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Another early evening grand prix beckons this weekend, this time in the USA. This is the only race that Alonso hasn't won (the only race that Michael hasn't won is Turkey). In fact Alonso has never even finished at Indy. But those sort of things don't phase the world champion. Certainly not this season. He's been ticking off all of the circuits he's never won and in many ways it will be a suprise if he doesn't have the set by the end of this weekend. So who can stand in his way?

First we have the wild card in the shape of Kimi. That McClaren was looking pretty racey during the last race and Kimi will be determined to prove Ron Dennis wrong after the public telling off that he got after the last race (Ron said he'd over revved the engine during the first pit stop which meant the wheel was turning when the pit man was trying to put the tire on, and that then he over compensated in the second pit and under revved which is why he stalled).

The only problem with all of these ideas is that the Renault just seems faster and stronger. And as they have the same tires there doesn't seem to be much hope.

Unless you're on a different tire. After the disaster that was the US Michelan tire last year it wouldn't be suprising to find that Michelan have brought a more conservative tire choice to this race than they might otherwise have.

So this could be Michael's big chance. The cars looking good, and with a little heat his tires really could come to him even at the start of the race (an area the bridgestones have really struggled with).

So look for good form from the bridgestone runners, a continuing improvement from BMW, a charge from Kimi and a possible win from Michael. But if you discount Alonso then then you must be crazier than Sato.

As we're talking about Martin at the moment I thought it might be a good idea to lay on the line my feelings about James Allen.

Unlike some I've never hated him. In fact for a long time I tended to be his defender in arguments. I have always realised what a tough job commentating really is and that it was supremely unfair for us to compare Murray who had been a commentator for fifty years and James who had just started.

It wasn't the same when Martin started because he had Murray standing next to him. He only had to chip in the odd thing at first and then slowly but surely said more and more.

The thing is that being a commentator is really hard, as Martin once said, "Next time the Grand Prix is on, turn the volume down and start talking. See how far you get before you run out of words, or start repeating yourself, or you make a mistake. And it's not very far."

And we have really slammed James for his mistakes where Murray's mistakes we treated with a kind of sense of fun. This must have seemed particularly unfair.

The thing is there is a justifiable reason for this and not just an unfair thing and there was a prime example of it at Canada. Martin was talking about something that had been happening in the pits and he came to the end of his sentence. At this moment the shot changed to one showing just how close Kimi had got to the back of Alonso. And what was James reaction? It was something like this, said in a near monotone, "right so now the two leaders are close together on the track". And then he went on to talk about something else until he was interrupted by Martin who wanted to point out Kimi had almost overtaken Alonso. He just never seems to get excited.

Actually no that's not true, he does, but he gets excited just after everyone else does. And when something really great happens he'll say something like, "Yeah! And who says Formula 1 is getting boring"?

Just imagine the same scene with Murray and you can see the difference:

Murray: "Look at this, the fastest two men in formula 1 at the moment are litterally less than 1 second appart and Rikkonnen is looking racy, I say the fastest men in Formula 1 because Michael is in the pits".
Martin: "Actually Murray he's just lapped a Super Aguri".

Look me in the eye and tell me you don't miss commentating like that! It might have been wrong, but there was no way you could accuse him of lacking passion. James please, please get more excited.

Forget Murrayisms, what about Martinisms?

Schumacher very much in a Renault sandwich, but not a lot of butter in it for him.

It went out as a V8, came back as a V7.

A Formula 1 car is one of the best hoovers in the world.

Looking at the way Karthikeyan’s car was handling, I imagine his pit stop was for fresh underwear.

Normally the Renault understeers like a cross-channel ferry.

Is it a Ferrari sandwich, or a BAR snack?

Hello, Jim. Hello, everybody. Congratulations for getting up early or setting your video correctly!

