Christian Horner has said that Formula 1 needs to let its drivers be themselves more. I agree. In particular, the younger drivers need to be set free before they become PR automatons. Young people are frequently ludicrous and brilliant – let them get on with it.

Horner’s own Red Bull driver, Daniel Ricciardo, is a case in point. It’s not original or clever to point it out, but it’s unavoidable: he is one infeasibly beaming Australian.

Who hasn’t enjoyed seeing him on the top of the podium twice this season? It’s a joy to see him enjoy winning so much. Or doing just about anything, it seems. It would be criminal if his PR handlers were to erode that implausibly large smile to a weak, heartless smirk.

Or look at Marc Marquez. Admittedly anyone doing as improbably well as he has for the past season and a half would be on a permanent high, but he’s another one that’s a joy to see win.

It’ll be interesting to see how he comes across on MotoGP Tonight on BT Sport next month. Tickets to be in the audience practically evaporated, so the public are keen to see what he’s like. Hopefully he’ll be as charming as he tends to come across as in interviews, and not dead behind the eyes already.

Riders do inevitably calm down, though. Like Jorge Lorenzo. He wouldn’t jump in the water at Jerez with his leathers and helmet on these days, as he did in 2010. Shame, that.

It’s not all beaming smiles and daft celebrations though. One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about the World Rally Championship this year has been on boards with Elfyn Evans. It’s the young Welshman’s first full season in the WRC, and the look on his face while driving, a mixture of intense concentration and justifiable fear, is a thing to behold. This on board from Monte Carlo is a bit dark, but it’s clear enough.

So: young people being young people. More of it please!

There’s a lot of running away with championships going on this year, but not all of it is as clear cut as the results suggest. Here are six degrees of motorsport domination so far in 2014.

6. KTM – Moto3

It’s a remarkable record: a KTM-engined bike has won every Moto3 race since July 2012, and a KTM chassis every race since September 2012.

Though 2013 was a year of utter domination for KTM, 2014 hasn’t been the whitewash – six wins from six – that it looks like. Were it not for some cracking rides from Jack Miller and Romano Fenati – topping the points table as it stands – Honda would by now have secured a win or two at the hands of Alex Rins (third on points), Efren Vazquez or Alex Marquez.

The Honda is now a match for the KTM, and Miguel Oliveira on the Mahindra can’t be entirely discounted as an outside bet. It’s only a matter of time until KTM’s winning streak comes to an end.

Domination: cracked

5. Shane Byrne – British Superbikes

Shane Byrne has won three of the first four races in British Superbikes this year, and came second in the other. It’s a storming start, giving him a 30 point championship lead on 95 points.

But with those four races at only two meetings, there’s an awful lot of the season to come. There are consistent riders behind him too: Josh Brookes has a win and two second places, a retirement costing him dearly in the points standings; James Ellison has finished third in every race.

It’s too early to say that Byrne will dominate, then, but it’s clear where the sensible money is.

Domination: to be established

4. Mercedes – Formula 1

The Mercedes F1 W05 Hybrid hasn’t finished a race outside the top two so far in 2014. Until last weekend, it seemed completely believable that it could win every race.

Reliability at the Canadian Grand Prix put paid to that though, and Daniel Ricciardo took the first non-Mercedes win of the season for Red Bull.

But there’s no sign that the other teams are in danger of catching – let alone overtaking – Mercedes on performance. So with 258 points and a 119 point lead in the constructors championship, and a similar advantage in the drivers table, it’s going to take a lot more unreliability for anyone other than Mercedes to have a look in when the big prizes are handed out at the end of the year.

Domination: probably in tact

3. Citroen – WTCC

Citroen have definitely ‘done a Volkswagen’: entered a world championship, thrown time and money at the project, and blown the competition – with little or waning manufacturer support – away.

They were never going to win every race of the season, with a reverse grid for the second race of each meeting, and the penalties for success that are usual for touring car racing. But even before the season started, it was virtually a foregone conclusion that one of the Citroen drivers would come out world champion.

