While it’s not an F1 story, I couldn’t help but smile at a local story this week where a Melbourne man crashed his father’s Ferrari F360 Challenge Stradale. Nobody was injured (apart from the driver’s pride). The part I love is how the crash happened at “Batman Avenue”. Seriously, Batman Avenue? Shame Superman didn’t save the day… 
The Spanish Grand Prix had such a good build up… Alonso almost on pole… Kubica still mixing it up with the “big boys” (even though he’s physically a bigger boy than all of them )… Then the race came… What a let down…
Fernando Alonso - An unbelievable qualifying effort. I thought Nelson Piquet Jr was starting to get closer to Fernando’s pace in previous rounds but the Spanish Grand Prix has just shown how huge the gap is between the two. How ironic that the traditionally reliable Renault couldn’t last the distance. I’m not sure but I think it was James Allen that made a fantastic comment during the race (yes James, we give you cred when it’s deserved! 
) - something along the lines of “Alonso drives very bad cars very quick and drives very good cars pretty average” (paraphrasing). With that said, hopefully the Renault is no longer a “very bad” car.
Renault - Big ups to the team for all their hard work to make such a quantum leap in performance. I can’t believe I just wrote big ups…
Heikki Kovalainen - Very happy to see him walk out of hospital on the news today. Hope he’s better for the next round. Maybe he might come back even quicker like Robert Kubica did after his terrible Canadian accident.
Kimi Raikkonen - Another day another Finn… I mean win… 
Lewis Hamilton - Very good race given where he started from. Seems McLaren is dropping a bit from Ferrari but perhaps they’ll turn that around on slower circuits (like Monaco).
Mark Webber - Didn’t see much of him but a great qualifying and a great race. Looks like the Renault is a pretty handy engine on the faster circuits.
Giancarlo Fisichella - Have to mention our Italian friend as always because he continues to do a remarkable job in an
David Coulthard - Bye bye in 09
Robert Kubica - Mr Top 6 himself 
Toyota - Just when they seemed to be getting near the top 4 they go backward… 
Honda - Honda seem to have gained a little performance on the other hand (compared to Toyota)…
Nick Heidfeld - Hmm. I don’t understand why Robert is outperforming Nick so much lately (both qualifying and now, race).
Channel 10 Australia - Thanks for not showing the driver interviews… not. I guess the Indian Premier League is pretty cool but come on, just show it 5 mins later next time (it is on every friggin night after all, whereas we only get F1 every 2 weeks or so).
I can’t believe Honda is testing a new version of their Dumbo-ear wings again this week. The FIA should step in and ban the device just based on how ugly it is… At least in white they look a bit like angel wings or something, and a bit less bulbus than Dumbo wings version 1.
With F1 testing resuming this week, it looks like we’ve been given a sneak peek of the 2009 grid courtesy of McLaren (picture from gpupdate.net):
I have to say, the car looks a lot better. While the rear wing is technically much less effective, it’s cleaner, and thus looks faster (important for the fans ). The front wing is still a bit ugly, but the limited flip-ups again make the car look cleaner.
Best feature all up though has to be the return of slick tyres!! 
Caitlin had a great theory that the reason Kimi Raikkonen never performs well in Bahrain is because he doesn’t get to enjoy any champagne after the race, as alcohol is banned there. This means there’s absolutely no motivation for him to do well there
We managed to find a picture on the web that suggests Ferrari have been testing some new fuel just for Kimi:
Every litre promised to Kimi after the race is said to be worth up to half a second per lap!
