A very good Grand Prix, and for the first dozen laps a great one. True, eventually the inherent superiority of the Red Bull RB7 asserted itself at Spa, so that Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber scored a comfortable enough 1-2, but in the first part of the race the action at the front was frantic – indeed four different drivers led before an accident on lap 13, which eliminated Lewis Hamilton and brought out the safety car. At the finish Hamilton’s McLaren team-mate Jenson Button was third, followed by the Ferrari of Fernando Alonso and the Mercedes of Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg.

It’s been said before, but it can never be said enough times: take them to a proper circuit, and you get a proper race.

Qualifying at Spa is invariably unpredictable, sometimes chaotic. The weather sees to that, and it’s been that way since the running of the first Belgian Grand Prix here, back in 1925. Fickle doesn’t make a start on it. Torrential rain can materialise from nowhere, and it is not unusual for one part of the circuit – at 4.35 miles it’s the longest in Formula 1 use – to be bone dry while another is streaming.

Conditions on both Friday and Saturday were mixed, but very rarely was the track entirely dry, and after qualifying all the drivers lamented the lack of dry running, for the the forecast for race day suggested that the sun would shine.

For all the uncertain conditions it was the usual suspects who figured most strongly in qualifying. There were, however, some anomalies. Right at the beginning of Q1, for example, Schumacher’s Mercedes shed its right rear wheel on the climb to Les Combes.

The Spa circuit is situated only 50 kilometres from Kerpen, Michael’s birth place, so he not surprisingly refers to it as ‘my garden’. In the days of his pomp he won here six times, and he had reckoned that the Mercedes, while not competitive with Red Bull, McLaren or Ferrari, might be better suited to Spa than some of the recent F1 venues. In that he was right – team-mate Rosberg qualified fifth – but it was hardly surprising that he was dismayed by the thought of starting dead last. This weekend, after all, marked the 20th anniversary of his Formula 1 debut.

If Schumacher didn’t figure, neither – more suprisingly – did Button. In Q1 Jenson was fastest of all, predictably much at ease in the sort of mixed conditions in which he excels. In Q2, too, he topped the lists for a while, but in the late minutes the track was drying fast, and the name of Button began sliding down the list. It didn’t look like a problem, for he was surely capable of responding, and thus he backed off, cooling the tyres, having been informed by McLaren that there was time for one more quick lap.

There wasn’t, though. By the time Jenson made it back to the start-finish line the allotted time had ticked away to zero, and he found himself out of Q1, back in 13th place. And frustrated, you might say.

And there were others, too, notably Alonso. An abiding problem for Ferrari this season has been getting heat into the Pirelli tyres – in a normal summer, with plenty of races in hot weather, this would have become a virtue, of course.

As it is, we have had a succession of races run in unusually cool conditions, and if that has hampered Ferrari it has very much aided McLaren, where there is no problem getting the tyres up to temperature – indeed on hot days it works against them.

Alonso was well in the mix through most of qualifying, and indeed set fastest time in Q2. In Q3, though, he was delayed by Perez on two of his laps, and on the last one slowed at the chicane to let Webber through, fearing that otherwise he might get a penalty. When Alonso is slower than team-mate Massa it raises eyebrows; when he is a second slower something somewhere doesn’t compute. Eighth was not where Fernando had expected to start.

Vettel-Hamilton-Webber is how the first three lined up, but this wasn’t a typical Vettel pole position. In Q1, he admitted, he didn’t feel comfortable with the car. “Then, in Q2 I discovered Spa again – and in Q3 everything was fine. On the last lap I pushed as hard as I could…”

Most of the time Webber looked the more likely of the Red Bull drivers to take pole, but in the end Mark – celebrating his 35th birthday, and also the signing of a new contract for 2012 – set third best time, beaten to the front row by Hamilton.

Lewis always excels at Spa. “I had pole for about five seconds,” he said, after setting his time at the very end of the session, “but then Sebastian came over the line…”

En route to his fastest lap Hamilton was undoubtedly… muscular as he passed Pastor Maldonado’s tardy Williams at the final chicane, but really he had little option. After the chequered flag had fallen the two cars made contact as they went down the hill to Eau Rouge, and while neither driver appeared entirely blameless the Venezuelan was adjudged more culpable than Hamilton, and ‘fined’ five grid positions. Lewis got away with a reprimand.

