Dodgy Business

The F1 business tends to take over. Between March and October, you're on the travel treadmill and other things go on the back burner. Including health. If you need running repairs, there isn't time.

With the season done, I finally got around to knee arthroscopy to investigate the damage I'd done on a ski slope 20 months ago. No big deal. In and out same day, take it easy for a couple more. But, Sod's Law, I got an infection. Back to the Krankenhaus for what I assumed would be a course of tablets. But no, the antibiotics could only be given intravenously and I'd be in there for a week!

Welcome to the real world. My laptop delivered, I was trying to look back on the ins and outs of the F1 season but, at first, it all seemed a bit trivial.

Having spent a couple of days telling any doctor or nurse who went near him to go forth and multiply, the poor fellow in the bed opposite passed on. The 80-year-old next to him was away having physio when it happened. On his return his mate on the other side of the ward let him know.

"Croaked, has he?" chirped the octogenarian. "Good for 'im. Comes to us all, sooner rather than later, I 'ope..."

A while later, the same chap announced, triumphantly, that he'd just managed his first bowel movement in five days.

An ambulance © XPB/LAT

"Nurse!" he yelled. "I need wiping." Everyone quickly clipped on their headphones or buried themselves in a newspaper.

When the long-suffering girl in the blue dress arrived, cheerful as ever, the old fellow was full of it. Cheek, that is...

As she set to work, he emitted a noise like one of those flashy Gaggenau espresso machines you see all over the F1 paddock. This time, thankfully, from his throat.

"Blimey, you're a bit chesty," she observed.

"You're not!" he shot back, already sniggering, Muttley-style, at his own wit.

Dolly Parton she wasn't, but I still thought it an odd approach to a charming girl involved in the business she was, as it were, and in possession of a tray full of needles.

Just couldn't do that, I thought. Give me a stroppy Jean Todt or a tape full of Ronspeak any day.

As is the way with hospitals, the space opposite was filled within a few hours and the new patient was a racing fan. He wanted to know how Lewis Hamilton would do in F1. The fellow next to me admitted he never missed a Grand Prix. How Kimi Raikkonen will go at Ferrari was the question on his mind.

The physio arrived in the middle of this.

"Oh, I love racing," she said. "I was there the day Peter Collins won the world championship. Fantastic, it was."

I was temporarily thrown. First, she didn't look that old. Second, Collins was never champion. Then I realised. Speedway. Peter Collins, Ivan Mauger, World of Sport, Dickie Davies, etcetera. Apologies if you're under 40. She liked F1 too but was a bit baffled about why they never pass each other.

The chap next door then asked what had impressed me about the season just gone and there I was, back on track.

Without any notes to jog the memory, I guess the things that came to mind really were my stand-out moments.

The first was a pre-season Barcelona test. My mate Mark Hughes had come down to interview Schuey for the magazine. Despite a circuit grandstand looming large from the Ibis hotel window, we'd taken the best part of an hour to find the hotel after leaving the track. I have to admit that Tom-Tom or Garmin would be entirely inappropriate as my middle name and my temporary tag of 'Prat-Nav' was much more on the money.

It didn't dampen Mark's enthusiasm for just how upbeat Michael Schumacher had been about his first experience of Ferrari's 248. After an awful 2005, he'd found it hugely drivable and couldn't wait to get going. Even at this stage it looked like we were set for an enthralling year.

Michael Schumacher tests the Ferrari 248 F1 at Barcelona © LAT

Bahrain proved it. After all the pre-season hype, opening races can be an anticlimax, but not this one. It was decided by the narrowest of margins as Alonso pitted out just ahead of Schumacher after his final stop. Clearly, they both had potential championship-winning cars beneath them.

Imola was a fantastic race decided by the nuances of strategy. Just when it looked as if Michael's middle stint tyre drop-off might allow Fernando to jump him by pitting earlier, Schumacher flipped over the 'bluff' card, turned in a couple of scorching laps and reversed the previous year's San Marino defeat. Renault's Pat Symonds looked sick as the proverbial.

