I had thought that jbroomy or bc525 would have been all over this one but I suppose I'll do the honours instead.

Last weekend saw two major milestones reached in motorsport; not only did NASCAR finally decide to hold a race in the rain (and yes, I am peeved that they'll refuse to do it for the Cup series if Chad Knaus' report on 'TWIN' had a shred of truth to it), but we also had the 100th different winner in F1 history.

Heikki Kovalainen, aka 'Kovy', was the lucky driver in more ways than one.

He put in a great qualifying lap to start second behind his teammate, and Championship leader, Lewis Hamilton but at the Hungaroring, that means the dirty side of the track. Indeed, Felipe Massa's Ferrari got the jump on both McLarens and took the lead going into turn one with Kovy settling into third...and a rather lonely race for the Finn had begun.

Kovalainen became the 100th different driver to reach the top step of the podium.

Now, some drivers have no winning luck at certain tracks; Dale Earnhardt at the Daytona 500, Michael Schumacher at the Australian GP, Glenn Seton at Bathurst, Rubens Barrichello at Interlagos and Kimi Raikkonen at Hockenheim just to name a few (dare I add Marcos Ambrose at Montreal to that list?). However, Felipe Massa tends to have more than his fair share of bad luck than most (although, some of his retirements are down to brainfades mind you...not good if he wants to win the title one day) and around Hungary, that 'luck factor' is even worse as he hadn't had a good points race there in his entire career.

That was set to change on Sunday as not only did he manage to get the jump on Lewis at the start, but he was able to slowly build his lead over the next 40 odd laps before he could cruise when Hamilton got a puncture on his left front tyre (either from flat spotting or debris, I'm not sure) with 29 laps to go (70 lap race by the way). At that time, Felipe's lead over Kovy was around 23 seconds and it looked a forgone conclusion that Massa was about to retake the Championship lead as Lewis had to work his way through the field for the second straight race. However, the racing Gods had something else in mind and as Felipe came down the front straight to start lap 68, his Ferrari V8 engine let go in a huge cloud of smoke and his race was over.

And so, that left Kovy to pick up the pieces and secure his first grand prix victory. The Finn, in just his second season finally broke through and repaid the faith Ron Dennis showed by replacing Fernando Alonso, the man who had won the 2005 and 2006 titles, with him. Now, I pretty much expected Kovy to struggle against Lewis this season since Lewis had all of 2007 to get used to 'the McLaren way', but now that he has that first win, his confidence at a title shot in 2009 would have been significanlty boosted.

As for the luckless Massa...well, he can take heart in the fact that his teammate came from further back this time last year to win the Championship so all is not lost yet.

Episode three of my epic, and very irregular, 'poke fun at motorsport' series. If you don't like having a sledgehammer taken to your favourite driver, I suggest you stop reading this now...although this is just F1 so most probably don't have a clue with half the names anyway. 

The Formula One season kicked o...uh, green lighted off (not quite the same ring I think you'd agree) in Melbourne two weekends ago and it was thoroughly dominated by the McLaren duo of Lewis "do as I say, not as I do" Hamilton and Heikki "from henceforth dubbed Kovy as it's far easier on the keyboard" Kovalainen which was a big surprise as Ferrari looked to have stolen several marches on the field during testing...the joys of the unpredictabilty of motorsport, eh?

Lewis took the pole from Robert "I'm starting to catch my teammate" Kubica and, yet again, dived straight across the track off the startline to block Robert...clearly Lewis has yet to read the memo about it being bad form to #### on about unfair blocking tactics from other drivers (Alonso at Spa) when you keep doing it yourself. The Kimster got off to a great start for 2008, making me look like an #### for believing he had got over his 'car breaker' tag...thanks, Kimi, you cost me in Will's trifecta, mate. Not only did he start mid-grid, he then got stuck behind Rubens' Honda for half the race, elected not to pit under the safety car that came out mid-distance (insane as that would have put him in a great position to win the race), spun trying to pass Kovy on the restart and spun again trying to pass Toyota's rookie, Timo Glock, before retiring his limping horse when his engine went AWOL...not a good day for the reigning Champion. His teammate faired little better, sel####estructing in the race taking out, firstly himself by spinning at turn one and then David Coulthard as he was trying to make his way through the field...DC won't be sending Felipe any Christmas cards this year if his interview afterwards was anything to go by.

Drive of the day belonged to Sebestian "Mr Champ Car" Bourdais who was on for fourth place until his engine let go less than two laps from the chequered flag while Glock got both Air-time and Crash of the day when he launched himself over the accessway and destroyed his car on landing...I don't think he actually hit the wall so the fact it got that damaged is truly an amazing effort. Kovy got done out of second place when the final safety car came out handing the place to Nick.

On to Malaysia then where Ferrari managed to show the pace everyone knew they had, monopolising the front row while the Maccas were pinged for being morons in the qualifying session by holding up Nick "the most underrated driver in the history of F1" Heidfeld as he attempted to complete his final flying lap. I will see if I can find the onboard camera form Nick's car so you can see the closing speeds as he had to duck and dive around the other cars...so why did just the McLarens get penalised, you ask? Well, of the other seven cars that were also trolling around at, what seemed like, 10 mph, only Lewis and Kovy were on the racing line. Of course, McLaren pleaded innocence saying it was purely coincidental that BMW were the best chance of ruining McLarens second row starting spots. The FIA gave both silver cars a five car penalty and they started the race from 8th and 9th, Kovy in front.

Here we go...good thing Nick used his head or McLaren would require two new cars for the race.