And so it has worked out so far: Citroen have won 11 of the 12 races, and comfortably occupy the top three spots in the championship table. It’s not all predictable though: not many would have Jose Maria Lopez leading the standings by 41 points from Yvan Muller and Sebastien Loeb.

Domination: convincing, but not complete

2. Volkswagen – WRC

Volkswagen have won each of the first six rallies of the year, and there’s every chance that run will continue.

They also won all but three rallies in 2013, in their first year. Sebastien Loeb won two of those three, but he’s out of the way now, part of Citroen’s domination of the WTCC.

The competition are looking only intermittently threatening, with a smattering of podium finishes scattered amongst the Citroen, M-Sport and Hyundai runners. Citroen’s Mads Ostberg has been most consistent, but has less than half the points of inevitable championship leader Sebastien Ogier.

Volkswagen might not win every rally this season – reliability and bad luck always come knocking eventually in rallying – but it’s almost inconcieveable that they – and Ogier specifically – won’t be on top come the end of the season.

Domination: highly efficient

1. Marc Marquez – MotoGP

One man, though, has dominated domination so far in 2014. As if taking the MotoGP title on his first attempt in 2013 wasn’t enough, Marc Marquez has won all of the first six races of 2014, to collect a perfect 150 points. His closest rival is Valentino Rossi, on 97.

The first four races of the year were pretty straightforward for the ludicrously talented Spanish child, who has been excellently described as the Predator, in reference to the ‘aliens’ tag that has been used in recent years for the frontrunning set of MotoGP riders.

Then in France he made it hard for himself by dropping back to 10th at the start, but it didn’t take long to find his way to the front, ultimately taking victory by 1.5 seconds.

And in Italy, someone finally made it hard for Marquez. Jorge Lorenzo – hopefully a now resurgent Jorge Lorenzo – challenged him race-long in a superb battle for the win. Marquez ultimately triumphed, by just 0.121 seconds.

But he did win. Again. When will it end? No-one knows.

Domination: frightening

We’re a couple of rounds into the season, so it seems like a good time to consider how BT Sport are getting on with MotoGP.

On the ground

Most importantly, the commentary team of Julian Ryder and Keith Huewen are solid. Crucially they’re capable of talking to each other, which is more than can be said for some commentary teams. It’s not the first time they’ve worked together and they seem to get on, which comes across in the commentary; but equally they don’t spend the race chuckling amongst themselves. It’s a good balance, and probably the strongest element of the coverage.

That and Gavin Emmett, who’s doing an absolutely cracking job as roving reporter. Having worked on the world feed for a number of years, he knows everyone, and everyone knows him, which makes for great, informed interviews. He’s completely relaxed in the pit lane and on live TV, and was a very wise signing.

I rather like Neil Hodgson too. He’s not quite at home in front of the camera yet – a bit like James Haydon a few years ago – but his enthusiasm for racing is infectious, and he’s very natural talking to riders. With Gavin Emmett, they’re a great pair to have roaming the pits.

Front of house

Then there’s the presentation team, which is harder to judge at this stage. Melanie Sykes doesn’t seem entirely comfortable. Her conversations with the pundits are a touch stilted, with a tendency to move on quite abruptly. It could be a production issue, or a lack of familiarity. But at the moment I can’t help feeling that we’d be better off with Gavin Emmett fronting the whole thing.

It recalls Jennie Gow’s brief stint fronting the BBC’s coverage after Suzi Perry left. There was nothing particularly wrong with Jennie Gow, but Matt Roberts was there in the pits, infinitely more qualified, looked over for no obvious reason. A year later, Matt Roberts was moved to the fore, and the coverage was all the better for it.

I don’t want to write off Melanie Sykes though – not at all. She was very good in the preview programme, and it’s too early to reach any firm conclusions about the live coverage.

The importance of set up

Rough edges aside, the set up in Sepang was superb, with Melanie Sykes talking to various pundits in a specially constructed raised area at trackside, passing over to Gavin Emmett and Neil Hodgson in the pits – it felt truly comprehensive, like proper event television.

The coverage of Austin was much less convincing, with half the team stuck in a studio in the UK. It was inevitably more disconnected, and felt a tiny bit half-arsed in comparison to Sepang.

