• Just had a stupendously hot bath and read last week's Autosport. Now very dark, chilled vibes. A good Tuesday… #
• Curses. Sat down to write a blog post and found the whole Twitter API had changed, so just spent that precious time fixing WordPress! #

• Missed doing the race preview due to various emergency events this morning, and only sat down 15 seconds before the start. Cracking race. #

I had the laptop all poised, drinks in hand, to do the preview but various emergencies happened and I only just about sat down as they were leaving the Bus-Stop Chicane on the warm up lap.

To be honest, it wasn’t a bad preview to miss. Practice and qualifying didn’t reveal too much, other than Red Bull appeared to be “under-performing” relative to the expected pace. The whole storm around the flexible front wings was partially resolved this weekend with beefed up strength tests, with the full solution due next race at Monza where the underfloor also has to pass mustard for an increased load test. Co-incidence?

As with all wet races, there’s a degree of lottery. However, in this case the rain didn’t do a lot of damage. It added a lot of spice, but the big moves of the race would have happened wet or dry. Webber blew the start, Vettel took himself and Button out the race, Hamilton and Kubica got a flier and Alonso was at the rear of the midfield.

Vettel, once again, squandered points due to impetuosity. Button’s early seven race form during the 2009 championship set up the eventual glory, but the extreme tail off in performance in the back stretch left the ultimate destiny of the title only vaguely in his hands. Both Webber and Vettel had a more than decent chance at overhauling the Brawn, but wasted far too many points on foolish mistakes. And, for Vettel at least, this year looks no different – car advantages quite this strong don’t come around very often. Button capitalised on his 2009 good fortune, but Vettel appears to be wasting another gold plated opportunity.

Webber however, appears to be taking a solid approach. I think you can fairly say that Webber has blown two races, but done a good job in the others. And this approach again yielded another 18 points. However, it shouldn’t be forgotten that neither Webber nor Vettel have done a good enough job. Hamilton should be 30 points further up the road but for mechanical failure, in inferior machinery.

Button’s challenge is now over, through no fault of his own today, but the Button supporters (including myself) have to surrender that he’s just not quite as fast as Lewis Hamilton. Then again, probably no-one is. I don’t buy that Webber or Vettel have better speed – let’s see qualifying without the sort of car advantage they have been enjoying and then we’ll see what’s what. Alonso has already been found wanting – and that was in Hamilton’s rookie season. So, this is no disrespect to Button – but guile and solid performances won’t get it done again this year.

The race was quite heart-in-the-mouth stuff. All the nail-biting tension of a greasy, wet race. You can wax lyrical about the various incidents. But, at this stage of the season it’s a mental game. It’s about the ability to handle pressure, the intra-team mate pecking order – and today put clear water between Hamilton/Webber and the rest. Webber enjoys the car advantage, Hamilton is the better driver. Unless either chart a costly DNF, the others are now out of this.

• The weekend wasn't of top notch quality – had a migraine all the way through it. #

• The hosepipe ban is over! Just as more sun appears for the first time in seven weeks. #
• And 101 days of the new Government – not perfect, but so much better than the alternative. #

• Just caught the repeat of Gameswipe with Charlie Brooker. So many memories. Fantastic days. #

• Bricked my phone and put my foot through my parents loft. All in all, not a good day. #

• It's absolutely *hammering* down at work. Most vicious rain I've seen in a good couple of years. #

• The week of VMware has been and gone – early starts and late finishes has resulted in a cracking headache today (at the weekend of course). #

Unfortunately this is a late post, due to my worshipping at the altar of VMware this week.

The race was on its way to being an utter procession. Webber didn’t get a great start and slotted behind Alonso. Wait for the pit-stops, five laps more lappery, into second, 18 points. Thank you very much.

Talking of starts, Button had a rare nightmare when the lights went green. The start was good enough, but the position was utterly horrible and he lost five places at the first corner. Usually his positional awareness is much better, and that just about summed up his weekend. Horrible. Even a perfectly timed pit-stop for the only safety car of the race didn’t yield much in the way of points on the bottom line.

Hamilton’s didn’t go much better – retirement after the first set of pit stops. And now second in the championship. Of course he should still be leading it. Fifteen points down the tubes here, 18 points when the rim failed earlier in the season is still a fair swag of points which would have been a handy buffer. However, at present you just can’t avoid feeling that McLaren are now too far behind technically to swing this championship back towards him.

So, that leaves us with two remaining talking points. Vettel throwing the race away, and Schumacher attempting to put Barrichello into the wall.

The first is relatively easy – Vettel has always given the impression of not being the finished article. Fast but flawed. Very flawed. And there’s no two ways about it, he was in a world of his own, hand already on the trophy and the twenty-five points and took his eye off the ball, and the car in front.  The offence is hardly a capital crime, but the rule is there for a reason – or Webber could have just swanned off 30 seconds up the road, whilst the rest of the field sat impotently behind Vettel, still snugly unpassable under safety car conditions. And thus the penalty exists to stop a team giving any sort of tangible advantage to another driver. And he didn’t even know about the rule to begin with, let alone momentarily forgetting about it. Case closed. A win thrown away due to a lack of focus.

The second is actually a little more vague. Schumacher was basically a thug on the track. He’d messed up the final corner, Barrichello had a tow, job done – right until he decided to shove Barrichello to the very extremis of the race track. So extreme that post-race photographs appear to show maybe a foot at absolute best between Barrichello’s front right wheel and the concrete of the pit wall. It was probably shorter than that, but let’s be genenerous. However, there was no crash and the move was made. Maybe a lesser driver would have been intimidated – Barrichello kept his foot down. That wasn’t a “lift or we crash” moment. That was a “do it if you dare” moment.

As such, I’m more towards the “hard but fair” than the “utter nutter” position on this incident.

So, Formula One now goes on it’s annual break. The championship gives the illusion of being finely poised, but it’s a three horse race now – Webber, Vettel and Alonso. And in reality only Webber or Vettel should be in a position to win the championship given the car advantage. Unlike Button last year, they haven’t maximised their advantage in the early part of the season. Crucially, also unlike Button, their car hasn’t been overhauled by two other teams leaving fifth place the best likely result of the weekend – if anything the Red Bull advantage has increased.