Undoubtedly the most startling performance in qualifying came from Bruno Senna, seventh for Lotus Renault GP, three places ahead of team-mate Vitaly Petrov. Ayrton’s nephew has been drafted into the team for the rest of the season, replacing the disappointing Nick Heidfeld, who was frequently outpaced by Petrov. Given the testing ban, Senna has had almost no cockpit time this year, and his showing certainly raised an eyebrow or two.

The circumstances of qualifying created an interesting scenario for race day – when rain threatened, but never materialised. As we have said, it’s a long lap at Spa, and in Q3 the drivers – very much keeping the weather in mind – stayed out on one set of tyres rather than the usual practice of running a quick lap, changing to a new set of tyres, then running a second quick lap. In normal circumstances, therefore, you start the race on a lightly used set – but at Spa the top 10 drivers went to the grid on tyres that had done 20 or 25 miles. Throw in the fact that there had been very little dry running, and it was hardly surprising that the drivers were a little apprehensive.

“We were going very much into the unknown today,” said Webber, “in terms of what the tyres might do – and I’m not just talking about blisters…” Vettel agreed: “When the front tyres blistered, there was a lot of vibration, and it really wasn’t very comfortable going into Eau Rouge or Blanchimont like that. In the end, we’re sitting in the cars…”

As a rule of thumb, then, the intention was to change tyres as soon as practicable, to get rid of the set that had run in Q3. Medium and soft were the compounds brought by Pirelli on this occasion, and of course the top 10 drivers necessarily started on soft. Button, though, hadn’t made it to Q3, and was therefore able to take a different tack, and start on the medium tyres.

Although the start was reasonably straightforward, there was chaos at La Source, as invariably there is on lap one. Senna, sadly, undid all his good work in qualifying by slamming hard in Jaime Alguersuari’s Toro Rosso, which had started an impressive sixth. And behind them cars started bouncing off one another.

“I got a terrible start,” said Webber. “The anti-stall kicked in, and I thought I’d get passed by about 30 cars – but fortunately most of them hit each other at the first corner…”

The sensation at the start was Rosberg, who came out of La Source with only Vettel ahead of him, and on the long climb to Les Combes – the designated ‘DRS Zone’ at this track – Nico was able to take the lead quite easily.

This was to become a phenomenon of the afternoon. Some are in favour of DRS, and some are not, but either way there was no doubt that at Spa the zone was too long, making overtaking too straightforward. Any driver leading another narrowly out of Eau Rouge was like a tethered goat. On lap three Vettel took back the lead from Rosberg in exactly the same way, and we would see it time and again throughout the race.

Sebastian immediately began to pull away, but after five laps was into the pits, keen to get rid of that first set of tyres. Webber, indeed, had stopped a couple of laps earlier than that, as had Button, who had had his required run on the medium Pirellis, and wanted to be on the soft ones as soon as possible.

In the first part of the race, though, the man really going motor racing was Alonso. From his eighth grid position Fernando was up into fifth by the end of the first lap, and on the second he got by Hamilton. By lap six he had also passed Massa and Rosberg, and that – given that Vettel had pitted by now – took the Ferrari into the lead.

Alonso made his first stop on lap eight, and that briefly put Hamilton into the lead – until he came in on lap 10. Briefly Rosberg was now in front once more, but in a staggering demonstration of his confidence in the Red Bull – and in his own abilities – Vettel passed the Mercedes on the outside at flat-out Blanchimont…

That was a move to make you doubt your own eyes – and there had been another a couple of laps earlier. As Alonso accelerated down the hill to Eau Rouge, immediately after his stop, Webber was closing on him – and going into the first, left-hand swerve, he went by! No one could ever remember a pass – a competitive pass – being made here in any F1 race at Spa, and it said much for both drivers that the moment didn’t end in tears.

“Yeah,” Mark agreed, “it takes two guys for that situation to work out OK. Fernando’s a great driver, and he’s also smart enough to know when enough’s enough. Believe me, there are a lot of guys I wouldn’t have tried that with…”

On lap 13 Hamilton, running fifth behind Kobayashi’s Sauber (which had not yet made a stop), overtook – DRS again – on the hill, but as they approached Les Combes Kamui closed again, and was almost alongside (on the outside) as they reached the turn-in point.

