Korean GP - Mine's a double Red Bull

Odd one, the Korean GP, isn't it?

Good track, which the drivers seem to like, but the place just looks deserted. I guess that's what happens when you drop a GP track in the middle of nowhere and hope people will turn up. Or maybe it was the absence of EJ from the BBC team - I hear he's banned as his shirts incite capitalist yearnings.

Once again, practice made it seem likely that someone other than a Red Bull would be on pole. This time it was actually true, though. It certainly looked like Lewis Hamilton, but the strange, subdued, non-smiling chap that got out of the car and proceeded to display little in the way of emotion throughout interviews afterwards seemed pretty far removed from the Hamilton we normally see. This one was the F1 equivalent of Windows Safe Mode - it worked, but with a lot of the functionality removed... but also the errors. Hail RoboHamilton!

HamBot got away well from the grid too, but was robbed of the lead by Vettel within a couple of corners, whilst Button cascaded from 3rd to 6th, and Webber upped himself into the final podium slot.

By lap 10 the Sebulator was easing gently away, with a few tantalising drops of rain adding the possibility of drama.

Button and Rosberg pitted together on lap 14 and his Merc mechanics did their work faster than the McLaren mob, releasing Britney alongside Jenson. Rosberg had the edge, but somehow managed to cock up the pit exit, allowing a grateful JB to nip back past. Nico wasn't giving up that easily though and snatched the place back moments later. Jenson finally got his place back for good 2 laps later.

Schumi and Petrov were so busy attempting to out-run each other than neither noticed a) a corner or b) slower cars and Vitaly piled into Michael sending both of them out of the race, but not before they narrowly avoided ending Alonso's afternoon too.

Following a Safety Car period to tidy up bits of broken Mercedes and Renault, Jenson made a stirling effort to get Webber, but didn't quite manage it.

Rosberg was running an impressive 5th on lap 28, but a lock up so extreme that it probably wore through half the wheel and not just the tyre allowed both Ferraris through.

RoboHamilton and Webber put on a cracking, multi-lap, show over 2nd place, pitting together and then continuing their fight afterwards too.

Alonso had found himself outqualified by Massa for the second race in a row, and the main event was proving to be a similar frustration for him. Whilst the front-runners made their final round of stops, Fernando stayed out and put together an impressive run of fastest laps, finally allowing him past Felipe. Team orders at Ferrari? Not today, at least.

Impressively, Alonso continued his fast pace and began to reel in Button, who had managed to drag himself up to 4th. Webber and Hamilton were at it again with 7 laps left, and Lewis finally managed to wrestle his way past.

With 4 laps left, Seb was cruising out front, but Hamilton, Webber, Button and Alonso were running nose to tail is their battle for 2nd.

And there they stayed, with only Alonso livening things up by telling his team over the radio that he was giving up. The top 6 were only lightly shuffled from quali, but the order was enough to hand Red Bull their second constructors title.

(Brief interlude from the CD A-Z, as a new CD dropped through the gap where my letterbox used to be recently - They Might Be Giants' latest, "Join Us".)

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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