You can read old quotes here: Quotes Page, and find regularly updated ones here: Racing Lines

Things are slowly starting to take shape: James Allen says Raikkonen will drive for Ferrari next year, regardless of if Michael quits. Both Williams drivers are staying. Klein is probably leaving Red Bull. Will Ron Dennis really give in to the media and his sponsors and let Hamilton drive that McLaren? Both Toyota drivers are staying. Montoya could line up alongside Coulthard, giving David a chance to thoroughly thrash him and show he should never have been replaced a year ago. The test driver for BMW, Kubica, is suddenly being mentioned a lot for a race drive. And what about that chap Paffett? How can he not get a drive having been recommended by Bernie?

Lastly, a headline from Sunday: 'Button frustrated by lack of pace'. Isn't this the same headline we've heard for almost two years now? I think DC has it right: Honda should stop expecting too much. They were a better team when they didn't expect wins.

Canada was a great race. Made all the more interesting by the fact that it started broadcasting here in the UK while and England football match was on. I wonder what happened to the number of viewers although I don't think there is much crossover between fans. We'd have to ask our resident football expert Adrian.

The most annoying thing of the whole weekend came on Saturday when James said, "as we all know revenge is a dish best eaten cold"! No James we don't know that, it's "served" cold not eaten cold! Who wants to eat revenge? Okay well that and Kimi just missing that overtake of Alonso.

Is it make or break time? The two races on the North American continent will determine the tone of the second half of the season. If Michael wants to get back in the hunt then he should be pushing in these two races.

Michael has won in Canada seven times and Alonso hasn't ever been on the podium.

Canada is hugely unpredictable, and with American grand prix tire from Michelan being bound to be a safe option Ferrari might be smelling a chance.

So here comes the now traditional place where I say "but don't discount Kimi" only for everything to go wrong for him between here and Monday. I'd still like to say it as Kimi seems happier with his car this weekend than he has for a while. And if things get crazy in Canada then he might be in the right place at the right time.

Further down the grid we might see a chance for something rather special from BMW who really seem to be improving. A team that seems to be spending its budget wisely.

The only thing stopping a chance at a podium from the is JV's bad luck in Canada. That's the kind of luck that could see your teams maiden grand prix podium handed to your team mate.

"I've realised my ambition to release an albumn". William Shatner's done it, Keanu Reeve's done it, even Celine Dion has done it. And now Jaques Villeneuve - no really - has done it. Want a listen:
http://www.myspace.com/jvofficial

Reviews accepted of course.

Motogp. The Grand Prix of motorbike racing. The fastest riders in the world on the fastest machines. Overtaking is guaranteed at every race all the way through the field: the leader never finishing more than a few seconds in front of second place, normally having to fight for that first place until the last corner. The crashes are spectacular, the risks high (last week, above, three riders crashed out with broken bones). The rules are more relaxed (spectators shake hands with the riders on the slow-down lap), and the characters more flamboyant (Rossi getting off his bike on the slow-down lap to hug fans). Why did Rossi decide to stay there? Why aren't we watching it instead?

The proposed rules for engines in formula 1 from 2008 will be a massive change to the sport.

The rules suggest that the teams will enter a single engine design for 2008, 2009 and 2010 this year. And that they will use the same designed engine for that entire period. The idea is that engine development is damaging the sport as it is so incredibly expensive, it's rather boring to most people and it reduces overtaking (as the cars get faster they can stick to the ground more which means you have to lift less and most overtaking happens when cars are slowing down not speeding up).

The FIA think this is also the right time to go for the rule change because coming, as it does, only a year after the change to V8s it means the engines are closer together than they usually are.

Well so far no argument from me. It is expensive, they are close together, it does reduce overtaking and it is kind of boring. This last point is the one that most commentators have focused on. They say things like Formula 1 needs to be at the forefront of design and innovation and that this change and they are almost saying "if we don't have this forefront thing then we're no better than GP2 and they even have overtaking over there". Actually nobody will remember that the engines are the same unless the commentator says things like "you have to remember Martin that these guys are driving using old fashioned engines designed two weeks / two months / two years ago" every race for the next three years. Although we know he will.

There are actually three genuine problems with this rule:

The first is of reliability. We know that the although the small speed differentials between current engines will be beaten over the next three years by aerodynamics and so doesn't really matter. But a) reliability doesn't work like that, nothing can change it if the engine design is locked down, b) reliability is more important to the overall championship campaign than raw pace and c) the reliability is the part of engine design that is already the most divergent. Even amongst the fastest teams there are massive variations in reliability already.

