Brawn

Team boss Ross Brawn admitted on Saturday night that his car had been out-developed by Red Bull and McLaren, but revealed an impressively daring strategy that should enure his team are not a one-championship wonder.

The Brawn car arrived at the first grand prix this year as the most developed car of all. Where other teams were only on their Mark I designs, Brawn was at the equivalent of Mk III.

Add what turned out to be the legal double-diffuser concept and they had a massive head start.

The team did some development work on the car, but by the time of the Turkish Grand Prix in early June, Brawn took a gamble.

He believed the car had enough in hand to win the championship, so told his design engineers to switch their attentions to the 2010 car.

Brawn told us that they only switched wind-tunnel attention back to the 2009 car for one week between mid-summer and the end of the season when they realised they might need a bit more performance to secure the championship.

Ross Brawn is clearly building foundations for the long term, and since the 2010 car won't have the compromised radiator layout and gearbox mounting that this year's car had to accept because of the late switch to Mercedes engine, next year should be stronger still.

Red Bull

Like Brawn, another big question for 2010 is whether Red Bull will be able to sustain their performance following the banning of refuelling.

They ended the season with the fastest car on the grid, but were helped in Abu Dhabi by their ability to work the tyres hard, whereas Brawn and McLaren had problems achieving the optimum tyre temperature and suffered grip variations between sets.

With the cars starting the races much heavier with fuel, the name of the game next season will be tyre management, so a car that is naturally hard on its tyres will be at a disadvantage. That's a part of this year's Red Bull DNA that will have to be eliminated for next season.

Red Bull also face a potential problem with their engines.

Team boss Christian Horner's desire to have the Mercedes power-plant in his cars seems to have been torpedoed. A final decision from both sides was delayed for so long that it is now too late to incorporate a change of engine.

Rumours in Abu Dhabi suggested Red Bull's Mercedes deal was blocked after pressure from current Mercedes teams Brawn and McLaren, who don't want a potential championship rival sharing their 'best in class' engines.

So, needing to know which engine to build his car around, design chief Adrian Newey was left with no choice but to stay with the Renault, despite Red Bull's very public comments and private concerns about the French engine being unreliable and lacking top-end power.

Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel won the prize for the highest number of fastest race laps achieved during the season. Mark Webber was tied with his team-mate on three fastest laps, but Vettel won the trophy on count-back.

Renault's Fernando Alonso was not far behind with two fastest race laps, which, considering the car he's had all season, is pretty impressive. That Renault engine must have some grunt after all...

McLaren

Some interesting detail on Lewis Hamilton's brake failure. It was caused by a manufacturing error that left a less dense area of carbon material in the middle of one brake pad.

That explains how the brakes worked well in qualifying and were just about all right in the first stint of the race.

But when the pad wore down and hit the 'hole', it quickly wore out, the temperatures went through the roof and total brake failure would have resulted, had McLaren not retired Hamilton on safety grounds.

Toyota

Given the drip-drip of rumours suggesting Toyota were set to leave Formula 1, I don't suppose we should be too surprised at their decision in recent days.

What I am surprised at, however, is that they did not give their employees more notice to allow them to find work elsewhere in the paddock.

It's ironic that a good number of Toyota personnel attended the BMW leaving party on Saturday night, wishing their colleagues well for the future, not knowing they would soon be put in the same position, and with far worse prospects of finding another way to pay the mortgage.

Renault

It's been particularly difficult to gauge how much improvement Renault have made over the season, as their performance has been so circuit-dependent.

A podium in Singapore on merit, but nowhere in Abu Dhabi a month later. Indeed it looked like they had gone backwards.

With continued doubts over their F1 future, it looks like Renault will resolve one issue by releasing Fernando Alonso from his contract early; before it expires at the end of the calendar year.

Alonso spoke last Thursday about wanting to start work at Ferrari at the end of November. His new house in southern Switzerland is a three-hour drive from Maranello (although, with him driving, maybe it's two and a half), so with seat fittings and cockpit layouts to be finalised, he understandably wants to get on with his work.

Force India

By the time you read this, Simon Roberts, the Force India chief operating officer, will have been back at his desk at McLaren for the best part of a week.

I was on the flight back with Roberts and his replacement Otmar Szafnauer on Sunday night, and Roberts was proud of the work he had done there and, while sad to be leaving the team now his loan period is up, is sure that the new working processes and reporting structures set up there will continue to be fruitful at the Silverstone team.

Now he's back at McLaren, it will be interesting to chart where Roberts ends up next. A team principal of the future?

Toro Rosso

This won't be confirmed for a few weeks, but Sebastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari will be staying at Toro Rosso for next year. Team boss Franz Tost let the cat out of the bag when we spoke on Friday, albeit in the context of a slightly negative remark about his drivers.

The gist of it was that Toro Rosso has essentially had a good season and had scored some points, but there had been too many mistakes from the young drivers. When they both come back next year, Tost explained, Buemi and Alguersuari will be expected to deliver, drive fast and not crash.

Buemi will no doubt receive 'rookie of the year' plaudits over the winter, although Kamui Kobayashi may have something to say about that.

Buemi's performance in Abu Dhabi was very impressive: Only one point for eighth place, but the second fastest lap of the race, just 0.047secs slower than race-winner Vettel yet faster than McLaren and Brawn.

That's about it from this column for this year. Thanks for all your comments, opinions and observations over the season. Enjoy your winter, and I look forward to starting it up again in March.

The McLaren driver was on pole by a margin of nearly 0.7 seconds and he was still half a second clear when the amount of fuel in the cars was taken into account - an astonishing margin in a season that has been so close.

The cars in the top 10 qualifying shoot-out are not allowed to refuel between qualifying and the race, so the amount of fuel they carry dictates their pace on Saturday as well as when they will make their first pit stops on Sunday.

So grid positions can be misleading until the fuel weights are published and the ramifications of that calculated. Assessing those figures underlines just how strong Hamilton is looking.

This is BBC Sport's fuel-adjusted Abu Dhabi Grand Prix grid, with projected first pit stops:

Because he has two laps' less fuel on board, Hamilton's fuel-adjusted margin over the Red Bulls is not as large as it was on the track but at nearly half a second it is still more than big enough for the race to look like it is his for the taking.

It seems as if the Abu Dhabi track could have been made for the McLaren.

Hamilton and his McLaren were in a league of their own around Abu Dhabi's new track

There are two long straights for them to get the most out of their Kers power-boost system, which gives them an extra 80bhp for 6.7 seconds a lap.

And the track abounds in the slow- and medium-speed corners in which the car is so strong, while lacking the high-speed bends in which it struggles - and in which the Red Bull is the class of the field.

