Pity Lewis Hamilton's race engineer on Sunday. Chastised for distracting his driver during the first-half of the race, he was then sternly rebuked, with an audience in the multi-millions eavesdropping, for not distracting Lewis enough in the second. Oh, and because of that long-established principle that the driver is always right, even when he was clearly wrong or at least contradictory, he couldn't even countenance answering back either. The next time the role of race engineer in F1 is advertised in your local paper, check the small print to ensure that 'Must have the patience of a saint' is included in the job requirements. The serious point though, and one which was alluded to in Ross Brawn's "that's Lewis, we're used to him" response, is what those outbursts told us about Hamilton and why the driver considered to be the fastest in F1 isn't necessarily the best. Lewis is no longer a young man. He is, by F1's ever-youthening standards, something of a veteran nowadays. And yet this apparent volatility remains in his make-up just as evidently as it did when he joined the sport in 2007 and McLaren self-imploded. Why hasn't it been curbed? Partly because Lewis is just Lewis, partly because a F1 driver is always right, and partly because of that unproven - unproveable? - but much-feared process of physiological osmosis that so many talented but volatile sportsmen have sheltered behind over the years. Remove it, pacify Lewis, curb that volatility, and some of his pace will ebb away. Or so the convenient theory goes. Yet a flaw is a flaw and in a sport of fine margins every flaw matters muchly. What those radio messages also offered, in addition to welcome relief in a race that was principally a procession, was a snapshot of the critical shortcoming in the Hamilton 'package'. He brings pace, and plenty of it, but there's also baggage to be carried, and plenty of that too. Don't mistake his race engineer's silence as understanding because all that emotional volatility must be as draining for his crew and team as it must be internally to him too. Red Bull and Adrian Newey is the major reason why Hamilton has - at least yet - failed to translate his talent into more than one title, but a deeper reading of those radio calls perhaps offers another. Grosjean joins the elite
There isn't a more improved driver on the grid at present than Romain Grosjean. From first-lap nutcase to a model of consistency, the Frenchman is in acute danger of becoming the real deal. Third in Korea, third in Japan, third in India, fourth in Abu Dhabi and second in the United States, Grosjean is the only driver on the grid other than Vettel who must wish 2014 could wait a little longer.
It's been a long year of failures and mistakes for McLaren. Longer than a year, actually, because their first mistake probably occurred in June or July last year when, very possibly spooked by their woeful performance in the British GP, they decided on revolution not evolution with the MP4-28. That irredeemable and 2013-fatal blunder was then compounded by the failure to persuade Lewis Hamilton to stay, and this week came the official confirmation - there's no other way of interpreting the news - that the decision to hire Sergio Perez was a colossal misjudgement. Though the team maintain that Perez's ousting was more about Magnussen than the Mexican, it's impossible not to view Sergio's dismissal as anything other than a frank admission that the team got it horribly wrong a year ago when they hired him. Given that Perez has been offered just a single season in a car which has horribly under-performed, is level with Button in qualifying, and has scored points in three of the last four races, it's also eminently arguable the team have wronged Perez. Perhaps the team themselves are aware they might have done so - or at least are aware of the perception - because Martin Whitmarsh has, in his own words, "rung Force India and rung Lotus" to tout their outgoing driver. Stop for a moment to consider just how awkward those calls must have been and it's starkly apparent just how much soul-searching must be also going on inside McLaren. 'Hello, Martin here. Just to let you know, Sergio's not good enough for us, but...' Still, that awkwardness aside, McLaren can be applauded for once again advancing the career of a young driver and for supporting and clearly defining the purpose of their Young Driver Programme. Moreover, if it is their opinion that Magnussen, rather than Perez, is the better bet for the long-term, and more likely to world Champion, then all other counter-arguments are invalid. The one rather large and critical caveat to that applause, however, is that their decision-making over the last fourteen months isn't exactly inspiring a huge amount of confidence that, in the process of admitting they got it spectacularly wrong before when they signed 'rough diamond' Perez on a multi-year deal, McLaren have finally got something right again. Why doing nothing can achieve an awful lot
If only Pastor Maldonado's scandalous comments about Williams, amounting to an accusation of sabotage, talked him out of a drive for next season. Alas, in the cash-strapped world of F1, money talks louder than ever and 29m euros of sponsorship money will likely see Maldonado take the vacant seat at Lotus ahead of Nico Hulkenberg. A special delivery from Quantum may change perspective, but 29m euros - Maldonado's reputed dowry - is an amount of money which few teams can afford to lose sight of.