Perhaps Lewis had not expected the Sauber still to be close at hand. Whatever, he steered slightly left, giving himself the ideal line into the corner – and the cars touched. At once the McLaren pitched into the guard rail more or less head on, and when it came to rest there was initially no movement from the driver. Eventually Hamilton stirred, and removed the steering wheel, but he seemed shaky as he stepped out, another to rejoice in the strength of the contemporary Grand Prix car.

As soon as the safety car was deployed, Vettel dived straight into the pits, and really this put his victory beyond doubt, for when they were given the signal to go again, three laps later, he was on new tyres, where his rivals were not. Although Alonso led them away again, it wasn’t long before Vettel was able to DRS him on the long hill. And once into the lead anew, Sebastian pulled easily clear.

His team-mate might, who knows, have been able to go with him had he, too, stopped for tyres as the safety car came out. “I radioed in,” said Webber, “saying that I wanted to come in, but I never heard anything back…” As it was, Mark had to run a very long stint on his second set of tyres.

The final round of pitstops, at which most drivers were required to take the slower, medium compound tyres, began on lap 29, with Alonso followed by Vettel on 30 and Webber on 31. On lap 32 Button, who had been making striking progress, was also in – but he of course had started the race on the medium tyres, and was therefore able to stay with the soft ones.

On lap 37 Webber passed Alonso again, this time less dramatically (DRS on the hill) than before, and began slightly to close on Vettel. But the pattern was now set, and the Red Bulls simply swept on to the finish. Alonso, meantime, had no answer for the soft-tyred Button, who moved by – yes, DRS again – on lap 42, thereby claiming the last spot on the podium.

The other talking point in the late laps concerned the Mercedes drivers. Schumacher, having started from the back, indeed drove an extremely good race at this track he loves, and was up to sixth, behind team-mate Rosberg. We began to wonder if ‘team orders’ – now fully legal again, of course – might come into the reckoning…

Finally there came a message on the radio: ‘Nico, we need you to save some fuel…’ Given that three of the 44 laps had been run behind the safety car, that seemed a touch unlikely, but Rosberg duly acquiesced, and the Mercedes hierarchy had the finishing order it perhaps preferred…

Three races – Silverstone, the Nürburgring, the Hungaroring – had gone by since the last Red Bull victory, and some had begun to wonder if perhaps a little of the earlier magic had been lost. On the strength of Spa, they should not put too much store by that theory. “The car,” said Vettel, “was simply fantastic today – maybe the best it’s been all season…”

Button, meantime, was left to ponder how different his race might have been, had it not been for that ‘communication’ mistake in qualifying…

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Spa-Francorchamps. The very words have a sense of excitement, of anticipation, don’t they? Grand Prix cars howling and wailing through the Ardennes, swooping up and down across the valley. Oh yeah, Eau Rouge may be easy flat in a modern car, but Spa is Spa, and it’s good.

And another thing. It is five hours by road from the south of England, the Channel Tunnel making this trip the simplest it’s ever been. Lots of Brits will be there, waving their flags and banners every time ‘our Lewis’ or ‘our Jenson’ go screaming by on another lap of what is still a magnificent racing circuit, even if it’s not the spooky challenge it was in days gone by.

This year the teams go to Belgium after a month’s holiday, an enforced shutdown when – for two weeks – no work may be done on the cars. The drivers will be chomping at the bit, the mechanics will be refreshed and the engineers will have been dreaming up yet more tweaks in the quest to beat those pesky Red Bulls. Just as McLaren, and possibly Ferrari, began to catch up along came a month’s break in the season. It is now or never if anyone is to have the faintest hope of catching Herr Vettel before they go to Brazil in November.

So what makes Spa-Francorchamps one of the great circuits, one of the races you always anticipate with pleasure? Many things, really, but above all it’s the chance to see Formula 1 cars let loose at full chat around a naturally flowing piece of asphalt that dips, dives, climbs and snakes through a valley in the dark green forests of the Ardennes.

Arriving is good. As you wind your way through the woods you can tune in to the circuit radio station, start to get excited. Then you hear the cars, like wild beasts rampaging around beyond the trees that encircle the car parks. These days, sadly, you can’t tell which car is which from the engine noise like you could when Ferraris made their own music and Matras, or Cosworths, sang another kind of song. But despite the homogeny of modern times, this is still a wonderful place to watch an F1 driver at work.