If BT Sport are going to do it properly, they need to ship everyone to the race track. It looks like the studio will be the norm rather than the exception though, sadly.

Punditry

James Toseland is presumably going to be the regular pundit, despite being absent from Austin presumably due to his parallel music career. I’m not wholly convinced by him: he’s always seemed a little overly formal to me, and I’m not sure he’d done all his Moto2 and Moto3 homework before the first round.

It’d be good to see more of MCN’s Matthew Birt, who featured over the Sepang weekend. For Austin we had Troy Corser and Steve Parrish, who knows his way around a TV broadcast, and will be a semi-regular. No sign of Charlie Cox yet…

No class snobbery

Credit has to go to BT Sport for treating Moto2 and Moto3 properly – as promised. There’s plenty of discussion, analysis and interviews – and not only with the British riders, though obviously they get the lion’s share of the attention.

MotoGP Tonight

And the coverage extends into the week, with MotoGP Tonight on the Tuesday evening following a race weekend.

Craig Doyle is an established safe pair of hands (Isle of Man TT etc), and alongside him Iwan Thomas is a bit of a pleasant surprise – enthusiastic, knowledgeable and not a bad presenter.

The format is a bit hit and miss – due in part to the hit and miss nature of celebrity guests on this sort of programme. Famously bike-loving comedian Ross Noble was an obvious choice – confident and enthusiastic, he dominated the first show, and not in a bad way. Cricketer Graham Swann was a bit more representative of a typical guest, and left the presenters with more work to do.

The content too is a mixed bag – but I generally find this sort of themed magazine show a bit awkward. The straight sport content is sound, and there’s definitely a place for further analysis after a few days to digest things. The lighter sport content – from Twitter, for example – actually works quite well. The general bike content and studio tomfoolery – like the ‘Lean Machine’ – is fine if you like that sort of thing. For me, you could probably lose half of the one hour run time and have a tighter, better show.

It’s early days though, and these things need time to find their feet.

For many riders, their bike number is a big part of their brand – Valentino Rossi and 46, for example.

But there are only so many one and two digit numbers to go round – 98 to be precise, excluding the rarely-seen 0 and champion-reserved 1. So there’s got to be some sharing going on between championships. But which numbers are the most popular? Let’s investigate the heck out of it.

The popular – and unpopular – bike numbers

This is the full list of bike numbers in MotoGP, Moto2, Moto3, World Superbikes, World Supersport and British Superbikes, scraped from those websites this week.

Even from that tiny thumbnail, you can see that smaller numbers are more popular – no surprise there.

Proving that riders are a superstitious bunch, the most popular bike number overall, and indeed the only one in use in all six of the championships, is lucky number 7. Next up are numbers 4, 5, 9, 11, 19 and 23, all in use in five of the six series.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are a handful of completely untouched bike numbers. Those include 1, because none of the current champions chose to adopt the number 1 plate; and 13, further proof that riders really are a superstitious bunch. The others are: 28, 48, 56, 62, 74, 75, 78, 79, 82, 83, 85, 90, 92 and 98.

Summaries

There are a lot of untouched bike numbers in the 70s, aren’t there? It’s not popular around there, as this breakdown by intervals of ten shows:

Average bike number by championship there, too. And those tables are related.

The two bike numbers in 100+ are both in British Superbikes – 127 for Robbin Harms, and a frankly ludicrous 303 for Keith Farmer. Fatboy Slim might have said that Everybody Needs a 303, but he wasn’t thinking of bike numbers. Other championships presumably dictate a maximum of two digits. Wisely.

And that’s why the average bike number in British Superbikes, at 52, is noticeably higher than the other championships, which range from 38 to 42.

Phwoar! Look at that branding

As I said at the start, a lot of riders use their bike number as part of their brand, and sensibly championships are getting more relaxed about how the number is displayed on the bike.

One of my favourites from recent years was Jorge Lorenzo’s 2011 number 1 plate, which he adopted after winning the championship in 2010. The construction of the number 1 from his initials, JL, was pleasingly subtle.

A current favourite is Mika Kallio’s number 36 on his Marc VDS Moto2 bike, displayed as -36°, presumably referring to his chilly homeland of Finland. Very neat.

