Whatever the official attendance figure recorded here today at Monza, feel free to add a few thousand to it. The Royal Park has plenty of security and stout walls in all the right places, but mere mortar and barbed wire are no match for the tenacity and ingenuity of the average skint, Italian teenage petrolhead many of whom hurdle the fences with the verve of a seasoned Glastonbury hippie.

It’s an activity that blurs the boundaries between criminal trespass and good old-fashioned fun; like borrowing apples from your neighbour’s orchard, or stealing Ferrari’s monogrammed cutlery. One of Monza’s most infamous former hedge-hoppers is a certain Mr M Andretti who would later come back to win the grand prix here in a Lotus 78. Ironically that gentleman’s son, also M Andretti would be booted out of F1 after racing at Monza, having lost the faith of a team principal who preferred to finish the season with a kid called Hakkinen. Maybe there’s a sort of cosmic balance in there somewhere.

Getting into Monza without a ticket isn’t for the faint-hearted. The police ensure it’s a lively experience by providing the full array of batons, pepper sprays and over-eager german shepherds. A couple of years back, one of our more independent-minded media colleagues thought it would make a good story and joined the vaulting throng. After an evening of carousing on the loudest campsite in history and feeling rather fragile he launched a dawn raid with several hundred others, and was duly spotted by the forces of law and order, hunted down and cornered like a rat.

History does not record the police reaction as their quarry produced a perfectly legitimate permanent (red) Paddock pass, lit a cigarette and asking for a lift to the media centre on account of being a bit winded…

Mark’s win at the Nürburgring was special for a number of reasons… one of which was that he became – after Alan Jones and Jack Brabham – the third Aussie to take the top step of an F1 Podium.

To celebrate this momentous achievement his nation’s stamp designers (The Philatelic Group of Australia Post) created a fetching souvenir sheet of stamps. They show portrait, race action and post-win images and come in a hard-wearing protective sleeve…

We’ve finally got our hands on three sets and will have them signed by the man himself.

If you fancy owning one of these very rare, very valuable and rather attractive prizes, then just answer the following question and enter our competition:

Who was the last Australian Formula One driver to win a grand prix before Mark’s victory in Germany?

You need to send the answer, your name, full postal address and a daytime phone number to competition@redbullf1.com before 5pm (CET) on Sunday, September 27 2009. The three winners will be chosen at random from the correct answers.

Good luck…

*Don’t worry, he’s signed the sleeve, not the actual stamps. You’d still be able to use them.

The best-ever film about motor racing is John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix. We’re liberal and even-handed with a deep respect for the opinions of others and welcome those who challenge our world view. But if you think anything other than Grand Prix is the best motor racing film of all time, then you really should never, ever venture a critical opinion again. Seriously.

The finale takes place at Monza, on the old, banked circuit – and it’s never looked so good, or as shocking as it does here in Grand Prix:

This is thanks in part to Frankenheimer’s insistence on shooting everything at full racing speed on Super Panavision 70mm, and partially because the extras have names like Ickx, Siffert, Clarke, Bandini, Bondurant, Brabham, McLaren and Ginther. Obviously they weren’t going completely flat chat – but Jo Siffert did managed to knock three wheels off his Cooper in between takes. Apparently they all liked to race back to first positions.

The banking, part of the original Monza velodrome, is still here today, hidden out in the woods. The police attempt to limit access during F1 weekend, but if you’re wearing the right kit and have the right sort of pass, or are carrying the right sort of ‘gift’, they’re quite obliging. Although last year the Carabinieri did draw the line when one Paddock-dweller wanted to take a team scooter around. Fair enough; after all it is the racing equivalent of Stonehenge, the Coliseum and The Simpsons all rolled into one.

Until you stand there you cannot begin to imagine the terrible height or steepness. It’s impossible to walk to the top, you need to take a good run up and lunge at the Armco. Fail to find something to grab onto and you’ll soon be tumbling back down the bottom. Here and there you’ll see people simply lying on the concrete like something from a particularly bizarre Radiohead video. It’s just one of those boxes you have to tick when going to Monza.

 Drive through the gates of the Royal Parco di Monza and just breathe in the atmosphere. That’s the smell of 60 years of Italian Grands Prix, although pedants will point out the 1980 race took place in Imola. This place is just the business and is a great venue at which to bid farewell to the Old Continent before the final quartet of flyaway races.

It’s a beautiful sunny day which means the gold braid shines even more brightly on the uniforms of the police officers who appear to have carte blanche (or should that be carta bianca) to wonder through the F1 paddock without any sort of pass, apart from the shiny leather gun holster on their belts. They spend most of their time posing down the Ferrari end of the paddock, but this year, although the appointment of Giancarlo Fisichella as Kimi Raikkonen’s team-mate for the rest of the season is using up a lot of ink, the main story has nothing to do with the Prancing Horse and is all about the Lozenge. That’s the Renault Lozenge logo and the story of course is did Nelson Piquet deliberately turn his F1 car lozenge-shaped against the barriers to facilitate Fernando Alonso’s flukey victory in last year’s Singapore GP.

