Masters of the Elements

Ten to nine, Friday morning. The trackside kiosks selling mayonnaise-lashed chips are a) open for business and b) elegantly framed by a ripple of lightning. In the adjacent forests, thousands of German campers are marinated in equal quantities of beer and rainwater.

Even at times like this, it's impossible not to adore Spa-Francorchamps.

Like Monza one week beforehand, it inspires a sense of wonder whether or not there are cars going around. Some complain that namby-pamby asphalt run-off areas have diluted its edge (even if they don't appear to offer much retardation in the wet), but the on-board camera offers a different perspective - especially when it's raining. Is that a ball of spray ahead or could there be a spinning hunk of carbon fibre within? There's no way of telling - and that's when this sport exercises its full capacity to chill.

But the "ooh-it's-a-bit-wet-we-can't-possibly-race-if-it-stays-like-this" reaction of some drivers was inexcusably lame.

While Jenson Button, Michael Schumacher (oddly, but then he is now 36) and others were pontificating about the perils of the wet after a free practice session during which not a single timed lap was recorded, 24 GP2 Series drivers - some of whom were competing at Spa for the first time and none of whom had the benefit of traction control - were sent out to qualify.

The rain had eased a little but conditions remained treacherous. That didn't bother anyone unduly, however, and only a couple of cars ended the session with battle scars.

There is, obviously, a point at which common sense has to take precedence over any commercial niceties - but F1 drivers are idolised (and, even in the case of a few rubbish ones, paid inordinate salaries) for their customarily cheerful defiance of climate-driven adversity.

To be talking fretfully about puddles two days before a race starts is political correctness gone mad. Political incorrectness, more like. Sorry, lads, it goes with the territory. Get on with it, or clear off and do something else. Nobody has ever pretended this is an easy sport - nor is it meant to be.

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, the field for the inaugural Grand Prix Masters (at Kyalami, South Africa, on November 13) is taking shape.

Setting a bunch of famous old blokes free on a racing circuit is fine, but are 600bhp single-seaters an appropriate medium? Last weekend, one former F1 star divulged how painfully off the pace one of the GPM nominees had been when they shared a car at Le Mans in the late 1990s. I don't imagine a few more years out of the saddle will have made him any quicker.

The Masters is a fantastic concept, but - and this is an idea Bernie Ecclestone is purportedly pursuing for the longer term - the golden oldies should be running in identical sports or saloon cars as one of the Sunday morning curtain-raisers at grand prix meetings.

"That would be fantastic," said former F1 driver Ivan Capelli, who has been linked to the GPM. "I really want to race, but we should have open sports cars so that people can see us at work. We need enough power to be entertaining but not so much that fitness will be an issue."

That's a realistic proposition - and it would provide tremendous added value for the punters.

The drivers are unlikely to carp much about the weather, either.