And finally, some maths – sorry

Incidentally, if I was a racer I’d choose one of the completely unused numbers. That’s 28, because it’s a perfect number, meaning that it equals the sum of its proper factors: 28 = 14 + 7 + 4 + 2 + 1.

Implying that, perhaps unsurprisingly, racers aren’t necessarily big fans of number theory, the other perfect number less than 100, 6 = 3 + 2 + 1, is in use in only two championships, which isn’t many compared to other small numbers.

Photo Credits
#46 & #99: mmphotography.it – Flickr – Some rights reserved
Jorge Lorenzo #1: Tomohiko Tanabe – Flickr – Some rights reserved
Mika Kallio #36: Ben Henderson / ImageNationPhotography – Flickr – Some rights reserved

What to make of Cal Crutchlow signing for Ducati? He must believe it to be the best decision, but some fans aren’t so keen. I think a consideration of probabilities helps here.

Podiums

What we – by which I mean British MotoGP fans – want is a British rider at the front. We’ve got that this year, with Crutchlow having bagged four podiums and a pole position so far. It’s not unreasonable to expect more of the same for the rest of the season – and indeed in 2014 had he stayed on the Tech 3 Yamaha.

By contrast, Ducati have had no podiums this year, and a only four in the past two seasons.

I think this is what British fans see: the probability of Crutchlow fighting at the front and grabbing a handful podium is greater at Tech 3 than at Ducati. And it’s a fair point, from a spectator’s point of view; the thought of Crutchlow languishing mid-pack on a Ducati is not exactly inspiring.

Race Wins

But no-one dreams of podiums; racers race to win. This is where it gets tricky.

The last time any satellite bike won a race was 2006, when the Gresini Honda was victorious with both Marco Melandri and Toni Elias.

Ducati, meanwhile, last won a race in 2010 – three times, thanks to Casey Stoner of course. Even excluding Stoner as a special case, it was still more recent than 2006 – Loris Capirossi took a win in 2007.

So where is Crutchlow more likely to take his first race win? It’s close. At Tech 3, on a satellite bike, he’ll struggle without something to level the playing field – wet weather or problems for the factory bikes; at Ducati he’ll need them to produce a better bike, or just ‘do a Stoner’ and somehow ride the heck out of it.

World Championships

Race wins aren’t the end of it though: it’s all about being World Champion.

Here it gets a bit easier: satellite bikes don’t win championships. Never in the MotoGP era, and not in recent history before that – if ever. On the other side, Casey Stoner took his Ducati to the world title in 2007.

So undoubtedly Crutchlow stands a better chance of becoming world champion at Ducati than Tech 3. It might still be a long shot, but it’s better than the near as damn it zero chance at Tech 3.

The one certainty

This is all probabilities, chances and likelihoods. There only one certainty, and that’s that Crutchlow will earn more at Ducati. A racer’s career is relatively short, and opportunities are few and far between, so it’s only right that money be a factor.

If he’d stayed at Tech 3, Crutchlow would have had a very good chance of running at the front next year. In exchange for passing up that opportunity, he’s getting a factory bike which, if Ducati get their act together or Crutchlow can ‘do a Stoner’, could give him a chance at the world title – and the certainty of more money. Seems like a fair deal to me.

Photo Credits
Cal Crutchlow: Corentin Foucaut – Flickr – Some rights reserved
Casey Stoner: Thomas Helbig – Flickr – Some rights reserved

It’s hard to keep up with the MotoGP rider rumour mill – who has a contract for 2014, who doesn’t, and who has a contract that might not end up being worth the paper it’s written on. But what it all adds up to is too many riders for not enough bikes, and pressure on certain riders.

Our very own rookie Bradley Smith is one of those riders, and there’s plenty of discussion about his performance this year.

He’s spoken about how the gap to the winner is more important to him in gauging his progress than outright finishing position. It’s a good point, but I think there’s another way to look at it too.

His satellite Tech 3 Yamaha is a competitive machine, so on paper he ought to be beating the CRT bikes, and at least having a bash at the prototype stragglers – Ducati, essentially. So: how many CRT bikes have been finishing ahead of him, and how many prototype bikes has he been beating?