As expected, Ferrari ran away with the race, Kimi jumping Felipe at the first round of pitstops, but, as we've seen several times in his career, Felipe threw his race away when he exited the track, stage left. Of all the drivers, he was the one I was most worried about handling no traction control and so far has a big doughnut after two rounds...not boding well at all. My man, Mark Webber, had a great start...amazingly...and held up Lewis for the first two thirds of the race, helped by Lewis losing (at least) ten seconds on his first pitstop. Kovy managed to come through for third while Robert grabbed BMW's second consecutive second place finish. Jarno Trulli somehow ended up fourth showing that Toyota's early season pace isn't limited to just NASCAR...it remains to be seen if that keeps up the rest of the year however.

The circus heads to Bahrain next where it's BMW's turn to have bad luck and I'm expecting Kimi to be leading the Championship after that race...so naturally it'll still be Lewis in front instead.

Just a few over the last 15 years...I narrowed it down to these since there are lots of cases. Oh, and remember, this is just my take on them so don't bother crying about my opinions as you won't be getting any sympathy from me.

Michael Schumacher is involved in four of them; his accidents with Damon Hill (1994) and Jacques Villeneuve (1997) while Rubens Barrichello and himself got into some hot water in Austria (2002) and lastly the tyre issue in 2003.

1994 saw him clip the wall before Damon tried to muscle his way past at the next turn. Both drivers retired from the impact and Michael won his first F1 Driver's title. The shot of Michael's Benetton Ford up on two wheels with him still trying to steer remains as one of the coolest photos in Formula 1. No penalty was forthcoming from the FIA who figured this was just a racing incident.

1997 saw a similar situation but a different outcome. Again, Michael was leading the race only for his final set of tyres to not perform as he would have liked and Jacques quickly closed in and dived down the inside to pass him. Michael turned in, they collided and Michael was left stranded in the gravel while Jacques carried on to finish third, enough for him to clinch the Championship. The FIA did penalise Michael for this; he was stripped of his second place in the standings but allowed to keep his statistics (number of wins, pole positions, etc) in the history books.

The Austrian GP of 2002 hailed the start of the 'team orders' rule after Rubens thoroughly dominated the race only to pull over on the start/finish straight (literally yards before taking the chequred flag) to gift Michael the win. Ferrari said it was for the title so Michael could gain the extra points, but the FIA (and fans alike) viewed it differently. Ferrari had such a car advantage over the others that there was no need for the team to tell Rubens to move over. The only penalty (that I can recall) was the introduction of that new rule.

The Formula 1 season of 2003 had the potential to be a classic going into the final handful of races; Michael Schumacher, Juan Montoya and Kimi Raikkonen were all but level when the circus hit Monza in September. That's when things started to fall apart for Kimi and Juan. Michelin (tyre supplier for McLaren and Williams) got told that their tyres did not conform to the regulations. The problem was that while the tyres passed the pre-race inspection, Ferrari claimed that they became illegal during the race as they exceeded the maximum allowable tread width. Michelin had been using the tyre since the San Marino race (first half of the year) without any problems but changed their tyres rather than protest it. The end result was that Michael again won the title...and many fans were left disgruntled about what might have happened had the tread issue not surfaced.

And let us not forget the 2005 Indy GP...I won't even bother talking about that since you only need one word to sum it up; farce.

The 2006 Daytona 500 was an interesting race. Jimmie Johnson lost his Crew Chief, Chad Knaus, for car infringements (and Chad was suspended for a few races). This didn't stop Jimmie as he powered his Lowes Chevy to the front to start the year off as he finished it; number 1. It was a wonderful year for the #48; Daytona 500 winner, All-Star Race winner and the Championship, it doesn't come much better than that. During the races Chad wasn't there, Jimmie was on fire, scoring a couple wins and consolidating his Championship lead.

Same track, but different year. 2007 saw Toyota enter the Cup (and Busch) series for the first time. Michael Waltrip switched from Dodge to Toyota and we had the infamous 'fuel sample' debacle. To this day we don't know exaclty what was in it, but Mikey was pinged as it was alleged that the substance might have been rocket fuel. Up until a few weeks ago, he was still in the negative in the points standings.

So now we come to the two incidents involving the new car. Both DEI and HMS played around where they should not, and both received the same penalty; 100 points off (Owners and Drivers), $100k fine and Crew Chief suspended from action for 6 races. NASCAR have told everyone (repeatedly) not to mess around with the car as they will punish you. There will always be people who argue that the penalties weren't fair on either team as the circumstances were different...but you can't say that NASCAR is showing favouritism in this regard since both teams got exactly the same thing.

But the question is this; should the penalties for tinkering with the new car have been more? Should both teams have deserved having the book chucked at them, being booted out for the rest of the year, thrown in jail...or whatever else people can dream up. Was it cheating? DEI have said it was an accident that the wrong brackets were used while HMS have said they did it to gain a little bit extra downforce. Personally, I think both teams got off lightly...NASCAR have now set down the precedence and, rest assured, this won't be the last time anyone only gets that penalty.

NASCAR had a great chance to really hit the teams where it hurts (the Chase), but when their moment came, they dropped the ball...why?

Because NASCAR wants the best teams and the best drivers in the Chase...that's why. I believe that they were stung badly after 2005 (financial-wise anyway) when Jeff Gordon and Dale Jr didn't make the Chase that they didn't want to run the risk of that happening again.

By rights, those thoughts should never have come into it...but sadly, I think they did.