Not only that, but it should ensure he is unpassable on the first lap, so he should be able to lap at his own pace for the first stint.

If Hamilton has any rivals for victory, it looks like being the Red Bull drivers.

They are making their first pit stops a little later than Hamilton - Vettel on lap 19, compared to Hamilton's 17, and Webber on 18 - but, as long as the Englishman maintain his superior speed into the first stint of the race, it is hard to see Vettel or Webber being able to make up enough time to leapfrog him.

More likely is that the Red Bull drivers will be engaged in a tight battle with the Brawn drivers and Jarno Trulli's Toyota behind Hamilton.

With regards to Vettel and Brawn's Rubens Barrichello, that means a fight for second place in the championship as well as in the race - the German has a two-point advantage heading into the grand prix.

But just as they are fighting for the crumbs left by Jenson Button in the championship, they look certain to be doing the same behind Hamilton in the final race of the season.

All these things remain the same in Abu Dhabi - just 263 miles east of Bahrain - but the Yas Marina circuit is something else entirely.

The £800m-track has been dubbed the 'Arabian Monaco' but there is more than a dash of Las Vegas panache to the island complex carved out of the desert.

Team BBC landed long after sunset on Wednesday but despite the darkness our first impression of the circuit was a jumble of "wow, crazy, amazing, it's huge!"

The five-star Yas Hotel straddles the circuit and dominates the sky-line, especially when its hooded roof lights up at night in an array of colours.

Look left, right, behind and there is something else scrambling for attention; the grandstands - built to seat 50,000 fans - the VIP Sun Tower, the man-made marina, which just six months ago was another patch of sand.

The new Yas Marina complex has raised the bar for F1 facilities

That's not to mention the inescapable sight of the giant prancing horse painted on the roof of Ferrari World, a huge theme park and homage to the Italian team which will open in 2010.

Less than 32 months ago none of this existed. Yas Island had neither roads nor electricity. No wonder it took 14,000 workers and 35 million man hours to build the circuit out of the sand.

The oil-rich emirate of Abu Dhabi took on the challenge of an F1 race because it wanted to put itself on the world map, establish itself as tourist destination and reap future 'macro-economic' benefits.

So far everyone - including the drivers - seems pleased with what the emirate has accomplished in such a short time.

"You enjoy it because there is always something to do on the track," says Renault's two-time world champion Fernando Alonso. "There is no time to breathe".

Nico Rosberg, of Williams, added: "There is no criticism, every corner is unique."

The twilight race means the days here are long; there are extra security checks - including a vigorous body search at the entrance to the track - and some members of the BBC team have been low on hot water. But those are the only mild complaints.

Abu Dhabi has a seven-year deal and that could eventually be extended to 20 races if the spectacular circuit delivers an event to match.

The grandstands were far from full during Friday practice and organisers will be keen to avoid the kind of criticism that Turkey and China attract about a lack of local support.

It is intriguing that Abu Dhabi makes its bow on the F1 calendar just as one of its oldest venues fights for its place on it.

It can hardly have pleased the organisers that Silverstone, a track in the middle of England, is threatening to steal its headlines.

But this 17-stop season has proved that F1 needs a variety of tracks from Melbourne's Albert Park, to Monaco's winding streets, the mountainous thrills of Spa and the dazzling desert delights of Abu Dhabi.

McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh sums it up: "This is a special venue. F1 needs these but we must not forget the roots of the sport."

BRAWN

Spending a few extra days in South America, and without a computer, I haven't seen much of Britain's reaction to Jenson Button's championship win at the Brazilian Grand Prix. In the insular world of the Formula 1 paddock, though, there was a general feeling of goodwill towards Button, despite the intense rivalries between all the teams.

Other drivers and team bosses I spoke to agreed that Button deserved the title, that Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel will get his chance to be champion, that Rubens Barrichello probably won't, and that it will be interesting to have what is effectively a non-drivers' championship race in Abu Dhabi just for fun.

It's this last thought that intrigued Button's race engineer Andrew Shovlin when we spoke on the pit wall after the race. He was pleased that at last we will be able to see whether Jenson's drop in form since Turkey was because of the car, or due to the immense pressure he was putting on himself to get the job done.

Brawn's Jenson Button is surrounded by photographers after clinching the 2009 world title

The Brawn team had, understandably, kept very quiet about this throughout the year. Many of those made redundant have since found work elsewhere in motorsport, but it was significant how they were at the front of Ross Brawn's thoughts in his moment of victory.

Other team members handled the celebrations their own way. Mechanics tempered their joy with mild irritation that their garage had become invaded by seemingly every cameraman and hanger-on in the paddock, chief executive Nick Fry's smile was as wide as ever, while wives and girlfriends, sponsors and friends of the team wandered around, some crying, others barely able to take the moment in.

What I'll always remember from that weekend was Button's own psychological battle, how he rose to win the title from being at emotional rock bottom on Saturday night.

I've never seen him so down as when we spoke three hours after he had qualified 14th, not even throughout the tough times with Renault in 2001-2, or on realising in both 2007 and 2008 that Honda had built him a slow car to race yet again.

Button admitted he took the qualifying knock pretty hard, but added that he had "a few good people around me who have sorted me out". His dad, his manager, physio, engineer and Ross Brawn did quite a job, because he was a different man by Sunday morning.

Button had clearly decided in his head that enough was enough, and that he was going to finish the title in Brazil. In this respect I'm sure he had learned from Lewis Hamilton's 2008 experience, had seen how easily it could all have slipped away, and resolved that that was not going to happen to him.

RED BULL

Team boss Christian Horner is a competitive chap, so he just about managed to find it within himself to congratulate Jenson Button and Brawn Grand Prix on their championship win during our interview after the race.

Horner's frustration is understandable. This season Red Bull emerged as a serious championship contender, with two top-class drivers in Vettel and Mark Webber, but they got off to a late start.

Horner refused to blame any single element for his team's championship defeat, neither driver or team errors, imperfect reliability, nor the failure of his design team to spot the loophole which allowed 'double diffusers' at the start of the season.

Instead, Horner stressed what a good season they'd had and how close they'd pushed Brawn - a team that, on the evidence of the first six races, had looked invincible.

In that light, it was rather telling to read Red Bull's press release, in which Renault's Fabrice Lom felt the need to include the following sentence: "I won't let anyone say that the engine is the only aspect that cost us the title, we won as a team and we lost as a team".

McLAREN

McLaren gained three points on Ferrari in their battle for third place in the constructors' championship with a canny drive by Lewis Hamilton to the podium.

