Australian GP thoughts

- Go Brawn! Brilliant.

- Ferrari, you suck. What a fiasco.

- What was Kubica thinking? He cut in front of Vettel when Vettel had the line going into the corner. I blame him entirely for the crash, and he should have been the one penalized. What was Vettel supposed to do, go off? Just terrible driving in general, and astonishingly idiotic considering he wrecked both his and Vettel's sure podium finish. Barrichello rear-ending Räikkönen was just as boneheaded, but not as catastrophic.

- Amazing work by Toyota: starting from the pit lane and finishing with both cars in the points and Trulli on the podium. Unbelievable, and in some ways even more impressive than Brawn.

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Of course, Trulli isn't on the podium any more. I can't believe it's starting all over again. He was penalized for overtakin Lewis Hamilton behind the safety car, after Hamilton overtook him and let him pass. So, Hamilton overtakes Trulli and Trulli gets a penalty. Brilliant. Toyota have appealed the decision, but the only way it could be reversed is if the FIA appeals court decides against Hamilton. Yeah, right. As Trulli says:

"When the safety car came out towards the end of the race Lewis passed me but soon after he suddenly slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road. I thought he had a problem so I overtook him as there was nothing else I could do."

Potentially this opens up a brilliant tactic for eliminating your rivals. Let someone pass you behind the safety car; they're hardly going to stop their car behind you and wait for you if you pull over to the side of the road. And then they're guilty of overtaking behind the safety car!

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This was the first time in what, 30 years, that a newcomer team has taken a double victory in its first GP. At least according to Finnish TV, Richard Branson is planning to buy the team. Here's an idea, free of charge: he should only do it after this season. Then they can do the whole new-team-wins-first-GP thing all over again with Virgin GP.

If it's more of a co-ownership thing, will they call it Brawn Virgin GP or Virgin Brawn GP? Do they want to go with more of a really butch nun or a reservoir of untapped muscle? These are important image management decisions! I'd go with Brawn Virgin, and tentatively suggest Hammer from Fable 2 as their logo. Virgin Brawn might be more of a Tom of Finland thing. There are other fascinating possibilities like Virgin Racing. Although that's probably a Monty Python sketch.

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I'm terrified by the prospect of the FIA appeals court getting its hands on the results after Malaysia. If, for instance, all the cars with the debated diffusor are disqualified, guess who ends up being the winner? Yeah. The guy the FIA has been pulling for, hard and in total disregard of any kind of impartiality, ever since he first sat inside an F1 car. Who was just given a podium finish he didn't drive to by the race stewards. So don't think they can't do it. I just hope they won't.

If the FIA reverses these results, and a small part of me actually expects them to, it'll be the death of F1. At least for a while. For those of us who aren't head-over-heels in love with the FIA's golden rule-excempt boy, it was bad enough to see him get into the points after a series of amazing cock-ups in front of him. He's disgustingly lucky. If the FIA then go on to hand him a victory, well, there won't be any point in calling it a sport any more. They might as well hand over the future USF1 team to Vince McMahon.

Luckily enough, Richard Branson and his wallet on the side of Brawn make it almost certain that this time Bernie Ecclestone will lobby in favor of Brawn almost as strongly as he lobbied for the McLaren drivers in the espionage scandal. As Bernie is apparently the one who really calls the shots, as seen then and plenty of other times, Brawn will probably keep their results.

As a side note, our completely unbiased Finnish announcer (hiccup) gushed about how fantastically brilliant it was that golden boy managed to finish fourth even though he started in 18th place. Of course, he barely acknowledged that Jarno Trulli drove to the podium after starting in the pit lane.

In the end, being sold an athlete, or for that matter any product, as hard as a certain British driver has been sold to us, is in the end like force-feeding: it just makes you want to vomit. The way the FIA is taking every opportunity to favor Hamilton over the other drivers is making a mockery of the whole series.

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When they go back and change the results afterhand like this, in a way it feels like the whole race was for nothing, especially with the top two finishers facing the appeals court a week from now. They simply need to stop this garbage. I can't believe they let a guy go up on the podium to celebrate his third-place finish and then reverse the results a couple of hours later. It's beyond disgusting.

Imagine this happening in any other sport. Picture the NFL reversing the Super Bowl results after the trophy has been handed over. Imagine watching a hockey playoff game, only to be told later that the league has decided to reverse the result. What other sport does this? And how long does the FIA think they can keep changing the results to get the people they want on the podium?

Of course, last season they decided the world championship that way, so I guess there is no limit. It just makes it really hard to make any kind of emotional investment in F1 any more when you know that the order the drivers finish the race in is only half the story.