I go in, not to the paddock or pits, but to the top of the hill at Eau Rouge, known as Raidillon, where the cars appear as if about to fly into the sky. Then it’s up into sixth, seventh and flat out down the long straight to Les Combes where Mika Häkkinen so famously outfoxed Michael Schumacher in 2000 when faced with a backmarker at nearly 200mph. From here you may walk as far as you please, pausing to goggle at the sheer grip and grunt of these machines, the commitment of the drivers, and the ridiculous speed with which they change direction. Or walk the other way to Blanchimont where the raw speed beggars belief.

I first saw Jenson Button in a Grand Prix car here in 2000, in a competitive Williams, in tricky weather conditions. He qualified a superb third and finished fifth. It was clear to me and countless others that – given the right opportunities – here was a very talented driver who had earned his rapid rise through Formula 3 to the top level. Took him nine years to get his title… no wonder he looks so much more at ease these days.

So, once you’ve had your fill of the skills on display at a proper circuit, you return – ears ringing – to your hostelry, study the times over a good Belgian beer, eat too many chips with mayonnaise and wonder how we ever ended up in places like Abu Dhabi or Sepang. All Grand Prix racing is good, and fascinating, but European races remain the best.

And Monza is next. Joy. Pure joy. Racing cars, pasta, Parmesan and Chianti. But that’s another story for another day.

Who will win at Spa on Sunday? I have no idea. A month is a long time in modern F1 racing. But, forced to predict, I reckon it’ll be a McLaren.

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Ahead of our Hall of Fame event next Tuesday (February 15), the Motor Sport team sent out a survey to everyone registered on our website.

Usually these things are well beyond my pay grade, but this time I managed to get a quick glimpse of the results. Some were quite predictable – Jim Clark was voted the greatest Formula 1 driver of all time ahead of Ayrton Senna and Juan Manuel Fangio – but others weren’t.

Here are some of the results…

Which is the most memorable F1 car of all time?

1)    Lotus 72
2)    Maserati 250F
3)    1988 McLaren MP4-4

What was the best ever rivalry between F1 drivers?

1)    Alain Prost vs Ayrton Senna (with a staggering 68.5 per cent of the vote)
2)    James Hunt vs Niki Lauda
3)    Juan Manuel Fangio vs Sir Stirling Moss

Which circuit in 2011 do you expect to produce the most exciting F1 race?

1)    Spa-Francorchamps
2)    Silverstone
3)    Montréal

Which will be the most improved team on the F1 grid in 2011?

1)    Mercedes
2)    Williams
3)    Lotus (quite a good call, although even if its cars are comparatively three seconds a lap faster than they were at the end of last season they’ll still be a second off the pace)

Out of the rookie drivers new to F1 for 2011, who do you think will excel?
1)    Paul di Resta (should be right on the pace)
2)    Pastor Maldonado
3)    Sergio Pérez

Which team do you think will be the main contender for the constructors’ title in 2011?

1)    Red Bull
2)    McLaren
3)    Ferrari

Which driver would you tip to win the 2011 drivers’ championship?

1)    Fernando Alonso (with the above answer in mind, it doesn’t say much for everyone’s view on Massa!)
2)    Lewis Hamilton
3)    Sebastian Vettel

So there you have it. What are your thoughts? Do these answers really represent what you think?

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OK, I’m back.

Apologies for the silence but it proved to be somewhat tricky to send dispatches from the Grande Festival de Classicos at Portimao, this being due to the internet service suffering from intermittent failures without any warning. We, that’s the man from Autosport and I, considered demanding our money back, but we’d had such a good time at this terrific historic event in Portugal that we struggled on in silence.

Thankfully we were able to file our stories on Sunday night. Otherwise the editor in London would not have been impressed. Suffice to say, this is one of the highlights of the historic calendar, along with Goodwood, Spa-Francorchamps and Monza. It is also a highlight for those who participate for two main reasons.

One, most racers like to play golf, and the Algarve coast appears to have more golf courses per square mile than anywhere else in the world. Two, the Portimao circuit is a modern classic. Designed by former bike and car racer Paulo Pinheiro, it is a spectacular challenge for drivers and a wonderful place to watch. There’s a full report in the next edition of the magazine but I do urge you to get to this event if you can.

