Grapevine: Paddock Life - Hockenheim edition

"It's not the Nurburgring mate, it's miles away," he laughed.

Undeterred by multimap.com's predictions of a seven-hour plus drive and Jon's constant ribbing, myself, Edd Straw and Mark Glendenning headed off to the Black Forest region full of confidence for a smooth journey.

The TomTom predicted five-and-a-half hours from Calais, which we thought wasn't too bad, but in the end it took a little over eight! This time though there were no speeding disasters like there were on the way to Magny-Cours, but instead some rather poignant surprises.

Just over 200 miles into our journey, we saw signs for Zolder off the E314 to Antwerp, the place where Gilles Villeneuve lost his life attempting to qualify for the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix.

It's a place I vowed never to visit as a distraught nine-year-old Ferrari fan all those years ago. Nevertheless the car found itself turning right up the slip road, and no more than 500 metres later we were at the entrance to what seemed like the land time forgot.

Still very much an active racetrack - there was a motorcycle track day in attendance - Zolder's pit buildings and tribunes hark back to a period when the time-worn amphitheatre of pitlane grandstands helped conjure the atmosphere and ramp up the anticipation.

We walked down the back of the pits to the pit entry, where paddock-side there stood a memorial for Villeneuve, placed on a small mound of grass. It was erected in 2002 to replace a slightly tacky display of his helmet in a glass case.

According to Autosport's former Grand Prix editor Nigel Roebuck, when the F1 circuit returned to Zolder in 1984, two years after Villeneuve's accident, the original memorial's positioning was such that the sight of it tore Michele Alboreto apart every time he entered the pitlane.

Having paid homage to this rather underwhelming sculpture, we ventured out to Terlamenbocht, now known as the Villeneuve chicane, where the French-Canadian's Ferrari had happened upon Jochen Mass's March and become airborne.

The fearsome downhill left-hander into Terlaman is still dauntingly fast, the chicane still eerily familiar from my memories of the television footage, despite the safety revisions over the years.

As we walked back through the woods, the sun forging beams of light through the undergrowth, we stumbled across a garden that put it all into striking perspective.

Sad though it still seems that Villeneuve, like other racing greats had been cut down in his prime, his memorial didn't have the same moving effect as this tribute to the Belgian resistence fighters executed on a mount, not far from the chicane, during the second world war.

What is it about people throwing themselves at Kimi Raikkonen these days?

The world champion, having (quite literally) forced off the attentions of an unwanted photographer on the Silverstone grid two weeks ago, appeared to be the unwitting victim of more flying humanity in the Hockenheim paddock.

Having just arrived through the gates, Raikkonen strode towards the Ferrari motorhome when a mother and child apparently approached him for an autograph.

So desperate was the woman for Kimi's moniker that she batted the unfortunate infant clean off her feet.

Kimi, slightly bemused, and this time clearly not at fault, selected Iceman mode and marched purposefully on - with the woman still in pursuit apparently oblivious to the child's fate.

Raikkonen must be wondering what an earth is going to come flying at him next.

Speaking of attention, Sebastian Vettel looked slightly startled at 14:00 on Thursday afternoon when a press call to announce his promotion to the Red Bull senior squad caused a minor crush in the team's Energy Station hospitality unit.

Formula One's entire media contingent seemingly descended on Red Bull, prompting extraordinary scenes of journalists hanging off banisters, vainly waving dictaphones while late-arriving photographers clambered on stalls to get a view.

Announced in several German newspapers as the 'new Michael Schumacher', Vettel will have to get used to scenes like this if his country's media predictions prove correct.

Watching it all with dignity, while having lunch with one of his engineers, at the opposite end of the Energy Station reserved for team members only, was the man Vettel replaces, David Coulthard.

It was curious to see him sitting there, completely unmolested, while the media went into meltdown just feet away. It also spoke volumes for his character that he sat it out and continued eating and chatting when he could so easily have hid away in a motorhome. Old school.

As the paddock prepares to bid farewell to one familiar face, at least behind a balaclava, another made his return in Hockenheim.

Michael Schumacher's popular former physical trainer, Balbir Singh, turned up bedecked in Force India colours, more than three years after walking away from F1.

Singh last worked with Schumacher in 2005 and since then he has been plying his trade with teams on the Dakar Rally, an experience he claims he "will never forget", while also building up his own training centre in Germany.

So what brought him back to F1?

"I may be a German citizen, but to see somebody building an Indian team I think is something special," he explained. "I thought it would be nice to be a part of this.

"So I will work with both the drivers for the rest of this year, and see if I want to make this a permanent part of my life again."

Something else that bode farewell to the press room last weekend was the sight of veteran journalist and commentator Bob Constanduros' transcribing away wearing a pair of 70's style grey head cans.

The entire British media core was devastated when on Thursday afternoon, Bob sat down to transcribe the FIA press conference with natty new earphones.

Paddock gossip raged and answers were demanded, so Paddock Life asked the man himself why he had decided to put an end to one of F1 media's most iconic images.

"I have upgraded all my recording equipment, and the technology meant that the old cans were just too quiet," he explained.

"It's a shame," he added, "they did such a good job of drowning out the noise of Karin Sturm!"

Sturm is a German F1 journalist not noted for effective voice volume control.

Lewis to Ferrari? That was the question posed by Ed Gorman and The Times newspaper on Friday morning.

Gorman, like the rest of the British press corp, was invited to the Mercedes-Benz F1 barbecue on Thursday evening. It was a fun event with a live band, attended by nearly all the teams. Even Ferrari's top brass such as Stefano Domenicali, Luca Baldisserri and Aldo Costa made a polite appearance.

But as the scarlet-clad figures made to leave, Lewis Hamilton's father Anthony swiftly made his away across the party, situated behind the Mercedes grandstand, and tapped Domenicali on the shoulder. The pair then began chatting in earnest, in full view of his son's employers.

The context of their discussion was never uncovered, but it was more likely to have been along the lines of "Good luck on Sunday" rather than "Gis a Job!"

Gorman, meanwhile, had been taking pictures of the band playing at the other end of the party, when rather mischievously, he was egged on by Fleet Street's Finest, and a number of the specialist press, to take a picture of this 'high-profile' meeting.

The joke was on them on Friday, however, when they discovered Ed had actually used the images in his Times blog as part of a story about Lewis's future intentions.

Having spent the day receiving a significant amount of stick for his 'scoop' from the rest of Fleet Street, he was at least welcomed with open arms when Ferrari hosted a dinner for the British press on Friday night, where he was made to sit at the head of the table and regale Ferrari's press officer Luca Colajanni with his version of the tale.