Bring on the sub-headings

Phil: I completely agree (as always) with my learned co-blogger that so much was going on at Sepang on Sunday that we need an A to Z to find our way through it.

A. Alonso
General consensus in the paddock is that Alonso is the best driver of his generation, but that he rarely has a car to flatter his talents. General consensus also says that this year's Ferrari is the worst car they've built in years. At Sepang, as in any wet race, the performance differential between a good car, a mediocre car and a really awful car is to a certain extent levelled off, and raw driver talent plays a much bigger role. Alonso's win tends to prove both theories correct. Together with his fifth place in Melbourne, it also gives him the lead in the world championship. But - and it's a big but - even he acknowledged after the race that at dry races it's going to be damage limitation.

B. Bruno Senna
Nice one.

C. Coverage
I'm afraid I don't subscribe to any of conspiracy theories doing the rounds about Sky sabotaging the BBC's access to the juicy bits. All broadcasters' pictures are the same as they come direct from FOM (Formula One Management), so this should really be under B for Bernie. Or even B for bollocks. After all, it would hardly be the first time the producer has shown us a shot of someone pitting from eighth place when someone else is challenging from the lead.

G. Grosjean
Qualifies well, goes off in first lap incidents. We're only two races in though and the first one was a simple racing incident (at the time I'd have put the blame more at Maldonado's feet, actually) so I'd give him the benefit of the doubt.

K. Kimi
Before the season started I confidently predicted Kimi would be a laughing stock by the beginning of the European season. However, his pre-race poo strategy is really paying off and it's not beyond the realm of possibility that he might actually win a race this year.

L. Lewis
I fear my co-blogger may have misinterpreted my earlier blog as tending to be supportive of Lewis when I was actually taking the piss out of him. He seems not to have taken the hint either (anyone would think he doesn't actually read this blog), so I think things now need to be spelt out to him.

Lewis. When you first came into F1, I was a huge fan. I was impressed by your maturity as well as your talent. I was impressed that you weren't overawed by having a double world champion for a team-mate. I was genuinely over the moon the next year when you became the first British world champion in over a decade having given us the Official Best Race Ever (see last year). But now I have tell you you irritate me more than any of the other drivers. More than Kimi. More than Alonso. More than Vettel. More even than Michael Schumacher. And the reason is this. When things don't go your way, you sulk. You're second in the world championship, and you're sulking now. And I think the reason you sulk is that you can't deal with failure. Your life except for the last 2-3 years has been one success after the other. You've been a champion in every form of motorsport you've entered, including the very highest. So you've never learned that sometimes, in racing, and in life, things don't go your way. Sometimes you can give it every ounce of breath and every drop of sweat you have, and still watch it all fall to pieces on the very last lap. Just look at Maldonado last weekend. Some drivers spend their whole careers doing that. You're lucky, you're a world champion. But you're not special. You don't have a god-given right to have everything your own way. When they don't, that doesn't mean there is some kind of conspiracy against you, that's just racing. The thing that worries me the most, Lewis, is that you're slowly but surely turning into Ayrton Senna. By the end of the season you might very well be shunting Jenson off into the kitty litter at the first corner at Suzuka, then telling everyone he had it coming to him. And you know what happens then. Gerhard Berger throws your briefcase out of a helicopter and fills your hotel room with frogs. Oh yes. Don't say we didn't warn you.

P. Perez
It's pissing down with rain and a promising young Latin American driver scores an amazing second place which was very nearly a win. As James Hunt might have said, this marks the arrival of Sergio Perez as a major new talent within Formula 1.

S. Schumi
He's 43 years old, he was world champion 7 times and won 91 races along the way. He has nothing to prove to anyone, but he is still beating his team-mate, has started both races this year from the second row of the grid and seems to be having the time of his life (well, apart from winning everything in sight for about 10 years). I'm actually almost warming to the old sod.

V. Vettel
Slightly uncharitable about Karthikeyan I thought. It's difficult to go any faster when you've only got an HRT to drive. However we won't put him in the naughty corner, because Lewis is already there.

On thing is 'for sure' (as racing drivers don't say any more). We're in for a cracking season.

Reasons to be cheerful

Phil: Anyone would think Lewis Hamilton had been sucking on a lemon for most of Sunday's Australian grand prix, to judge by his post-race demeanour. Having cocked up the start, allowing his teammate Jenson Button into a lead he never looked likely to lose, he (perhaps slightly unfairly, it has to be said) lost second place to reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel when the safety car came out. And the big picture is that he must know he once again has a car capable of winning the world championship, but that the only other man with the same car, his teammate, is already 10 points ahead.

So, just for Lewis, and with a nod to Ian Dury who went to the same school as us (yes, really!) here are some things we learned on Sunday which if he were to reflect on them for a moment might incline him not to be such a miserable sod.