All in all, quite a weekend for us racing fans. In the media centre at Portimao we could watch MotoGP in Australia, DTM in Germany and the Rally of Scotland – simultaneously on three separate screens… what a remarkable world we live in today.

And that’s not to mention all the football. Not a good weekend for my aforementioned colleague and I. He being a Liverpool fan and I being a Manchester United fan, it would have all been rather depressing had we not had to go outside and write about some great motor racing

There was much talk in the paddock about Mark Webber going to Ferrari next year and about how Valentino Rossi will struggle to get to grips with the Ducati. I’m not saying the former is true, and I’d be surprised by the latter, but both are good things to gossip about at the bar after a day’s racing.

Rumours are rumours until they come to pass. Back in reality, Skoda did another great job in Scotland with yet another win for the talented Juha Hanninen who’s had a fantastic year in the highly effective Fabia. Guy Wilks was fast too, but failed to get to the finish. Only nine cars got to the end of this extremely tough rally. And what about Casey Stoner? A much-needed boost for Ducati and certainly Mr Rossi will have taken note of Stoner’s pace. Not one of the greatest MotoGP events but nonetheless an interesting result, Stoner and Ducati having been much stronger in the last two races. And the win moves the Aussie into third in the championship with two races to go, just eight points ahead of you-know-who…

We move on this weekend to what will be a very intriguing Grand Prix in Korea. The fascination is partly because nobody’s been there before, so all the pre-race data will have come from simulators, and partly because it will be interesting to see just who works best under the mounting pressure. The wire is fast approaching and this season will go all the way. Now is the time to see who can handle what is a very tense situation. Will the Red Bulls get tangled up in internal strife and allow Fernando Alonso to come through? Will the McLarens come good just in time?

These and other questions will be answered by Sunday night. But we won’t have all the answers for another few weeks. Ah, the anticipation… just how racing should be, and has been all season long.

Back soon with more ramblings as winter lurks on the edges of autumn here in England. And it could be an interesting winter. Will F1 testing be restored? Possibly. Will F2 champion Dean Stoneman get a drive at Williams? Will Webber go to Ferrari? Will Michael Schumacher be sufficiently impressed with the new Pirellis and his new Mercedes-Benz?

I’m not making any predictions. Not yet, anyway.

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Let us begin with a simple fact – a simple fact this particular week, anyway. The penalty for almost causing a collision in the pitlane is a drive-through penalty. This we know because Bruno Senna was thus punished in Saturday’s GP2 race at Spa, and it cost him the race.

In the following day’s Belgian Grand Prix Lewis Hamilton drove a quite brilliant race, scoring his fifth victory of the season, and moving himself into a commanding lead in the World Championship, with five races to go.

After the race, though, those dreaded words appeared on the TV screens in the press room: ‘Incident involving cars 1 and 22 under investigation’.

This referred to Kimi Räikkönen’s Ferrari and Hamilton’s McLaren, which had been locked in battle all afternoon. “I’d been pushing and pushing,” said Lewis, “but four laps from the end I thought, ‘I can’t catch this guy’. I was praying for rain, because I knew it was my only chance to pass him. When I started getting spots on my visor, my hopes were raised – and when I saw Kimi start braking earlier, I knew it was on…”

On the increasingly slippery surface, Hamilton swiftly closed on Räikkönen, and as they approached the right-left chicane at the end of the lap, with two laps to go, he jinked left of the Ferrari, as if to pass it on the outside. Kimi, Lewis said, had braked very early, and that had presented this opportunity. Side by side into the turn, though, Räikkönen was not ready to cede, and Hamilton, keen to avoid a touch, went over the corner, in the process momentarily taking the lead.

Told by his team to let the Ferrari by again, Lewis did as bidden, but into La Source he immediately wrong-footed Räikkönen, and went by once again, there to stay. Whereupon Kimi, fighting harder than we have seen for a very long time, spun off into a wall on the penultimate lap.

The matter under investigation, apparently, was whether, although he allowed Räikkönen to re-pass, Hamilton had ‘gained an advantage’ from the manoeuvre as a whole. “I did not do anything wrong,” Lewis said, “and if we get a penalty there’ll be something wrong, but we know what they’re like, so…”

We do indeed. But even as he murmured the words, we wondered at the wisdom of it. Free speech is hardly encouraged, after all, in the Formula 1 of today.