The second is of costs. While engine costs are extremely expensive this rule change isn't going to make a difference to that at all. What are the teams going to do with their engine designers over the course of the three years. Fire them? What will they do in three years when they need new engines? I think they will end up spending the money on future development and also on other parts of the car development thus saving nothing.

The third is of what happens next. This is the most troubling part of the plan as far as I can tell. One of the main defences of how it is going to be possible to do this is that the engines are very close together right now. The only way to really keep engine development costs low would be to not change the regulations again, and give the teams three years to come up with their next engine. The problem with that theory is that the engines would be wildly different with three years of closed room development (nobody gets to see what the competion is doing out on the track) and by the time people realise they are wildly different the engines will be locked down and they won't be able to change things. In fact the only way to stop this is to make a sudden sweeping engine rule change a short period before the new engines are required and hope that everyone ends up on the same playing field. And even then there would be no way of knowing if the next 3 years were going to be a fair and close competition. If they do try and fake it with a sudden rule change then it will make engine development even more expensive than it is now making a mockery of the whole process.

So yes I think engine homologation is a bad idea. But not for the wishy-washy reasons most people seem to be suggesting.

What do you make of the itv-f1.com polls?

I think I've only ever voted once (something to do with Jacques that I was infuriated by), but they are interesting to see how the public reacts to events. For instance, the majority damned Schumacher for what happened in Monaco. But by Silverstone they were all wanting him to win. Is it the same people voting? Sometimes they seem knowledgeable and intelligent, at others simply prone to the media's whims. At the moment they're voting that Kovalainen will partner Fisi, which seems a sensible conclusion.

One problem I have is the phrasing of some of the questions, which sometimes invites people to vote for what they like rather than what they believe will actually happen (which I think is the better way). For an example of the difference, compare the current poll on f1.com: they ask 'who would you most like' to partner Fisi (and the answer is Raikkonen), whereas itv have it right for once and ask 'who do you think'. Itv also have many more options to choose from.

The news that Fisi has signed for another year at Renault is sadly more one of desperation than good judgement. It will be very interesting to see who the other driver is but to my mind it must be Hekki not Kimi. Why hire an experienced hand if you have Kimi on the way. Unless the idea of an all Finnish team was just a little bit too scary for the sponsors?

Actually I think that's exactly what's happened.

My feeling is that the situation goes something like this. If Michael retires then Kimi has a water tight contract with Ferrari. But that if Michael leaves Ferrari then Kimi can chose where to go out of at least three contracts on offer to him. One from Ferrari, one from McClaren and one from Renault.

I'm pretty sure that michael is going to stay in formula one at this point. I think he has to make a decision now ish and can't wait until the end of the season and if he had to guess right now he'd have to guess that he won't win this year. So this leaves Kimi free to choose.

Which one he chooses will be very interesting. I don't think he'll stay at McClaren although it would be truely interesting to see what would happen.

So then it's between being the new gun in an old team at Ferrari or jumping into the ultra reliable Renault.

I know who i'd pick if I was me I'd go to Ferrari thinking that there's a team that knows winning and knows how to get back to winning.

But if I was Kimi and i'd had the unreliability that Kimi had had I'd go to Renault.

But I'd sign a one year contract and see what happened after a year.

Is the most important feeling in Formula 1 the desire to win?Or is it something else.

James said something interesting the other day, i know, i know, he suggested that the thing that was driving michael wasn't so much the desire to win but was more a desire to stop somebody else from having that winning feeling.

I wonder if it's only Michael who thinks like this. I actually doubt that. The evidence seems to be bourne out by the difference that is made to a driver who has broken his duck. Usually this is explained by the idea of getting the monkey off your back but actually what it might be is that in Formula 1 it isn't a let down when you win. Which is kind of incredible.

