Bahrain Grand Prix: Lap By Lap*

Existential fug on wheels: "Are you all alone there?" asks Peter Gibbs. Yes.

Lap 15: Hamilton is "eating up the space" between him and leader Massa, according to the ITV commentary team. I'm not sure how true this is, because last I looked he was about half a second behind Massa, and now he's trailing by a full second. I mean, I'm simple folk, but... eh?

Lap 14: Alonso is falling even further behind the front two, now a good six seconds behind the leader Massa. He's holding Raikkonen back, and allowing Heidfeld to catch up in fifth. More thrills please, F1 stars!

Lap 11: Massa and Hamilton are streaking away from Alonso and Raikkonen - there's about 0.6 secs between the first two, while the battle for third is being held a good five or six seconds further back.

Lap 9: Hamilton is driving his car in a quicker manner than anyone else on the track. He's closing on Massa by 0.1 sec per lap. Oh me, oh my, these are visceral thrills at their very best!

Lap 7: I've just noticed there are going to be 57 laps of this. I say the following as part of the Guardian's open-door policy of honesty and total transparency between hack and reader: oh for Christ's sake!

Lap 6: Raikkonen seems to have got his chops up, having closed up on Alonso; he's only 0.4 seconds behind him. Meanwhile there's some concern about Hamilton's engine, which appears to be smoking, but not in a good way.

Lap 4: Right, the safety car has done one. Massa leads, Hamilton and Alonso are not far after him - but Raikkonen was fannying around at the restart and is suddenly well off the pace. He's 2.345 seconds behind the leader. Hamilton tries to nudge past Massa on Big Straight with some cheeky slipstream manoeuvres, but they don't quite come off.

Lap 3: God alone knows what's been happening, the ads have been on. You can get Jeeves and Wooster DVDs with the Telegraph this week. Is it wrong of me to point that out? Anyway, we're back, back, back! And we're told the safety car will bugger off at the end of this lap.

And they're off! The cars are moving, they are going forward! Hamilton's a bit slow off the mark, but he manages to hold his line and fend off Alonso, who leapt off the grid past Raikkonen, at both the first and second turns. Meanwhile Jenson Button runs into Scott Speed, who had been hit by Christijan Albers - the latter is fine, but Speed and Button are out. As is the safety car.

We'll be off in a minute. They're off on the warm-up lap.

The worst interview in the entire history of Independent Television (which launched in 1955): The record previously held by Jim Rosenthal and Roberto di Matteo has just been broken after a mere five days by Martin Brundle, who was introduced to the prime minister of Romania by Bernie Ecclestone, accused the F1 supremo of giving him a bum steer ("are you sure?"), nearly dropped his microphone after being smothered by a passing flag, then apologised for having run out of time for any questions. "Sorry. Nice to meet you, though. And it's back to Steve in the studio!" Mind you, I'm in no position to criticise anyone or anything, partly because I'm not even 100% sure that was Martin Brundle.

It's very windy with a massive headwind on the straight! The guy on ITV was about to tell me how that will affect the drivers, but he's started talking to Jamie Cullum instead - "I'm recording a new album and really enjoying myself," says Michael Parkinson's favourite jazz dwarf, allowing a concerned nation to finally breathe out - so I'll take a stab at some analysis myself: thanks to the stiff old breeze, nobody's sure whether the Toro Rossos will be able to get up the road or not.