It’s not an entirely straightforward comparison – there’s been injury aplenty in the Ducati camp, for instance. Nevertheless, let’s have a look.

Those two DNFs obviously stand out, but only Qatar was his fault. It’s also worth comparing that error in the first round to his performance at a wet Le Mans, where he kept it upright when the likes of Valentino Rossi didn’t.

The trend – if you can call it that – against the other prototypes suggests that Smith has started to get on terms with the Ducati riders, notably beating the lot of them at the Dutch TT. Overtaking Andrea Dovizioso – even on a Ducati – is no mean feat, and he’s beaten him in his last three finishes.

On the other hand, Smith has been beaten by a CRT bike four times in seven finishes, which doesn’t sound great. But every time that was Aleix Espargaro, for whom no-one seems to have anything other than utter admiration this year. Get that man on a prototype.

Looking at Smith’s preferred measure of success, he’s clearly been getting closer to the front – down to under 30 seconds behind the winner in Germany. And his finishing position is going in the right direction, even it is a bit of a blunt measure.

So it’s hard to argue that he deserves to be booted out of MotoGP. But is he more deserving of a ride than current Moto2 frontrunners like Scott Redding and Pol Espargaro? That’s another question altogether.

Photo Credit: Barron Fujimoto – Flickr – Some rights reserved

With MotoGP moving to BT Sport from 2014, the BBC will be left with half the Formula 1 season and nothing else in terms of live motorsport. Where can it go from here?

Buy British

I’d love to see the BBC throw its not inconsiderable broadcasting weight behind a British championship.

ITV did that with the BTCC, initially leveraging its F1 coverage to build a bigger audience, before moving it to ITV4 where it continues to be lavished with endless hours of airtime. Indeed ITV are now leveraging the BTCC, scheduling highlights of the new BRDC Formula 4 Championship directly after the live BTCC programme.

The problem is: which British championship? British Formula 3 would have been ideal, but it might be a bit late for that – it’s down to just four rounds this season. British Superbikes would be a similarly good fit, but that’s tied to Eurosport until the end of 2015.

Given that the World Rally Championship can’t work out how to do TV coverage, the British Rally Championship might be too much to ask. British GT doesn’t have a huge profile – but maybe that’s more of an argument for than against it. British Rallycross is probably even more obscure, but the fast-paced action could be an excellent choice.

Regardless, it feels like the sort of thing the BBC should be doing – supporting British motorsport, if not at the grassroots level, then at least a bit closer to it.

One-offs

But that’s not exactly the way the BBC has tended to go when they’ve lost the rights to other sports. The other option I can see is standalone events.

They already do it in tennis, for example, covering Wimbledon but not all the Grand Slams. It’s not hard to imagine Formula 1 going further down that route, with the BBC perhaps only showing the British Grand Prix.

But there are more interesting directions the BBC could go, should they wish to curate a selection of motorsport events over the course of the year. The Dakar in January, Le Mans and the Isle of Man TT over the summer, the Race of Champions at the end of the season – to name just a few.

Imagine if the BBC gave Le Mans even a fraction of the treatment Glastonbury gets one weekend a year. It could be brilliant.

There must be a bit of budget going spare now, and a nice range of one-offs would surely cost the BBC less than an entire season at the highest level. It sounds good to me, anyway.

The departure of Jake Humphrey means that Formula 1 on the BBC in 2013 looks a little bit different. Not as different as 2012, when Sky pinched half the live races and raided the BBC’s talent roster, but noticeably different nonetheless.

Crash! Smash! Fire!

The first change was unexpected: the title sequence. The bizarre flying cubes of 2012 have been swiftly retired, replaced by a more traditional montage of historic and modern footage.

But what hit me on first viewing was how much it concentrates on crashes and fires. My barely-watching girlfriend said the same thing.

Watching it again more carefully, it’s not actually that marked – I count about four crashes and one fire in the minute-long sequence. But the impression that they’re highlighting the sensationalist aspects of the sport is unshakeable.

