Look at the picture at the top right of your screen. Notice something odd?

Isn't it always a surprise every time you see the beautiful deep red of a Ferrari racing car. Not only does it look elegant but unlike most other F1 cars it doesn't look like a billboard on wheels.

A word on F2

In all seriousness sponsorship is a big deal in all forms of motor racing, not just F1. Take the new F2 championship proposed by the FIA. One of the reasons why the governing body believes F2 may usurp GP2 is that the running costs are extremely low — some £200,000 a year. How can the FIA get away with this when it costs more than 5x that to run a GP2 team?

Simple, sponsorship. The idea is to make it a full spec and service series and bundle in some advertising to boot. Effectively what this means is that manufacturers must bid for the right to make the car, engine and supply all the spare parts.

The winning bid is likely to be a consortium that combines engine, chassis and services. Whether the overall cost can come under the FIA's proposed ceiling is a different matter. One thing that will help is that the FIA has allocated 20% of the bodywork space to the winning bidder. In other words expect to see Renault, or Mercedes, or Dallara, emblazoned across F2 cars next year.

One thing that will work, if the FIA can pull it off, is to replicate Moto GPs model. Moto GP runs an integrated championship with 125cc and 250cc bikes preceding the main race. This allows avid fans to switch on and watch three consecutive motor bike races. Great idea — it allow fans to get to know the drivers in the junior series.

GP2 already follows that approach to some extent but does it in a more complicated manner. For a start there are two races: a long race and a sprint race, the latter of which has some convoluted qualifying rules (by that I mean the average Joe on the street needs to take five minutes to properly understand them). If F2 were to follow F1 around the globe as a supporting race finishing, say, an hour before the big show then it could be a wild success.

The only impediment is Bernie. He owns the rights to run races at all the tracks on the F1 calendar and he (along with CVC) also owns GP2. Why would he kill his own baby to sate the FIA?

Back to Alonso

According to reports over the weekend Banco Santander will ditch McLaren when its contract expires at the end of 2009 and switch allegiance to Ferrari. To those of you who have been asleep for the last couple of seasons Santander are McLaren's second biggest sponsor after Vodafone.

Santander is one of the biggest banks in the world and Spanish to boot. One reason it signed with the Woking outfit at the start of 2007 was the presence of one double world champion, Fernando Alonso. One can imagine that the top brass weren't too chuffed to see Ron Dennis stick Alonso on his bike a few months later.

Banco Santander hasn't done too badly out of the deal as it has reaped the benefits of Lewis Hamilton's ascension to the top - it owns Abbey, a UK bank. However, its core markets are Spanish speaking and there is little doubt where its allegiance lies.

That makes the switch to Ferrari interesting. Everyone in Maranello vehemently denies that Alonso is making the switch to Ferrari in 2010. But on paper it makes perfect sense.

Alonso is one of the best drivers on the grid and will relish Ferrari's ability to build a team around him. Meanwhile the Scuderia will have an open seat. Raikkonen will almost certainly have hung up his driving gloves by that point and Massa may also have been expunged from the team.

Although the sponsorship deal has yet to be announced, when it is be sure of one thing — Fernando and Ferrari will be new best pals.