Further thoughts on the Bahrain Grand Prix

F1 fails to see itself as others see it
So, the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend has now passed. For all of Messrs Todt's and Ecclestone's public bombast on the issue, there will no doubt been small, private, sighs of relief from both that the F1 event itself passed broadly without disruption (joining many others in so doing). But it cannot be said that F1 came out of the weekend unscathed, as the sport continued its uncanny ignorance and/or ambivalence of how it's viewed more widely.

Credit: Emily Faulk / CC

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Bahraini situation might be, F1, frankly, was made to look terrible it the course of the weekend. It featured on the front pages and at the top of news bulletins interspersed with coverage of Bahraini civil unrest and clashes, including the death of one protester (and the staging of an F1 race was clearly a focus for many protesting), as well as with stories of mainstream journalists being barred from the country and of others being arrested. The sport also appeared, whatever their protestations of being apolitical, rather like it was taking sides, and way too close to the Bahraini regime funding the event. The broad impression for those looking on was that F1 is amoral, avaricious and (helped by the flippant remarks of Bernie and of the world champion) rather insensitive to what's going on around it.

Even though F1 made some money from holding the Bahrain race, the parallel damage of what you'd call F1's 'brand equity' is of course immeasurable, which in turn impacts the sport's ability to attract fans, media, sponsors and manufacturers. And it surely should have been seen coming from a long way off. Even though some in and around F1 have been complaining that the media coverage has been terribly unfair and unrepresentative, not focusing on the local support for the race and the areas of calm in Bahrain, saying this betrays a breathtaking naivety of how the media work, as well as that, possibly, reflects that the F1 fraternity was kept inside a bubble for much of the weekend.

Final thoughts on 2011: twenty-four cars battle for 90 minutes and at the end Vettel wins

Former England footballer Gary Lineker, shortly after losing to (then, West) Germany not for the first time, commented that: 'Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win'.

It's tempting to view the 2011 F1 season in similar terms. We were spoiled with lots of highly diverting races, characterised by impassioned and close racing with plenty of overtaking. And at the end of it all Sebastian Vettel was invariably at the front.

There were two key themes for the season. Sebastian Vettel's growth into a genuine top level performer in winning the drivers' title in double-quick time, and that overtaking returned to the sport at a rate that almost nobody could remember.

Credit: Russell Ford

Vettel's speed in clear air was well-established from recent seasons, but this year with the assurance of a surprise championship in his pocket he found a completely new level, as did the Red Bull team backing him up, who operationally hardly missed a beat. To cut a long story short, Seb's driving this term ruthlessly reversed the areas that had been seen as his weaknesses, and whatever happens from now on he'll surely go down as one of the sport's all-time greats. He's certainly the best 24 year old the sport has ever known - bar none. And while the RB7 was a mean set of wheels, Seb absolutely got the very best from it. His championship was mathematically all his with seven weeks of the season remaining. It was as good as his long before that.

The other key theme of the year was that the on track action was almost completely unrecognisable from what we had grown used to in years past. The lack of overtaking in F1 wasn't a new problem, and many potential 'solutions' had been tried before. But for 2011, desperate times brought desperate measures, with the introduction of DRS (Drag Reduction Systems - do keep up at the back) which allowed a car within a second of the car ahead at a certain 'zone' of the track to flatten its rear wing and thus increase its straightline speed.