Splash and dash

Phil: Blogging in my lunch break at work as I've moved yet again, and have no Internet at home, so it's going to have to be a short splash and dash.

First things first, greetings to our follower! First actual readers, and now an actual follower. This blog goes from strength to strength. If we carry on at this rate we may be starting our own religion by the end of the season.

Anyway, the race. I would have to agree with some (but not all) of my co-blogger's detailed analysis. The news since he blogged is that Schumacher has apologised to Barrichello for almost shunting him into the pitwall, and been penalised 10 grid places at the next race, at Spa. Given his current qualifying form this may well put him last on the grid.

I'm going to give a pat on the back to Vitaly Petrov, consistently outraced by his Renault teammate Robert Kubica all season to the extent that Renault have openly considered who to replace him with (Sutil? Heidfeld? Raikkonen?), who scored a 'best of the rest' fifth place at the Hungaroring.

Congratulations also to Mark Webber - make no mistake, this was the drive of a champion. Admittedly, the opportunity only arose because of his teammate's misfortune (one of the Red Bulls was inevitably going to win this race, as they were head and shoulders ahead of the rest of the field at the weekend, and I'm going to pretend I didn't see Vettel behaving like a spoilt child as took his penalty and on the podium) but the important thing is that Mark took the opportunity and turned it into a dominant win. And with the top five drivers separated by only 20 points (the equivalent of only 8 points under the old system) with one third of the season left, this is going to be the closest season finale in a long time. I can't wait.