Max Mosley is now on twitter.  He’s following 38 people at the time of writing, and I’m one of them!  I had no idea I was so influential!

I read his tweets and they seem credible so far, but I’m quite net-savvy so I’m not going to assume anything here.  He did say his IT team had helped him secure the @maxmosley username, which sounds credible too; if anyone else had it they would be making fake comments by now.

To confirm, I called Mr Mosley’s secretary in Monaco.  She didn’t know for sure, but said she would ask him when he returns to the office tomorrow and contact me to confirm whether it’s actually him.

I’ll let you know.

Edit: Max’s secretary never got back to me. The Twitter account has been suspended, so I assume it was fake. Would have been nice is someone had thanked me for bringing it to their attention, but that’s Max and the FIA for you.

Trulli slid onto the grass under yellow flags, and Hamilton went past him. When Trulli recovered, he then re-passed Hamilton (still under yellows). 

Vettel also received a penalty.

Revised result to follow.

1. Jenson Button
2. Rubens Barrichello
3. Jarno Trulli
4. Lewis Hamilton
5. Timo Glock
6. Fernando Alonso
7. Nico Rosberg
8. Sebastien Buemi
9. Sebastien Bourdais
10. Adrian Sutil
11. Nick Heidfeld
12. Giancarlo Fisichella
13. Mark Webber
14. Sebastian Vettel
15. Robert Kubica
16. Kimi Raikkonen
DNF Felipe Massa
DNF Nelson Piquet Jnr - spun
DNF Kazuki Nakajima - crashed
DNF Heikki Kovalainen - accident damage

Will post Championship standings as soon as I can, but may be a few days (busy).

Here’s the most important data for the start of the race (as at time of posting).

Pos / Driver / Team (engine) / Time / Race fuel (+/- 1 lap) / Pit-stop Strategy / Notes: KERS = using Kinetic Energy Recovery System (in Boost Button). Diff = Diffuser deemed ‘legal’, but stewards’ decision under appeal.

1 Jenson Button 22 Brawn (Mercedes engine) 1:26.202 Fuel 59.9kg/20 laps (2 stops) (Diff)
2 Rubens Barrichello 23 Brawn (Mercedes engine) 1:26.505 Fuel 61.6 kg/21 laps (2 stops) (Diff)
3 Sebastian Vettel 15 Red Bull (Renault engine) 1:26.830 Fuel 51.0 kg/17 laps (2 stops)
4 Robert Kubica 5 BMW Sauber 1:26.914 Fuel 45.0 kg/15 laps (2 stops)
5 Nico Rosberg 16 Williams (Toyota engine) 1:26.973 Fuel 52.0 kg/ 17 aps (2 stops) (Diff)
6 Felipe Massa 3 Ferrari 1:27.033 Fuel 49.0 kg/16 laps (2 stops) (KERS)
7 Kimi Raikkonen 4 Ferrari 1:27.163 Fuel 50.5 kg/17 laps (2 stops) (KERS)
8 Mark Webber 14 Red Bull (Renault engine) 1:27.246 Fuel 57.0 kg/19 laps (2 stops)
9 Nick Heidfeld 6 BMW Sauber 1:25.504 Fuel 86.0 kg/29 laps (1 stop) (KERS)
10 Fernando Alonso 7 Renault 1:25.605 Fuel 75.7 kg/25 laps (1 stop) (KERS)
11 Kazuki Nakajima 17 Williams (Toyota engine) 1:25.607 Fuel 75.5 kg/25 laps (1 stop) (Diff)
12 Heikki Kovalainen 2 McLaren (Mercedes engine) 1:25.726 Fuel 85.6kg/29 laps (1 stop) (KERS)
13 Sebastien Buemi 12 Toro Rosso (Ferrari engine) 1:26.503 Fuel 70.5 kg/24 laps (2 stops)
14 Nelson Piquet Jr 8 Renault 1:26.598 Fuel 89.1 kg/30 laps (1 stop) (KERS)
15 Giancarlo Fisichella 21 Force India (Mercedes engine) 1:26.677 Fuel 84.0 kg/28 laps (1 stop)
16 Adrian Sutil 20 Force India (Mercedes engine) 1:26.742 Fuel 79.5 kg/27 laps (1 stop)
17 Sebastien Bourdais 11 Toro Rosso (Ferrari engine) 1:26.964 Fuel 57.5 kg/19 laps (2 stops)
18 Lewis Hamilton 1 McLaren (Mercedes engine) (gearbox change) Fuel 50.0 kg/17 laps (2 stops) (KERS)
19 Timo Glock 10 Toyota (time excluded for ‘rear wing too flexible’) Fuel 55.0 kg/18 laps (2 stops) (Diff)
20 Jarno Trulli 9 Toyota (time excluded for ‘rear wing too flexible’) Fuel 65.0 kg/22 laps (2 stops) (Diff)

Australia 16/03/2008. Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes

Malaysia 23/03/2008 Kimi Räikkönen Ferrari

Bahrain 06/04/2008 Felipe Massa Ferrari

Spain 27/04/2008 Kimi Räikkönen Ferrari

Turkey 11/05/2008 Felipe Massa Ferrari

Monaco 25/05/2008 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes

Canada 08/06/2008 Robert Kubica BMW Sauber

France 22/06/2008 Felipe Massa Ferrari

Great Britain 06/07/2008 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes

Germany 20/07/2008 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes

Hungary 03/08/2008 Heikki Kovalainen McLaren-Mercedes

Europe 24/08/2008 Felipe Massa Ferrari

Belgium 07/09/2008 Felipe Massa Ferrari

Italy 14/09/2008 Sebastian Vettel STR-Ferrari

Singapore 28/09/2008 Fernando Alonso Renault

Japan 12/10/2008 Fernando Alonso Renault

China 19/10/2008 Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes

Brazil 02/11/2008 Felipe Massa Ferrari

Sorry about the lack of formatting; better to get it out soon than pretty.

Pos/Driver/Nationality/Team/Points

1 Lewis Hamilton. British. McLaren-Mercedes. 98 pts.

2 Felipe Massa. Brazilian. Ferrari. 97 pts.

3 Kimi Räikkönen. Finnish. Ferrari. 75 pts.

4 Robert Kubica. Polish. BMW Sauber. 75 pts.

5 Fernando Alonso. Spanish. Renault. 61 pts.

6 Nick Heidfeld German. BMW. Sauber. 60 pts.

7 Heikki Kovalainen. Finnish. McLaren-Mercedes. 53 pts.

8 Sebastian Vettel. German. STR-Ferrari. 35 pts.

9 Jarno Trulli. Italian. Toyota. 31 pts.

10 Timo Glock. German. Toyota. 25 pts.

11 Mark Webber. Australian. Red Bull-Renault. 21 pts.

12 Nelsinho Piquet. Brazilian. Renault. 19 pts.

13 Nico Rosberg. German. Williams-Toyota. 17 pts.

14 Rubens Barrichello. Brazilian. Honda. 11 pts.

15 Kazuki Nakajima. Japanese. Williams-Toyota. 9 pts.

16 David Coulthard. British Red. Bull-Renault. 8 pts.

17 Sebastien Bourdais. French. STR-Ferrari. 4 pts.

18 Jenson Button. British. Honda. 3 pts.

19 Giancarlo Fisichella. Italian. Force India-Ferrari. 0 pts.

20 Adrian Sutil. German. Force India-Ferrari. 0 pts.

21 Takuma Sato. Japanese. Super Aguri-Honda. 0 pts.

22 Anthony Davidson. British. Super Aguri-Honda. 0 pts.

Here’s the way the Constructors’ Championship ended last year.

1st: Ferrari 172
2nd: McLaren-Mercedes 151
3rd: BMW Sauber 135
4th: Renault 80
5th: Toyota 56
6th: Toro Rosso-Ferrari 34
7th: Red Bull-Renault 29
8th: Williams-Toyota 26
9th: Honda 14
10th: Force India-Ferrari 0 (lack of funds meant they couldn’t race after
Spain)

All times GMT

Friday 27 March
Practice (Times TBC): 0125-0305, BBC Red Button/BBC Radio 5 Live sports
extra/online
0525-0705, BBC Red Button/BBC Radio 5 Live sports extra/online

Saturday 28th March
Practice: 0255-0405, BBC Red Button/BBC Radio 5 Live sports extra/online
Qualifying: 0500-0715, BBC One/BBC Red Button/Radio 5 Live sports
extra/online
Re-run: 1300-1415, BBC One

Sunday 29th March All times BST
Race: 0600-0900, BBC One/BBC Red Button/Radio 5 Live/online
Race re-run: 1300-1500, BBC One/BBC Red Button/online
Highlights: 1900-2000, BBC Three/BBC Red Button/online

I think the ‘Red Button’ coverage is a small window, low bandwidth version.
We’ll have to wait and see.

Less than a week to go, and I’m way behind what I wanted to do before the
start of the season. Here’s the driver line-up.

McLaren: Lewis Hamilton, Heikki Kovalainen
Ferrari: Felipe Massa, Kimi Raikkonen
BMW Sauber: Robert Kubica, Nick Heidfeld
Renault: Fernando Alonso, Nelson Piquet Jr
Toyota: Janro Trulli, Timo Glock
Toro Rosso (Ferrari): Sebastien Bourdais, Sebastien Buemi
Red Bull (Renault): Mark Webber, Sebastian Vettel
Williams (Toyota): Nico Rosberg, Kazuki Nakajima
Force India: Adrian Sutil, Giancarlo Fisichella
Branw GP: Jenson Button, Rubens Barrichello

Last year’s standing will be posted later this week.

Follow me at www.twitter.com/BowenRacing for updates.

Google will replace their current Adsense advertising with Phorm-style interest-based advertising with effect from 1st April 2009.  They’re advising website owners to update their privacy policy becuase of this, but I don’t think that doing that is sufficient.

Their current Adsense ads show advertisements that are based on the content of the site on which the ads are shown.  For example, on this site the ads might include F1 race tickets or karting companies.  Google’s new Interest-based ads will show ads based on websites that the person has previously visited.  So, when someone visits a site that contains Google ads, Google assumes that the person is interested in the content of that site and records that person’s interest in it.  When that person visits another site with Google ads, Google will show ads based on the database of what Google considers interesting to that person.

This sounds like the Phorm (AKA Webwise) privacy scandal that BT and other ISPs got into before.  Basically, they installed equipment an advertising company’s equipment that monitored websites their customers visited, and served adverts related to those previous websites.  The Information Commissioner (Data Protection Act) and the EU law enforcers were concerned that privacy was being breached.  It seems that BT (and maybe Virgin and TalkTalk) are going to introduce this spyware-like technology at some point in the future.

Getting back to Google, they sent an email to website owners saying “your privacy policy will need to reflect the use of interest-based advertising”.  Well, I don’t have a privacy policy because I don’t collect personal data.  I’m certainly not going to spend time and money getting one drawn up so Google can earn more money by placing interest-based ads on my site; ads that might have nothing to do with the content of my site.

And having a privacy policy for a website is not sufficient legally, in my opinion.  In order to view the privacy policy, someone has to visit my website.  By visiting my website, their visit is logged by Google before the person has a chance to decide whether they want that data recorded or not.  So, in effect, data about their visit is collected without their consent, and that’s illegal in the UK.

Quite simply, this whole thing worries me.  It sounds like spyware.  After all, people’s browsing habits are being tracked without their express permission, and that to me is spyware.  So, come 1st April, my site will no longer be showing Google ads.  That leaves more space for me to add things that my visitors actually want to see.

Comments welcome, for or against.