Abu Dhabi GP - Vettel in 'no win' shocker!

Abu Dhabi – it’s amazingly shiny, but a bit dull, right? Bunging a couple of DRS zones in should sort that though, surely? Well, it did help a bit... but not a lot.

Pre-race talk was once again about Hamilton, who was busy complaining to the BBC that the fact that he didn’t have a girlfriend, Dad, friends, hairdresser, cat, manicurist, cat’s manicurist or that chap he used to go to school with but hadn’t seen for 5 years with him at every race was the reason Jenson was doing better than him. Um... OK, then.

Jenson, meanwhile, was busy growing a fetching moustache and just bloody well getting on with it.

Quali had a pause in Q2 whilst pieces of highly un-tech bollard were removed, and an exciting last-gasp battle saw Button, Hamilton and finally Vettel grabbing pole in rapid succession. Seb equalled Mansell’s 14 poles in a season record, whilst the team the grumbly Brummie had so much success with, Williams, delivered their worst qualifying session in living memory, with too-many-engines penalties and gremlins leaving Maldonado and Barrichello 23rd and 24th on a dark day for the former champions.

Sunday featured a truly unique event – Seb didn’t even finish a lap. His usual lightning start saw him lead into the first corner, but an instantaneous puncture saw him spin out, gifting Hamilton a surprise 1st place. Alonso sneaked 2nd from Button, whilst Schumi & newly-contracted Rosberg slugged it out to try and prove who’s the daddy in the Merc squad.

A bemused Vettel limped round to the pits, but flailing Pirelli has chomped away half of the arse-end of his car, and it was game over for the Sebulator. Typically, he then had a look at data to try and figure out what happened, then sat the rest of the race on the pit wall to learn what goes on there. If that’d been Kimi, it would have been choc ice and Coke time.

Whilst Lewis held the gap to Alonso steady at around 5 seconds, Button was struggling by lap 13 as his KERS packed up. Webber closed in, and some quality scrapping ensued, the pair swapping places but avoiding any contact (Take note, Lewis and Felipe). Post-race, it turned out JB’s KERS worked on and off, leaving him playing Russian Roulette every time he stuck the brakes on.

Webbo got a taste of what his team mate is well used to on lap 17, as Hamilton, Alonso and Button pitted together, leaving the Aussie briefly in the lead. It was a brave call for McLaren, as they had to service both their peddlers with no gap in-between.

Massa and Webber passed and re-passed each other on lap 31, whilst Maldonado did a very good impersonation of an utter spanner by ignoring enough blue flags (and lights the size of buses) that the stewards gave him a penalty for it.

Webber got past Button and his on/off KERS, but Mark still had to stop to use the hard tyres, whilst Jenson didn’t. Alonso had a slim chance to get past Hamilton during their final pit stops, but a slow tyre changed scuppered that, already faint, hope.

Massa did his best to entertain the troops with a late spin, and Webber’s last lap stop dropped him back behind Button at the end, but fair play to the lad – Hamilton drove a flawless lap, with pace to spare, for a comfortable win.

It seems all he needs is several months, a messy public split with his pop start girlfriend, multiple crashes with red cars, his Mum, a stupid beard and a whole lot of pouting, then he’s bang on form. Hurrah!

(Continuing the CD romp, tonight it's The Beatles again, with "Beatles For Sale", from 1964.)

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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