There are some pretty striking PR failures in Formula 1 at the moment.

Red Bull Racing seems like a team concerned by its image, as you’d expect from the massive energy drink brand. All the suggestions of Red Bull Racing favouring Sebastian Vettel over Mark Webber have done nothing to endear the team to fans. It certainly doesn’t help that the smoke and mirrors being used by the team to try to smooth over the situation contrast starkly with the unerringly straight-talking Webber.

In fact, I think there’s only one thing Red Bull Racing could do to make the situation worse: announce Sakon Yamamoto as Webber’s replacement.

Well, it worked so well for Hispania Racing. Yamamoto first replaced Bruno Senna for the British Grand Prix, and in hugely strange circumstances. It might have been punishment for a critical email, and Senna might have found out in the first instance via Yamamoto’s Twitter feed. Whatever happened, it wasn’t until a day later that HRT bothered to explain the situation: they were giving Yamamoto an ‘opportunity’, and Senna will race for the rest of the season.

There was no mention of HRT’s other race driver, Karun Chandhok, though. So it’s his turn to be dropped in favour of Yamamoto for the German Grand Prix. Chandhok is massively popular in F1 circles, it seems, and the decision hasn’t exactly been greeted kindly. The BBC further suggests that HRT’s fourth driver, Christian Klien, will get a race at some point too. Suggestions are rife that all of this is down to money. It’s all just a bit rubbish.

One team that can’t seem to do any wrong, though, is McLaren. Their viral videos – featuring Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton driving to Silverstone in a campervan, or trying to put an F1 car together, to name but two – have been very well received. To be fair, they’ve actually been quite good – chiefly because either Button and Hamilton genuinely get on well, or they’re pretty good at pretending to.

What surprises me, though, is the reaction to Ron Dennis cutting Eddie Jordan‘s microphone lead live on the BBC after the British Grand Prix. Adam Cooper gives a good account of it, but virtually all the support from people commenting is for Dennis. While it might have been funny to unplug the lead, cutting it is just creating stress and hassle for the BBC production staff, isn’t it? The BBC and McLaren were reportedly not happy at all, but somehow McLaren have got away without it harming their image. For some reason, at the moment, they can do no wrong.