25 July – Germany

While most eyes at the German Grand Prix were on the Ferrari duo spoiling the race up at the front, one driver a bit further down the road was having more than enough troubles of his own.

Renault’s Vitaly Petrov was… doing his usual job, tooling around somewhere outside the top ten, when he received a stern telling off from his team, handily broadcast to tens of millions of TV viewers.

Vitaly was told; “You MUST concentrate on shifting early to seventh gear, you must do this PROPERLY Vitaly, if you don’t we will have to turn your revs down and there will be NO television before you go to bed tonight”.

After the race Petrov was sent out the back of the garage and made to sit on the naughty step to think about what a really bad little boy he had been.

Still, he probably got off lightly compared to HRT plodder, Sakon Yamamoto, who according to some reports started the race with his pitlane limiter on and then ended his day by hitting the fire switch rather than the brake bias, which cut all power to the engine.

And they hired him for performance reasons?

(UK viewers, to hear Vitaly getting a good telling off, click here, and go to 2:14.03)