And then there were four...

In F1 terms, Brazil is usually good value for money.

For starters, it has held the championship showdown for the last 5 years. Would it manage in again in 2010 with 5 drivers still in the hunt?

Qualifying was that entertaining thing of a wet, but slowly drying, track. Things went roughly as you would expect, which regrettably included Button struggling for grip and seeing him fail to make Q3. The biggest surprise came in the last 4 minutes, when everyone decided it was time to switch to slicks and see if they could hang on. Whilst most drivers (including the championship rivals) all slithered here and there, one man kept it all together - a surprising (and probably surprised) Incredible Hulkenberg. But not only did he manage to be ahead of everyone, he then put in another lap a whole second faster. Awesome. Somehow you knew that was likely to be the highlight of his weekend...

Button's crap day got worse when some armed neer-do-wells attempted to get at his armoured motor on the way out of the track. Still, whilst scary, he fared better than some Sauber mechanics who were held up and had their gear stolen. You don't get that at Silverstone. Mind you, you get robbed when buying a burger instead.

Race day saw Red Bull with another opportunity to become constructor's champs (if they could manage not to balls it up this time) and they got off to a fine start, with both drivers past Hulky on the first lap. Alonso couldn't manage the same until L7 and Button once again seemed to be struggling with tyres.

Hamilton seemed to spend most of the race grumbling about his tyres, the F duct (asking if it was working seemed a bit odd - it's a bloody hole. Did he think it had healed up or something?), tyres again and probably the price of fish too.

Jenson opted to pit early for tyres (what had he got to lose?) on L12 to try and get himself out of the Hulkenqueue which had formed, and Massa did the same. A dodgy wheel nut meant he was back in next lap, knackering him home GP big time, and any chance of him helping his team-"mate".

Up front, Vettel led from Webber by roughly 2 seconds for ages, the gap ebbing and flowing as they lapped endless cars, a low-attrition race (unless you were Tonio Liuzzi) meaning nearly everyone was still running at the end. Alonso, comfortable in the knowledge that he just needs podiums to bag another title, kept a comfortable distance back in 3rd.

Liuzzi failed to spot a corner (how come he's still got a drive?) on lap 51 and the Safety Car was deployed. As everyone had already taken their mandatory tyre stop, it was surprise to see Hamiton and Button pit, but as it turned out, they remained in the same positions, albeit with a bunch of lapped cars in front of them.

Button needed a miracle for his title chances to stay alive but, unlike armed gunmen*, it didn't arrive. Whilst Koyayashi did his usual late-race banzai business and Rubens had his usual crap luck at home with a puncture, Vettel won with Webber 2nd, Alonso 3rd, Hamilton 4th and Button 5th. Credit to Hulky - 8th was pretty respectable in the end, with only the title protagonists and 2 Mercs in front of him.

It was enough for Red Bull to take their first Constructor's title too. And so we head off to to the final race of the season, with the top 3 closed-up further, but Hamilton out of it, unless he wins and the rest don't score in Abu Shabi. Sorry, Dhabi.

Damn, this season is exciting...

(* Why do we say "armed gunmen"? If they weren't armed, they wouldn't be gunmen, just men. It's like saying wet water. I really shouldn't let this sort of thing annoy me so much, should I? *long pause* But it does. Grrrrr.)

(Playing tonight, Marillion's 88 album "Radiation")

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 ...

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...

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