F1: Boys and their toys

It shouldn't have been like this. Webber, having shown his team-mate Vettel that the championship is not all done and dusted by his spirited attack at Silverstone and by grabbing pole leaving the young German to flounder around in qualifying for his home GP, should have shot off into the distance, making use of the Red Bull's superior pace in clean air. Alonso should have used his new-found ability to get the Ferrari off the line almost as if he knows - in advance - exactly when the lights will go out. Hamilton should have followed them around with fourth place being battled over by Vettel, Massa and Rosberg. Something was obviously wrong with Button's car throughout practice and there was little chance of him challenging for big points.

That's what should have happened. It didn't. For sure, Button's car ran like someone had chained it to the gates to the circuit until about two thirds into the race, it suddenly started to work. He stormed around, making serious racing passes. Then the pits told him to come in because "something might be wrong with the hydraulics" and they would have to "retire the car." Starting the race on equal points with Hamilton after no points in the British Grand Prix when the wheel fell off, to be forced out with a problem in a car that had actually shaken off a sluggish issue was galling. Button, unusually, had a face like a scalded cat as he walked through the garage.

Fast forward a few laps to the press conference: Hamilton could hardly speak through a grin so wide it looked like the top of his head might fall off. As Alonso and Webber, 2nd and 3rd respectively, spoke in muted terms of their satisfaction with their places, Hamilton entirely failed to hide his delight at a win.

It was a win he deserved. Right from the front to the back of the field, the race that commentators had almost universally written off as likely to be a dull procession with few chances to overtake proved that experts are often merely pundits.

The DRS played almost no part in the overtaking and, surprisingly, nor did KERS. what really made a difference was that this was, for the first time in a long time, just boys and their toys. Bash wheels? Yep. Drive wide to force another car onto the dirt? Yep. Cut corners? Yep. Go into corners so hot that the wheels turn but the car doesn't? Yep. Spin? Yep.

Really. Racing hasn't been this much fun, with so much happening, for these guys since their Sunday race days in bleak circuits where the only fans are parents.

Alonso ran out of fuel on the slowing down lap. In the spirit that we used to see in the 1970s, a car stopped, he climbed onto the side pod and held onto the air intake and they drove around together, waving. Who stopped? Webber who Alonso had beaten into second place with a pit stop a fraction of a second faster.

That's what racing used to be like in the days before Schumacher and the win-at-all costs attitude he brought to the sport.

Today, Schumacher was outclassed - in every sense of the word.

And today, we remembered why we watch motor racing and why, a tiny fraction of us are privileged to have taken part. For amongst all of the hard racing, the almost hazardous and brave driving, only one accident happened when Heidfeld touched the back of a Torro Rosso and was flipped up and around and almost over. It could have been a horrible accident. But it wasn't. Because nothing, not drizzle that fell as the cars came home, not partisan fans, not broken down cars was going to spoil the day.

And, for most people from Karun Chandok finishing his first race for Team Lotus to Mark Webber, incredibly, apparently, leading a whole lap for the first time this season (ESPN-Star's commentary is rubbish but they have great statisticians so thanks for that tidbit) nothing did.