And the winn(g)er is...

A picture paints a thousand words....

Still, won't stop me, will it? Well, what a cracking afternoon's entertainment. The BBC's coverage of the British Grand Prix was spot on (thanks guys) and I especially enjoyed the pub quiz. To quote Al Murray's pub landlord when offering darts to Button "You any good at Arrows? Nah, neither was Damon Hill".

An interesting story had bubbled up overnight about the Red Bull wing issue. In short, they had two new front wings, Vettel's broke, so they took the one off Webber's car and gave it to Seb. For a guy feeling the pressure about wether his team are favouring the other side of the garage, this must have brought down the red mist for Mark. Luckily, he's better at controlling his temper than Alonso, and he took it on that big Aussie chin of his and decided the best way to answer that was to go out there and win it.

Straight away at the start he made it abundantly clear that he wasn't going to take any crap from his team-mate and avoided a swerve by Seb before muscling him out of the way at the first corner. Vettel then brushed Hamilton's from wing and copped a puncture. Pole to the back on the first lap. They weren't the only team-mates scrapping though, as Alonso and Massa came together and Felipe joined Seb at the back after his own flat sent him limping to the pits. Hamilton and Webber traded fastest laps at the front with Mark ahead, and a hot-headed Alonso tried to get past Bob Kubica, only to find he was out of track when Mr K firmly closed the door on him. Rather than do the sensible thing and let Kubica back through, he ploughed on, risking a penalty. It came, but by this time Kubica was out of the race so the FIA went for a drive-through penalty instead. Unfortunately for the grumpy one in red, the Safety Car came out to allow for debris from De La Rosa's collapsing rear wing to be cleared, thus he had to take the penaly afterwards... by which time a Sunday drive down the pitlane involved the entire field passing him. I'm guessing he wasn't happy, as not long afterwards he curtly told the team "no more radio".

Towards the end some good scraps built up: Liuzzi & Alonso, who was attempting to get back through the field - didn't work out very well though, and Fernando wound up with a puncture. I wouldn't want to be on his flight back home. Rosberg and Button (in a brilliant recovery from 14th on the grid) slugged it out for 3rd, with Nico the winner in this fight, whilst Sutil and a fast-moving Vettel had a ding-dong for 7th, with Seb finally getting the place.

Webber's comments on the radio after taking the flag spoke volumes: "Not bad for a Number Two driver", whilst Christian Horner asked him "Can you manage a smile now?".

Barrichello showed Williams' improving form for 5th (and then became the fastest F1 driver in a reasonably priced car on Top Gear later), with another good drive from Kobayashi netting him 6th. What was he doing the first half of the season then?! Sutil, Schumacher & Hulkenberg rounded out the points finishers, meaning both Williams and Mercedes drivers finished in the points. Ferrari? 14th and 15th...

If Mark Webber needed to answer his critics and show that he can rise to the occasion in difficult circumstances, he did a fair dinkum job at Silverstone.

(NP tonight. Er... Bon Jovi. Sorry.)

Shouting in the social media mirror

It was always tricky to fit everything you wanted into the intentionally short character count of Twitter, especially when, like me, you tend to write ridiculously long sentences that keep going on and on, with no discernible end in sight, until you start wondering what the point was in the first place. The maximum length of a text message originally limited a tweet to 140 characters, due to it being a common way to post your ramblings in Twitter’s early days. Ten years later, we’ve largely consigned texting to the tech dustbin, and after a lot of angst, the social media platform’s bigwigs have finally opted to double your ranting capacity to 280. Responses ranged from “You’ve ruined it! Closing my account!” to the far more common “Meh” of modern disinterest. As someone rightly pointed out, just because you have twice as much capacity doesn’t mean you actually have to use it. It is, of course, and excellent opportunity to use the English language correctly and include punctuat...

A fisful of change at the shops

A recent day out reminded me how much the retail experience has altered during my lifetime – and it’s not all good. I could stop typing this, and buy a fridge, in a matter of seconds. The shops are shut and it’s 9pm, but I could still place the order and arrange delivery. I haven’t got to wander round a white-goods retail emporium trying to work out which slightly different version of something that keeps my cider cold is better. It’ll be cheaper, too. But in amongst the convenience, endless choice and bargains, we’ve lost some of the personal, human, touches that used to make a trip to the shops something more than just a daily chore. Last weekend, we visited a local coastal town. Amongst the shops selling over-priced imported home accessories (who doesn’t need another roughly-hewn wooden heart, poorly painted and a bargain at £10?) was one that looked different. It’s window allowed you to see in, rather than being plastered with stick-on graphics and special offers calling ...

Making an exhibition of yourself

Now and again, it’s good to reaffirm that you’re a (relatively) normal human being. One excellent way of doing this is to go to a business exhibition. Despite what you might have surmised from reading my previous columns, I am employable, and even capable of acting like a regular person most of the time, even joining in the Monday morning conversation about the weather over the weekend, and why (insert name of footyballs manager here) should be fired immediately. The mug! True, there are times, often involving a caffeine deficiency, where it is like having the distilled essence of ten moody teenagers in the room, but I try and get that out of the way when people I genuinely like aren’t around to see it. As part of my ongoing experiment with what others call ‘working’, my ‘job’ involves me occasionally needing to go and see what some of my colleagues get up to outside the office, and what our competitors do to try and make sure that they do whatever my colleagues do better than ...

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