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!

Well he now has that win. And it was a truly dominant win at that. His car was clearly majestic at the Nürburgring, but he also comprehensively outclassed Sebastian Vettel all weekend. Not only that, but Webber did this even when his typical bad luck hit him.

Webber’s drive-through penalty did seem a bit harsh. He clearly made a move across into Barrichello’s portion of the track, so there was the potential for there to be a nasty accident. But both drivers were in control of the situation. Plus, Michael Schumacher did this sort of thing on a race-by-race basis without the FIA so much as raising its eyebrows.

You would never have guessed he had a drive-through penalty, because it didn’t seem to affect his race in the slightest. This was helped by the fact that the Red Bull team cleverly kept him out for as long as possibble before he had to serve his penalty, ensuring that he had time to build up more of a gap. This is a signal that Red Bull as a team is maturing too.

It’s worth remembering too that Mark Webber still has a chunk of metal in his right leg from his bicycle accident over the winter. It is easy enough to imagine how much of a hindrance this is in terms of confidence in the cockpit and the physical pain that may be present. But the metal also adds a load of weight to the driver. This is real hindrance particularly to someone like Webber who, being tall, is one of the heaviest drivers on the grid even without lumps of metal in his leg.

All-in-all, this makes it a big, big win for Webber. Despite all the woes that hit the Brawn team over winter, this win was more hard-fought than any of Button’s this year. A straightforward lights-to-flag victory wouldn’t be Webber’s style, but I guess that makes it all the more rewarding.

This makes both Red Bull drivers now major title contenders. If it comes to crunch time towards the end of the season, the team faces a tough choice between which of the two drivers to rely on the most — the ostensibly quicker Vettel, or the more experienced Webber? An internal Red Bull battle will play into Jenson Button’s hands.

After all, it is not difficult to guess which driver Brawn will favour. It might be strange for them to think of that given Barrichello’s extraordinary post-race outburst. I doubt the team is interested in further antagonising a driver who is clearly paranoid. But maybe if they sit him down and give him some more “blah blah blah blah blah”, he will understand that it makes no sense for a team to forfeit Button’s races in favour of a slower driver.

It is true that Barrichello led into the first corner (sort of) but on his light fuel load he was never going to be a favourite for the win here, and neither was Button. A fuel rig problem, outwith the control of the Brawn team, of course did not help matters.

Perhaps a more pressing concern to the Brawn team will be the fact that they now genuinely look like they do not have the best car. Like Britain, the German GP was particularly cool, which favours Red Bull and disadvantages Brawn. But notably, both Brawn cars finished behind a Ferrari and a Williams, two teams that had a pretty torid start to the season. The advantage they had at the start of the season has been whittled away.

It remains to be seen if the warmer races will see the pendulum swing back in Brawn’s favour. But one thing seems certain: the second half of the season won’t be nearly as easy as the first half for them.

Rubens reckons he led into the first corner, although another driver who could claim to have been leading in the first corner is Lewis Hamilton. Unfortunately, in the scramble for the first corner, he was tagged by the front wing of Webber’s car and had to trail round for the whole lap with a puncture before being able to pit. The tyre damaged his car further, meaning that his race was effectively over in turn 1.

I think Hamilton and McLaren can take a lot of heart from the weekend’s events though. Who knows how the race would have unfolded had Hamilton emerged as the leader for the first stint. He did have the third lightest fuel load on the grid, but he was heavier than the Brawns.

Fuel-adjusted, Hamilton was the third fastest in qualifying, 9 tenths ahead of Heikki Kovalainen who didn’t have the upgraded package. It looked so unlikely just a few weeks ago, but McLaren could be challenging for wins in the second half of this season.

The other major surprise up the grid was Adrian Sutil. He managed to qualify 7th which was stunning enough, but my jaw hit the floor when I saw that he had the heaviest car in the top 10! Sadly, it didn’t come together for him during the race with yet another racing incident involving Kimi Räikkönen. These things happen.

You sense that Force India are very close to their first point. In truth, a bucketful of bad luck is the only thing that has prevented them from scoring so far. Even Giancarlo Fisichella is in good form right now. During the first stint he looked very pacey indeed, overtaking a number of cars. All in all he gained nine places before making his first pit stop.

Another driver who had a great first stint was Nico Rosberg. He gained six places on lap one alone (as did Kubica, indeed, not that he could make much of it in that dog of a BMW). Rosberg continued to steadily climb throughout the race, and ultimately finished a very well-deserved fourth. Rosberg continues to impress me this season.

