China GP - "Great effort"

I'll start with some brief chartage:

Liking: the season's most elegantly-dressed clapping ladies and Webber's trademark Stan Laurel headscratch.
Loathing: BBC's Sex and the City spoof, we were over 4 minutes into their coverage before F1 was mentioned. Also the return of EJ and DC bickering.

Qualifying really shook things up and promised a great race. Firstly, there was the shock of Vettel exiting in Q2. This was followed by the comforting noises of lovely chap Heikki Kovalainen, who was too nice to say that Maldonado was the baddie in their coming together. Whitmarsh looked like he was going to cry when it was all over.

Pre-race the BBC treated us to a special obituary for Sir Frank Williams, to celebrate his 70th birthday. I should clarify that Sir Frank is still alive.

After that, nothing much happened for many many laps. This was made worse by the lack of coverage of the mid-field battles or pit stops and Bedward being incapable of distinguishing between teammates. Once the tedious laps were out of the way, the race was thrilling. Schumi managed magnanimous, which he can definitely add to his emotional wardrobe. I haven't seen the post-race interview with Raikkonen but I am assuming he was not so cheery. There are a couple of interesting FF1 points: Vettel gets the points for most grid places made up and Kobayashi did the fastest race lap. It was a triumph for the underdogs though. Everyone was pleased that Rosberg broke his duck (Hamilton in post-race smile shock) and Webber finally did what was needed and came in ahead of his teammate.