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Magnaminous. Not a trait applied to second place very often, but in this case, like last time, a slowdown-lap radio transmission summarised the key point of a race better than a hundred commentators could (though Eddie Jordan, bless him, did a very good job of trying).

To address the point of whether, from the point of view of the race in isolation, it made sense for Felipe to let Alonso by, I offer the following graph:



Firstly, I apologise for the graph's small size. If you want to see it full-sized, please download to your computer and zoom it in.

Secondly, an explanation of the graph. It shows who had the largest number of faster laps of the two Ferrari drivers up to each point in the race. If the graph goes upwards at a particular point, then Massa was quicker than Alonso on the previous lap. If it goes downwards, Alonso was faster than Massa.

Note that the graph does not take the extent to which a given driver may be faster or slower into account, only the bare fact of who beat who.

For the first 14 laps, Massa is generally quicker than Alonso, but Alonso occasionally does one better than his team-mate. Towards the end of that 14 laps, "occasionally" became more frequent.

From lap 15 to 22, Fernando and Felipe traded faster laps.

Laps 23 to 27 see Felipe get an unbroken run of faster laps, cumulating in his strongest intra-team position of the race. By lap 27, he'd had 9 more "faster" laps than his team-mate, indicating that he'd been faster for two-thirds of the race up to that point.

Laps 28 to 38 are like an inverse of the first part of the race: Alonso has the upper hand for most of the time but Massa sometimes gets his own back.

Laps 39 to 45 see a second wind from Felipe; for all but two of those laps he is quicker than Fernando.

But after that the wind seems to have gone out of his sails: Fernando records all but 5 of the "faster" laps for the 21 laps remaining of the race.

The message, "Felipe. Is. Faster Than. You." came over on lap 48. At that point Alonso had been quicker for the previous 2 laps, so on a zoomed-in viewpoint, Fernando would have had cause to believe himself faster. Especially since he'd just hit the dirty air of Felipe's car.

However, take the last 10 laps, say, and it's quite another matter. Then, it's evens as to which of the two was quicker. The further the situation is zoomed out, the worse it looks. Especially since Alonso's gains mostly came in two discrete blocks (hence why Massa had still been faster for 3 more laps than Alonso at the time of the radio call). One of those blocks was when Massa made a series of mistakes getting used to new hard rubber and the other mostly happened after the team-breaking order.

In normal conditions that race, Felipe was faster.

It's not even as if Ferrari need to put all their firepower with one candidate yet. The gap between their drivers was less than for 2 second places, which given the team reliability and operational skill so far is easily made up in the 9 races that remained at that point. The gap to the leaders was wider, but either driver could still have bridged the gap. It was far from mathematically impossible for either.

Therefore, Ferrari have managed to incur the wrath of the FIA and its supporters, as well as damage its intra-team relations, for... ...not an awful lot of justification.

I've seen some really pleasing news. Valentino Rossi has returned to MotoGP and qualified fifth for the German GP at Sachsenring.

It's good to see Valentino recover quickly from his broken leg and that he is still competitive despite needing to be careful to avoid another crash. I look forward to seeing him mount a decent title challenge.

This lunchtime, I decided to get myself some yoghurts to go with my lunch. I bought three yoghurts on special offer in a shop (which shall remain nameless) and took them to the till. Expecting to get change from £2, I was surprised when the checkout staffer quoted £3.67 for the items.

Querying this, I was met with the response, "You've bought two yoghurts and a pack of meatballs". She glanced at the checkout. So did I. The third yoghurt...

...was still a yoghurt. The label confirmed that it was even suitable for vegetarians.

It turned out that the scanner had introduced an error that would have cost me nearly £2 if it hadn't been so blatant.

You may wonder what any of the above has to do with McLaren. I would draw your attention to the new McLaren exhaust. Presumably the exhaust had been in the simulator long before it made it onto the McLarens on Friday. Nonetheless, the thermal energy employed was too much for the diffuser. Even with an insulating plate, they changed shape over the course of the day, ruining performance and potentially reliability.

Reverting to an older style of rear for the car indicates that something was wrong with the computer simulation equipment. Somehow it's not quite mapping onto the real world as well as it needs to be. A few hours in a windtunnel would probably help if they've got a spare day of straight-line testing left.

They might even sort out other problems on the car. We know about the heat problems with the exhaust, but what other issues have been copied from computer to track simply because nobody knew there might be a calibration issue until now?

How many meatballs are in McLaren's shopping right now?

"Not bad for a number 2..."

Initially I thought Mark Webber was simply having a light-hearted joke with his race engineer after he won the British Grand Prix. He'd raced with an older wing than Vettel, with a chassis Vettel had rejected and still prevailed - not only over Sebastian, but over everyone else.

True, it was unlikely anyone other than a Red Bull was going to win unless they tripped over one another or both broke down. Even with Vettel and Hamilton colliding and the Red Bull driver then picking up a puncture, McLaren's chances of taking the win were always going to be somewhat limited. Once Alonso's start got bogged down, everyone else would have needed a miracle to get in Mark's wheel tracks.

Winning a straight fight is fun. Winning a fight where all the odds are stacked against you is amazing.

However, time passed, the podium-placed drivers moved towards the podium and Mark still didn't look suitably amazed. Something was clearly bothering him - possibly even anticipating an argument. His press conference answers were monosyllabic and though he congratulated the other drivers, he didn't look terribly convincing in the preparations for the Red Bull photo shoot.

Perhaps, then, I should not have been surprised when Mark commented that he would be discussing his future with Red Bull. But I was.

Firstly, falling out with your team in public rarely does anyone involved any good. This goes double if the other side of the garage is toeing the party line, which Vettel is doing.

Secondly, Webber usually has enough sense not to do stuff that will obviously damage his career, even though he is also well-known for being brutally honest and courageous in the face of controversy.

There are few teams of comparable quality to Red Bull and Mark already has a contract for 2011. McLaren is full, Ferrari is full, Mercedes don't look like joining the top table in 2011 and every other team apart from Red Bull is in a worse position than the ones I've mentioned. Mark may be feeling feisty, his point may be inarguable, but is he willing to forego a title-competing seat in his quest to correct Red Bull's path? And if not, can he find a way of changing Red Bull's ways that doesn't result in Christian Horner or Dietrich Mateschitz sending the voice of sense away?

Yet I can't honestly tell Mark to shut up. Morally, he's right.

You can't keep giving Vettel all the good bits and Webber all Vettel's cast-offs if they keep trading places in the championship the way they are. They have to be treated as equals.

You can't blame one driver for everything the other driver does wrong, or let either driver do likewise. You have to place blame (and credit) where they are due.

You can't have scapegoats. You have to have solutions.

You can't give all the limelight to Vettel and sort-of-ignore Webber unless he's winning. You have to regard them both the same, with the same standards and responses to actions for both.

You can't have team warfare. You have to have team victory.

"Not Bad For A Number 2" would make a good title for a Mark Webber autobiography one day. "Team Victory" would make a better one for Red Bull - but only if they become that by cohesive and constructive behaviour, as opposed to the outward illusion generated by a self-destructing entity.