A couple of hours later came the verdict of the FIA stewards – and perhaps we should have expected nothing else. Hamilton was indeed adjudged to have ‘Cut the chicane, and gained an advantage’, this despite the fact that Räikkönen was clearly ahead once more as he and Hamilton began their penultimate lap. It was hardly Lewis’s fault that Kimi made a novice’s mistake at La Source, and left the door wide open.

The punishment for Hamilton’s offence, the stewards decided, was a drive-through, but this – given that the race was long over – was somewhat difficult to administer, so the stewards instead added 25 seconds to Lewis’s elapsed race time, which neatly moved him from first to third, and made Ferrari’s Felipe Massa the winner of the Belgian Grand Prix. Instead of leading Massa by a comfortable eight points, Hamilton suddenly found himself a scant two points ahead.

I ask the reader now to consider the opening paragraph again, the one dealing with Senna’s drive-through penalty in the GP2 race. In Valencia, two weeks before, Massa’s Ferrari was involved in an identical incident, and after the race it was announced that the incident was ‘under investigation by the FIA stewards’.

Open and shut, surely. The penalty for almost causing a collision in the pitlane is, as we saw from the Senna incident, a drive-through penalty, and if it is applied after the race, that equates to a 25-second penalty, right?

Well, not exactly. Or at least not always. That was the punishment if you were Senna at a race in Belgium in September, but if you were Massa in Spain the previous month, it was a fine – for his team – of 10,000 Euros, which Ferrari found themselves well able to pay.

What a lucky fellow Massa is. A 25-second penalty in Valencia would have dropped him from first to third, as with Hamilton in Spa, but as it was he kept his Spanish win – and inherited a Belgian one.

This is no longer, happily, the era of Jean Todt, and we may believe Stefano Domenicali when he says that at no stage did Ferrari enter any sort of protest: rather, he pointed out, he and his driver were summoned by the stewards.

Whatever, one marvelled yet once more at this sport’s unrivalled ability to shoot itself in the foot. What we saw on Sunday afternoon was a magnificent motor race, utterly compromised and belittled by a post-race decision most considered obscenely unjust. But… perhaps we should have expected nothing else.

Massa won the Belgian Grand Prix, then, although at no point did he threaten the chief protagonists. For 40 of its 44 laps, the race was a relatively mainstream affair, with Räikkönen and Hamilton running first and second, rarely more than a couple of seconds apart. There was no lack of tension, but, as Lewis said, the closer he got to the Ferrari, the more difficult his McLaren became to drive: the old ‘dirty air’ problem which has plagued motor racing for more years than we care to remember.

At around the 25-lap mark, though, it had been announced that ‘Rain was expected in 20 minutes’, and on this occasion the forecast proved uncannily accurate. On lap 38 Fernando Alonso, running fourth, radioed the Renault pit to reports ‘drops of rain’ at one particular point on the circuit, and a couple of laps after that it began to come down rather harder, and over the entire track. That was when Sunday afternoon at Spa came truly alive, and when Hamilton did the work that won him – or should have won him – the race.

Joining Hamilton and Massa on the podium was Nick Heidfeld, and although the BMW driver had qualified well for once, you wouldn’t have put much on his finishing as high as third (which became second, of course), for he was turfed off the road by Heikki Kovalainen at the first corner, and spent the afternoon playing catch-up. At the start of the last lap, indeed, he was in eighth place.

Ah, but Nick had made a smart move. “When it began to drizzle,” he said, “I thought no one would have the balls to change tyres – so I thought I would. I went onto intermediates, and they were perfect…” They were indeed. So treacherous were the conditions by now that in the course of the last lap Heidfeld passed Bourdais, Kubica, Vettel and Alonso.

If, over the last few races, the World Championship appeared to be distilling to a fight between Hamilton and Massa, as big a talking-point, as Spa approached, was the fall from grace of Räikkönen – the reigning World Champion, lest we forget. In Ferrari circles the belief, while not publicly aired, is that for some time Kimi has done justice neither to himself nor to their car, and this they find vexing, not least because he is paid approximately five times as much as team-mate Massa.

Stefano Domenicali insisted there was no crisis involving Räikkönen, no suggestion that his motivation was not what it should be, but still, in assessing Kimi’s form, state of mind, whatever, the Belgian Grand Prix was thought crucial, for Spa is the purest of driver’s circuits – and a place in which Räikkönen has traditionally excelled. If he were to fall short here, of all places, there really would be cause for serious concern – and not only because, at two million dollars a race, he is a pricey item on any team’s budget, Ferrari included.

