Well, it was off to Bahrain for my annual checkup on the current state of Formula 1, which appears to be quite well considering the number of times it’s been pronounced dead. All the teams were extraordinarily upbeat about their chances this year, although I have to say in a number of cases this mood decayed fairly rapidly throughout the weekend. But then, in the current climate any team is doing well to be in the paddock at all.

The jury is still out (even if knobbled) on the new regulations. It does look as though the top ten qualifiers will all start on the soft tyres and then have to try and keep these going for a decent length of time, holding up anyone behind who might be in the mood for a bit of racing. This all changes as soon as it rains, and suddenly Bernie is looking at rainfall charts to guarantee an exciting race. This of course instantly elevates Silverstone to pole position.

The rumour is that after fuel limits and tyre conservation, the next regulation is one to encourage the smoothest possible driving. The requirement will be to carry a box of eggs on the car, and points will be deducted for breakages. This may sound like nonsense but you can’t keep good engineers down, and apparently Adrian Newey is developing a Kevlar bird, fed on carbonfibre granules – and, although recent autoclave experiments have failed to produce sufficient egg strength, they have resulted in a competitor to KFC. Ferrari is arguing that the rules don’t specify hen’s eggs and is looking at caviar solutions, trying to work around restricted budgets, and Ron Dennis is at a secret location near Woking with a breeding flock of ex-music hall rubber chickens.

I know I was a fully paid-up member of CND in my youth, but I have become a total convert to all forms of police and military helicoptering now that there’s no danger of me being conscripted. Apart from the respect that has to be accorded to these people for doing an unbelievably skilled and often dangerous job – for less money than a drum tech receives – they get to do the sort of flying that no civilian pilot would dream of carrying out.

This includes things like tactical take-offs (accelerate to about 120 knots at a few feet above the ground, then pull up hard into a climb). It may not be socially acceptable with one’s neighbours, particularly if they keep livestock, but it sure helps if those neighbours happen to have access to SAM missiles and AK 47s… My ultimate ride was with one of the Blue Eagles display pilots in a Lynx, doing aerobatic manoeuvres that I was definitely taught were totally impossible by my (ex-military) flying instructor.

The domestic stable is suffering from mid-winter blues. An Alfa lost battery charge and forgot how to start when reconnected, and although I’m all in favour of hands-free driving – oops, no, that must be hands-free ’phoning – there really needs to be an improvement in voice recognition systems. Mrs Mason’s new Italian car seems to be incapable of understanding simple English names and insists on picking some random name from uno capello to call. We’ve experimented with Italian names and accents but so far without success. Now it’s got in a huff and announced that it’s about to inflate the airbag as a surprise…

Adventures this month included a call from Audi to do a final drive of one of its Auto Unions from a car park into the museum in Ingolstadt, where it is now intended to rest permanently. It’s a particularly good museum, with a fine exhibition of Auto Unions alongside their arch-rivals from Mercedes-Benz, so it’s not just a promotion for its own brand. The development of these cars over such a short period is really not dissimilar to the rate of change in today’s Formula 1.

The shortness of the run was more than made up for by the fact that it was snowing. The other car receiving similar treatment was one of the quattro rally cars, driven by the great Stig Blomqvist, who was rather more in his element in the snow. A short walk of the course revealed mechanical bollards that rise out of silos, and steep ramps out of the underground park and into the museum itself, as well as a curious arrangement of vehicles strewn over the car park that made the VSCC driving tests look positively benign. What was meant to be a jolly evening suddenly became the ultimate opportunity to ‘stall a racing car in ten different ways and positions’. But I’m happy to report that all went well, and I am now of course re-editing the speeds I did, and the revs I used.

‘There I was past Tesco’s, flat in fifth…’