Grapevine: Final News from the Paddock - Japanese GP

Rest Room Racers

The paddock at Suzuka is very open and, without their cosy motor homes away from home, the drivers and team chiefs are forced to live without their creature comforts. One of the problems this causes is that they must all use the 'public' conveniences inside the paddock to relieve themselves, which led to a stream of drivers chasing into the toilets before each session - right past the cafe where the journalists were eating their lunches.

Williams team orders, it appeared, were brought into play before the qualifying session when Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya took their 'piss' stops within a minute of each other - but Montoya was left disappointed upon his exit when a Ferrari employee appeared to deliberately get in his way. Fernando Alonso, showed clear signs of a future Champion as he went alone some five minutes later and took care to scrub his boots on the ground to lay down some rubber for a quick exit. Unfortunately for the young Spaniard, his inexperience clearly led to a problem which left him in the box for quite some time while World Championship contenders Michael Schumacher and Kimi Raikkonen were both conspicuous by their absence.

Easy Life

One Ferrari mechanic had a bigger smile than most in the Suzuka paddock this weekend as he displayed the difference between the haves and the have nots. The work of mechanics is rarely seen at Grands Prix as the teams are able to hide themselves away within the garages. But at Suzuka everything is on display and that allowed Ferrari to reveal one of their secret weapons - the automatic tyre washer. While his opposite numbers in the other nine teams hauled in their tyre stacks on heavy trolleys and then scrubbed away with the brushes and hoses, the Ferrari man barely had to bend down to lift his tyres into the special machine which sprayed them with water, brushed them down and left them looking like new. That is the mark of a World Champion team.

Karaoke Kings

Lucky Strike held their now annual end of season party on Saturday night with the main event compared by Radio Five Live commentator Jonathan Legard. He made regular jibes against unfortunate absentee Jacques Villeneuve as he chaired a competition to win the night's star prize, the irony of which would not be lost on the Canadian: It was a trip to swim with sharks.