But after Hamilton asked his engineer, after his first-lap pit stop, why he'd put him on a one-stop strategy, I was left wondering what it is, exactly, they do in their briefings, if they haven't discussed the possible strategy permutations that might be used.

"Oh, we were always going to do that if there was an incident at the start, Lewis", came the reply. Great. Was there anything else they were planning to surprise their driver with?

RENAULT

Thanks to Robert Kubica's second place for BMW in Brazil, Renault lost their hold on seventh place in the constructors' championship, and slipped down to eighth.  If there's some crumb of comfort Renault can take from what has, in almost all respects, been a disastrous end to the season, it's the fantastic drive by future Renault driver Kubica, a man every single team member is delighted to have coming on board.

Stand-in team principal Bob Bell could barely find enough superlatives with which to describe the Pole, and singled out his abilities as a team leader, something they will need, having lost Fernando Alonso to Ferrari.

As for who will be Kubica's team-mate, Robert is pushing hard for Hamilton's current team-mate Heikki Kovalainen, knowing that he would be a reliable number two, and possibly believing that there's more to him than he has been able to show thus far at McLaren.

Indeed the Finn was again seen openly hanging out with Renault personnel after the race, obviously not feeling the need to be particularly discreet about it.

On a different note, Renault brought two new engines to Brazil for Alonso and Romain Grosjean. Renault have been one of the more successful teams in managing their eight-engine allocation for the season, and because Alonso crashed on the first lap, he will go into the last race at Abu Dhabi with the freshest engine on the grid. This could prove to be useful in what looks like a power track.

I found out an interesting footnote concerning the Renault engine. We asked why Webber had not taken the opportunity to put a new engine in his Red Bull when he started from the pit lane in Japan. Apparently the Renault engine loosens up and becomes more powerful after its first few-hundred kilometres.

FERRARI

A lot of people were truly impressed by the way Kimi Raikkonen drove coolly through a wall of flame in the pit lane after countryman Kovalainen drove off from his pit stop with his fuel hose still attached.

It was also impressive that he had to drive the rest of the race with his eyes streaming from droplets of condensed petrol vapour that got into his visor.

Another race and still no points for Giancarlo Fisichella, in what was his fourth time driving Ferrari number three. In Brazil his progress was limited by being forced off track on the first lap, which wasn't his fault.  

We talked more generally on Thursday about the problems with the car. Fisi said he had got used to operating the multitude of switches he has to fiddle with on the steering wheel, but that he is losing time during braking.

The way the Ferrari runs its Kers power boost demands constant adaptation to different behaviour in braking zones as the energy stored under braking is converted into electrical power.
Apparently no two corners are alike, and when the Kers starts to malfunction, as it did in Brazil, you never know whether you're going to need to brake earlier or later from lap to lap.

Fisichella might gain more by taking Kers off the car, which would allow him to brake in a predictable way. But in the hands of Raikkonen in the other car the Kers system gains Ferrari half a second per lap, so it seems unlikely they would agree to go down that route for the final race of the season.

The chaotic qualifying session at the Brazilian Grand Prix, and the subsequent mixed-up grid, makes drawing definitive conclusions from the fuel-adjusted lap times difficult.

The drivers in the top 10 shoot-out are not allowed to refuel between qualifying and the race, so their pace is dictated by how much fuel they have on board.

And once the weight of fuel in the cars in the final session is taken into account, Red Bull's Webber emerges as the fastest man in the field, with pole-man Barrichello second, albeit by a margin of only 0.056 seconds.

Qualifying was held in the wet, and forecasts for the race are mixed. But it is still possible to draw a sense of who might be in best shape for the race.

And with Webber fuelled to do two more laps than Barrichello, the Australian has the chance to jump the Brazilian at the pit stops.

Either way, those two have to be considered the hot favourites for race victory as it is difficult to see any of the drivers immediately behind them having the pace to challenge them, whether it is wet or dry.

Barrichello (centre) and Webber (right) look in strong shape for the Brazilian Grand Prix

The fuel-adjusted top 10, with predicted first pit stop laps, looks like this:

1 Mark Webber (lap 22)
2 Rubens Barrichello +0.056secs (lap 20)
3 Adrian Sutil +0.231 (lap 23)
4 Jarno Trulli +0.361 (lap 24)
5 Sebastien Buemi +0.501 (lap 24)
6 Kimi Raikkonen +0.622 (lap 20)
7 Nico Rosberg +0.631 (lap 23)
8 Kazuki Nakajima +0.790 (lap 26)
9 Robert Kubica +0.963 (lap 22)
10 Fernando Alonso +1.862 (lap 20)

In terms of the championship battle, then, that is good news for Barrichello and terrible news for Jenson Button, who is down in 14th on the grid.

Barrichello heads into the race 14 points adrift of Button, and must make up at least five points on his team-mate to keep his title hopes alive going into the final race in Abu Dhabi in two weeks' time.

On the face of it, his chances of that look pretty good - Barrichello's hopes of scoring at least eight points, for second place, are strong, with 10 for the win. If Barrichello is second, Button would need to finish at least fifth to win the title - a difficult job from that far back. And if the Brazilian wins, the Englishman would have to be third.

Realistically, then, Sunday's race will be yet another exercise in damage limitation for Button - but then he's been getting rather a lot of experience in that in recent races.

Two places behind him, things are more clear-cut for the final title contender, Webber's team-mate Sebastian Vettel. With a 16-point deficit to Button, he has to score seven more points than Button just to keep his hopes alive. The German has no choice but to simply throw caution to the wind and go for it.

Interlagos, home to the Brazilian Grand Prix for the last 19 years, is a place of pilgrimage - and more often than not a good spot for a party too.

But to better understand the roots of the nation's passion for motor racing the Mole first paid a visit to the Morumbi cemetery in Sao Paulo's suburbs.

There, at the peak of the hill and under the shade of a single tree, lies the final resting place of Ayrton Senna, Brazil's best-loved racing superstar.

For someone who is idolised by his nation, Senna's memorial is surprisingly modest. A few pots of chrysanthemums and sunflowers nestled in one corner of the grave and two Brazilian 'auriverde' flags fluttered in the fading early evening light.

Despite its modesty, the tranquil haven, which keeps the city's looming skyscrapers at bay with a ring of trees, is a fitting place to reflect on Brazil's sublime but fated last world champion.

Senna captured three world titles for McLaren in a dazzling F1 career that was cut short in a fatal accident at Imola in 1994.

And his legacy has fanned the flames of Brazil's passion for motorsport and heaped expectation on those who dare to follow in his tracks.

