The first three seconds of a race are virtually 70 per cent of it. So says Mark Webber, who knows how to nail a good start. I now feel a little less guilty for (in my youth) watching the first lap then heading off for a beer before catching the last five minutes. Of course, recent races have had enough incidents in the middle to keep you from the pub, but Webber's comment underlines the importance of the charge to the first corner.
A race is around 90 minutes long, and you'd have thought that would be enough to right any start-line mistakes. But it's not that simple. A driver might know that his whole race strategy hinges on being in front of another from the start and being able to increase a lead before pit stops.
Sometimes it's a simple case of having to get ahead of a teammate from the off. This is often less to do with team strategy and more to do with scoring psychological points, or in Webber's case at Silverstone sticking it to the team and his teammate over favouritism. In that case the first three seconds really did win the race for the Aussie.
This being Formula One, getting away from the line without stalling is a fabulously complicated affair - well it is now that anti-stall devices are banned. Learner drivers about to take their test may want to skip this paragraph for fear of being completely freaked. F1 drivers, you see, have two clutches. Both are paddles behind the steering wheel, next to the gear shifts. The driver holds both and lets go of one as the lights go out. The other is pre-set at a certain point and is only released when there's enough grip from the accelerating car. Simple, eh?
Michael Schumacher will certainly need those skills after his 10-grid place demotion this weekend at Spa. After almost running former teammate Rubens Barrichello into a wall in Hungary, he needs to spend more time trying to win friends than striving to take the chequered flag. The problem with Schumacher is that he just doesn't seem to get what it is that makes him so unpopular.
Like him, I know what it is to be a controversial (and in some quarters unpopular) motor racing champion. Admittedly this was just a stag weekend karting event, but I benefited from what you might call uncompromising driving on my part, doing what was necessary to keep my mates behind me. There were accidents, but even so I was a little taken aback by the reaction of my mates to my victorious morning. They booed.