Think of Rubens, he had to wait more than 100 races before he had his first win. All of that time he must have been dreaming what it would be like and in his mind it would just keep getting better and better. But when he finally won you could see by the look on his face and the tears in his eyes that it had still beaten expectations.

And that's kind of amazing after that kind of a build up. So to get back to the point. Given that actually winning is a better feeling than you could even expect it to be aren't the drivers who have experienced winning driving around in something closer to a jealous rage? And that could be very powerful.

Finally what about drivers who's first win is under a cloud couldn't that ruin you as a driver? I think this happened to Fisi. And i think it was going to happen to Kimi but Ron stopped it from happening at the last moment i think he sacrificed a win to make his drivers first win more special.

Is he as good as people say he is? Should he partner Alonso? One journalist said his Silverstone drive was the greatest he's ever seen from any driver. Really? Or is that just nationalism creeping in? It is almost impossible for us to tell how good he is, and/or whether he'll be able to cope with a) F1 cars and b) Fernando Alonso as team-mate. One thing is for sure, this weekend marked the beginning of the British journalists' emigration from Button to Hamilton...

What annoys me is the amount of unnecessary time they spend on Button. If he had qualified on the front row then, yes, spend a lot of time talking about him. But if he qualifies 19th, forget it. But they just talked about him more! Ignoring the potential battle of the three greatest drivers up the front (which ended up as Raikkonen slowing Michael down so we never knew if he could have challenged Alonso).

Anyway, I think what Martin Brundle said in his Sunday Times column was right: the problem with Button is that he can't adapt to changing conditions in the car; hence the slow lap times after pit-stops; this and a fundamental 'mind-management' issue, which led to farces like him moving to Williams, then back again.

Back in the old days of formula 1. By which I mean, for the purposes of this post, the period immediate preceding this one. There used to be three top teams. They were pretty much Ferrari, Williams and McClaren. Every so often one of them would have an off season and another team would have their time at the top.

Now we have the same thing with Renault replacing Williams. But something else has been afoot these last few seasons. The top teams have been much closer to the mere mortals than they ever used to be. A fact proved by renault moving up. There really are now four top teams (it's only williams further slump this year that makes this not look true and the fact that so many teams desperately want that fourth place) but it has been true ever since they made the most important rule change of all. When they made the points go to the top eight instead of six drivers. With two drivers a team it's made that difference.

The main thing to have come out of the grand prix today is a small mathematical shift in the championship.

Psycologically a driver needs to know that they can go and make the difference by themselves, and that's no longer posisble for Michael. You want to be able to go out there and win all of the races and just hold your apponent behind you.

Before the race this weekend Alonso was 21 points ahead of Michael. And if Michael had won every race and Alonso had come second then he would have got 22. And now Alonso is 23 points ahead of Michael and there is only a 20 points advantage to win (keeping Alonso in second while Michael wins).

So from here on in Micahel can't do it by himself. He has to rely on his team or a mistake from Alonso.

So the perfect weather for the race that gives you everything. Every grand prix has character but in the world of Formula 1 the older you are the better you are. Like Monaco Silverstone still seems a bit old school and this year with it's super fast corners it really should be a supreme test of the drivers. But hold on what about the straight line speed that's required? You need a great car too. So this race will be a package race. You can't drive around the car sorry Jenson and David and the car can't just hand you a victory. Sorry Massa.

Renault and Alonso have that package. And so do Ferrari and Michael. I'd also like to include McClaren and Kimi but do they have the reliability?

Also watch out for Rubens going faster than Jenson not just because I don't like Jenson (i do as a person but not as a driver. He's smooth but not fast enough.) but mainly because Rubens goes like the clappers here. Also watch for toyota who might just have something up their sleeve. A podium for them might not be out of the question if the race gets shaken up.

So the weather doesn't look like a factor but don't let that fool you. As Murray used to say "Anything can happen in Formula 1 and it usually does". And at the british grand prix doubly so.

One of the things that's very difficult to know is how a driver keeps doing what they are doing race in race out. The feeling of complete danger doesn't seem to stop them from going out there so how do they do it?