"There were champions Emerson Fittipaldi (1972 and 1974) and Nelson Piquet (1981, 1983 and 1987) but since Senna motor racing has been like a religion," explained Ferrari driver Felipe Massa's brother Eduardo, 'Dudu' for short.

"Every Sunday, every Brazilian is waiting to see the race. Football is still in first position but after that the passion is for cars."

Senna's nephew Bruno, who is close to making his F1 debut in 2010, added: "Everyone expects the next Piquet, Fittipaldi and Senna to come and give Brazil some titles. That is the mission for all the new drivers coming in."

But Brazilian fans have had a lot less to cheer about this season.

Massa struggled to follow-up his runners-up performance in 2008 in an uncompetitive Ferrari before narrowly escaping a career-ending head injury at the Hungarian GP.

Then Nelson Piquet Jr lost his Renault race seat before revelations he purposely crashed at the 2008 Singapore race shocked F1 and left his reputation in tatters.

F1 veterans remarked that Friday's thin crowds were unusual for Interlagos, but with the cheapest tickets around £50 the empty stands were probably down to cash-flow rather than a lack of enthusiasm.

It has been left to the oldest man on the grid, Rubens Barrichello, to carry Brazilian hopes, and the man nicknamed 'flip-flop foot' by fans because of his mixed results could fulfil them at long last at the age of 37.

"Brazil can be quite tough and supportive at the same time," says Barrichello, who is in the hunt for a maiden world title, 14 points behind his Brawn team-mate Jenson Button.

"They wish that they had a new world champion and say: 'We haven't won for so many years, this is your chance, give us that feeling.'

"But I have that feeling - I want to win the world championship too."

Brazil may not have been swept away by Barrichello fever when he was relegated to as Michael Schumacher's support act during his six years at Ferrari but it has been hard to put a lid on their excited expectations at Interlagos this weekend.

Each glimpse of Barrichello was met by clapping, shouting and chants of 'Rubinho' from fans poised on the verge of positive heckling.

The Mole emerged unscathed from an early morning foray into the cheap seats - a plastic beer cup hurled when stood too close to some Argentina fans notwithstanding.

Fans decked out in Brawn hats, hoisting the occasional anti-Button banner, seemed to mention 'Rubinho' in every second breath.

When Barrichello wrestled the wet weather to grab pole position in his home town of Sao Paulo, the ecstatic chants seeped through the walls of the television compound.

In the aftermath of Senna's death, Barrichello, who was also involved in a big crash during practice for the 1994 San Marino race, said: "It is impossible to be like Senna. He was different.

"Everyone wants to do something for him. The guys in the World Cup team want to win for Senna."

This time Brazil will be behind Barrichello as 'Rubinho' attempts to drive to his place in the history books - and if he doesn't succeed he'll probably still be smiling.

The last few laps of the Singapore Grand Prix were agony for Ross Brawn and his engineers on the pit wall. As Lewis Hamilton crossed the finish line, they sat, expressionless, for a full 30 seconds until Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello crossed the line fifth and sixth, with next-to-no brakes. Only then did anyone say a word.

Strangely enough, telemetry sensors were reporting that the wear was acceptable, but the amount of carbon dust coming out of the front wheel spinners told a different story.

The Brawn team knew from first practice that their Brembo brakes were an issue. They were running very hot, so much so that the rear wheel fairings had to be removed to aid cooling.

It was a mark of how seldom Brawn feels the need to talk to Button during the race that he had to identify himself on the radio before telling his driver to bring the car home.

Button would have understood the subtext of that soothing voice: Brawn would be issuing the same instruction to Barrichello behind him, so Button knew he could back off and would not be challenged by his team-mate.

Barrichello may look back on Singapore as the race where his championship challenge ended. When he came in for his second stop, he couldn't engage neutral on the gearbox.

Button beat him out of the pits by a little more than that five seconds, so while it might not turn out to be crucial in the championship, the stalled pit stop did hand back one place (and crucially some momentum) to Button as they go to Suzuka.

Observing Ross Brawn through the second half of the season, one gets the impression there is much more pressure on him now it is his name above the door.

During his time at Ferrari he always spoke about how he felt protected by the organisation headed by Jean Todt and Luca di Montezemolo, which left him to get on with his job of technically directing the team. Now he has to do both jobs, and while you'll never be able to tell it from our interviews, Brawn is feeling just as much pressure as his drivers.

McLaren

We wrote about the idea of Kimi Raikkonen moving back to McLaren on this website at the European Grand Prix, and I examined the likelihood in this column back after Belgium a week later. So remember where you read it first!

The rumour was Ferrari lawyer Henry Peter was in Singapore to hammer out a contract settlement with Raikkonen's management team, but I didn't see him in the paddock, so I can't confirm that. Not that he'd be so obvious as to do that deal in the paddock, of course.

There are a couple of things that I'd expect might be problematic if Raikkonen does 'go home' to McLaren.

First, he would be back under the command of their massive marketing company, and will be obliged to do all the appearances expected of a McLaren driver. The same ones he couldn't wait to get away from when he joined Ferrari.

And second, I wouldn't expect Lewis Hamilton would like having Raikkonen as a team-mate one bit.

Since Raikkonen left, McLaren has become Hamilton's team. But McLaren still hold Kimi in such high regard, that there could be a natural re-focusing on Raikkonen.

The problem comes if both win races. If this year's impressive development is anything to go by, McLaren should have the fastest car in F1 next year.

Could we see a repeat of 2007 with both McLaren drivers going for the title, both winning races but then losing the championship to someone else? To Fernando Alonso in a Ferrari, perhaps?

Red Bull

Mark Webber has a point when he argues that the rules about driving off the track and gaining an advantage are not being applied consistently.

Webber was forced wide by Alonso, so the Australian drove over the kerb and outside the circuit white line to avoid a collision.

I understand race director Charlie Whiting tells the drivers that if they put all four wheels off the circuit to gain or maintain a position, they have to give that place back or expect a penalty.

Webber highlighted Kimi Raikkonen's trip off the circuit on the first lap of the Belgian Grand Prix, which undoubtedly maintained him second place, but went unpunished.

Whiting will doubtless listen to Webber's viewpoint, but it's largely academic for Mark, whose race - and championship challenge - was ended by a brake disc failure.

BMW

I asked BMW team boss Mario Theissen if his engineers had run Nick Heidfeld underweight in qualifying deliberately to gain an advantage. His reply was: "If we'd done it deliberately, we wouldn't have told anyone about it."

To explain what happened: When Heidfeld's car came back from post qualifying scrutineering, BMW engineers weighed it and found it lighter than they expected.

