That’s how the old local radio advert went, wasn’t it? Anyway.

Any time spent at Thruxton, in my experience, is time well spent. As well as spectating there, I did a driving experience there a few years ago. Too long ago, indeed, which is why I did another one today.

I’d say it’s money well spent, but in truth it’s bloody expensive. Today’s shenanigans were, in true rock ‘n’ roll fashion, financed by Tesco Clubcard points; and the time previous, I had a gift voucher. Under those circumstances, it’s excellent value.

So it was that in the pouring rain I was driven around the circuit with a couple of other guys in a Mazda3 MPS, before being put behind the wheel of a Porsche Cayman. Which was, you know, nice. I’m no motoring journalist, clearly.

Not like TV’s own Tiff Needell, off the telly. He’s now resident at Thruxton, offering five laps of the circuit in a BMW M3 for £125. Yes, £125. Needless to say (weak pun intended), I didn’t bother. I mean, it looked like a lot of fun when he overtook me sideways, but £125? Nah. Though it was highly amusing to see him bombastically shouting about the wet conditions, and how that makes his experience even better. He clearly has no problem assuming the role of shameless salesman.

That was in stark contrast to the regular instructors, who were very humble. Amongst their number were Duncan Tappy, who is racing internationally in Superleague Formula; and BTCC frontrunner Tom Onslow-Cole. Indeed, The OC seemed utterly thrown when I knew who he was, as he guided me over to the supercar area.

Where I got what I had been waiting for: the Ferrari California. The circuit was drying, and it was an absolute treat to get progressively less bad at driving the thing lap after lap. Power, balance, cornering – all that good stuff was utterly effortless. Especially compared to the Ferrari F355 I drove last time, which was a mechanical beast to drive. But still fun, obviously.

Finally I went out in the Formula Renault, on a virtually dry track. It was my second go in a single seater, and a great deal of fun – although not as revolutionary as the first; it really is quite unlike anything else, and a true experience. Even my girlfriend sort of enjoyed it, even if she was petrified before she got in.

I thought I’d had bad luck with the weather, considering how dry it’s been recently. But when the heavens absolutely opened on the way home, I counted myself lucky that I wasn’t still out on track. That would not have been fun, even with Tiff Needell at the wheel.

This comeback hasn’t been easy for Michael Schumacher, but at least one of his previous positions has been restored: the most hated man in Formula 1. For the summer break, at least.

After some very strong whinging this season, and of course the team orders in Germany, Fernando Alonso looked like he had that particular title tied up for the foreseeable future. This presumably riled Schumacher, so he had to dig deep.

At the Hungarian Grand Prix today, he did just that. His victim had to be one of the paddocks most enduring characters. Rubens Barrichello satisfied that, but also added an entire museum-worth of history, Barrichello having lived in Schumacher’s shadow – often so unnecessarily and unfairly – at Ferrari. Plus, Barrichello is quite an emotional chap. The perfect choice, then.

The move itself – basically pushing an overtaking Barrichello into the pit wall – was textbook Schumacher. And all for just one championship point. Thankfully that point ended up Barrichello’s. The videos of the incident, and interviews with both men, on the BBC website are utterly perfect.

Schumacher has received a ten place grid penalty for the next race, as the stewards judged he had “illegitimately impeded car 9 during an overtaking manoeuvre”.

I’d translate that as: Schumacher got the penalty for being a shit.

The United States Grand Prix now has not only a specified site for the circuit (see right), but also a big name financial backer.

And what a name: Red McCombs. Even better, his real name is Billy Joe McCombs – you don’t get more brilliantly American than that. And he’s sometimes referred to as BJ McCombs, if you fancy some particularly immature smirking. Which I frequently do.

Amongst the American sports teams McCombs has owned, the Denver Nuggets (NBA) are a particular highlight. It’s just a very good word: nugget. Here’s hoping they give turn one the name ‘Nugget’. Commentators talking about “the run from the start down into Nugget” would be a thing to cherish. One more time: nugget.

And of course this is all in addition to Tavo Hellmund, the man putting the whole project together. Another first rate name, and no mistake.

Formula 1’s return to the USA came a little closer to reality yesterday, with details revealed of the site, and chief financial backer, of the future United States Grand Prix in Austin, Texas.

Since one of the items released was a PDF map of the site, I thought I’d make it a little more helpful, and map it on Google Maps (bigger version):

Rest assured, that’s an outline of the site, not Hermann Tilke’s early draft of a circuit layout.

So, team orders are back in the news. And with the FIA World Motor Sport Council due to look at Ferrari’s actions at the German Grand Prix, they’re set to stay in the news. Oh joy.

How does Formula 1 keep getting into this mess? The standard argument is that it’s a team sport, so team orders are unavoidable. I agree. The problem comes, I believe, when team orders are issued in the heat of competition.

Felipe Massa being told, while leading the race, that he had to give the place to Fernando Alonso, was never going to go down well. Had Massa known, before the race, that he’d never be allowed to lead his team mate – assuming he didn’t, of course – then perhaps the place could have been swapped a little more seamlessly.

But that would have meant telling Massa, in only the middle of the season, that his role is now to support Alonso, not go for the championship himself. Which is a tough conversation to justify. It’s easier to get Massa’s engineer to tell him to move over in the middle of a race, as and when required. Quite cowardly on the part of Ferrari management though, isn’t it?

Take MotoGP: with no radio communications during the race, any team move has to be orchestrated between the riders alone, knowing what the team expects of them, and they can generally do it in a more acceptable manner. And only later in the season, when that conversation is more justifiable. Unless it’s Yamaha, who wouldn’t even try to have that conversation with Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo.