1. Red Bull's domination is broken. By mid-season we may be cursing McLaren's domination, but a change in F1's prevailing wind is always refreshing to begin with. Particularly if you happen to be driving the new fastest car on the grid.
2. The midfield is closer than usual. Perez made it to 8th from 22nd on the grid. Raikkonen must have had a damn good shit before the race because he made it to 7th from 18th. A healthy number of retirements (9 out of 22 starters) kept it interesting and even without the last corner shenanigans I was struggling to keep up with who was running where.
3. Williams seem genuinely competitive. Probably both Maldonado and Senna ought to have scored points, and would have done had they avoided midfield shunts.
4. We don't need Sky after all. Apart from cutting a few laps behind the safety car, I genuinely forgot this was an extended highlights show, rather than every lap in full. This will admittedly be of limited interest to Lewis. But best of all...
5. There's another one this weekend.

Lewis love-in

Phil: Just when we thought the season was all over, a Vettel DNF and a Lewis love-in. Who'd have thought it?

For most of this season, Hamilton has seemed unable to do anything right. I've lost count of the number of times he's tangled with Felipe Massa, sometimes at successive race weekends. We speculated that it might be personal issues, or the fact that for the first time in his career he's been consistently outraced by his teammate. Whatever it was, he put his demons to bed yesterday and his second (or third?) race win of the year.

Not only that, but a reconciliation, nay even a love-in, with his old arch-rival Fernando Alonso. Embracing on the podium? 'The greatest driver of his generation' (or something like that)?

Maybe Vettel's puncture robbed us of a titanic scrap for the win, or maybe Vettel would have walked it given four tyres with air in rather than three. But the second half of this season to my mind has been a bit flat. Vettel has been driving within himself and the others, as I've commented before, seem to have the same tussles for the same places - Alonso against Webber, Hamiton against Massa, Schumacher against Rosberg - every race. Don't get me wrong, the first half of the season gave us some classic races - Canada will stay in my mind for a long time - even though the championship was never really in doubt, but now the fizz has well and truly gone out of it, as if each driver knows his part in the play and acts it accordingly.

So we go on to 2012. The top four teams are retaining their current line-ups (which may well mean more of the same next year) but further down the grid things are more fluid. As we've said, three drivers are in the running for the no 1 seat at Williams, of all places: Barrichello, Sutil and potentially a returning Kimi Raikkonen. Let's hope that if and when Frank Williams calls Raikkonen to offer him a drive, he's not too busy having a shit to take the call. Actually, let's hope he is.

There are no less than four drivers in the offing at Renault, who we must remember to call Lotus next year. Rumour has it they'll go for Grosjean, who's famous for not being as crap as Nelson Piquet Jr., and Petrov, who isn't famous for anything. Personally I'd much rather see Bruno Senna, and a fully recovered Robert Kubica.

But then at least one of those options, sadly, is starting to look very unlikely.

Monza

Phil: I have fond memories of Monza, watching the 2008 race in the wet, standing by the armco on the inside of the entry to the Ascari chicane, where the track cuts underneath the old, banked track. Vettel took his maiden victory that day, and he won again today. It was a good race, but not a great race, and one that he dominated completely. Once he had passed a fast starting Alonso - almost unbelievably, around the outside of Curva Grande - he never looked in danger of not winning.

Button, who passed Alonso, Hamilton and Schumacher to finish second, seems to me to be at the peak of his game. He has consistently outdriven his teammate Hamilton this year, hasn't made the mistakes that Hamilton has, and has performed particularly well at the real drivers' tracks, like Spa, or Montreal in the wet where he drove a really masterful race. I think that technically he is one of the best and most underrated drivers out there.

What else happened today? Bruno Senna, apparently unnoticed by the BBC team, took the first points of his career today with ninth place. And as a Phil who is often mistaken for a Paul, it was refreshing to hear Paul di Resta's race engineer, who ought to know him fairly well by now, call him 'Phil' over the radio.

Vettel is now 112 points ahead of Alonso, and 117 points ahead of both Button and Webber, with six races left. If Vettel wins his third race in a row next time out at Singapore, Button must finish second (again) and Alonso must finish third (again) for either of them to stand even a mathematical chance of taking the title. Put it another way. Vettel could be world champion in a fortnight's time.

Money talks

Phil: Don't worry, my co-blogger wasn't talking about our relationship. We are still very much loved up.

In answer to where all the romance went, it's tempting to identify one of Bernie Ecclestone's more private parts. But the truth is, I don't think it was ever there: cash has always been king in Formula 1. We both know why Hispania dropped Bruno Senna, and it's nothing to do with his performance on the track. Sakon Yamamoto's sponsors (who are rumoured to include Honda*) simply offered more money than Senna's, and for a team such as Hispania which is unlikely to achieve anything this season anyway and who probably struggle to pay the wage bill each month, that's all that matters.

Hispania's car has been so dire that it's all but impossible to get any idea of how good, or otherwise, Senna actually is. But I feel optimistic we haven't seen the last of the Senna name in F1.

*Honda have a habit of favouring crap Japanese drivers over promising non-Japanese ones: my co-blogger, who was raised on F1 from an early age, will probably recall Satoru Nakajima's distinctly unmemorable tenure at Lotus in 1987. His teammate? None other than Ayrton Senna.

Another eyecatching headline

Phil: Spotted this one on Yahoo! F1 and knew instantly it had to be shared: http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/30052010/23/senna-splits-virgins.html