Kubica can claim one of Singapore's stellar drives for his battle to eighth place

They knew how much fuel they had put in and how much Nick had consumed, so BMW worked out that their zero fuel weight was less than the regulation 605kg.

On closer examination, they found that mechanics had mistakenly fitted ballast blocks that were too light.

What BMW could have done was to knowingly do the race with a car that was capable of being underweight at a certain time - namely at the end of a stint when the fuel was low.

At the final pit stop they would then put more fuel in than was necessary to do the last stint, but was enough to keep them over the weight limit.

Or Heidfeld could have drunk a few kilos of water, or worn heavy boots, that sort of thing.

Instead they very honestly pulled the car out of parc fermé, replaced the ballast to make the zero fuel weight and took the opportunity to use a ninth engine, becoming first team to do so this season.

In the other car, Robert Kubica drove his socks off for, as he described it, the most difficult point he has ever earned in his life. It was a massively impressive drive, right up there with Alonso's run to the podium.

Renault

Renault's new ING-free team clothes and race suits arrive in Japan this week. The only benefit of the orange title sponsor pulling out is that the car should end up looking much more colour-co-ordinated.

From the intense shockwaves that ran through the team all weekend, Alonso emerged to drive a fantastic race to score Renault's first podium of the season.

I got the feeling Alonso actually fed off the negativity that was directed Renault's way and he responded by picking up the team, putting it on his shoulders and driving the wheels off the car all weekend.

It now looks all but certain that Kubica will replace Alonso, which is a massive result for the beleaguered company. In Kubica, Renault have someone of Alonso's quality who is capable of winning races and scoring consistent points right from the start. He is someone around whom they can re-build their team.

The top 10 drivers in qualifying are not allowed to refuel before the race, so their pace is dictated by the amount of fuel on board, which also defines when they will come in for their first pit stop.

Once the weight of fuel in the cars is published, it is therefore possible to calculate a fuel-adjusted grid, and work out who is theoretically in best shape for the race.

Taking that into account, BBC Sport's fuel-adjusted grid, with projected first pit stops, looks like this:

Two things immediately stand out from that. The first is that the grid order has changed less after making this calculation for Singapore than it has at almost any race this year. The second is how big the gaps are between the drivers.

The lack of change in the order is a reflection of the fact that all the drivers in the top 10 have chosen remarkably similar strategies - with only five laps' difference between the drivers running longest (Glock and Kovalainen) and shortest (Vettel and Heidfeld).

Hamilton lit up the Marina Bay circuit despite his misgivings about the track

The big gaps between the drivers will at least partly be due to the length of the Singapore track, as well as the difficulty in putting together a perfect lap on such a bumpy, tricky circuit.

But they also emphasise what a superb performance Hamilton and McLaren have produced, and just what good shape they are in for the race. It's hard to see him losing from here, all things being equal.

The world champion is running quite long - lap 17 - to his first stop and yet he has a margin of more than 0.5secs on the next fastest driver, Rosberg, who jumps ahead of Vettel's Red Bull on fuel-adjusted times.

That is quite an achievement for Rosberg and Williams, and it underlines the pace they showed in the second qualifying, when the German put in a stonking lap to be fastest of all.

And the fuel-adjusted times do not make great reading for Vettel. He drops to third, will almost certainly lose places off the start because he is on the side of the grid that has less grip because it is off the racing line, and he is stopping early - lap 14.

Jenson Button, by contrast, will be encouraged. He has qualified only 12th, but his fuel load means he will be stopping on lap 26, so he may still have a shot at a strong points finish despite his lowly grid spot.

And a dark horse in the top 10? How about BMW's Kubica, who is ahead of team-mate Heidfeld on fuel-adjusted times, is starting on the clean side of the grid in ninth and has more fuel on board than anyone in front of him.

In a race when the safety car is expected to make an appearance at some point, these sorts of things can make a difference.

Such scenes are best viewed from above and so The Mole boarded the largest ferris wheel in the world, the Singapore Flyer, for a bird's eye perspective of practice.

From up high, it was fascinating to see the street circuit weave its way alongside the marina and under the city's flyover as every so often an F1 car darted beneath eight lanes of meandering traffic.

F1 in Singapore is a spectacular sight - but it plays havoc with the brains of those involved

While 15,000 white spheres light the drivers' way, beyond them the night sky is broken by the neon of Singapore's skyscrapers and the yellow glow of the city.

To put it simply, Singapore's night race is a stunning sight.

"It's the contrast that makes it so exciting," says Getty Images photographer Mark Thompson, who reckons all the snappers relish the chance to be creative in Singapore.

"It's about capturing the balance between dusk fading into night; the blurring movement of the lights and the cars and the totally unique environment of a race in the heart of a city."

Despite its visual appeal, Singapore's night racing requires the whole F1 circus - from the drivers, to the cooks and the media - to alter its thinking. Or, more accurately, to delude itself.

"I've always been told by my father to go to bed very early if I wanted to be a racing driver and here I must wait until 4am to go to bed," said Brawn's Brazilian driver.

"It's amazing! It's a totally different philosophy."

On-track activities may happen in the evening local time but media duties and team meetings drift on long into the early hours. To cope with 'pulling an all-nighter' the majority of the paddock continues to operate on European time.

McLaren say they go to sleep at 5am in Singapore and get up at 1pm while Brawn's reserve driver and BBC 5 Live analyst, Anthony Davidson, has even gone as far as keeping the hands of his wristwatch firmly fixed on UK time.

The concept of working in a different time zone is confusing; never has the phrase "what time is it?" been heard so often at BBC HQ, followed by "what UK or Singapore?"

Everyone has a tale to tell about the consequences of such confusion whether it's eating sushi for breakfast or mistakenly walking into a hotel linen cupboard in a semi-comatose state.

One experienced F1 hand was heard to say; "We'll really have to stay out of the sun in this heat during the race". What even at a night race?

To make matters worse, Singapore sticks rigidly to its own body clock, which means snoozing through the morning bustle or finding a restaurant that stays open beyond 2am requires great reserves of patience.

Luckily, the Mole's hunger has been sated by the discovery of a 24-hour food mall - recommended by the proprietor of the 24-hour corner shop - which serves up vegetables and steaming rice for £1.50.

Veterans of last year's inaugural grand prix have warned that as the weekend wears on, the body slowly starts to crave sunshine and night-time slumber and angrily demands to be switched to Singapore time.

As it happens, F1 will lurch forward eight hours sooner than it might like as everyone will go local - and hopefully not loco - for next week's Japanese Grand Prix.

Brawn

Following Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button's one-two in Monza, it was significant that team boss Ross Brawn wanted to stress how his drivers are sharing information on their car's set-up.