It’s a similar story in the World Rally Championship: there was uproar when Sebastien Ogier was used in the heat of the moment to benefit Sebastien Loeb at Rally Jordan. But Ford and Citroen both have established number two drivers, and that’s not really a problem.

The rule of thumb should be: if you can’t rationally discuss team orders in advance, and come to an agreement with all concerned, then they’re probably not justifiable. If you go ahead anyway, half-arsed in the heat of the moment, then you’re going to piss off the fans.

Not sure exactly how the FIA can phrase that in the rule book, though.

The German Grand Prix was supposed to be a storming race, according to all the previews. It wasn’t, really.

The Good

• Felipe Massa sailing into the lead from third on the grid. Pole man Sebastian Vettel put all his efforts into pushing Alonso towards the pit wall, which messed the start up for both of them.
• Jenson Button looking after his tyres in the first stint, and staying out longer, provided a lot of the early interest, as he was faster than the drivers who had pitted. He only managed to leapfrog one driver as a result – Webber – but it was good stuff nonetheless.
• Rob Smedley. Always Rob Smedley. Lovely, northern Rob Smedley. Massa’s race engineer giving him encouraging words that he “can win” as he led the race.

The Bad

• Fernando Alonso, king of the whingers, who at one point told the team, “this is ridiculous”. What, being beaten by your team mate?
• And so it was that Massa couldn’t win. The Ferrari men took turns at being fastest at various points, but ultimately it came down to the team deeming Alonso to be faster overall. Smedley’s words to Massa were heartbreaking:
  

  “Okay. So. Fernando is faster than you. Can you confirm you understood that message?”

  And after Alonso made the ‘move’ on Massa:

  “Okay mate. Good lad. Just stick with it now. Sorry.”

  It made sense for the team, of course, but no-one likes to see it. Especially when it’s Alonso benefiting.

• Smedley did his best to console Massa on the radio after the race, describing Massa as “magnanimous”, then saying he’d explain what it means later. But none of the men on the podium – Alonso, Massa and Vettel – were as jubilant as you’d expect to see. Which isn’t exactly great for the sport. At all.

The Ugly

• Team orders utterly dominating the aftermath isn’t helpful, is it? Inevitable, but rubbish. It looks bad. Bad bad bad!
• So that might be investigated by the FIA. So too might flexible wings. Almost makes you ashamed to be a Formula 1 fan, doesn’t it?
• And even at its home race, the grey Mercedes GP car was still oh so very grey.

At least there’s a MotoGP race tonight. Let’s hope there’s some actual racing at Laguna Seca!

Valentino Rossi missed races after his crash, and he’s not back up to full fitness. But after finishing 4th last week in Germany, it’s tempting to think that maybe, just maybe, he could still have a go at the MotoGP title.

We’re eight races down, with ten to go. Jorge Lorenzo has 185 points and a very nice championship lead; Rossi is 6th with 74 points. That’s a 111 point deficit, so if Rossi can score 12 points per race more than Lorenzo, then that would do the job.

It’s an average, and if Lorenzo has a couple of non-finishes, then obviously it would be a very different picture. And there are other riders in with a chance. But 12 points per race is illustrative of the magnitude of the task. So what does that look like? This:

With Rossi winning, Lorenzo couldn’t finish better than 4th. And 4th is the worst position Rossi could finish, with Lorenzo 15th or lower. In short: 12 points per race is an awful lot.

I sometimes wonder what sponsors get out of motorsport. In the BTCC, for example, there are a lot of ‘trade’ sponsors – like Pirtek, a “fluid transfer solutions” company. But it’s by no means always about selling to Johnny Armchair watching at home: there are considerations for business-to-business opportunities, hospitality and that sort of jazz. Apparently.

As a broker on the foreign exchange markets, you wouldn’t assume that FxPro would directly market to the regular motorsport fan. But they seem to be – and that intrigues me.

Their branding is all over the World Rally Championship, and admittedly the concept of Miss FxPro 2010 isn’t exactly crediting the public with a great deal of intelligence.

But their Formula 1 activities are a little more interesting. Most obviously, they sponsor Virgin Racing. To complement that, they launched the FxPro Currency Race, with F1-related prizes up for grabs. It’s quite clever: you choose the pair of currencies to trade, and your little F1 car’s performance is based on how that trade performs in real time.

It’s a touch bizarre as a game. It’s effective though: not only does it promote the brand, but it teaches the punter what foreign exchange trading is all about – presumably in the hope that they’ll indulge in a little of it with FxPro. And that is crediting the public with a bit of intelligence – which is to be encouraged.

The BTCC summer break is so very long, isn’t it? We need something to keep us going. Something like… a graph. Yes, a graph of cumulative points by round of the championship so far, for the top drivers.

After all, there’s good data available, thanks to the company responsible for timing in the BTCC. Go on, treat yourself:

What fresh insight does this offer us? Well, it pretty clearly illustrates that Matt Neal, cartoon villain and current points leader, has been ludicrously consistent. In fact, the lack of variation in the gradient of his line is positively inspirational.

Equally clear is where Jason Plato lost the top spot: that disastrously horizontal segment of line around the Brands Hatch GP meeting. He scored, on average, a huge 1 point per race between rounds 7 and 10. Not helpful.

Stephen Kane and Gordon Shedden – 3rd and 5th overall – have also been consistent, but it looks like Tom Onslow-Cole – who really should be referred to as The OC – is the man to watch: he started slowly, but that line sure is creeping up fast now. Even Matt Neal agrees, and that’s without the benefit of this mighty graph.

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.