Be under no illusions: none of us who were there thought that that was much of a San Marino Grand Prix. It was, in short, pretty boring - or probably very boring. There were a couple of overtaking manoeuvres, but perhaps you missed them. They were pretty far back in the order anyway.

But we did have a clean start, there’s no accusations of dubious driving tactics flying about, and generally speaking, everyone kept their noses clean - bar Mr Irvine if you listen to Rubens Barrichello. On lap 28, the Brazilian lost at least a second behind the Jaguar as Irvine let Ralf through but not the man who replaced him at Ferrari. But Rubens wasn’t crying. He soon made up the time and dismissed the Ulsterman with “he’s getting old anyway.” (Aren’t we all, Rubens?)

I digress. If this was Rubens’s only whinge, then so be it. He didn’t have much to whinge about this weekend. In fact he was very positive. His car was “brilliant, just brilliant” and he used it to best effect. He should have been on pole, he admitted. He missed out on that by hundredths of a second and he was quickest in the warm-up by nearly half a second. He certainly used his car to its best advantage.

He admitted that he probably paid for losing pole position by being on the wrong side of the track at the start and missing out to Ralf Schumacher. One wonders if things might have been different if he had been in second place early on. After all, he was drawing in Michael Schumacher in the closing stages until Ferrari told him to conserve his engine. On lap 38, he set fastest lap of the race with 1m 24.170s. Michael set second fastest lap seven laps later with a lap that was 0.111s slower. In short, Rubens was flying.

It was great to see another RB on the rostrum, Rory Byrne. He is the Scuderia’s chief designer, and told me before the race that that responsibility is to co-ordinate all the various different departments in the drawing office. He doesn’t do much designing himself “although I do occasionally sit down at the board and sketch something out. I have the only board at Maranello. I can’t get on with CAD (computer aided design).”

Rory doesn’t often come to races, just the two Italian ones, so he’s almost in demand as much as Luca di Montezemolo himself. He does admit to being astonished by the amount of work demanded by modern Formula One companies. Remember, he was trying to retire to his house on the Thai island of Phuket when Ferrari tempted him to come out of that retirement and join Ross Brawn. The workload means that he has spent a week and four days with his wife in Thailand so far this year, “and I’m bound to Ferrari for several more years yet.”

I was principally asking him about his rise through the ranks of education and design to his current position and he admitted that if he submitted his CV to himself now, he wouldn’t even give himself an interview. He has a degree in chemistry, but learned his trade by coming up through the field of designing via a Formula Ford car in South Africa, then designing Formula Fords for Royale (we are talking serious seventies club racing here), moving on to work with the fledgling Toleman team in Formula Ford 2000, then in Formula Two and finally designing the Toleman Formula Two car which won the championship in 1980. That prompted the eventual move into Formula One for Toleman, which then became Benetton etc.

Another graduate from those days also enjoyed his race on Sunday. Pat Symonds is still basically with what was then Toleman, having stayed with the team right the way through the years from the Formula Two days into Formula One, Benetton and now Renault. But even he began with Royale in Formula Ford - even working with Rory Byrne. (See how incestuous motor racing is?)

After a superb performance by Jenson Button but also the team on Sunday, Pat was ecstatic. “I love beating McLaren,” he enthused. The team tactics were perfect. Jenson was actually bottled up behind ailing teammate Jarno Trulli during the opening stages but they weren’t far behind David Coulthard. At the first pit stops around laps 22/23, Jenson got ahead of teammate Jarno, even though their actual time at rest was identical. It was ages before Coulthard made his first stop, on lap 34 but he came out 2.4s behind Jenson. But that grew to 7.1s when the Renault made its second stop on lap 41 in 9.0s.