Modern Formula 1 is very different than it was in the old days. Thanks in no small part to Max Mosley and Prof. Sid Watkins many drivers now seem to feel that they are playing a video game where nothing can really hurt them. This cognitive dissidence is probably healthy for a modern Formula 1 driver. The idea that while the sport is dangerous which makes it cool it's only dangerous for other people. This is especially easy as it has been, thankfully, a long time since a driver has been killed.

Formula 1 drivers, in my opinion, now fall into three groups:

1. The drivers who will go out and do the crazy thing knowing it's crazy but want it to be as safe as possible when they do it: Michael, DC, Webber and Montoya. Eg. American Grand Prix last year, the tire company had told them that the tires were unsafe to drive. And while DC worked hard for an alternative solution right up to the line, he was still asking on the radio as he went round on the parade lap if there was any way he'd be allowed to race.

2. The full cognitive dissidence boys, Alonso, Kimi, Sato. It doesn't matter to them, in their minds if the races becomes safer or less safe because bad things don't happen to them. They do, of course, these particular three have all been in bad crashes. But that doesn't stop them from knowing each time they go in to a corner: "I'm going to be okay".

3. The last group contains just one man: Jacques Villeneuve. He's probably nuts but he's the only one who seems on the surface to actually relish it when it's less safe. He of course has history because his father was killed in a Formula 1 race and weirdly this seems to have taken him the other way to the rest of the Formula 1 fraternity. Perhaps it is because unlike everyone else who has had to learn about the danger once they are already out on track and trying to win - Jacques had to conquer his fear before he got into the car.

All of this leads us to the British Grand Prix this weekend which will have some of the fastest cornering speeds ever experienced in F1's history. Now in true James Allen stylee lets just listen to what Jacques has to say about it and started with those that had been complaining:

"Maybe they should stop driving F1, we just raced in Monaco, no one complained and it was great. There is a small amount of risk but it is tiny. In the past there used to be 100 corners in a season with that amount of risk, and 50 with more risk than that – and now there’s just three during the whole season. It’s no big deal, just lift – you don’t have to go flat."

Okay so, so far so chastising of the others. Now listen to him psyche himself up to not do what he's just advised the others to do:

"It has the type of corners where you have to go beyond your human limit, not the limit but your personal one, where you reach the corner and your foot wants to get off the throttle, and you have to tell it to stay flat. That’s the most exhilarating moment in driving a race car. Copse is flat on new tires and low fuel, which makes it exciting. It’s a little bit like Eau Rouge used to be – a corner that you know is flat, but it’s hard to bring yourself to actually do it flat. But you know it, every lap you go ‘OK, next lap it’s flat’, but somehow each time your foot comes off the throttle. That’s what makes it exciting. I haven’t done it flat yet. I went in flat [in testing] and went off the track. I didn’t crash, just went wide. But it will be flat this weekend. Other people have done it flat I think, and when I mean flat I mean not braking with your left foot, because that’s not flat! The thing is that the way the cars are made now, with traction control and everything, it’s hard to go off. You can go off but it’s a lot harder than it was in the past. I don’t expect people going off, but you never know."

I think that paragraph there gives more away about the psyche of a F1 driver than most other interviews I've ever seen. He's almost saying "I want to go flat but know I can't. But if other people are going flat then I must be able to do it because there's no way there's going to be somebody out there who's braver than me"!

That's what Niki Lauder says Jenson needs to prove that he's as fast as Kimi or Alonso.

And he isn't - he's slower.

Bernie has come out in favour of having twenty races in a season. In fact that's only one more than we were supposed to have this year. The only that traditionally stops us from having more races is the teams saying that the season is too long and incredibly exhausting. One of the main people to use this defense is ron dennis. He of course isn't in the management group any more - i'm sure this is just a coincidence.

Bernie has said that he's going to make things easier for everyone by spreading out the races more. In fact this means that he'll make the season longer which is great. It has always seemed to me that the easiest way to deal with the longer season is to make the closed season longer by getting rid of winter testing. The fairest way to reduce testing is simply to reduce the period that testing is for.

