars would tour round the circuit for the first 10 or 15 minutes doing nothing but… burning fuel. When F1 is supposed to be projecting a more environmentally friendly image, perhaps it least green rule ever was introduced. Not only that, it was also deathly dull and it looked simply stupid.

In an attempt to remedy that this year, the FIA have decided to shorten Q3 to 10 minutes and get rid of the fuel credits system, so cars cannot refuel after qualifying. This has, of course, led to the problems we have seen today.

The race fuel loads rule is supposed to (if I remember correctly) mix up the grid slightly. But if you ask me, this makes the races even more boring. Because if a car qualifies on a light fuel load, that means he goes into the race with a compromised strategy. This makes it even more likely that the leaders will be able to run away with an easy race win.

If you ask me, this whole thing could be remedied simply by getting rid of race fuel loads in qualifying, and simply having every driver set a fast lap on a light fuel tank. But of course, Clive is right when he says the last thing we need is a sticking plaster solution.

The FIA needs to go back to square one. It needs to sit down and decide what the purpose of qualifying is. Is it to entertain the fans watching on television, or the fans at the racetrack? Is it to have the fastest driver on pole? Is it to mix up the grid in order to make the race more entertaining? Once it has decided what qualifying is for, it needs to come up with a simple, elegant solution aimed at achieving that goal with the minimum of rules.

That might finally end the farce of qualifying that has lasted for too many years now.