Trying harder to snare the casual viewer? Maybe. Whether it’s reflected in the priorities of the coverage is yet to be seen, but I’d be surprised.

Perry

Opinion on Twitter seems very mixed from what I’ve seen, but really it’s too early to assess what difference it will make having Suzi Perry at the helm.

Not only are we only one race in, but it was a highlights-only weekend. With much less time to play with and no Eddie Jordan, there was little space for her to stamp her personality on the coverage. The same was true last year under Jake Humphrey: the highlights shows were pretty vanilla affairs.

But for my money Suzi Perry has started well.

She seemed instantly at home broadcasting from the pit lane, but with years fronting MotoGP on the BBC, that’s no surprise. What interaction there was with David Coulthard didn’t make me cringe, so it’s all good so far.

We’ll have to wait for the first live race weekend in China next month before we know whether she’s banished the banter which became so bothersome last year.

Next on BBC Two…

We’ll also have to wait until China for the first live coverage of free practice on BBC Two.

Now, that might initially sound like a massive commitment to the sport from the BBC. But actually, one of the big changes under the BBC’s Delivering Quality First cost-saving initiative, was to ransack the heck out of BBC Two daytime.

So actually, it’s a great way to fill a few hours of the schedule, for virtually no additional cost. And what’s being sacrificed? Repeats of antiques and lifestyle shows, and maybe a bit of news – which is probably taken from the BBC News Channel anyway. Everyone’s a winner!

Promotion

It’s great to see Tom Clarkson promoted to a full-time pit lane role, after standing in for Lee McKenzie last year, when she was standing in for Jake Humphrey, when he was off furthering his career at the Olympics.

After Sky nabbed Ted Kravitz, his apparent replacement on the BBC was Gary Anderson. His role ended up as more of an oracle though, to be consulted on all matters technical and strategic. I love his input, but there was something missing.

Tom Clarkson fills that gap, as pair of eyes and ears in the pit lane, chipping in as and when. With Gary Anderson staying on as technical analyst, it’s a stronger-than-ever commentary line-up – and welcome sign of commitment to the coverage from the BBC, to boot.

Interwebs (sorry)

I think the online offering is looking stronger this year too. The regular Lewis Hamilton column is the headline, but amongst others there are post-race columns from David Coulthard and Gary Anderson, and a series of memories from Murray Walker.

I also wonder whether the editorial side has more resources. Last year it seemed like Andrew Benson was doing the lot on his tod, but I’ve noticed more from Lawrence Barretto recently.

Oh, and a note about MotoGP

And it’s not just Formula 1 that the BBC has been beefing up. Over on MotoGP, the BBC have taken on Azi Farni full-time, rather than just on race weekends; she previously also worked for Dorna.

With the BBC’s MotoGP deal up at the end of this year, it’s encouraging to see big changes afoot – and I look forward to seeing what that might mean.

It’s the time of year for season reviews, awards – all that jazz – so I’ve given some suitably haphazard thought to the best of the season just gone. These are that.

Best Race Win: Williams F1

It’s not often that motorsport – or anything else for that matter – gets me close to tears; I’m pretty much dead inside. But when Williams won their first race for more than seven years at the Spanish Grand Prix, a certain moistness around my eyes was notable. I was pleased for Pastor Maldonado, of course, but I was bloody delighted for the team.

My attachment to Williams dates back to the mid-’90s, when I was in my teens and Williams were winning championships all over the shop – the most significant for me being Damon Hill’s 1996 drivers title. That attachment has been maintained by the presence of Frank Williams, who continues to be one of the most remarkable people in Formula 1 – a point reinforced by his reaction to the pole position, the victory, and the unfortunate pit fire the team suffered almost immediately afterwards.

Best Bowing Out: Casey Stoner

You couldn’t have written a better story than Casey Stoner’s retirement from MotoGP. It came completely out of the blue, and he was openly critical of the sport both in and after his announcement. So as early as May, we knew that 2012 would be Stoner’s only chance to add a third world championship.

That chance disappeared entirely when he was forced to miss three races following his crash in Indianapolis. That didn’t put an end to the story though, as it became a battle to come back from injury and win at Phillip Island, which would make it six in a row at his home race.