His words sounded like he had recently had to bash the drivers' heads together: "I demand they do it fairly and openly... Everything has to be on the table... They have to work together properly", Brawn told us after the race.

It is a difficult balance to strike, and not one he ever had to worry about at Ferrari, where Michael Schumacher's position was pre-eminent.

One regularly hears stories in the paddock about Button 'stealing' Barrichello's set-up - a subject Button discussed in Mark Hughes's column on this website this week - but it's only now the championship is getting tight that the two drivers have started to discuss it publicly.

Anyone who has worked with Barrichello will tell you he is brilliant at setting up the car. Evidently he arrives at the optimum set-up quite quickly and knows how to avoid dead ends.

To use a mining metaphor, Barrichello knows how to identify and then drill down to the richest seam of performance set-up gold, dig it out and reap the benefits.

Why?

He has experience - 284 races worth - as well as an exceptional feel for the car and good judgement of track conditions.

The only thing that could hinder his championship run-in, then, is damage to the gearbox that was damaged at the Belgian Grand Prix.

The fact it was burnt in an oil fire seems not to be too much of an issue. Brawn mechanics did an ultrasound scan on it on Sunday morning to detect any weakness or bonding flaws in the carbon-fibre casing, and found nothing amiss.

The over-torque it suffered is much more worrying than the burnt casing. An over-torque effectively means that too much turning force was put through the gearbox. That happened at the start in Spa, after the car went into anti-stall on the grid.

The last time this happened earlier in the season, Brawn engineers did have to change the box, and the team may elect to change it just to calm the nerves of Barrichello's race engineer Jock Clear nerves, if nothing else.

The problem is, Singapore, the next race, is massively hard on the gearbox, with loads of changes from seventh down to second and back up again.

The Spa gearbox then has to do Suzuka as well, which is not as high duty a race as Singapore, but still pretty demanding.

Given that a change of gearbox incurs a five-place grid penalty, this could have a serious effect on Barrichello's chances of challenging Button for the championship.

Red Bull

Team boss Christian Horner couldn't have been much clearer about who was to blame for his team's poor showing in Monza than if he'd had 'It was the engine' tattooed in capital letters on his forehead.

He spoke in the F1 Forum about having to run low downforce to make up for "our weakness", by which he meant the engine's lack of top-end grunt.

Indeed, I'd like to be the first to predict that when Red Bull eventually lose the championship at the end of the season, their final press release will be three people blaming Renault, and a Renault quote blaming the car.

The truth is somewhere in between. The Renault engines have been unreliable but so have BMW's and the Renault was powerful enough to win at Silverstone and China, with their long straights, so they can't be that bad.

Given that they expect to be strong in Japan, Red Bull are considering taking the ninth engine for Sebastian Vettel in Singapore to get the consequent 10-place grid penalty out of the way before Suzuka and ensure he has a relatively fresh unit for that race. We shall see.

In the meantime, Red Bull were not hiding their expected new Mercedes link-up, with team owner Dietrich Mateschitz openly discussing the situation with Mercedes sports boss Norbert Haug on the Monza grid.

They're a bit stuck at present as they need to wait for governing body the FIA to allow Mercedes to supply a fourth team, but once that is done, we can expect the Red Bull-Mercedes deal to be announced.

Ferrari

We didn't get around to mentioning it on the telly, but I found out what caused that strange moment of hesitation when Kimi Raikkonen tried to pull away from his second stop.

It was a fail-safe system that kicked in to stop the car if the fuel hose is still attached.

This is a legacy of the pit-stop traffic-light system that effectively cost Felipe Massa the world championship at the Singapore Grand Prix last year when he pulled away from the pits with the fuel hose still attached.

After that, the FIA asked the teams to come up with an immobiliser that would keep the car in the box if the fuel hose were still attached, even if the driver tried to pull away.
Ferrari came up with the system and has been using it this season.

There is a sensor on the fuel coupling on the car. When the fuel nozzle pushes it in, it immobilises the car. When it pops out, after the nozzle comes off, the car can go.

In Kimi's case, the fuel hose was off, but only just, so the trigger sensor cut the engine revs to idle. Kimi tried again, and it worked. It lost Raikkonen a second or two, which could have lost a place to Sutil, had the Force India driver not been experiencing a troubled pit stop of his own.

As for Giancarlo Fisichella's weekend, he seemed fairly pleased with it, and ninth place was a respectable result.

I put it to Fisi's old friend and now new engineer Rob Smedley that Ferrari weren't making it easy for their drivers, forcing them to make so many adjustments to the car each lap for the Kers power-boost system and other parameters. (At last count I made it 14 different knobs and adjustment buttons on the Ferrari steering wheel, and that does not include the brake bias lever.)

Smedley admitted there was a high workload, but made the valid point that professional racing drivers should have the wit to change a few knobs on the steering wheel while driving.

Smedley also confirmed that Felipe Massa would be starting his physical training programme soon, before starting to drive again in a go-kart.

Strange as it might sound, a kart with the right tyres is the closest you can get to modern F1 in terms of cornering forces, without hiring a circuit and borrowing a current GP2 team or an historic F1 car.

The drivers who are in the top-10 shoot-out are not allowed to refuel after qualifying, so once the weights of the cars are revealed it is possible to work out who was genuinely the fastest man in qualifying - as well as the lap on which they are likely to make their first pit stop.

At Monza, that honour went to McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen. Having qualified an impressive fourth with a heavy fuel load, the Finn is therefore in theoretically the strongest position to win the race. But the Brawn drivers also look to have a very strong chance - and if the Mole was to stick his neck out and make a prediction, it would be to make Button the favourite for victory. But we'll come back to that in a minute.

BBC Sport's full fuel-adjusted top 10, with predicted first pit stops, is as follows:

The first thing that strikes one about that list is just how close it is between the major contenders. Only 0.073 seconds separates the top four drivers on fuel-adjusted times. And that makes predicting a likely winner very difficult indeed.

On paper, a two-stop strategy (Hamilton, Sutil and Raikkonen) is marginally faster - but in practice stopping only once is often the best way to run a race at Monza.

Heikki Kovalainen is on fuel-adjusted Monza pole but can he convert that into a win?

That is because to make a two-stop strategy work, a driver has to run at his optimum pace nearly all the time - and it is very difficult to ensure that happens because a team whose driver is stopping early will find it very difficult to ensure he comes out in a place where he is not going to get held up by a slower car.

Hamilton needs to make the most of what is likely to be a clear track in front of him by pressing on as hard as he can in the opening stages of the race.