The Hungarian Grand Prix will be an important one, not so much for the racing (which probably won’t be very good on that circuit), but as a signal of what to expect for the rest of the season. Is Brawn’s slump more permanent, or was it a blip caused by cool conditions?

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!

5. McLaren-Mercedes

There has been lots of speculation over McLaren’s position throughout the winter. In the past month or so it has emerged that McLaren appear to have major problems finding grip at the rear. The McLaren has scarcely been able to set a semi-respectable time all winter, and ended up doing loads of straight line testing with yellow paint smeared all over the car in an attempt to understand the airflow.

In the cynical world of F1, many observers pointed out that this could just be the ultimate form of sandbagging. James Allen alerted us to the theory that McLaren are simply approaching testing in a different way as a result of the new testing restrictions. Yet more (such as Mr C on Sidepodcast) suggest that it may be a publicity start.

I don’t buy any of it. Sandbagging is all very well, but they have to turn up the wick at some point to make sure that everything behaves as expected at full speed. And I doubt it’s a publicity stunt, because I can’t imagine that Vodafone are too pleased about having their logo smeared with yellow day-glo goo in quite a high-profile way.

It’s worth remembering that McLaren have produced a dud of a car before in recent years — the MP4-18, which was so bad it never raced, and its offspring the MP4-19. Mind you, these problems were largely down to reliability rather than aerodynamic issues. That year, McLaren still managed to win a race.

My guess is that if McLaren manage to find a fix for their aerodynamic problems, they will turn out to have a decent season. But it will have proved a distraction, having used up resources and time which could have been spent on improving the car rather than fixing it.

4. Brawn-Mercedes

Brawn have been the surprise of the off-season. After a troubled winter which saw the team put up for sale without warning, and a protracted rescue, the team looked set to have a poor season. Yet the Brawn has easily been the most impressive of the cars, setting blistering times during practice.

It could all be an attempt to attract attention and gain sponsors. But the team is still getting a nice amount of funding from Honda. Also, Mercedes said they wouldn’t supply an engine until funding was fully in place, so presumably it is in place. I’m sure Brawn wouldn’t say no to a bit of extra funding though.

In a way, it makes sense that the Brawn is a fast car. Let’s not forget that Honda basically gave up on 2008 in order to focus on 2009. Before the team was put up for sale, I thought Honda were going to be the team to watch in 2009. Expectations only dropped after the tumultuous events of the winter.

Of course, this is irrational because it is still the same car. Only the engine is different. While this would normally lead to reliability problems, the Brawn car has been surprisingly reliable during testing. Whether or not you think Brawn were running light during the test sessions, the reliability of the car cannot be denied. Indeed, it may be the fact that Brawn are actually in a better position. Judging by Jenson Button’s comments, the Mercedes engine has more grunt that Honda’s.

My gut feeling is that Brawn will be in contention to win a few races, particularly at the start of the season. They may not have the resources to develop the car as intensively as other teams throughout the season, so their performance may drop off later on in the season.

3. Toyota

Immediately after Toyota’s launch, I pooh-poohed their chances. But their testing form seems remarkably solid. The TF109 has been among the fastest cars, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Toyota win a race or two. But there is still something inside me that refuses to see them as genuine championship contenders.

2. BMW

This is an important year for BMW. For many, they unforgivably gave up on the championship battle last season. A certain Polish driver was particularly peeved. If BMW don’t perform really well this season, history will view their 2008 strategy as a mistake.

Fortunately for BMW, their pre-season form seems pretty solid. They have done nothing spectacular, but this is part of the BMW way. Last year they seemed in the doldrums going by their testing form, but they had no problems at all once the actual racing was under way. BMW are not a showy team, and it is their methodical and sober approach that makes them winners.

BMW seem poised to take advantage of the ability to use kers. The team has always seemed the most confident of everyone over their kers system. But could it be a disadvantage to their star driver Robert Kubica? The Pole is tall (and therefore heavy) for an F1 driver, and the added weight of kers is one particular area where BMW appear to have a weakness.

1. Ferrari

Ferrari were the first to launch their car, and at first I felt like Ferrari were going to have a moderate season. For some reason, the early testing form suggested that to me. Of course, the idea behind the early launch was to enable Ferrari to debug and perfect the car. So the car’s more recent performances has been pretty tasty.

