Ted Kravitz - the Italian Grand Prix from the pit lane

Barrichello admitted: "When I find something on the car I'm not going to stand up and tell Jenson about it," which is his right. But the Brazilian also conceded that "at the end of the day, the cars get very similar, but that's fine, that's how it is".

Anyone who has worked with Barrichello will tell you he is brilliant at setting up the car. Evidently he arrives at the optimum set-up quite quickly and knows how to avoid dead ends.

To use a mining metaphor, Barrichello knows how to identify and then drill down to the richest seam of performance set-up gold, dig it out and reap the benefits.

Why?

He has experience - 284 races worth - as well as an exceptional feel for the car and good judgement of track conditions.

The only thing that could hinder his championship run-in, then, is damage to the gearbox that was damaged at the Belgian Grand Prix.

The fact it was burnt in an oil fire seems not to be too much of an issue. Brawn mechanics did an ultrasound scan on it on Sunday morning to detect any weakness or bonding flaws in the carbon-fibre casing, and found nothing amiss.

The over-torque it suffered is much more worrying than the burnt casing. An over-torque effectively means that too much turning force was put through the gearbox. That happened at the start in Spa, after the car went into anti-stall on the grid.

The last time this happened earlier in the season, Brawn engineers did have to change the box, and the team may elect to change it just to calm the nerves of Barrichello's race engineer Jock Clear nerves, if nothing else.

The problem is, Singapore, the next race, is massively hard on the gearbox, with loads of changes from seventh down to second and back up again.

The Spa gearbox then has to do Suzuka as well, which is not as high duty a race as Singapore, but still pretty demanding.

Given that a change of gearbox incurs a five-place grid penalty, this could have a serious effect on Barrichello's chances of challenging Button for the championship.

Red Bull

Team boss Christian Horner couldn't have been much clearer about who was to blame for his team's poor showing in Monza than if he'd had 'It was the engine' tattooed in capital letters on his forehead.

He spoke in the F1 Forum about having to run low downforce to make up for "our weakness", by which he meant the engine's lack of top-end grunt.

Indeed, I'd like to be the first to predict that when Red Bull eventually lose the championship at the end of the season, their final press release will be three people blaming Renault, and a Renault quote blaming the car.

The truth is somewhere in between. The Renault engines have been unreliable but so have BMW's and the Renault was powerful enough to win at Silverstone and China, with their long straights, so they can't be that bad.

Given that they expect to be strong in Japan, Red Bull are considering taking the ninth engine for Sebastian Vettel in Singapore to get the consequent 10-place grid penalty out of the way before Suzuka and ensure he has a relatively fresh unit for that race. We shall see.

In the meantime, Red Bull were not hiding their expected new Mercedes link-up, with team owner Dietrich Mateschitz openly discussing the situation with Mercedes sports boss Norbert Haug on the Monza grid.

They're a bit stuck at present as they need to wait for governing body the FIA to allow Mercedes to supply a fourth team, but once that is done, we can expect the Red Bull-Mercedes deal to be announced.

Ferrari

We didn't get around to mentioning it on the telly, but I found out what caused that strange moment of hesitation when Kimi Raikkonen tried to pull away from his second stop.

It was a fail-safe system that kicked in to stop the car if the fuel hose is still attached.

This is a legacy of the pit-stop traffic-light system that effectively cost Felipe Massa the world championship at the Singapore Grand Prix last year when he pulled away from the pits with the fuel hose still attached.

After that, the FIA asked the teams to come up with an immobiliser that would keep the car in the box if the fuel hose were still attached, even if the driver tried to pull away.
Ferrari came up with the system and has been using it this season.

There is a sensor on the fuel coupling on the car. When the fuel nozzle pushes it in, it immobilises the car. When it pops out, after the nozzle comes off, the car can go.

In Kimi's case, the fuel hose was off, but only just, so the trigger sensor cut the engine revs to idle. Kimi tried again, and it worked. It lost Raikkonen a second or two, which could have lost a place to Sutil, had the Force India driver not been experiencing a troubled pit stop of his own.

As for Giancarlo Fisichella's weekend, he seemed fairly pleased with it, and ninth place was a respectable result.

I put it to Fisi's old friend and now new engineer Rob Smedley that Ferrari weren't making it easy for their drivers, forcing them to make so many adjustments to the car each lap for the Kers power-boost system and other parameters. (At last count I made it 14 different knobs and adjustment buttons on the Ferrari steering wheel, and that does not include the brake bias lever.)

Smedley admitted there was a high workload, but made the valid point that professional racing drivers should have the wit to change a few knobs on the steering wheel while driving.

Smedley also confirmed that Felipe Massa would be starting his physical training programme soon, before starting to drive again in a go-kart.

Strange as it might sound, a kart with the right tyres is the closest you can get to modern F1 in terms of cornering forces, without hiring a circuit and borrowing a current GP2 team or an historic F1 car.