Firstly let’s state the blatantly obvious: As pretty as it may look, Monaco has once again proved itself to be wholesomely inadequate and inappropriate as a venue to stage a modern-day motor race.

After last month, and highlighted by Sebastian Vettel showing what the pace of a racing F1 car can be – with an awesome fastest lap on the penultimate monotonous lap (way ahead of the pace he had been showing) – there can be no doubt this is not a circuit where cars race or are capable of racing.

The jewel in the F1 crown? A decayed tooth in a mouthful of gold fillings more like!

Secondly, for the clarification of those that have been in touch: Regardless of a racehorse being found to be pumped full of Stanozolol (the notorious anabolic steroid which, in 1988, turned Ben Johnson’s eyes yellow and his 100m medal gold); an athlete having taken enough amphetamines to send Pablo Escobar’s grandchildren to Eton; a car found to have raced with fuel so octane laden its capable of launching the space shuttle; or a team having availed of an offer to take 1,000 kilometres of free testing; bookmakers settle bets as/when the jockey is weighed-in, an athlete collects his medal and, in F1, the drivers have done both. Any subsequent demotion or disqualification has no relevance to your bet.

OK, no literary niceties this week. Those shenanigans only came around when my school teacher, on my attaining a resounding U for the fourth time in an English O’Level exam, declared: “Brindley you have the IQ of a sponge”.

Concurrently my maths teacher was questioning if I had stolen exam papers while querying if I’d be interested in a scholarship to Oxford. Figures are my sausage and mash.

But sadly the consensus of the betting public, the bookmaker’s odds formulated by the weight of financial support for each driver in a marketplace scenario, shows the mean average of all those opinions concurs with the story the stats tell.

The following pie chart shows the race winners of all F1 Grand Prix since the outset of the 2012 season and the percentage of the races they have claimed: