Fortunately, I’m not sufficiently interested in soccer to be broken-hearted at England’s inglorious exit from the 2008 Championship. I like a sport where the superstars behave like heroes, the rules are simple, and the teams have a sporting rivalry unmarred by politics or personality clashes. Yes, give me Formula One any day.

Now what? The GTO is somewhere on the high seas –hopefully on, rather than under – struggling back from America, and it’s cold, wet and dark outside. The heating has broken in the hangar, which modified a nice afternoon wandering around, showing off my cars to a friend, into a frantic sprint to get out before frostbite took over.

I’ve got the GP Racewear and Demon Tweeks catalogues, and I’m seriously considering all those new lightweight helmets that are bound to make a significant improvement to my lap times. I like the attention to detail that creates better airflow, and possibly even downforce on driver and car, from the helmet shape. A five-lapper in the pre-war Aston could see a slightly shorter driver climbing out in the paddock.

It’s that time of year for those congratulatory events that are geared to persuade team sponsors to hang on in there. So what if the car failed at every race, the driver refused to talk to anyone, and the girl doing the catering took the last two engines in lieu of money owed? Next year it’s really going to be great!
I do admire the ability of the major teams to behave rather well as their sponsors are tempted away by the opposition, or a change of Board policy or chairman has seen complete withdrawal of millions of pounds of support. It makes the wife running off with another woman – and taking the dog – seem relatively minor.

It’s also time for all the motoring book launches. I know this because I found myself comparing notes with a friend at Richard and Mindy Hammond’s book celebration. Both of us were attired in our ‘smart casual’ attire – comprising the jacket kept for this sort of occasion. The pockets were full of cocktail sticks from last year’s sausages, as well as, more alarmingly from the Health and Safety point of view, some rather odd science experiments resulting from those canapés – often involving crab – that had been discreetly palmed into the pocket after a small bite had been taken, and then forgotten.

It’s interesting that Richard’s book has been enormously successful, due it must be noted to the fact that most of the input has come from Mrs H. As he said himself, he couldn’t actually remember very much...
It’s probably a rather extreme way of devising a subject, but it’s a lot more interesting to read about the really big accident than about an endless series of races that were either won or were stolen by some dastardly foreigner cheating; unless it’s the memoirs of the dastardly foreigner, in which case the rules reverse, if you get what I mean…

I speak with a little authority on this business of getting the wife to do the writing, as well as the cooking, cleaning, ironing and washing, having had my own column hijacked on odd occasions. My fragile ego took a real beating when I had to sit at a dinner listening to some lunatic waffling on about how much he liked my wife’s column in the mag. ‘Are you interested in cars as well?’ he asked me.

On a brighter note, I thought Lewis Hamilton was terrific on Top Gear recently. According to a mole in the Top Gear empire, they had fewer complaints than usual. In fact, only five. All were the same, and an alarming indication of the intelligence of the TV audience. The moaners were incensed that Lewis wasn’t on the programme: I guess the others just thought James Blunt was Lewis, but that he’d grown his hair a bit… If you didn’t see the programme, I’m sorry, but an explanation would take too long – just skip to another article.

The best part of the show was to watch a master at work in slow motion, for once a tribute to the concept of the reasonably priced car. My impression was that Lewis was finally easing out slightly from becoming the totally perfect corporate person, and if he can do that he will become my totally complete hero.
Earlier this year I was prevented by management from asking him the question that everyone really needed to know. Was it true he was going to extend his sideburns one inch for every GP win? And what would happen if they met under his chin? I think Lewis might now be prepared to let us know the truth.