Amazingly, he did just that. Only once in his time in the premier class did he not win the Australian Grand Prix, and that was in his first season, on a satellite Honda.

It was a suitably impressive end to a regrettably short, but brilliant MotoGP career.

Best Person: Alex Zanardi

Okay, so his achievements this year weren’t directly motorsport related, but it’s safe to say that Alex Zanardi has a place in every motorsport fan’s heart. How could he not? Formula 1 driver and twice CART champion in his first motorsport career, and after losing of both legs in a massive CART crash, multiple WTCC race winner in his second.

His two hand-cycling gold medals – and a silver – at the London 2012 Paralympic Games this summer, then, were utterly remarkable, yet almost inevitable given his character. And it’s not just motorsport fans who celebrated his achievement: the IPC considered him among the twelve most outstanding athletes of the Games.

That’s not all. The tale of Zanardi helping a 17-year-old complete the Venice Marathon in October, making use of rope scavenged from a bin and good old-fashioned sticky tape along the way, cemented his reputation as World’s Most Determined Man.

You can throw a DTM test for BMW in there too. What a year.

Jonathan Legard’s hour-long interview with Zanardi for BBC Radio 5 Live is still available as a podcast, and is well worth a listen.

Best Championship: Moto3

Moto2 seemed like brilliantly chaotic madness when it was introduced in 2010. Moto3, new for 2012, made that seem positively tame.

There was close racing all season, but Assen comes immediately to mind as a highlight – particularly the feisty battle between KTM team-mates Sandro Cortese and Danny Kent.

The leading pack had been relentlessly passing and repassing each other, and the race went right down to the final corner: Luis Salom was leading but slow out, leaving Maverick Vinales to take advantage and the win; Cortese finished 2nd, 0.011 seconds ahead of Kent in 3rd; Salom was only 0.001 second behind Kent in 4th. You can relive the final five laps here, in glorious German shaky-vision.

That was Kent’s first podium, but he went on to take a pair of wins, the Brit ending the season 4th in the standings. Good stuff.

Photo Credits
Williams F1: E.R.R / Ezequiel – Flickr – Some rights reserved
Casey Stoner: ytulauratambien – Flickr – Some rights reserved
Alex Zanardi: brianfuller6385 / Brian Fuller – Flickr – Some rights reserved
Moto3: andrew.napier / Andrew Napier – Flickr – Some rights reserved

Jenson Button was worried that spectators at Silverstone wouldn’t see much on track action in practice for the British Grand Prix on Friday, due to the apocalyptic rain that we’re being treated to in this most British of summers. Nice of him to be concerned, but ridiculous that he needs to be.

MotoGP: racing with a broken ankle

It’s tempting to unfairly compare the situation to the MotoGP at Silverstone last month. Cal Crutchlow had a nasty crash in practice, and it looked like the crowd wouldn’t have a competitive British rider to cheer on in the premier class on Sunday. He later told the BBC:

“When I was lying in the gravel all I could think was the British fans weren’t going to see me ride in my home race again.”

So, in order to give the crowd what they wanted, Crutchlow raced with a broken and dislocated ankle. That he finished in a staggering 6th place was the icing on the cake. Slightly mad, but also slightly heroic.

Formula 1: just give them some more tyres

Back to this weekend, all the Silverstone crowd want to see on Friday is cars on track. In FP1, the cars covered a total of 197 laps. As a blunt comparison, they covered 484 laps in FP1 a couple of weeks ago at the European Grand Prix in Valencia.

What does Formula 1 need to do to increase that number in the wet – to give the crowd what they want? It’s really not complicated: increase the allocation of wet and intermediate tyres.

As it stands, drivers only get four sets of intermediates and three sets of wets to last them the weekend, with an extra set of intermediates if it’s wet on Friday. Making that lot last three practice sessions, qualifying and the race sounds tricky.

Jenson Button gets it, even I get it. Does the FIA get it? Let’s hope so: then it’ll be down to the teams and drivers to just get on with it.

Photo Credit
Miss Vio – Flickr – Some rights reserved