There were, surprisingly, some fantastic elements of today’s European Grand Prix from Valencia.

Fernando Alonso and Ferrari getting hilariously annoyed with their result relative to Lewis Hamilton; Mike Gascoyne having a good old argument with David Coulthard about the crash between Mark Webber and Heikki Kovalianen.

But best of all was Kamui Kobayashi. When he didn’t stop during the safety car period, it initially seemed annoying. I thought he would obviously hold up Jenson Button, so for Sauber to keep him out seemed like little more than bloody-mindedness. Not so, though: Kobayashi was reasonably fast, and didn’t overly disadvantage Button. More importantly, it let him build up a decent gap over the field, so that when he did stop, he re-emerged in 9th.

Then came the kind of driving we saw from Kobayashi last year, overtaking Alonso in quite splendid fashion, then Sebastien Buemi mere laps later around the final corner, to finish 7th. It was enough for Martin Brundle to exclaim:

“Love it!”

Brundle has seemed oddly down on Kobayashi this season, so it was good to see him sharing in the joy.