He needs to make up enough time to ensure that when he emerges from his first stop anyone in front of him is going fast enough, on what by then should be a lighter fuel load, not to hold him up.

If anyone is going to make a two-stop strategy work, though, it is Hamilton.
Starting from pole, in a car fitted with the Kers power-boost system, the world champion is in the perfect place to capitalise on his team's planning.

Even so, Kovalainen is still in a very strong position. With Kers, he is likely to get ahead of Sutil's Force India at the start. And even though he may not pass Raikkonen, he should not be held up by the Ferrari in the first stage of the race.

The question mark over Kovalainen is whether he has the consistency of race pace to fulfil his potential - it has been his relatively poor performances in races so far this year that has put his position in the team under threat.

The Brawn drivers are also in a potentially very strong position to score some serious points and perhaps even win, as they made clear in their interviews on the BBC immediately after qualifying.

Barrichello and Button may only be fifth and sixth on the grid but they are both fuelled heavy - and it would be a surprise if both of them are not in contention once their single stops are out of the way.

So, why make Button the favourite? That is because of Kovalainen's inconsistent form in races and the fragile gearbox in Barrichello's car.

Certainly both Brawn drivers have a golden opportunity to effectively put some serious distance between them and their Red Bull rivals in the championship. For while Vettel and Webber are also fuelled long, they are starting far enough back that it will be difficult for them to make up the ground.

For the record, the calculated first pit stops for the rest of the field are as follows:

11 Jarno Trulli (lap 35)
12 Romain Grosjean (lap 33)
13 Robert Kubica (lap 31)
14 Giancarlo Fisichella (lap 28)
15 Nick Heidfeld (lap 31)
16 Timo Glock (lap 37)
17 Kazuki Nakajima (lap 33)
18 Nico Rosberg (lap 34)
19 Sebastien Buemi (lap 34)
20 Jaime Alguersuari (lap 34)

If team-mates are listed on the same lap, the one who is leading in the race when the stops approach tends to be given priority.

But once the car turned into the gates of the royal park, the landscape completely changed and all the talk about the magic of Monza suddenly made sense.

So, this is why the Milan Automobile Club defied conservationists in 1922 to build a track in the middle of a wood. This is why Italians call it "La Pista Magica" - the magic track - and why Ferrari's tifosi flock to see the majestic red cars fly round the fastest circuit in F1.

It is hard not to feel a sense of time and space, past and present becoming blurred under the camouflage of the trees.

Ferrari's Giancarlo Fisichella glides over a Monza circuit which carves through woods near Milan

Cycle paths weave through the dusty, leaf-strewn ground and after a while the sight of fans pedalling with large Ferrari flags billowing behind them no longer comes as a surprise.

After all, this is a place of pilgrimage for fans of Ferrari, who have won the Italian Grand Prix here 17 times.

"Monza has been in Formula 1 since 1950, it has so much history and many world champions," said Francesco, from Tuscany, in proud tones.

"My father taught me to love Ferrari, I have taught my son and we are all here. It is an honour and a pleasure."

A group of Kimi Raikkonen supporters were so keen to spot a flash of red flying by that they had constructed a tent against the mesh of the fence at the foot of the Ascari grandstand. It probably seemed like a good idea until a storm broke through the trees on Friday evening.

This circuit and the fans go hand-in-hand like no other stop on the F1 circuit and, decked out in red with scarlet hair and painted faces, the tifosi certainly make their presence felt.

"Ferrari is a magic symbol for Italy," explains Signor Setta from Milan. "All our heart is only for Ferrari. It is impossible not to love them."

Away from the Scuderia merchandise stands and the treasure troves of tempting memorabilia stalls lie real relics of Monza's history and the deeper into the woods you go, the larger history looms.

The remains of the famous high-banked oval track still stand beside the current grand prix track, which is flatter but no less furious.

The oval was built in 1955 but was abandoned just six years later after too many drivers questioned the safety of powering around its steep walls. Clambering up the 65-degree slope of the curve, the idea of driving around it seems gravity-defying never mind absurdly dangerous.

It was Wolfgang von Trips' fatal crash in 1961 on the approach to Parabolica on the flat track, in which 14 spectators also died, which prompted the oval to be closed for good.

Even without the oval, Monza holds the grizzly record of causing more fatalities than any other grand prix circuit.

Alberto Ascari, Jochen Rindt and Ronnie Peterson (left to right) lost their lives at Monza

Ferrari's two-time champion Alberto Ascari, the posthumous 1970 world champion Jochen Rindt and 1970s legend Ronnie Peterson are just some of those who lost their lives here.

Some say you can hear the ghosts moving still between the trees. Such eerie tales may be far-fetched but F1 history and fate have never seemed more tangible than when you are deep in Monza's woods.

More than 170,000 people flocked to see the return of Oviedo's favourite son in his beloved Spanish hometown at the weekend. And they were not to be disappointed.

Fernando Alonso put on a great show and looked like he was enjoying himself as much as anyone in the crowd.

I was lucky enough to be there for two days to interview the double world champion and, more specifically, to witness him giving something back to the area in which he grew up.

It was intriguing to see Alonso away from the track. He was extremely relaxed and a true gentleman, giving time to all the wide-eyed fans who had come out to see him. It must have been a relief to have some fun and escape all the controversy haunting Renault and the swirling, persistent questions involving his future.

Though the 28-year-old always shies away from the limelight at the track (if not on it), he was in true showman role on Saturday as he drove a selection of Renault's road and sports cars - along with his new 'Fernando Alonso kart' - around the historic streets and squares of the northern Spanish city.

The highlight for me was not actually the F1 car, as these things can only go so fast down your average high street. But it was the car and kart control he displayed. This little machine took off like a rocket and Alonso's famous one-finger-in-the-air doughnut in the F1 car was completely outdone when he took both hands off the steering wheel and continued to do doughnuts in the kart. Incredible.

As he did endless laps of the two-kilometre track, he would stop, get out and run to the crowd, taking cameras off people, taking photos and sometimes making his own on-boards with someone's video camera. I have no idea if the cameras ever got back to the correct people, but someone in the crowd got them!

The interview afterwards was certainly interesting and although he was tight-lipped about his widely predicted move to Ferrari, he gave some very insightful answers about F1, his rivals, and especially how he sees himself as a driver: "I might not be fastest, or the most technical, but I am consistent."

He also told me he is desperate to win not just one more title, but hopefully more. 'Nando' is always a good interviewee, giving intelligent and considered answers. But this weekend also showed him to be a humble guy who loves his country and is keen to give something back. Even if he wouldn't answer questions about prancing horses last weekend, I would think maybe this weekend in Monza we will get a bit closer to the truth.