If there is one thing that will be a cause for concern to the Scuderia it will be reliability. They seem to have been suffering from a few gremlins over the winter. This will be especially worrying since Ferrari’s reliability left a lot to be desired last year as well.

All-in-all, though, I can’t help feeling that Ferrari are going to be leading the way this season.

That’s all well and good if FOTA turns out to be half-decent and come up with good solutions. Unfortunately, the signs are now that the teams’ ideas for the future of Formula 1 are every bit as barmy as Mad Max’s.

Take a paragraph buried in Pitpass’s story on Luca di Montezemolo’s whines about the Singapore Grand Prix earlier this week. As it happens, I kind of agree with most of what di Montezemolo had to say, although that is for a different post. But as though the shock of agreeing with the execrable Ferrari President (who also happens to be President of FOTA) wasn’t enough, what Pitpass revealed about FOTA’s early ideas literally left me open-mouthed in shock and disillusionment.

We hear that at last week’s meeting a number of issues which could result in a seismic change to the sport were discussed, including standard transmissions, standard wheels, standard brakes and standard rear wings.

We hear there may even be a vote on whether F1 should have a weight handicap system!

Excuse me for swearing, but what the very fuck?! What is this pish? Standard transmissions, wheels, brakes and even aero? Why not go the whole hog and throw in standard drivers as well? We might as well pay to watch a glorified Scalextric race.

This is beginning to look like a complete stitch-up. I know the teams desperately want to cut costs, but this is just extreme. With practically spec cars, the only competition left in F1 will be over who has the biggest motorhome and the best catering.

Lest the powers-that-be forget, Formula 1 is supposed to be all about watching the best drivers in the best cars, and that means teams constantly innovating in as many areas as possible. F1 is supposed to be about technological excellence. FOTA’s plan sounds like a watered-down European version of IndyCar — and there is a reason why so few people watch those lorries tootling round the place.

If you want to watch a spec series, you can take your pick. There is GP2, A1GP (if they can ever get round to actually building the blasted cars), World Series by Renault and now even Max Mosley’s sorry Formula Two scheme. That is not to mention the literally countless spec series that operate lower down the chain.

If even Formula 1 becomes a spec series with standard this, that and the other, what is left? Please. We have to have at least one motor racing category that is dedicated to technological advancement. The world is already over-populated with spec series that there would simply be no point in F1 transforming into one.

I haven’t even gone into the weight handicap system. Needless to say, this would be a total disaster for F1. We want to see the best drivers and the best cars win. That is what sport is supposed to be about. Why should people be punished for being fast? What a load of nonsense. Remember, BTCC’s figures went off a cliff when they introduced their ludicrous ballast system. Why do they think we want to see fast cars going slowly? Keith skewers weight handicap systems here as well.

Meanwhile, Martin Whitmarsh has unveiled FOTA’s big plan for spicing up the Grand Prix weekend. But it doesn’t sound very spicy to me. Apparently, the biggest problem with Formula 1 is Fridays! Silly me for not noticing! And what is the great thing that is going to solve this ill? A mickey mouse time trial with a cash prize!

WTF?! First of all, Fridays are the one bit of F1 that are more-or-less perfect if you ask me. They are called practice sessions, I get to watch the cars practicing. For me, that is a win. There is a certain pleasure to be derived from watching F1 cars do their thing at high speed but without necessarily competing with one another.

Why does this — of all aspects of the F1 weekend — need to be tampered with? Why does there need to be competitive action on a Friday? As far as I’m concerned, Friday is for practicing. Competitive action is for a Sunday.

Don’t forget that no-one will watch anything if it happens on a Friday. People are at work. They’re doing other things. Remember the doomed experiment with spreading qualifying over two days. That was pretty hastily dropped because they realised that no-one could be bothered watching the Sunday morning session — and that was a Sunday, never mind a Friday!

As for having a cash prize, I mean please. This isn’t a game show — it’s Formula 1. Besides, do they really think fans will be that bothered to watch mega-rich drivers getting even richer? No thanks.

See more on this from Clive at F1 Insight, with whom I totally agree on this.

I think I preferred the chaos and deadlock of old over these hare-brained schemes of FOTA.