We won’t know the truth, or at least the outcome of the hearing, until the World Council meets on 21st September, but already the newshounds are producing more theories than Archimedes. It is widely felt that if Renault is found guilty of race fixing, then the French car company will pull out of the sport. As for Nelson Piquet, he’s unlikely to get another racing licence for a very long time, if ever, if his allegation is deemed to be correct. The third twist, on a day when Spanish banking giants Santander announced that next year, they are switching from sponsoring McLaren to Ferrari, thus almost rubber stamping Alonso’s move to the Scuderia, is that if Alonso is found to have known all about the reasons behind the Piquet crash, he might also face some sort of ban or suspension.

But never mind all the politics; just take a look at the policewomen at every circuit gate. It’s enough to make you chant “Down With Ferrari,” just to get them to handcuff you. To ensure balance, we’re reliably told that the policemen are also of an attractive hue…

Thanks to everyone who took part in our Trust competition. The three mice signed by Mark and Seb will go to Lu Tang of Shanghai, Maria Rochelle A. Diswe of the Philippines and Tristan Rayner from Australia. The nice people at Trust also gave us three extra prizes and signed Trust Red Bull Racing mouse mats will go to Scott Bennett of Australia , Helen Tyler from the UK and Sofía Ruiz Martín from Spain.

We asked what the race distance Mark drove when he won the German Grand prix and the answer, from lights to flag, was 308.863km.

Congratulations to our winners and we’ll have another exclusive competition over this weekend.

Weren’t a winner? You can get the Trust/Red Bull Racing computer mice here

Design
The Belgium Grand Prix is for many UK fans a second home race. From our Milton Keynes base it’s a quick hop over – or under – The Channel, a drive through France around the infuriating Brussels’ ring road (London’s M25 is a race track in comparison) and through the Ardennes forest to Spa-Francorchamps. And in the spirit of Red Bull openness and participation one of our number decided to camp for the weekend among the fans. Our transport and accommodation for the weekend was the all-singing, all-dancing, go anywhere, anytime VW California

Strategy
Leaving Milton Keynes early on the Wednesday before Spa was a party of three. Despite the livery, vehicle and contents we were classed as freight, so our pristine VW California was stuck between the Polish, British and German HGVs on the bottom deck of the P&O passenger ferry. A quick four-hour run to Belgium and within ten minutes we had set up camp (raised the roof, unwound the awning and turned the front seats around) and had the first beer in hand. Our location was Spa d’Or a campsite 8kms from the track which boasted better facilities than your average field site (one of our number was under two and has high expectations of his accommodation) a decent restaurant with a beer menu, and on Friday and Saturday nights hosted a Grand Prix Buffet/Karaoke. Sorted.

Communications
The bad news was we had no pass to get into the F1 Personnel car parks. These are rarer than Wonka Golden Tickets, so our transport to the track alternated between cycling, lift from the site manager or a borrowed scooter. The important thing was we made it to work on time every day. The site wasn’t situated in the hardcore campsite ring which surrounds the track, so the extra distance meant we had a relatively better night’s sleep, for the most part devoid of the Continental and British fans who had imbibed too much local brew to damage their volume control. 

Marketing
The California we had came in a look-at-me livery and we gained the attention of everyone from other motorists to pedestrians who  waved, stared or pointed. While we didn’t blend in, we did make friends. From our first run in the Factory car park to the motorways to the ferry to the campsite we attracted attention. And when our fellow campers found out we were dishing out Red Bull Racing caps, posters and autograph cards… we suddenly became very, very popular.

Driver
It’s a mere 533kms from Milton Keynes to the Spa d’Or campsite including four and a half hours on motorway, one hour 40 minutes on a P&O ferry and an hour waiting in queues to get on the boat. And despite being a van, the California is no lorry to drive, it’s nippy and we had to wait at several service stations for our friends who had decided to venture over in a full-blown motorhome.

Result
If we’re honest it was luxury camping rather than the camping the majority of fans go through in the louder, slightly more rowdy sites, and the unusually good weather (for Spa) meant we could eat and drink al fresco and weren’t confined to the Caliornia (or the bar) that often in the evenings.

Strategy
For more on the VW California and to see where the promo vehicle has escaped to this summer visit www.vwescape.co.uk. There’s also a vacation video on YouTube:

Logistics
Our thanks to VW Commercial Vehicles, P&O Ferries and the Spa d’Or Campsite.