Then there was Monaco and 'that' Michael moment at Rascasse. I'm not condoning it but it was hardly pioneering stuff, and I couldn't quite understand the degree of vitriol. Granted, messrs Raikkonen, Alonso and Mark Webber had ample cause to be hacked off. But back in the Lotus days Ayrton Senna was pilloried for setting a quick early time and then tooling around on the racing line. And over-filled oil tanks became a problem strangely unique to the Principality. Just ask Charlie Whiting or Martin Brundle...

It was the execution of Schumacher's move that was so awful. Sheepish-looking Ferrari men hung around awaiting the verdict. I mentioned to Nigel Stepney that if Michael had done a more plausible job, creamed it into the barrier at Tabac maybe, nobody would have said a word.

"Bugger off," he laughed, "You should see the mess Felipe's made of the other car! We'd like to get to bed tonight..."

In Germany, Renault dared not risk running their mass damper system ahead of the appeal verdict on its legality. And suddenly Alonso was struggling big time. Pat Symonds said that the difference was 0.3 seconds per lap. At a track where Renault did not get the balance right - not unrelated - it looked more. With the summer testing ban in operation, political feeling ran high.

Hungary was memorable for many reasons. It was mighty tedious for Jenson Button to be reminded on a fortnightly basis how many Grands Prix he'd driven without winning - and wholly meaningless in a sport where you're as good as your car. Finally the monkey was off his back.

Then there was Alonso's brilliant drive/retirement. And Schuey costing himself four points by unnecessarily monstering Pedro de la Rosa and Nick Heidfeld. Monte Carlo and Budapest cost Michael a 12-point swing. Perhaps a good thing he ultimately lost by 13 and not 11...

At Monza nobody could quite believe Alonso's qualifying penalty. It really was a black day for F1's credibility. Even if you accept that Massa's entry to Parabolica was compromised by a Renault never less than 97m ahead of him, surely the response was 'tough.' Only if there's a suspicion of deliberate blocking should it be different. The whole thing made you wonder at the futility of what you were watching and doing. The antithesis of the ward sister's job perhaps. But the feeling doesn't last long, and I'm certainly not up for a swap!

Cosworth managing director Bernard Ferguson © LAT

In China, the look on Cosworth director Bernard Ferguson's face when he heard that Spyker had inked a Ferrari engine deal on Saturday lunch time stayed with me. It meant the end of the F1 road for Cosworth after 40 years.

"Given what they've done," said Red Bull's Mark Smith, "if they were a bunch of swine you'd still feel sorry for them, never mind that they're all such good blokes." I couldn't have put it better.

Then there was Schumacher's Shanghai qualifying and race performance which set up the tension of the last two races. Schumacher was spellbinding while Alonso's decision to bolt on new rather than used intermediates at his first stop was as close to a mistake as he came all year. In his defence, he had a big lead and a worn left front, so it was a logical decision when Fernando made it.

From the beginning of the Japanese weekend you couldn't see past Michael and Ferrari for the 10 points. Schumacher is always awesome at Suzuka and the Ferraris appeared to be in a different league. But Alonso was closer on Sunday as the track/conditions better suited his Michelins, and Fernando was as relentless as ever. Then it happened. Michael's engine went bang in a race for the first time since Magny Cours six years earlier.

"There is a God!" quoth one uninvolved non-Ferrari sympathising team principal whose nose had been knocked out of joint by mass dampers and Monza.

Finally, Interlagos. Ironic, in a way, that for Michael it should all finish up in Ayrton's backyard. The Ferrari had the pace to walk it, as Massa proved, but this wasn't Michael's weekend. I got goosebumps when I realised that with minutes of his extraordinary F1 career remaining, Michael was going to go for Kimi. Raikkonen, I knew, would resist hard. Thankfully, the final memory was happy and fitting.

That, for me, was the year that was.