• Breakfast
  • Three fried egg sandwiches topped with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise
  • Two cups of coffee
  • Omelette made out of five eggs
  • Bowl of grits
  • Three slices of french toast sprinkled with sugar
  • Three chocolate chip cookies
• Lunch
  • Half a kilogram of enriched pasta
  • Two large ham and cheese sandwiches of white bread with mayonnaise
  • 1,000 calories of energy drink
• Dinner
  • Half a kilogram of enriched pasta (again)
  • A whole pizza
  • 1,000 calories more of energy drink

All I can say is, with a breakfast that big I hope he doesn’t have to commute!

This extreme diet reminded me of another extreme diet I read about earlier this year. It is not uncommon to hear about drivers stacking up on the pasta — the carbohydrates do them good over long distances.

But pasta is a big no-no for Robert Kubica nowadays. The pole is among the tallest drivers in F1 at 184 cm. That can be a major disadvantage in a sport where teams are always looking to trim unnecessary weight so that they can put ballast in the best position for the performance of the car.

There is also the fact that the cockpit of an F1 can be quite a confined space. Alexander Wurz was unable to deputise when Juan Pablo Montoya had his “tennis injury” a couple of years back because the Austrian still couldn’t fit into the McLaren car! In 1995 Nigel Mansell also struggled to fit into his McLaren, though that was probably more because he had grown outwards!

Over the winter, Robert Kubica went on an extraordinary crash diet which allowed him to lose an incredible five kilos in just five weeks. That is amazing for someone who looked so gaunt in the first place. This weight loss is said to be a major factor in his competitiveness this season. Here is a typical day in Kubica’s regime according to an article by Peter Windsor in the June 2008 issue of F1 Racing.

• Breakfast: fruit
• Lunch: A 50p-sized piece of chicken with some carrots and a sprig of broccoli
• Dinner: “A forkful of protein”

(A 50 pence piece is 27.3 mm in diameter.)

“No carbs. No dairy. Nothing artificially sweet.”

The prospect of eating so little throughout the day would be bad enough for me, never mind being banned from carbohydrates! Like Michael Phelps, Robert Kubica has had to display tremendous self-discipline and commitment. It is just another reason why Robert Kubica is surely a future world champion.

Because no matter what, only you can make the perfect cup of tea. Invariably, if somebody else makes me a cup of tea it tastes absolutely disgusting — and many people seem to say this. There is only one way to make decent tea, and that is my way.

People must assume that when I say that I take no milk and no sugar that I must want my tea to taste like compost. One person actually said this. She thought that because I took no milk or sugar that I must have wanted it really strong, so the tea bag was left in the mug for absolutely ages.

Yuk. No way. I keep the bag in my mug for a very short length of time — maybe five seconds. I just pour the water, swish the bag around a bit and take the bag straight out. A minimum of fuss and effort: this makes the perfect cup of tea for me.

I don’t mind milk in my tea, but it does seem a little bit pointless to me. It just ‘waters (milks) it down’ and makes it taste more like milk than tea. And it apparently takes away the lauded health benefits of drinking tea.

Some people have suggested that I put sugar in my tea. This is because I probably need to put on weight because I no longer fit any of my trousers, and I even bought smaller trousers and I don’t even properly fit them! A couple of years ago I was 10½ stone; nowadays I hover between 9 and 9½. I don’t know why really. I shovel food down my gullet like nobody’s business.

Nevertheless, some people have even made comments about how thin I look now. There is also the astonishing fact that I actually lost weight over Christmas. I explained this as being down to the fact that “junk food travels through faster”.

Sugar in my tea could fatten me up and allow me to reduce my clothing budget, so the theory goes. But I can hardly think of anything that tastes more disgusting than sugary tea. (Sugary coffee is not so bad, but I still much prefer my coffee completely untainted.) If I were to regularly put sugar in my tea, I would probably die of disgust before experiencing any fatty benefits.

Those ISO busybodies are not the only people suggesting a standard way to make tea. For instance, Scaryduck reckons:

Tea should be stewed for at least half an hour before serving, preferably in a mug last washed up in 1973 with full-fat milk and six sugars. Tea which breaks several international conventions against chemical weapons but we do not care. Anything else is a betrayal of British values.

And who could forget a few years back when the Royal Society of Chemistry suggested their own “perfect” cup of tea? (Link to PDF file.) Leader of the Tea Party, Tony Benn, approved:

He sniffed. He sipped. He pondered. “It’s very tasty, I must say,” he said. He sipped again. “Oh, it’s delicious.”

Update: Entirely coincidentally, this from Gordon McLean.