Grapevine: Paddock Life - Sakhir edition

Tilke helped pull off a minor miracle to get the Bahrain track ready for its inaugural race in 2004, but that didn't help him when he came face-to-face with the country's police on Thursday night.

Returning to downtown Manama from the circuit, Tilke was pulled over for what the police felt was excessive speed. So excessive, in fact, that he was taken to a local police station, thrown into the holding cells and only released after some intervention from higher authorities.

Tilke still has to face a judge to receive his fine for the matter - while his poor girlfriend Laura had a difficult time getting back to the hotel after being abandoned at the side of the highway without any transport when the police whisked away their fresh captive.

Kimi Raikkonen's tattoo had been something of a talking point in Malaysia, as he kept a stony silence on where it had been done, what it meant or even if it is was permanent.

Yet with the marking on his right arm not showing any signs of fading by the time everyone turned up in Bahrain, it became patently clear that the decoration is in fact going to be with him for the rest of his life.

A bit of digging by the Finnish journalists finally resulted in the truth coming out. Raikkonen got the tattoo done the day after his victory in the Australian Grand Prix - so happy was he with how his life at Ferrari had started.

Raikkonen created the design himself, to replace the small sun tattoo that had been on his arm since he came into F1. And, despite a few rumours to the contrary, there are no death metal hints in its style...

The paddock in Bahrain is one of the widest and longest of the season - not ideal when you are trying to make the trek down from Renault at one end to Super Aguri at the other.

There were even a few quips that the paddock is so long, you can see the curvature of the earth in it.

With harsh desert sunshine blazing down, this year at least the race organisers helped provide some welcome shelter for weary paddock trawlers with their covered palm-tree areas dotted down the middle section.

It was here on Thursday afternoon that the F1 fraternity were treated to a brief glimpse of the kind of considered man-management that McLaren boss Ron Dennis is having to undertake to keep his two drivers in top form this season.

Dennis, sat on a bench beneath one of the coverings, had summoned Alonso by telephone and the pair duly began what appeared to be a very intimate conversation.

And the increasing number of photographers who began crowding around them to try and capture the moment did not silence their talk.

Although Dennis would not reveal any details about what was said to Alonso, he did hint at a bit of a father-son type chat.

"All the cameras came around like bees around a honey pot," said Dennis. "You think, 'oh god, why did I start this conversation here?' So you either have to make a point of getting up and going somewhere else, or you think 'screw it, I will finish the conversation'.

"We were really just talking about a couple of things. About life in general, talking about opening laps and things like that.

"It is clear that now that our competitiveness is there, we should talk about our competitiveness and what our driver's behaviour should be to each other. It was a slightly paternal approach to that. I won't give you the details."

Remember the infamous preseason story about Nick Heidfeld and Sebastian Vettel having a punch up during testing in Bahrain? It was a fantastic piece of fabricated news from a Polish tabloid newspaper.

With Poland's interest in F1 massively on the up because of Robert Kubica's promotion to a race seat with BMW Sauber, its country's tabloid newspapers have moved heaven and earth to try and get the edge of their rivals with bigger and better stories.

Kubica himself was found to be on the receiving end of some of the more sensational claims - which are fast gaining a bit of (anti-) cult status in the F1 paddock.

The story of the punch-up in Bahrain revolved around the two BMW drivers nearly colliding on the track, returning to the pits for a fisticuffs, getting dragged apart by Alain Prost - who was then punched in the face himself, before Mario Theissen stepped in and banished them to their driver rooms.

The story ended with the two drivers shaking hands before they left the paddock - only for Heidfeld to sneer: "I'll see you at the hotel later..."

It was a great story, which would have been even greater if it had even a semblance of truth in it.

Kubica, who joined the British media for a BMW dinner in Bahrain on Saturday night, said that such untruths were not out of the ordinary at all for some of his country's newspapers.

Over the weekend, the latest word out of Poland was that Kubica was about to be replaced for the race by Vettel. The author had probably overlooked the fact that Vettel was actually competing in the Renault World Series at Monza.

And Kubica told of a fantastic interview he once had to do with one of the newspapers. "I was asked to do a short interview but I only gave them five answers - which were, 'No, Yes, No. Maybe. No.' I said no more than that.

"So imagine my surprise when I opened the newspaper and saw this huge two page interview with me, talking about lots of amazing things I knew nothing about!"