The other day I was taking a rare break from the computer and happened to catch the MotoGP race in Shanghai. My son is an avid motorbike racing fan and I’ve picked up a bit of knowledge from him, so the names were not completely unknown to me. Rossi is the man, of course, and the Ducatis are incredibly fast this year - that much I knew.

It was a good, exciting race but what struck me most were the interviews at the end. The riders are so young! Fresh-faced innocents playing truant from school, it seemed. Okay, maybe it’s the old fogy syndrome kicking in (everyone looks young to me these days) but it does bring home the fact that you have to be a bit insane to race bikes. And the insanity of the young is the belief that they cannot die.

It might have been that I was young at the time too, but John Surtees never looked young to me. His long list of bike racing championships prove that he had the necessary streak of madness, however. Which makes his success in converting to four wheels in 1960 all the more remarkable - few bikers live up to expectations when attempting that and Rossi probably made the right decision in sticking with MotoGP rather than taking a Ferrari drive.

John is famous mainly through being the only man to be a world champion on both two wheels and four but he actually has some claim to being as quick as Jim Clark. While Jim stuck with the design skills of Colin Chapman and so always had a competitive car, John raced for a series of constructors, some good and some not so good. Yet John was always in the hunt, often extracting more from his car than it wanted to give.

In fact, Surtees was a man ahead of his time; as well as being a fast driver, he was also interested in tinkering with the car to improve it. He was, indeed, the prototype of the modern driver, being able to sense what parts of the car needed tweaking and working with the engineers to perfect it. It was entirely natural that he should progress to building his own cars in the seventies, but not before he had supplied Honda with their first ever F1 win (Mexico, 1968).

The sixties is a decade that has gone down in history as belonging to Jim Clark; quite rightly so, since he had more success than any other driver of his era. But there was one that he raced against who should stand shoulder to shoulder with him in our memories. And that man is John Surtees.

The world champions are in trouble so far this season, their car apparently not as good as they had hoped, their drivers unconvincing and team boss Briatore already talking about next year’s car. Things could be worse, as demonstrated by McLaren and Williams last year, but not much; when you’ve been used to winning, it hurts to know that you are no longer in the running.

All this was fairly predictable (in fact, I did so in November last year), although we may not have expected the car to be as poor as it has turned out. Much of that drop in performance can be attributed to the change to Bridgestone tires, Renault having experienced more problems in this area than most teams, but there seem to be design weaknesses too. Otherwise Briatore would not be mumbling about next year’s car already.

The big question is how much Alonso’s departure has contributed to Renault’s fall from grace. That it has had some effect is undoubted - Alonso is so strong a driver that he would have hauled the car into higher positions than Fisichella has managed to; but it is doubtful that even he could have turned it into a race winner.

I think that little blame can be heaped on the shoulders of the Renault drivers. Fisichella is doing his best with the machinery he has been given and Kovalainen has made the usual rookie mistakes but should get better with experience. Unfortunately for Fisichella, the failings of the car will be blamed on him to some extent at least; this is his make-or-break year and it grows ever more likely that he will find himself out of a job at the end of the season. No doubt Briatore is already looking for a replacement.

And he will want a proven driver to lead the team although, with the sudden influx of new talent, there aren’t that many of the old guard left to choose from. I have seen Webber suggested but the Australian will have learned the lesson of patience from his time at Williams; Red Bull’s RB3 may not be as competitive as Webber had hoped but it does show that the team are heading in the right direction, perhaps to make a big breakthrough next year. Mark will stay with them, I think.

So who else is there? Raikkonen is pretty securely contracted to Ferrari and Alonso to McLaren - not much hope there. Heidfeld will stick with BMW if he has any sense at all, Ralf and Trulli are in their make-or-break years too and will probably break. Of the experienced drivers, there is just one possibility left and, although it may seem utterly ridiculous, it may be forced upon both parties.

Jenson Button could be the one that Briatore’s eye alights upon. He is contracted to Honda but, as we have seen in the past, neither Button nor Flavio take much notice of contracts. The Briton’s talent is doubted now but he has never had a decent opportunity to prove himself; he is quick and just might come good in the right car. It’s a chance that Briatore might be prepared to take.

As for Button himself, he must have realized by now that he made a bad mistake in going to Honda. The fact that they have had persistent problems with the front of their cars and been unable to solve them is worrying, to say the least. He could be open to an approach, despite recent assertions to the contrary.

All speculation, of course, and things may happen this season that make such an eventuality impossible. It is very early in the season still and one cannot discount the possibility of Renault solving their problems and returning to competitiveness in the coming races. It just doesn’t look likely, with Briatore becoming so desperate that his public pronouncements get wilder and wilder…

Humanity has got to be one of the strangest creatures on the planet. For a start, he walks on two legs, whereas most other mammals opt for four. He is also almost completely defenseless, with teeth that are hopeless for threatening anything bigger than a mouse and an unarmored skin that does not even have much hair for protection. Yet most other animals are scared of him. Weird, isn’t it?

But this is only the beginning of the odd decisions taken by evolution in designing mankind. There are aspects that can only be described as overkill and the perfect illustration of this is the F1 driver. Here is an animal that, without external aid, can reach a top speed of about 20 mph; yet has reflexes and processing power that enable him to control a vehicle going at ten times that speed.

Man lives on a planet that defines gravity in terms of itself - we live at 1G. Yet, for reasons known only to itself, evolution has decided to give him the power not only to exist at over 3G but to perform delicate and precise tasks at the same time. Then the humble backside, an anatomical part that cannot reasonably be expected to need more sensory perception than the discernment of the difference between a hard rock and a pillow, proves capable of sensing how much adhesion is left in four tires remotely connected to said backside through suspension parts, a car body and a seat. And all this happens while he is being shaken around, vibrated and thumped by his environment with an engine screaming in one ear and a disembodied electronic voice speaking to him in the other. Yet he copes with it all and even professes to enjoy the experience.

Our F1 driver, designed for a home of natural forces, turns out to be capable of functioning perfectly well at speeds, g-forces, pressures and sound levels many times that which could have been predicted before his brain allowed technology to make such things possible. What on earth made evolution design the human being with such huge tolerances above and beyond what could be expected?

If the human were a car, we would say he is massively over-engineered. He has no evolutionary need to cope with pressures so much greater than any encountered in the natural environment of Earth. It is as though evolution, in the act of fitting this harmless upright ape with a brain that could help him survive, had stopped suddenly and thought, “Hang on a mo, if I give the creature this brain he will eventually make things that go really fast and encounter forces that will rip him apart. I’d better give him a little more capacity for survival in such circumstances.”

Which, of course, is ridiculous - evolution doesn’t “think”. Pretty weird, isn’t it? Makes you wonder what’s really going on…

Apart from the first lap, there was not a great deal of overtaking in this Grand Prix. And yet it was very interesting. Perhaps most importantly, it illustrated that McLaren have closed the gap to Ferrari. Even had the McLarens not got the jump on Massa and Raikkonen at the start, they clearly were as quick and would not have been left behind if the Ferraris had grabbed the lead. When the Italian cars had nothing in front of them, they went no faster than they had been going behind Alonso and Hamilton.

Naturally, Jean Todt denied that this had anything to do with the tightening of the test for flexible floors, that it was merely that McLaren had found more improvements since Melbourne than Ferrari had, but I think there is more to it than that. The BMWs were able to run at Ferrari pace, as shown by Heidfeld keeping Massa at bay, and there was a string of cars just behind this pair; did everyone improve more than Ferrari?

Some of the loss of Ferrari’s advantage can be explained by Kimi’s reliability worries. He was obviously content to hold station rather than risk the engine and would have been better advised to take the penalty and show us the true pace of the Ferrari with a fresh engine, I think. In spite of his determination to pamper the engine for points rather than a win, he was able to stay with the McLarens; with a new engine, he could have bullied his way through to fight for the lead.

The Finn’s face in the post race press conference spoke volumes - he is with Ferrari to win the championship and, if that means sometimes he has to go a little slower and let Massa have the glory, he is prepared to do it. And the glow around Felipe is beginning to fade; this was a race that he expected to win but threw away in frustration when he lost his lead at the first corner. It is Raikkonen, not Massa, that Alonso will have to fight for his third championship in a row.

A little further back, Williams entertained us with a great drive from Rosberg that deserved better than retirement and a charge through the field from Wurz. Hopefully, the car will get even better and we can enjoy the sight of a Williams battling for the lead again.

The performance of the Renaults and Hondas was interesting, both racing much better than they qualified. This would indicate that their main problem is in adjusting to the Bridgestones, rather than fundamental flaws in the design of the cars. If they can get on top of the tire problem, they will leapfrog into the top ten, I think.

And give Fisichella his due: he is doing a far better job than his much-hyped Finnish teammate, driving the car as fast as it will go without drama and taking the points on offer.

Toyota performed their usual disappearing act, Trulli circulating anonymously in the final points positions while Ralf managed to find his way back to keep the tailenders company. If anyone drives like Fisichella’s reputation, it is the Toyota team!

Note that Super Aguri were not so impressive in Malaysia - they have slipped a little and now run with their natural competitors, the Toro Rossos. This is a trend that is likely to continue, since their car becomes ever more out of date as others develop their later designs and get them to work with the tires. Expect Toro Rosso to get better and better, however, as Red Bull get the RB3 sorted out and drop a few hints to their second team.

Finally, I have to say it: Scott Speed finished well ahead of Liuzzi. Yes, tell me that Vitantonio had a little argument with Sato that spoiled his race - the point is, Scott didn’t. He ran consistently with a gaggle of allegedly better cars throughout the race and brought it home in the end. Staying out of trouble is part of racecraft too, Gerhard…