The feature can be seen on BBC1's coverage of the Italian Grand Prix from Monza from 1210 BST on Sunday 13 September.

Ferrari

Kimi Raikkonen has done what he said he would do all season - win a race. One has the feeling that, in his mind, his targets have been achieved for the season.

The win was a massive relief for Ferrari. To have not won a race all season would have been unacceptable.

But as Murray Walker points out elsewhere on this website, Raikkonen's win has made it six different winners from the last six races: Jenson Button, Sebastian Vettel, Mark Webber, Lewis Hamilton, Rubens Barrichello, Raikkonen.

The last time that happened in F1 was 1985.

As for Luca Badoer, it was the Ferrari team radio broadcast during Friday practice that summed up his F1 return.

Engineer Rob Smedley had taken to telling Badoer where he was driving well and where he was not.

You'd have thought a professional racing driver would know where he was doing well or losing time. But with the help of telemetry, Rob was able to give real-time driver coaching:

"The driving is good, the driving is good, apart from corner 10 (Pouhon). You need to carry more speed through corner 10".

Smedley famously helps Massa with the driving, too, but it tends to happen in the debrief between sessions, not when he's out on the track.

In fairness, after the race, both Stefano Domenicali and Chris Dyer paid tribute to how tough the job was and how well Luca Badoer had done on such short notice. It sounded like a farewell.

Brawn

I fear there may be a possible five-place grid penalty in Rubens Barrichello's near future.

Thanks to an oil leak, his car was properly on fire as it came into parc fermé after the race. He had a new gearbox and a new engine fitted on Saturday morning.

Brawn are now assessing the damage caused in Belgium and will make a decision after running it on Friday at Monza whether they need to change the gearbox again.

Since he finished the race in the points, the rules say Barrichello must use the same gearbox for the next three races. Any change would incur a five-place grid penalty.

In many ways, that would be as good for Button's world championship hopes as seeing Vettel score the most points out of the Belgian weekend.

Indeed, Spa was the second race in a row where the fourth-placed driver in the championship picked up the most points of the title contenders. So with another race gone, Button's championship prospects don't look too bad.

Red Bull

Team boss Christian Horner and team adviser Helmut Marko had a very public discussion with Mercedes boss Norbert Haug in the paddock on Saturday, just in case anyone wasn't aware that Red Bull are chasing a supply of Mercedes-Benz engines.

Red Bull's problems with their existing Renault engines, and the number of failures they have been suffering, are having an ever-greater effect on their championship.

Not only will Vettel have less time to practice and find a good race set-up on Fridays because of his limited engine running, but there was also an engine scare during the race on Mark Webber's car.

We heard a team radio message telling Webber to stay off the kerb at Eau Rouge.

Horner confirmed after the race that this was related to some spikes in oil pressure that they had seen on the telemetry that could lead to further engine problems.

Taking a smoother line through Eau Rouge seemed to solve the problem.

McLaren

The prospect of Kimi Raikkonen returning to McLaren seems to be one of the more plausible outcomes of the driver market.

Many people at McLaren still love Raikkonen; in many ways he's the perfect McLaren driver.
For a team that grounds their engineering in pure mathematics and physics, to have an unemotional, repetitive - almost robotic - driver in the car is much easier than having a man who is inconsistent and variable.

You'll never be able to prove anything with an inconsistent driver, because you'll never know if what you're changing on the car is working.

McLaren engineers still talk with wonder about Raikkonen's consistent lap times. He was so good, they say, because he would come back to the pits, say what was wrong, they would fix it and he would go out and go faster. Simple.

Team boss Martin Whitmarsh, who values his engineers' opinions highly, wouldn't rule out employing Raikkonen again when asked on Saturday afternoon.

He also said the team wanted to employ the two best drivers they could, despite the problems they had with Hamilton and Alonso two years ago.

Raikkonen only left McLaren because his relationship with then-team boss Ron Dennis deteriorated when he signed Fernando Alonso. Is history repeating itself at Ferrari?

How Lewis Hamilton would feel about having Raikkonen in the other McLaren is another matter.

As a matter of interest, in the McLaren post-race press release, every quote - with the exception of Hamilton's - praises Kimi for his win.

Given that most McLaren people would rather undergo root canal surgery than publicly praise Ferrari, one can't help thinking there's a bit of 'preparing the ground' going on here.

Out of the top eight finishers on Sunday, only Sebastian Vettel knows for certain who he is driving for next season after penning a new deal with Red Bull in Valencia.

Speculation over the fate of race winner Kimi Raikkonen, said to be on his way out of Ferrari despite having a contract for 2011, McLaren incumbent Heikki Kovalainen, McLaren-linked Nico Rosberg and veteran Brawn driver Rubens Barrichello - all out of contract at the end of the season - kept the Belgium paddock humming.

In July, BMW announced it would terminate its four-year foray into Formula 1 as a manufacturer team this year, leaving both drivers without a drive for 2010.

Kubica has since been linked with a move to Williams while his best buddy Fernando Alonso's Renault seat is also up for grabs, once the Spaniard's not-to-secret switch to Ferrari is officially confirmed.

Good friends Alonso and Kubica are central to the F1 driver market this season

Renault, who are putting their heads together to roll out a more competitive car in 2010, are perceived to be a good option for Kubica but, despite rumours in Spa that it was a done deal, the Pole is in no hurry to commit to anything.

The 24-year-old is understood to have followed up talks with Brawn at the European GP with another sit-down in Belgium.

And a third option intriguingly emerged over the weekend - honouring the final year of his contract with whoever BMW morph into.

Kubica is understood to be happy to stay with the team, who have submitted an entry for next season, if they succeed in finding a suitable buyer.

He is said to be close to founder Peter Sauber, who owns a 20% stake in the team but had his takeover bid rejected by BMW at the beginning of August. Now, Sauber and team principal Mario Theissen are working hard to secure new investment for the team before the end of September.

After struggling with a sluggish BMW all season, staying with a team in transition would arguably do little to satiate Kubica's title-wining ambitions and talent. But the Pole is understand to want a one-year contract so he is free to move on in 2011 if a better drive becomes available.

Heidfeld is also confident he will find a drive for 2010 and the German has also been linked with a return to Williams, who he drove for in 2005.

The Italian GP on 13 September could well be an unexpected landmark in Fisichella's career if, as looks likely, he gets the nod as Felipe Massa's second stand-in for Ferrari and Monza traditionally provides the backdrop for handshakes on driver moves.

But in a season where The Mole is learning to expect the unexpected don't bet on things to be quite so straightforward this year.