Over the years there has been many an advert made which has highlighted the association between a sports star and a product - as usual some good and some bad.  In the main I think it can be good to see a different side to people, get to know a bit more about their personality - assuming they have one…

The most recent batch of adverts to hit our screens in Britain feature the media’s darling, F1 driver Lewis Hamilton, and again some are good….

…and some are bad…

Is the tide starting to turn against Lewis Hamilton?

Everyone is amazed at how well he has driven since he started the season in Formula 1, and Ron Dennis was shown beaming away with pride on more than one occasion after a successful race or qualifying session.

Until now, the press have kept away from any real kind of intrusion into his life other than to talk about the things they should be talking about, ie the races and his driving ability - albeit that this side of things has tended to be a bit overhyped, but they just can’t help themselves there.

The only interesting thing to happen over the course of the weekend of the Hungarian Grand Prix was the Alonso/Hamilton/McLaren spat which blew up in qualifying.

Quite who was at fault in that is a matter of great debate, but the result was a penalty of 5 places on the grid for Alonso and a deduction of any Constructors Championship points that McLaren scored in the race.

The fairness of the penalties is as much a source of debate as the penalties themselves, but the upshot was that the penalty handed to Alonso was immediate and therefore he was unable to appeal against it which somehow doesn’t seem very fair.  McLaren’s points could be easily added back on at a later date if any appeal they lodged were successful.

Not unsurprising news today that Scott Speed has been replaced by Sebastian Vettel at Scuderia Toro Rosso.

It was surely a switch that was going to happen at the end of the season anyway, but the dramas of the last few weeks have simply hurried this process along a bit. Amid rumours that he was not going to be retained for next year, there were even wilder rumours about a physical altercation with his boss at the European Grand Prix - after his comments here Speed’s future was basically decided there and then.

Apologies for this becoming more Lewis Hamilton oriented than ITV’s F1 coverage, but while trawling some blogs I came across this one written by ITV’s very own Mark Blundell - it’s not actually all that bad, but there was a comment which I simply couldn’t believe when I read it!

Not too sure what the protocol is for copying comments from another blog, but I’ve shown a link to that site so I’m going to copy the comment below :