Through qualifying Kimi was always thereabouts, but never there, and as usual it was Massa who took the fight to McLaren.

In the race, though, Räikkönen began to drive like Räikkönen again, for the first time in months, and looked very settled in the lead, apparently heading for his fourth consecutive victory at Spa, a record which would have equalled that held by the late Jim Clark. In the end, though, it all came to nought, and Kimi was not in a great frame of mind as he left the circuit – with first practice at Monza only five days away.

Before the race Hamilton, the man on pole, was asked if he had any worries. “Not really,” he said, “although if it’s a wet race the white lines are going to be slippery as hell…”

Not only the white lines, some wag said on Sunday evening.

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First, a note of thanks. Last week I was talking about mechanics – you know, the guys who get all the messing around and none of the credit. I was hoping that a few of these chaps would get in touch and, guess what, they have.

So my ‘Mechanics Tales’ series is at least safe for a few months more. Damien (my Editor) is pleased, or relieved, one of the two.

1971 European F2 Championship. Cranleigh, Surrey, UK. 4th November, Rondel Racing F2 Team including L – R: Clive Walton, Ron Dennis, Neil Trundle and Preston Anderson.

I was encouraged to hear from Neil Trundle, a man who has been there, done it, got the t-shirts, the videos and the trophies. Neil established the Project 4 team with Ron Dennis, the outfit that built the ProCars for BMW, wowed the paddocks with its presentation and persuaded the mighty Marlboro to support its bid for the old McLaren team. The rest, as they say, is history.

Dutch Grand Prix, Zandvoort, Holland. 29th – 31st August 1980. Alain Prost (McLaren M30-Ford Cosworth), 6th position.

Neil still works with Ron, at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, where he’s in charge of the gearbox department. This is all to cut a very long story short but Mr Trundle has agreed to tell me a few mechanics tales so you will no doubt enjoy reading those in the months to come.

This week I’m going to see Neil Davis, who worked for Ken Tyrrell for many years and looked after the cars of Jackie Stewart. It was he who featured in our picture of the paddock tunnel at the (proper) Nürburgring last week. Meanwhile, in next month’s magazine, it will be the turn of David “Dorky” Lowe who is a protégé of both Neil Davis and Roy Topp at Tyrrell and who was terribly injured at Imola in 1996 when Jos Verstappen left the pits while Dorky was still re-fuelling the Arrows. But we’ll be looking at a happier phase of his life in the pitlane with Paul Stewart Racing when he looked after David Coulthard in Formula 3.

San Marino Grand Prix, Imola, Italy. 3rd – 5th May 1996. Jos Verstappen (Footwork FA17 Hart).

I won’t be in Monte Carlo this coming weekend but I will be glued to the television. This is absolutely one of my favourite Grands Prix, along with Spa-Francorchamps, Montreal and Monza. Well, and Suzuka, but that’s not every year now. Why do I love Monte Carlo? Because of the speed and the skill. You can feel the speed, get close to the cars for once, and you can only wonder the skill involved in threading a Grand Prix car around the streets. And the noise. Ah, that noise, as the cars scream around the Principality, the shriek of those engines ricocheting off the buildings. First thing in the morning it is just thrilling, makes the hairs on the back of your neck bristle.
Many years ago I watched a practice session in Monaco with Jenks. We stood behind the barrier at the old Tabac and at the swimming pool section. We could, if we’d been mad enough, have reached out and touched the cars. “You’ve got to realise,” he said, peering up at me through his spectacles, “that this place really shows you who is that bit special, who’s really got it. But even the cars at the back are quick, even the slowest drivers are going fast.”

I remember that every time I see these guys dancing and sliding around the streets, the best of them within millimetres of the barriers. Fantastic place.

Monaco Grand Prix, Monte Carlo, Monaco. 25th – 27th May 2007. Lewis Hamilton, McLaren MP4-22 Mercedes.

There may not be much overtaking but overtaking isn’t everything in motor racing. I’d rather watch no overtaking in Monaco than in Hungary or Malaysia, for example. I’d rather watch Hamilton or Raikkonen in Monaco than the whole field at Barcelona. And, it is possible to overtake in Monte Carlo. Not easy, but possible.

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