Grapevine: Paddock Life

After the highlight of Singapore, it was always going to be hard for the race that followed to match the awe and sheer spectacle that we had witnessed a fortnight before.

But the Japanese Grand Prix has always been hugely popular with the F1 paddock - where the language and culture differences are things to behold rather than something to get frustrated by.

Fuji had been F1's new kid on the block the year before, and the track had had a few teething problems at that return to the schedule. Some grandstands had been built in places where the track could not be seen, and fans were left stranded outside the circuit by horrendous traffic jams not helped by the dismal weather of 2007.

This year the weather was definitely better - although Mount Fuji left photographers frustrated when its capped top disappeared from view just minutes before first practice got underway on Friday.

The F1 community also had a far better idea of where to go and what to do. Force India chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne was a regular in a wonderful Italian in Gotemba, while the beer-dispensing vending machines in the various hotels always had crowds gathered around them.

The mood in the paddock was slightly surreal though. With the world's financial markets going into meltdown, it was inevitable that the gloom would spread into the hugely corporate F1 world. All anyone would talk about was which stockmarket was down, and what it would all mean for F1.

Thank god we had a good race on Sunday.

Mark Webber managed to get back home to Australia between the Singapore and Japanese Grands Prix - and even made the trip down to Phillip Island to watch the MotoGP race there on the weekend in-between.

But he found himself at the centre of an amazing media storm after Autosport revealed that his Red Bull Racing team suspected a passing metro tram had caused the gearbox glitch that put him out of the Singapore race.

The relatively innocuous story created huge interest not only in Europe and Singapore, but spread as far as the United States and Australia, with no end of journalists tracking him down to get his comments on the matter.

"Yeah, I was in Australia and saw a few news stations," said Webber in Japan, as Red Bull Racing still have no answer for what went wrong as the RB4 passed over the metro line on the run down to Turn 13.

"I think it has just blown people away, I suppose it's because of how sensitive the cars are. But I think there were some other teams having problems with some moogs as well."

Webber was more impressed with the MotoGP race, however - being a keen motorcycle rider himself.

"It was awesome," he said. "I went down there and it was shame Valentino Rossi crashed in qualifying because it would have been a great race between him and Casey Stoner.

"But Casey did an awesome job. Nicky Hayden stayed with him for a bit but I think the Michelin tyres were struggling more in the second half of the race than the Bridgestones.

"I enjoy watching both Casey and Valentino. I enjoy that battles they have had. I think Valentino has done a huge amount for the sport and the sport will suffer without him. He is a phenomenally gifted guy and phenomenally powerful. He is so popular. Casey? I like him because he's Australian."

So any regrets that his career ended up on four wheels rather than two?

"No, not really," he said. "Four wheels have been fantastic to me. Two wheels, I think you have a shorter career."

Red Bull Racing test driver Sebastien Buemi got his Formula One 'debut' a bit earlier than he was expecting when he was slotted in to drive the medical car over the Japanese Grand Prix weekend.

Previous regular Jacques Tropenat finished his season before the Singapore Grand Prix, where Honda test driver Alexander Wurz was drafted in for the weekend.

But with Wurz needed for his regular television commentary in the final three races of the year, Buemi was approached - and accepted - the chance to get some early practice of F1 tracks.

Buemi did not get off to the perfect start, however, when he managed to spin the medical car during his practice laps that took place on Thursday.

At least that was done in front of only a few paddock regulars - rather than the millions of television viewers who would have been tuned in if he had done it on race day.

Put a couple of hundred people into a small fenced off area and let them chat to each other, and it's inevitable that there will be a fair bit of gossip and rumour going around. Welcome to the Formula One paddock!

Sometimes it is easy to work our which rumours have a basis of fact, and which are just pure figments of people's imagination. I know one team boss and his commercial director used to float totally incorrect rumours into the paddock.

They then had a bet to see how long it would for someone to come back to them claiming they 'knew' one of these rumours was true. There were further rewards for seeing such rumours appear as fact on the Internet, by those who write first, ask questions later.

The speed with which idle gossip becomes accepted truth to a few can be astonishing at times, and so it was in Fuji when Lewis Hamilton was asked in the post-race press conference about an investigation that the FIA were conducting into him blocking Nelson Piquet in Q2.

"Are you serious?" he asked the enquiring journalist.

It was all the result of some television and radio stations mishearing what Piquet had said on his radio - and reporting that there was going to be a protest about Hamilton. The story spread like wildfire in the paddock and media centre.

Piquet was unimpressed when he too found a fair few journalists down at Renault after the session to find out what had happened.

"Well, someone is crazy," he explained when asked about the Hamilton situation. "There is no problem. Nothing happened.

"Some idiot, lunatic must have heard when I said, 'I screwed up' and they heard 'Hamilton' I don't know!"