Formula 1

This is too much fun to pass up. If you're near the area between Florence and Bologna on Monday 30 April, go to Mugello and join the Scuderia Ferrari Club on the spot, and you're in for a go at playing pit-stop mechanic, driving a kart around the mini Mugellino track, drive a Ferrari F1 simulator or quiz the drivers.

Regular F1 tests start there on Tuesday with prices starting at 21.50€.

Courtesy of The Axis, here is the lap that put him on pole, half a second ahead of anyone else. Watch the sparks off the front wing at the turn into the first corner, without braking:

The rest of the top ten were within one second of each other. And some of them were strangely slower in Q3 than Q2.

... And Jazz. Beautiful.

Filmed at the 1981 Caesars Palace Grand Prix (yes that was the official name), 30 minutes of Clive James in Las Vegas (1981), courtesy of Motorsport Retro.

Classic line from the journalist in the Confederate cap who only said what everyone was thinking because he got a little worked up:

We are doing a go-kart race in the parking lot, man. And they call a that grand prix.

It was good to watch Monisha Kaltenborn being interviewed by Sky TV after the Malaysian GP. Here she answers some more questions from Grandprix.com, about everything that happened at the end of the grand prix:

How hard were the last laps?

Very hard! For me it's still a very new experience and you get nervous and tense because you never know what might go wrong and you think the wildest things and just wish those laps would get over as soon as possible.

BBC have a great series of Murray Walker articles and videos on Formula 1's greatest drivers. Last week it was Jochen Rindt, this week it's Graham Hill.

About Jochen Rindt at the British GP, 1969:

The British Grand Prix that year, also at Silverstone, was another highlight. Rindt and Jackie Stewart staged one of the greatest races there has ever been.

Swapping places for lap after lap, sometimes several times a lap, they disputed the lead, running at record speeds despite the intensity of their duel. Only when Rindt's Lotus ran into problems did the battle break up.

"It was a fantastic battle," Stewart remembers, "yet full of good humour. Occasionally we'd go through Becketts or somewhere side by side, neither of us willing to give way, yet taking care always to give the other fellow room. And we'd come out of the corner and look across at each other."

Lets hope for more of this sort of thing from Kimi:

He had not driven an F1 car since the 2009 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, and had no experience of the Pirelli tyres he was using. Yet, after a single installation lap to check the car's systems were working, his first flying lap was within a few 10ths of a second of the fastest lap he would do over the next two days.

For conclusions after the Australian GP, Planet F1, and Sky.

He can't believe it. This is the 2011 GP2 champion in the yellow Driot-Arnoux Motorsport:

This is going to be a good year in F1.

Neither of these vehicles is a Formula 1 car, but this happened at a GP track during a GP week, and it's just too good not to share.

Jet Pack Man can be seen flying around Albert Park this weekend at these times.

This was a bit of fun. At least to see what others think of your favourite driver. A thread has popped up on the Planet F1 forums asking users to rate the current world championship drivers.

The exercise isn't to predict this year's champion, but in November it will be good to look back at the discussion and reevaluate the Hamilton vs Button debate, remember the doubts we had about Ferrari's ability to build a decent contender (right now Lotus is faster!), consider if Hamilton can continue to improve and whether Raikkonen can be fast again.

Jaime Alguersuari will be on the radio this weekend, might be worth tuning in. Here he is with his new Radio 5 team talking a bit about his past and future.