The only people that you'd hear complaining about this are some of the biggest teams and also the journalists. The off season which only lasts for a month now is a complete nightmare for f1 journalists who have completely nothing to write about. Of course they could just take a nice long holiday during that time. But what if the off season was three months. Before i've never really been that worried about it but since we've started this blog i'm not so sure.

An alternative would be to really spread out the grand prix and have all of them three weeks apart. With the odd one two weeks apart. That way we'd only have say december off from f1. Grand prix with snow anyone?

It doesn't sound right, does it? Why would Toyota want to supply a team that can and is beating them? And why do Williams want to split themselves in half like that again (as they did with BMW)? It seems they have both compromised heavily: Williams want a better engine than Cosworth, and the Toyota was the only one around (perhaps they were hoping for a Mercedes?); Toyota wanted a better team than Midland to supply, and Williams were the only ones looking (perhaps they wanted Red Bull?).

What we have to look out for, of course, is how will it affect driver choice? And is Adrian now allowed to support Williams?

Watching Top Gear this week I was reminded of one of the things that I really like about Jeremy Clarkson. He's one of those guys that in your half remembered prejudices about people you assume is a little Englander who is hugely biased about the things that happen in the rest of the world. Especially if it comes to Germany.

However he really isn't. He was talking about the Monaco grand prix and said that the stewards should have awarded 100 points to Michael for being so skilled that he managed to stop everyone from beating his time and also not injuring the car all at that speed. That, he said, takes skill. He also said Fisi should have got points for thumping Jaques rather than being stopped!

There was another F1 factor in this weeks episode as they had a piece with Jackie Stewart. Jackie took one of the presenters - Captain Slow James May - and taught him how to shave 20 seconds off of his lap time in one day. It was an amazing thing to watch. I know Jackie is training up and coming drivers but I wonder if he trains the public? Of course Jackie (who's 66) was still miles faster than James 20 second reduced time which is still mind blowing.

Alex has already pointed out the black dots on a white jacket metaphor that Michael has used, but there are also others circulating that concern the incident: Flavio, for instance, said that Ferrari had taken all the other teams for Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Willi Weber has later said that having a Spanish steward judge Schumacher's incident was like asking the wolf how Red Riding Hood was (surely the other way around?). At the end of the day, when we get down to brass tacks, bite the bullet, and kick the bucket, metaphors (and especially the strange ones of fairytales) are the only way we can get close to understanding what happened: because what happened makes no sense at all.

Michael did not have to do it. That, surely, is his greatest defense. But, as I mentioned to Alex over some Salsiccia della griglia on Tuesday night, intent means nothing. We should have the same rule as professional golf, claims Richard Barnes, where regardless of if you have done something on purpose, you get punished. It happens sometimes in F1, but not all the time: if you speed in the pitlane you are punished; if you cross the white line you are punished; if you stall on the grid you are punished. Never does anyone question the intent of these actions. Is this how it should be throughout the sport?

Monaco was a great race in so many ways. I really did want somebody other than Alonso to win it. This was not because I dislike Alonso - far from it - but because I think Alonso's win here and the DNFs from Kimi and low points from Michael really do let him away at the front. And I want a championship fight come the end of the season.

There was so much going on at Monaco that I felt the result didn't reflect the race that we had seen, but of course it did. The best races in formula one seem to always express the entire season in a single race. And we had it this weekend. Kimi being fast but unreliable. Micahel's Ferrari fast but brought down by outside influences. And Alonso just sailing serenely past.

Kimi and Mark deserved more, but again didn't get it. And Fisi's overtake manauver was a sight to see. Surely he wasn't really in control of the car at that time.

When I saw this it made me think of the way that Fisi is normally a driver who seems to be unlucky. I wondered if maybe all drivers have the same amount of luck over the course of a season but some drivers use their luck like a bank and take it when it's really important (Micahel, Alonso) and other drivers Fisi, Rubens and to an extent Kimi take it as a lottery and allow it to happen to them. This was an amazing bit of good luck for Fisi but is almost completely pointless for him in terms of the championship.

Actually it wasn't completely pointless was it? Fisi now equals Kimi on championship points.

(Update: fixed picture)