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.

I hope the new chairman of Formula 1 team Williams, Adam Parr, gives plenty of interviews. He could be excellent value.

Talking to BBC Oxford, he came out with this beauty about the task he’s taken on:

“I like to use the analogy of a dog that sees a bus go past its house, jumps over the fence and grabs the bus by the exhaust pipe – then realises it has a 20 tonne vehicle attached to it. It is a big responsibility.”

Is Parr likening himself to a stupid dog? And the team to a speeding bus that he can’t stop?

I’m genuinely not really sure what he’s trying to get at – but it can’t be that. I like his style though, confused as it is. I think.

The British Grand Prix, summarised in the only way I know how.

The Good

• Mark Webber. Could he have been any more satisfied, after the whole front wing thing? And his words to Christian Horner – who sounded a little more muted than usual – on the team radio after taking victory were very well chosen indeed: “not bad for a number two driver”. Karma, there.
• And it was another pretty interesting race, wasn’t it? Not hugely significant overtaking, but you get the feeling that there’s real pressure out there at the moment, and it’s making drivers make more mistakes than usual. The result being good entertainment.
• Like Jenson Button finishing 4th from 14th on the grid. And Rubens Barrichello 5th, Kamui Kobayashi 6th – really good stuff.
• It’s always good to learn something, and today it was the standard unit of weight used in Formula 1, as Martin Brundle talked about “two reasonable sized adults of fuel”. Yes, it’s the reasonable-sized-adult.
• Celebrities! Rowan Atkinson was shown on the TV coverage watching the race from some privileged position. He’s British, obviously, but I reckon he was invited jointly by the six German drivers on the grid. Mr Bean really was very popular in Germany.
• Brundle also grabbed words on the grid with someone or other from the British royal family, and everyone’s favourite proper actor Sir Patrick Stewart.

The Bad

• The disappointment was that Brundle didn’t ask Sir Patrick to join him in the commentary box. His gloriously thespian tones would have been a lovely alternative to the still mediocre at best Jonathan Legard. But that was not to be.
• I’m torn on where to put Fernando Alonso‘s race. On balance, it was maybe just about a bad thing. When he overtook Robert Kubica by cutting a corner, even if he had really no choice, he probably should have given the place back. The drive through penalty he was eventually awarded was perhaps a tad harsh, but logical. The timing of the penalty – right before a safety car – was very unfortunate though. He had to wait for the safety car to go back in to serve the penalty, by which time the pack had closed up, so Alonso inevitably rejoined right at the back. Unfortunate for Ferrari, then, but very, very funny. How much moaning do we have to come?

The Ugly

• Just the Mercedes GP car. Grey and minty green still doesn’t go.

How did Britain do in qualifying for the British Grand Prix? Some and some.

As established, Virgin Racing is the most British Formula 1 team. But they couldn’t beat Lotus in the usual Q1 battle of the new teams, Heikki Kovalainen about 0.3 seconds ahead of Timo Glock.

It got so much worse for Britain in Q2 though, Jenson Button dropping out as only the 14th fastest driver, in the process pretty much halving the chance of a home win tomorrow. He delightfully described the car as “undriveable” on BBC One, then on BBC Radio 5 Live expressed the hope that they’d find a problem with the car. It certainly looked bloody awful from the on-board camera.

Good old Lewis Hamilton though. He seems to revel in taming wild cars, and stuck it on the second row in 4th. Right next to his good friend Fernando Alonso, which is a tantalising prospect. Inevitably, Red Bull Racing reserved the front row, Sebastian Vettel on pole.

The other good news for Britain was Williams – so nearly the most British team. It’s quite incredible how much better the car has been over the last couple of races, and Rubens Barrichello qualifying 8th is very encouraging.

So, it’s the British Grand Prix. I’m not actually going to Silverstone at any point over the weekend, but at least I’m in the country – so that’s one up on last year.

Fear not though, it’s not going to stop me from churning out my own brand of nonsense related to the shenanigans going on just off the A43. Which is an annoying road at the best of times, with all its bloody roundabouts, so in some ways I’m blessed not to be heading up there. Sort of.

So what’s the story so far?

The shock news came late yesterday that Bruno Senna is out of Hispania for the weekend, to be replaced by Sakon Yamamoto. Why? The team has refused to say at the time of writing, though a statement is expected today, presumably on the team’s website.

The other shocking news of the weekend came on Twitter yesterday morning: Will Buxton relayed the news that the TV in the media centre was showing Jeremy Kyle yesterday morning. Not a warm welcome for anyone, surely.

There were a couple of other good bits on Twitter yesterday.

McLaren‘s The Fifth Driver followed the team’s drivers making their way to Silverstone in the Vodafone VIP campervan. It’s annoyingly cool for a corporate wagon, as this photo demonstrates.

Nigel Mansell is the former driver advising the stewards this weekend, and Claire Williams shared a really nice photo of Sir Frank Williams with his former world champion driver.

It’s particularly timely, as we also learned that Sir Frank Williams is stepping down as chairman of the team. Williams remains team principal, which is good news; it will be a sad day when he steps back completely.

Ferrari unveiled a new logo. If you’ve not seen it yet, it’s literally as exciting as you’d expect it to be. Mainly they’ve got rid of that pesky controversial barcode.

Being British, I can’t not mention the weather. It’s looking good. The man to consult for the definitive view is always BBC weatherman Ian Ferguson, who blogs in great detail about the weather prospects for every race. His analysis is that it’s going to be warm, with a smallish chance of showers on Sunday.

