Rule Britannia: The Perfect 10

If Jenson Button and Brawn GP continue along their winning course, then Button will have the distinction of becoming the 10th British F1 World Champion. No other nation has produced so many F1 Champions, Finland and Brazil tie as the next most successful countries with just three champions each.

The list of British F1 champions is:

1. Mike Hawthorn 1958
2. Graham Hill 1962, 1968
3. Jim Clark 1963, 1965
4. John Surtees 1964
5. Jackie Stewart 1969, 1971, 1973
6. James Hunt 1976
7. Nigel Mansell 1992
8. Damon Hill 1996
9. Lewis Hamilton 2008

Championship winners tell only part of the story of British F1 dominance. In F1's 58 seasons so far, no less than 36 championship winners have been in British cars. The true figure is higher, because Fernando Alonso's two championships were won in British-built Renaults, but the team is registered as French.

In this 2009 season F1 fans may become heartily sick of the British national anthem.

Actually, the anthem is not too popular here. It opens with a musical groan and proceeds in a dirge-like manner to its dull conclusion; inspiring it is not. For that and political/nationalist reasons it has been widely supplanted in Scotland by Flower Of Scotland and in Wales by Land Of My Fathers.

The words, however, are interesting in places:

Not in this land alone,
But be God's mercies known,
From shore to shore!
Lord make the nations see,
That men should brothers be,
And form one family,
The wide world over

That was pretty darned progressive stuff in 1745.

And there is a verse that I feel could have been written in anticipation of the FIA:

O Lord our God arise,
Scatter her enemies
And make them fall;
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix,
Oh, save us all!

After all the great heroes of F1, we are now in an era of politics and knavish tricks. Oh, save us all.