Singapore

Special offers available for Black Friday via the link below have an interesting effect: if you fly from London or Manchester, a flight to SIN costs GBP490 but a flight to other destinations via SIN can cost less. The offers are across all classes.

Sebastian Vettel, F1's spoiled brat, had tears in his eyes as he got a hug from Ferrari Team Principal Maurizio Arrivabene. For his part, Arrivabene, already subject to some kind of gagging order from his bosses, has some explaining to do and he'd better come up with something better than his last excuse: a third party delivered sub-standard components and the team didn't notice before they failed. But it might be that the real reason that things are going tits up for the German driver are more intangible than the latest official reason of a failing spark plug. Renault and Torro Rosso are being taught a lesson, too. Welcome to the mystical East.

Let's be clear: I've lived in Malaysia, I love Malaysia, I'd like to live there again. It's a wonderful country full of absolutely lovely people (with a few crazy exceptions) and in the ten years I lived there it began to restore its fortunes as a regional leader, a position it had somehow lost in the 1980 until the mid 1990s. Amongst its crowning achievements was the astonishing Sepang circuit. But, due to a succession of errors of judgement, this amazing place managed to lose its pole position as the regional home of motor racing, surrendering without a fight to newcomer Singapore which doesn't even have a track but has a can-do, will-do attitude that seems to have completely eluded the Malaysian authorities. The reasons, it saddens me to say, are plain to see and are a mix of the neglectful and the deliberate. Things have become so bad that I'm in Malaysia but I'm not going to the race.. read on to find out why I and many more will miss the final (ever?) F1 in Malaysia.

It's easy to blame Sebastian Vettel for so many incidents, especially where he collides with another car. He's a horrible person and he's aggressive when he shouldn't be. But for once, although he was highly aggressive in the first corner of this year's Singapore Grand Prix, and he caused a crash which took out his team-mate Raikkonen, Verstappen and Alonso and himself and put Hamilton into the lead, it wasn't entirely his fault.