More good stuff from the BBC: we mere mortals will have available to us FOM’s driver tracker, which shows the position of each driver in real time on a map of the circuit. Excellent! It’s just a trial this weekend, but I can’t imagine it not being rolled out for the rest of the season. It’ll be on the BBC website during the race, alongside the rest of the live video, audio and text coverage.

As an aside, James Allen was the first one I saw with that news, followed by Joe Saward – both on Wednesday. It’s curious that the BBC didn’t go public itself at the same time: the blog from the BBC’s Andrew Benson only went up yesterday morning.

Right, not long to go to first practice.

It’s the week of the British Grand Prix, so Formula 1 is of particular interest to the residents of this green and pleasant land. Especially after the initial promise and ultimate disappointment of the World Cup and Wimbledon – because we’re kind of a big deal in motorsport.

But which team should have the support of the patriotic Briton? I’ve had a think about exactly that.

Most teams on the grid are based in the UK, so let’s immediately discount those rude enough to have no connection to this fair isle: Ferrari and Scuderia Toro Rosso (Italy), Sauber (Switzerland), and Hispania (Spain).

Then there are teams based in the UK, but entered under a different nationality – which also simply will not do. That’s Mercedes GP (Germany), Red Bull Racing (Austria), Renault (France), Force India (India), and Lotus (Malaysia).

We’re left with the three truly British teams on the grid: McLaren, Williams and Virgin Racing. But how truly British are they?

McLaren doesn’t quite cut it, I’m afraid. It was founded by Bruce McLaren, a New Zealander; and in addition to Ron Dennis – so British the Queen gave him a CBE, admittedly – its current shareholders include: the obviously not British Bahrain Mumtalakat Holding Company; and TAG Group, the Luxembourg company with Saudi Arabian Mansour Ojjeh at its head. Really not British enough.

Williams comes close. Sir Frank Williams must even more British than Ron Dennis, because the Queen gave him a CBE and knighted him. Until recently, Williams and Patrick Head retained complete ownership of the team. British, no question. But in November 2009, they sold a minority stake to Austrian Toto Wolff. Result: only quite British.

We come to Virgin Racing, then. The team is run by Sheffield’s Manor Motorsport. The car was designed by Wirth Research of Bicester. And Virgin itself is based in glittering West London. The only other shareholder, at least that I can find any reference to, is LDC, the private equity arm of Lloyds Banking Group – which, being part nationalised, is about as British as you can get.

There you have it: Virgin Racing is the most British Formula 1 team, and the British public even sort of tenuously owns part of it. Therefore it is the team to support this weekend. FACT.

All right, maybe I’m conveniently ignoring the fact that McLaren has two British World Champions as its drivers. So just a little bit of support might be directed towards Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton too. But mainly Virgin Racing, I’m sure. Logic dictates.

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

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.

Formula 1 is throwing the kitchen sink at overtaking for the 2011 season.

First came the decision by the teams to end their voluntary ban of KERS. So the power boost will be back to – in theory – aid overtaking.

Then yesterday the FIA World Motor Sport Council did away with the F-duct, but introduced the concept of “adjustable bodywork” which is “enabled if the driver is less than one second behind another”.

So to line up a pass, the driver will wait until they’re close enough, shift the car into this new low-drag mode, and engage the KERS power boost. Not to mention play with the fuel mix and front wing, as they already do.

Maybe it will work, maybe it will be utterly ridiculous. But either way, red shells aren’t far away.

It’s going to be a busy weekend. There’s MotoGP from Assen, Formula 1 from Valencia, not to mention the World Cup, Wimbledon and Glastonbury. All on the BBC. Fighting over the single BBC Red Button stream on Freeview. This isn’t going to work, is it?

Inevitably, MotoGP comes off worst. The Dutch TT, as it’s known, isn’t the same as other weekends, so it’s qualifying for all three classes on Friday 1150-1505. That’s on the Red Button, but not on Freeview, which only has eyes for Wimbledon at that time. So for qualifying, the place to go is the BBC MotoGP website. Which, given that most people will be at work anyway, probably isn’t the biggest problem in the world.

The news most likely to outrage, is that the MotoGP race won’t be live on any proper BBC channel, just the Red Button. Thankfully, that will be on Freeview: 0950-1205 for 125cc and Moto2, then 1240-1405 for MotoGP. Highlights are then on BBC Two for an hour at 0200 on Sunday morning, repeated at 0700 on BBC One. Brilliant, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Those MotoGP shenanigans mean that Saturday’s final practice session for the European Grand Prix, on the Red Button 0955-1105, won’t be on Freeview. So Formula 1 does lose out a bit. Again, the BBC Formula 1 website will be the place to go for that. Except you really ought to be watching the MotoGP.

The reason the MotoGP race has been demoted to the Red Button is presumably because it clashes with Formula 1 qualifying, which is on BBC One, Saturday at 1210. Having MotoGP on BBC Two at the same time would be too much motorsport for the BBC to get away with, realistically, so it’s Wimbledon instead.

The good news is that the Freeview Red Button looks pretty free on Sunday, so the Formula 1 race from the tedious streets of Valencia should have full alternative stream and F1 Forum service.

So there you go: it’s all there to be enjoyed, you just have to find it. Accentuate the positive and all that.

Handy Links:
BBC TV motorsport schedule
BBC Sport Red Button schedule