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I admire boxers. They do things I just don't have the courage for and are often very strong individuals. Boxing is a mental sport. You need to believe that you will be the one standing at the end of the bout, or you'll be the one on the canvas. You also have to get into the ring knowing that you are going to take an absolute hiding even if you win. I just don't understand that kind of mental strength.

One of the greatest days in my life was when I met Muhammad Ali. Well, I didn't actually meet him. We were in the same room. He was in Edinburgh to promote a book of photographs by Howard Bingham. The All Blacks were in town to play Scotland at Murrayfield and wanted to meet him so he was surrounded by a couple of dozen huge New Zealanders, his team of assistants and a lot of publishing PRs and journalists. His presence is electrifying. He is such a beautiful man. I'm gibbering now. Imagine what I was like at the time.

I'm also a big fan of Frank Bruno. His character is as immense as his punch. I haven't watched any boxing matches since he retired from the ring. While I really like boxers, I don't really like boxing much any more. I need a character to admire enough to overcome my distaste for watching two men try to punch one another unconscious.

I was upset to hear that Frank was having problems with depression so I was delighted to hear him this morning on the Today programme. Here is a link to the interview. He was talking about his diagnosis with bipolar disorder. He said that he didn't know that he had a problem. He was calling people early in the morning and behaving strangely. He said "People were telling me I had a problem, but you're always the last one to know." One of the people he made these early morning phone calls to was Gary Richardson who was interviewing him this morning.

Frank is helping to publicise a campaign called Time to Change which aims to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health problems. You can't catch madness from someone who's mentally ill. People with mental illness are much more likely to harm themselves than others. Why then are people with mental illness stigmatised and marginalised when as often as not their illness is the mental equivalent of a dose of the flu? People with depression feel that they cannot admit as much to their employers for fear of losing their jobs. It's sad and lonely being sad and lonely. I hope the Time to Change campaign and Frank's example help, I really do.

Mark Webber is a proper bloke. He enjoys sports, drives quickly and doesn't bother messing around with the F1 political circus. I noticed this Tweet in his Twitter feed from after the race on Sunday. He says "Wow! New rules, not sure huh? Why do they keep dicking with it? Followed Mercedes power for the whole race, no chance to overtake - again"

There is lots for us in this one short comment. Well there is if you were bored shitless by the race. I was. I can't imagine I was alone. I now think that Mark feels my pain. I'm oddly gratified by that. More importantly, I think it's possible that he was pissed off at his own car's lack of oomph. Nobody knows for sure, but it's likely that the Mercedes engine has more power than the Renault one in the back of Mark's Red Bull. It's a popular choice for teams. The two Mercedes works cars and both the McLaren's finished ahead of him. Liuzzi's Force India Mercedes was behind him. Five of the top ten finishers were powered by Mercedes. Rumours circulated last year that Red Bull wanted a Mercedes engine for 2010 but nothing much came of that.

Mark has in the past complained about the Renault engine's lack of power. When engine development was frozen at the start of the 2008 season, Mercedes and Ferrari found ways to extract extra power without developing their engines. Renault didn't. They managed to secure an agreement from the FIA and the other teams to do some development work and bring their engine closer to the power outputs of their rivals. Both the Renault works team and their customers at Red Bull suffered because they just couldn't keep up in straight line or out of slow corners.

It's interesting to me at least that Mark has noted so early in the season that he was stuck behind Mercedes engines all race. A bit more power might have made all the difference in getting past the cars in front. I'll speculate and say that perhaps he advocated Mercedes power for the Red Bull team rather than a renewed contract with Renault. Of course, the aerodynamic and circuit factors also made it difficult to pass and it's just as likely that Mark was complaining about that. I've already said that he doesn't do politics so I may be talking mince. Again. It's still interesting to speculate and more interesting than the sodding race was.

So, thanks Mark. You're a cracking bloke and that wasn't a whinge.

Fernando Alonso won his first race for Ferrari at the Bahrain Grand Prix this afternoon. He inherited the win when Sebastien Vettel's Red Bull started to blow its exhaust like a penioner's Austin Maestro. Vettel finished in fourth place as both Felipe Massa in the second Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton overtook him.

The early laps saw some of the rookie teams and rookie drivers making the rookie mistakes. Nico Hulkenberg got himself into a bit of tankslapper in his Williams. Karen Chandhok (who?)was the first to go out in his Hispania (who?) on the very frist lap. It's hardly surprising given that neither he not his team have had much running and he was really pleased just to have made the grid at all. Lucas de Grassi stopped on the next lap in his Virgin (stop sniggering at the back, there). Bruno Senna in the other Hispania (really, I'm serious, who?) made it to lap 17 before he had to park his car. As he sat in his cockpit, he looked so much like his uncle that I thought it was 1992 all over again.

He outlasted both both Timo Glock in the other Virgin (it's not funny, stop it) and Vitaly Petrov in a Renault. I had another collapse into the past when I glimpsed the Renault on the track for the first time. It was like 1977. The yellow and black paint job is the fastest on the grid by a long way. Shame the car isn't quite as quick as its paint job.

The Lotus was the best looking car on the grid. Its green and yellow paint job was exquisite. It was the best of the new teams. They got both their cars to the end of the race when neither of the other new teams could get even one car beyond lap 17.

The trouble is that the race was as dull as buggery. I love motorsport, I really do. I love the noise and the dram and the history. I love the overtaking and that was the problem today. There was hardly any overtaking. Martin Whitmarsh of McLaren talked some nonsense in the post race BBC Forum about mandating a minimum of two stops for tyre changes during the race. He avoided the point that it's very difficult for cars to pass one another. The cars aerodynamic appendages work the air so hard that one car cannot follow another closely enough through the corners to allow for overtaking on the straights. Circuit design on the most modern circuits tend to spread the field out rather quickly and reduce the number of overtaking opportunities. The carbon brakes shorten braking distances so much that it's really hard to pass at the end of a long straight.

I'd like to see much more simple cars in F1. Steel brakes, narrower tyres, a simpler aero package and maybe even manual gearboxes would all make the racing tighter and increase the spectacle for the fans. I love the cars but they don't allow us to see which is the best driver overall. Nor do they give us a show which is worth watching most weekends. Nobody's  seriously going to suggest reducing the amount of technology in the cars but something more radical has to be done to improve things for those of us who have to justify the amount of time we're going to spend on the sofa between now and the end of the season in November.