I’m writing this just as Massa prematurely leaves the pitbox with the fuel hose still attached! This isn’t the first incident this year, there have been numerous other pitlane related errors, something that wouldn’t have happened when Todt, Brawn and Schumacher were around… and I suspect when a traditional lollipop was still in use.

Think of it logically, if you have one big carbon fibre board which has “STOP” and “1st GEAR”, along with the pre-requisite advertisers’ logos.. it’s quite impossible for the driver to miss it. Even if it were pulled up early by mistake, it is easy for the lollipop man to actually just drop it back down in front of the driver, thereby stopping the driver.

But if the LEDs have already indicated a go, is the driver still gonna be looking at the overhead lights? I doubt it… so Ferrari.. Suck it up.. bring back the lollipop!

related links: F1-Live: Ferrari denies need to ‘lollipop’ return

** Update: Looks like Ferrari reverted to a lollipop on Raikonnen’s second stop.. I didn’t catch the other stops though…

Michael Schumacher is coming out of retirement… but to test for Ferrari in their upcoming test in Barcelona, Spain. According to Ferrari, “It’s half for pleasure, half for technical reasons”.

Whatever it is, it will be interesting to see what his lap times are, after a year on the sidelines. Whilst he was driving, he was always known to drive at 101%.. and nothing less.

Michael Schumacher and Mika Hakkinen have really endeared themselves to their respective teams. I wonder, which of the current crop of drivers are going to be as well-liked by their teams when they retire. So far only Lewis Hamilton comes to mind…

Kimi’s done it! He’s done the seemingly impossible, and won this year’s world championship! They say anything can happen in Formula 1, and it usually does! The curse of the commentator strikes Lewis Hamilton as James Allen mentioned:

He’s not had a mechanical failure all year, which is remarkable, but he has had three strokes of bad luck: the tyre mistake in Germany, the tyre failure in Turkey and the tyre disaster in China.

While not exactly a mechanical failure, but a mechanical problem nonetheless. James Allen could well be the next Murray Walker…

Ferrari have walked away with a 1-3 result from the Chinese GP. Woohoo! Wet races always produce the best racing as teams and drivers gamble with their strategy and tyre choice. Fuji and Shanghai are classic example of this. The FIA should consider artificially wetting a track at random every season!

Lewis Hamilton didn’t score at all this race. And I personally think it is a result of McLaren hedging their bets again, just like they did with Kimi when he had flat spotted his tyre back at the European GP in 2005. Lewis admitted as much, telling Louise Goodman that he was waiting for the right time to switch over and was in fact coming in for a fresh set of tyres when he slid off at the entry to the pitlane. A case of being a little too late?

The current championship tally of Hamilton - 107, Alonso - 103 and Raikkonen - 100 means that we head to Brazil with 3 drivers still in contention for the World Championship. It is still an uphill task for both Alonso and Raikkonen with Raikkonen needing another (preferably) Hamilton DNF, which we all know is quite impossible. But this is still F1, and stranger things have happened. The last race of the season is gonna be electrifying.

Special mention goes to Sebastian Vettel who redeemed himself quite well after Fuji. And to Scuderia Toro Rosso, who got both cars home in the points, ahead of their ‘A team’ Red Bull Racing.

Luca di Montezemolo wants an apology from the FIA for not making all teams properly aware of the extreme wet tyre change just before the start of the race. I’m curious. While it is true that the way they informed the teams may have been flawed, but it was Ferrari’s choice to pick the wet instead of extreme wet tyres.

In those conditions, and from what they saw (James Allen commentated that it was raining 36 hours nonstop), was it likely that they would need wets (for all intents and purposes, the intermediates)? I wouldn’t have thought so. So, equally Ferrari is at fault.

The FIA has already said they will amend the way the delivery of the information will be made in the future. But what’s an apology going to do? Give Raikkonen 10 points?

I hope Ross Brawn is coming back next year. Ferrari misses him.