Morning:
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Anyone still unconvinced that Bernie Ecclestone is either the thickest or most doolally sporting administrator on the planet, or both, should consider one implication to emerge from a soporific Singapore Grand Prix.
Actually, on second thoughts, I suspect that the gentle and trusting hypothetical creature outlined above is about as mythical as the Sphinx or Centaur.
Having styled himself as a Bizarro version of Horace Rumpole, Little Bern has lately risen in the courtroom of public opinion in defence of Max Mosley, Adolf Hitler and Flavio Briatore.
If these interventions have reduced his global fan club to a membership of one, that can only be because Mr Ecclestone hasn't got around to cancelling his own subscription.
His latest pronouncement holds that indefinite ostracism from Formula One is far too harsh a punishment for his friend, fellow billionaire and QPR co-owner Flavio Briatore for his part in Crashgate, and that a one-year ban would suffice.
By keeping Signor Briatore's willful endangerment of life at the front of our minds, Bernie thoughtfully illuminated Grand Prix racing's most vexing problem; that, for drama, excitement and passion, events on the track seldom come close to matching what happens away from it.
And so to a sublimely uneventful race under floodlights in Singapore City, an event most interesting for the hypothetical trailed, some time ago, in the opening paragraph as clinching proof of Ecclestone's idiocy/lunacy/both.
Had his plan to decide the drivers' title solely on number of races won not been abandoned soon after being adopted in March, Jenson Button would have become world champion yesterday.
He has six GP wins, no rival has more than two, and three races remain.
You needn't be the lovechild of Sir Isaac Newton and Carol Vorderman to do the math there.
Serve Bernie right though it would to be savaged for prematurely killing the F1 season stone dead, a traumatised sport must be glad the title remains up for grabs.
Button did surprisingly well to finish fifth in Singapore and extend his points advantage, and is now strongly fancied to nurse that lead to the line.
But few will doubt his capacity to do a Devon Loch, as yesterday's winner Lewis Hamilton did two years ago, by blowing it with the finish in view.
Short of taking the chequered flag, this was as perfect a result as Button could have imagined.
After a breathtakingly incompetent qualifying session he started in 11th, behind all three men with a mathematical chance of costing him the title.
He finished a place in front of Brawn team-mate and closest challenger Rubens Barichello, and just one behind Sebastian Vettel, with the latter's Red Bull colleague Mark Webber forced to retire with brake problems.
It now looks a two-horse race between the boys from Brawn.
By light years this was Button's best day since early June, when he won his sixth race out of the first seven in Turkey, although this is not the highest of hurdles.
He and his car have performed wretchedly ever since, and he needed to allay fears (not least his own) that he lacks bottle.
This much he did with an assured, error-free defensive drive that leaves him a prohibitive 1-6 title favourite on Betfair.
Lewis Hamilton was even shorter priced with three races left in 2007, it should be remembered, and choked to a standstill like a 1972 Austin Princess with defective spark plugs in a Manila monsoon.
Lewis came within 30 seconds of repeating the trick last year, but yesterday when the pressure was off he was silkily flawless.
His major concern came early on when the Kers system that gives a short burst of extra power down the straight, became a curse, and packed up.
However, with radio guidance from the mechanics (much as I'd guessed, it was a “default X 30” problem) he fixed it on the dashboard computer, and was never threatened again.
His lead was trimmed for a while by the deliciously topical appearance of the safety car.
It was to tempt that vehicle on to this same Singapore circuit, of course, that Briatore and Renault cajoled Nelson Piquet Jnr into driving into a wall a year ago because, as Crashgate fans now know, the safety car allows trailers to narrow the gap.
Despite this helping hand, Vettel's challenge faded thanks both to a time penalty and various bits falling off his car like scabs from a leper.
Ultimately, this was a facile pole-to-flag victory for Hamilton, who on this form looks much the smoothest driver of his generation.
Button does not, and a few scares must be anticipated before he wins that title.
If he secures five more points than Barichello in Japan on Sunday it will all be over. For Jenson it is all about running down the clock and praying for the final whistle.
The poignancy is that if only more people than the little chap himself understood what a true visionary Bernie Ecclestone is, the whistle would have blown in Singapore yesterday evening.
