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IS F1 NOW TOO DANGEROUS?
(Traction control has been banned)
If you do a search for Kimi Räikkönen on YouTube, along with his driving exploits you'll find videos of his social activities. There are no clips of the now legendary willy-waving in a strip club, but there are some of him falling on a yacht. Possibly drunk. That's the kind of guy he is - he just goes out there and gets on with it.

When he was asked recently about drivers expressing their fears regarding this season's lack of traction control, he shrugged it off in typical fashion, saying if they didn't like it, they could "always go and do something else". Legend.

Likewise, watching Hamilton dancing his car over the kerbs last season - most noticeably at Monaco - you could already see he wasn't going to find the lack of TC any more dangerous either. He likes to hang it out. "It's more fun," he said a few weeks ago. This from a man who told Clarkson that he finds crashing exciting. If the other drivers weren't already, they should be scared of Hammo and Kimi's mental readiness.

Conversely, David Coulthard keeps banging on about his concerns at the lack of TC, as does Felipe Massa. A case of getting the excuses in early or a genuine safety worry? As Mark Webber said recently, the person with the hardest job is going to be race director Charlie Whiting, who has to decide when it's safe to race in the wet and when it's not. We may see more postponed races this year.

WILL ROSS BRAWN SAVE HONDA?
(He won seven world titles at Ferrari)
Honda was gutted at the end of last season, and rightly so: Jenson Button finished 15th in the drivers' table, while team-mate Rubens Barrichello failed to score a single point, and the team ended up eighth overall in the constructors' championship. Not good. Actually, worse than that, it was effing terrible.

Button scored more points in the second half of 2006 than any other driver. Imagine going from that to feeling lucky to finish eighth for a point. The only good thing about last year's dog of an RA107 is that it let Jenson quietly deal with the meteoric rise of Hamilton, out of the media glare. No headlines, few comparisons, even less Red Top nay-saying. Jenson was slow because his car was rubbish. The end.

And now in steps Ross Brawn - with plenty of championship titles under his belt - to save the Brackley squad from another near kicking by their 'B' team, Super Aguri. If anyone can do it, we think Ross can, and having spent the last year fishing in South America, he should be mentally relaxed enough to deal with Jenson's ego.

TOYOTA: TWO YEARS OR BUST?
(Great car maker, crap car racer)
If you were getting paid $20 million a year to race cars, then you'd stay with the team that was paying you to do so as long as you could, wouldn't you? Even if the car was a bit crap, you wouldn't be too bothered. Would you?

Half Schumacher no longer drives for Toyota. He left, after last season finished, to pursue other avenues. One road led him to, amazingly, expressing interest in filling the driver role left vacant by Alonso at McLaren, the other to the newly titled Spyker team, now Force India, where he failed to impress team bosses, and was said on Pitpass.com to be even less impressed himself, not happy that he only got a day's test in the car when Giancarlo Fisichella got two.

Toyota head honcho Tadashi Yamashina has been given two years to turn Toyota around or it's chopping block time. At least Timo Glock's on board now to partner Jarno Trulli, neither of whom are being paid $20 million.

No one likes to lose their mojo, and it's even worse when it happens simply because something better's come along. Little Britain was cool until The Mighty Boosh, The Beatles were cool until The Stones... and now Monaco, once the coolest venue on the F1 calendar is about to be unceremoniously booted into the midfield. By Singapore.

Run on a public street-circuit around Marina Bay at night, it will be the absolute mutt's nuts. Believe us, there's not going to be a better place to watch a grand prix in 2008. And with Valencia also holding a debut street race, it looks to us as if F1 may have finally hit on a way to sex-up the product. Bring it on...