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Without putting too fine a point on it, thirty years ago we would already have published Heikki Kovalainen's obituary had he been involved in the sort of accident which befell his McLaren-Mercedes MP4-23 in the recent Spanish GP.  In fact, the car would most likely have exploded like a fire bomb and you'd have swept it all up into a black bin liner once the debris was cool enough to touch.

On this day, 22 years ago, world rallying lost its top driver of the time, and I lost my childhood hero. Henri Toivonen crashed on the Tour de Corse, his Lancia Delta S4 caught fire, and he and his co-driver Sergio Cresto were both killed. He was just 29 years of age; I was 12.

Toivonen, the son of Monte Carlo Rally winner Pauli, was a flawed genius. His spectacular driving style meant that he was often able to score victories in two-wheel-drive machinery, even in an era of Audi Quattros, but it also meant that he was prone to scrapes and incidents.

I became unusually excited at the appearance of BMW’s retro M1 Homage. It wasn’t the reassuringly sharkish demeanour, the iconic ‘M’ initial, or the fact - like the uber-cool original - it was named after our first motorway. No, one word popped into my head that hasn’t been mumbled since the early ‘80s: Procar.

This probably doesn’t mean much to younger readers, but to those of a certain age they are two of the most evocative syllables going, triggering memories of a golden age of mucking around on race tracks in fabulously costly supercars.

You never say 'never' in a business as capriciously unpredictable as Formula 1, but Fernando Alonso must surely be wondering whether he is ever going to win another Grand Prix after the door of future opportunity at Ferrari was slammed firmly in his face last week by Luca di Montezemolo.

Certainly, as he goes into his home race at Barcelona this coming Sunday, it's difficult to see how he can expect to finish any better than seventh - assuming Ferrari, McLaren and BMW Sauber get both their cars to the chequered flag.

Wheeze. Puff. So at last F1 is rid of loverly fags. Ferrari – the last remaining team with tobacco sponsorship in the pinnacle of motorsport – will run a ‘barcode’ livery instead of Marlboro stickers, even where the country hosting the race would allow the full-tar design.

Personally, I’m glad. A few years ago I ended up on a Radio 5 phone-in where one of the panel asked me to defend F1 not from a position of spectacle or entertainment, butfrom the fact that it glamorised tobacco in developing countries. Vaguely disgusted with the situation myself, I pretty much agreed with him, bringing the ‘discussion’ to a embarrassingly quick conclusion.

Damon Hill's gently restrained and dignified call on FIA president Max Mosley to consider his position and oblige the motor racing community by resigning as quickly as possible stood last week in dramatic contrast to the MSA's mimsing, fence-sitting unwillingness to say anything critical about the most powerful man in motorsport politics.

I can only assume that Britain's national sporting authority has opted for the middle route simply because they are worried that, in the event of Mosley getting a vote of confidence at the FIA general assembly meeting on June 3, it will be pay-back time to the detriment of those clubs who have taken a robust stance against the beleaguered president.