chickendinner believe the Swiss driver will top the podium

Last year Hamilton buckled under the weight of expectation thrust upon his shoulders, but right now people are so quick to write him off that they probably think his dad would stand a better chance of winning the race. The lack of expectation will play right into Hamilton’s hands and he will win the British Grand Prix this weekend. Here’s why:

1. Kimi Raikkonen was victorious last year but five different drivers have won the last five British Grands Prix - Rubens Barichello, Michael Schumacher, Juan Pablo Montoya, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen.

2. The Finn is also on a run of four races without a win and has only even once won the same Grand Prix twice in a row - in Belgium way back in 2005.

3. It won’t be Felipe Massa - he has never finished higher than fifth in five attempts at Silverstone.

4. And it won’t be the BMW’s, who failed to match the Ferraris and McLarens at Silverstone last year. A fortnight ago in France they had their worst result of the season, with neither driver finishing in the top four for the first time - Kubica came fifth and Heidfeld 13th.

5. You can count out Alonso too - the

Miss Grenada speaks out after being two-timed by McLaren star

Ahead of the weekend’s British Grand Prix action, Grid Crasher editor Ollie Irish steps in to tell us about the latest adventures of the world’s favourite Swiss racing driver…

Miss Grenada, aka Vivian Burkhardt, has ripped into Lewis Hamilton, after discovering that he had two-timed her with Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger.

“His life away from the track is far from glamorous,” Burkhardt told the News of the Screws. “Despite his huge wealth, I hate his lifestyle and feel sorry for him. There he is in Switzerland, where he has no friends, no family, just this amazing four-bedroom flat in the richest part of the city - but it’s simply big and empty.”

Ouch. Imagine having to live in Switzerland with no friends. A terrible double whammy.

Australian Grand Prix, 3.30am, March 16, ITV1, bet here 

The new Formula One season starts this weekend, with the ancient gentlemen of the committee still fretting away about how to make their sport more interesting. Years of “safety first”, technical dickering and comic inequality between teams have made F1 less of an enthralling contest and more of an easter parade. Until suddenly last season, that is, when suddenly something interesting happened. So why, given last year’s drama, have the people in charge allowed the friction generated by the enmity between tax-dodging Lewis Hamilton and big baby Fernando Alonso to vanish? Alonso shouldn’t have been allowed to switch teams and hide at Renault, he should have been handcuffed to Hamilton breakfast, dinner and tea, until their rivalry developed into something even more frenzied than last year. It’s amazing that the assembled boffinry of F1 is capable of building a car that can fly to the moon, yet still hasn’t got the faintest idea of how to engineer the human drama that makes racing compelling. More downward thrust and tax avoidance strategy is not going to do it for the youngsters.

The statistics

* Good news for Kimi Raikkonen - no driver has won the Championship for the first time and then not retained it the following season for over a decade.