My, what a pickle. The grand prix fraternity is famously sporty, with quite a few of the Formula One drivers mad keen on other activities, particularly cycling .... and tennis. So, there was a mad dash from Silverstone to get home and get the telly on for the Federer-Nadal epic on Sunday night.

None more so than Mark Webber. He had been to Wimbledon early in the week as a guest of the BBC but managed to fit in some tennis-watching before setting out for Silverstone and was intent on getting back to his pile in Oxfordshire at a speed slightly higher than he mananged on the track. Think the big-hitting Nadal must have inspired him to that drive to second on the grid in qualifying for the British Grand Prix. Unfortunately, Webber turned out to be a plonker in the race with a spin almost at the start. Never mind, he is a good guy and a magnificent tryer.

For the rest of us - media guys, mechanics, engineers and support staff - we left the track so late, it was BBC Radio Five Live in the car on the way home.

***

Ferrari were up in the press office defending their boys - Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa - after the race. Don't know why they bothered, really. Raikkonen suffered from some bad decisions but I think we know now that Massa doesn't like going out in the rain. How many spins did he have? Six, seven, eight? It has to be said that Ferrari's staff didn't quite get the joke when we asked whether the team had calculated whether Massa had done more miles in a circle than he did going forward on the track, nor one hack singing: "I'm spinning in the rain, I'm spinning ...." You know the rest.

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Meanwhile, the McLaren party was somewhat curtailed, in spite of Lewis's magnificent win. In the old days, Norbert Haug, the Mercedes head of sport, had a habit of breaking out the bubbly and turning up the volume on the sound system to celebrate with his favourites, the Rolling Stones. (You should hear him do Honky Tonk Woman. Lord save us!)

But the new and highly corporate motorhome - well, block of flats, more like - has put paid to that. It is over three levels now, so guests and sponsors are split up and it is all so antiseptic, you get the impression they would be afraid of making a mess on the new carpets. Pity.

***

Perhaps I was missing something but the celeb count at Silverstone seemed a bit low. Saw the incredibly lanky Jodie Kidd wandering around, although her celeb status has taken a blow by all accounts with Sunday newspapers claining she has been dropped by her model agency.

Gordon Ramsay did, however, sweep by at about 100mph several times. He was obviously doing a bit of glad-handing and telly stuff but was also a guest of McLaren and got to stand in the garage throughout the race. Actually, not quite a guest in that Ramsay does some consultancy work for Absolute Taste, McLaren's in-house catering business. I say catering business but the food is utterly phenomenal, well up to his three-star Michelin standards if my North Sea crab salad was anything to go by.

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Wimbledon had the pop royalty with Gwen Stefani in the crowd. The singer and her husband appear to have become chums with Roger Federer and the trio spent a day at Regent's Park Zoo on Federer's day off in the first week of Wimbers. Wonder if Rog can sing? Wonder if Gwen can play tennis.

***

Wimbledon will be back next year and forever, as far as we can see, but poor Silverstone is on its last legs. Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One's controller, confirmed to me that, whatever happens with this mysterious Donington bid, Silverstone is now firmly off the agenda after next year.

It is now startlingly clear that Donington have an epic task on their hands and a massive penalty facing them if they can't meet Ecclestone's 2010 deadline. What are the chances that if Donington can't make it, they have to pay Bernie - and here's a guess-timate - £25 million, or two year's race fees in default, and that he is then free to give Britain's July date to another country? What's the odds?

I started to come over all nostalgic as I drove into the windswept old place; there have been some epic races at Silverstone over the years, just like Sunday's with Hamilton making sense of the rain in quite unbelievable fashion.

Even as we upped sticks and headed for home, though, the locals were bemoaning the financial losses they face. For hotels and restaurants across a wide swathe of Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire, the British Grand Prix has been an important earner. When I checked into my cheap and cheerful digs in Stony Stratford, down the road from the track, the owner reported he was planning a major facelift for next year. I told him to save his money, delivering the news that Silverstone had lost the grand prix deal forever, he looked somewhat crestfallen, to say the least. I see reports that estimate the cost to the area, calculated over the ten years of the Donington contract, will be somewhere in the region of £400 million, with hundreds of jobs at risk.

That is one of those hidden costs that, I guess, people like Ecclestone don't think about when they start moving the pawns around their personal financial chess board. Let's be honest, the one man who never loses from these games is Bernie; everybody else stands to lose.

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