BELGIAN GP: Paddock Life, The Lighter Side Of F1 *SPOILER*

(from autosport)

It is sometimes hard to understand just why everyone in Formula One loves the Belgian Grand Prix so much.

Theoretically, it should be on exactly the same level as Silverstone - which doesn't feature high on many people's lists of favourite races.

Both tracks are fantastic driving challenges even if the facilities are far from state-of-the-art; the venues are in the middle of countryside with some narrow twisty roads on the approach; the weather is almost guaranteed to be appalling and accommodation is not flash hotels but small B&Bs and guesthouses scattered around in numerous tiny villages too spread out for people to meet up in the evenings.

And yet, for all the above issues that somehow seem to weigh the perception of Silverstone down, they are all that make Spa-Francorchamps just so great.

One other thing always makes Spa fantastic - the old track. Our route into the track this year took us down to Malmedy and to loop back up to the new circuit onto the old layout.

Each morning, bleary eyed and trying to work out just how cold it would be that day, there was always a smile and that little excitement in the stomach when you went through the Masta Kink - albeit in the wrong direction and 130mph slower than the heroes from years gone by.

McLaren were also in a slightly reflective mood over the Belgian Grand Prix as they celebrated the 40th anniversary of the team's maiden victory at the 1968 race.

The sport has changed a great deal since then - although McLaren team boss Ron Dennis was adamant that suggestions F1 was now 'boring' could be firmly batted away by a look at that 1968 race.

Much focus is made on how difficult overtaking is in modern F1, but Dennis felt that Autosport's Grand Prix Gold from that 1968 Belgian GP showed that F1 was far better now than back then.

During his regular 'Meet the Team' session, Dennis implored anyone criticising F1 now to go and read 'Grand Prix Gold' from that event.

"I don't have the facts, but one of the things you should do as we're talking about overtaking, is to read the Autosport article about the first race we won here in 1968," he explained.

"Read the article - we're all talking about how difficult it is to overtake - but the person on pole was five seconds ahead of the guy that was second. Five seconds a lap faster! The person in second was 30 seconds behind the guy that won. Three cars ran out of fuel.

"Read the article, look at the results, look at the qualifying positions and look at the lap times today. This is closer than F1 has ever been - this is truly competitive now. Yes, we need to address overtaking, but don't think that it was great in the past. Nothing will dissuade you from that more than reading the Autosport article."

Dennis also offered a fantastic anecdote from that 1968 event - which he attended while working for Jack Brabham's team.

"This was a difficult race for us because we had two different types of engine in the cars and in Jack's car we had the latest Repco engine. In practice, one of the valve seats dropped out of the cylinder head and this was the only engine we had - the second one was locked in customs.

"We never worked at the circuit, we used to take the cars to a garage - there were all these local garages around and you would write to them saying 'Can we use your facilities?' during the weekend and they used to clear an area out.

"As you know, there's a small airfield down the road, so the only solution was to take the cylinder heads off and Jack took them in his plane back to the factory, the engine shop in Guildford. They machined new valve inserts and literally took the cylinder heads home and put them in the oven.

"We were so tired when we got back to finish that night; we'd prepared all the engine - the engine was in the car to take the cylinder heads, and the next morning we got back to the circuit after working all night. And the Brabham trailer had a door that used to open from the bottom to the top and we arrived at the circuit, opened the door and one of the cars was missing.

"It had come loose, opened the door and it was about two miles down the road parked in the corner of a road completely undamaged with a whole crowd of people around it! So Jack arrives with the cylinder heads and he never knew the car had dropped out the back of the truck. It was very embarrassing! Needless to say, it didn't finish, but not because of that reason."

Dennis is a man who has been driven by the quest to be the best - which not only manifests itself in his passion for Formula One but also in his fondness for any type of competition or quiz.

So McLaren duly used the opportunity of the 40th anniversary of their maiden victory to hold a quiz for all the media. Featured on the screens inside their Brand Centre was a rolling video featuring 40 photographs of famous, and not so famous, victories. The challenge was to correctly work out which was which.

Only two journalists managed to get all 40 answers correct, and it then came down to a tie-breaker - which BBC Radio 5 Live commentator Maurice Hamilton duly won. It bagged him some fantastic prints of some of the victories, as well as the special T-shirts that McLaren are selling (www.mclarenshop.com)

But, of course, as is normal for anything involving F1 (as we found out on Sunday night!), the success of others can rarely be accepted without someone griping about it.

So, straight after the McLaren competition results were declared, one of the joint third place prize runners complained that it was not fair. He said the quiz, rather than being marked out of 40, should have been marked out of 120 - with a separate point for the name of the race winner, the track and the year. That way, the complainer said, the results would have confirmed him third alone, rather than joint third.

McLaren duly did recount the quiz to mark the third place finishers and actually found that the complainer had indeed score different results to the other two entrants who had equalled his tally. However, rather than being ahead of them, he actually had one point less! So he was dropped to fifth and would get no prize at all!

Sometimes it is best just to accept your lot...

The Belgian Grand Prix marked the anniversary of the culmination of the spy controversy last year, when McLaren were fined $100 million and thrown out of the constructors' championship over 'Stepneygate'. Thankfully the sport has been able to move on from the events of 12 months ago, with the matter getting talked about very little these days.

However, one journalist bravely tried to get Fernando Alonso to open up about his side of the events in a media session with the Renault driver in the Spa paddock.

After first apologising for having to ask a 'bad' question, the journalist said: "At Spa it is a year after Stepneygate. There were reports at the time that you tried to blackmail your boss - we never heard your side of the story. Are you willing to talk about it?"

Sitting in front of 30 journalists, Alonso was unlikely to open up - but he was at least able to smile as he responded.

"No, not today!," he laughed. "I have the drivers' briefing in 10 minutes. If I had two or three hours, no problem…"

Kimi Raikkonen may not have had much to celebrate after the Belgian Grand Prix, but he was at least able to leave the track with something he is immensely proud of.

On the Thursday before the action started in Spa, Raikkonen was presented with the designs of new Finnish stamps that celebrate his title success in 2007.

"It is definitely a very nice thing to have," said Raikkonen, who attended the special ceremony inside the Ferrari motor home to celebrate the launch of the new stamps.

Team principal Stefano Domenicali said: "It is a pleasure that we as Ferrari are sharing this important celebrating moment for this stamp in Finland. It shows Kimi as world champion, Ferrari the world champion as team, and this is the perfect image we want to see - and hopefully too in the future."

Interestingly the Finnish postal service has been marking the stamps, which feature him and his car in Australia last year, as Raikkonen celebrating his victory in the 2007 Malaysian Grand Prix. Maybe they should go check with Fernando Alonso to see who really won that race…