Maybe it’s the warm weather of summer making people restless and irritable, but there seem to be a lot of feisty words being bandied about.

Thankfully, Ferrari have finally gone quiet about the unfortunate (for them) safety car events in Valencia. But it could flare up again, as Lewis Hamilton agreed with a journalist’s question that it was sour grapes on the part of Fernando Alonso. It’s not like Alonso needs any provoking.

Another man who needs no encouragement is Juan Pablo Montoya. His words about Jeff Gordon, following Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race, were pretty special though:

“He has it coming one day.”

Blimey, threatening at all?

But for me, the best quotes of all come from Casey Stoner. I’m not sure who exactly has been talking to him, and whether they were prodding him with a pointy stick at the same time, but he called Yamaha’s decision to put Wataru Yoshikawa on Valentino Rossi’s bike “atrocious”, and had plenty to say about the number of bikes on the grid:

“They’re talking about a maximum of 22, and that being a big grid – it’s pathetic, it’s a joke.”

His solution? A couple more Suzuki machines, and year-old bikes for new small teams. Presumably he’d be sponsoring all the new entries personally.

Sources linked to above: Ferrari, Sporting Life, autosport.com