4 for me it was a very lame race. Vettel was away as usual. The rest was indeed very close but it was the usual procession. Nothing special IMO.

One of the finds of last season's first visit to Mokpo were some baseball nets in town attached to the back of amusement arcades where, for just 1000 won (the equivalent of 55p), punters can try their hand at hitting back 80mph balls fired at them from a machine.

The nets were bad news for unimpressed BBC Radio 5 Live commentator David Croft, whose motel room overlooked them directly – and which meant he was in earshot all night of the constant ping of aluminium bat hitting ball.

But one man's pain is another's gain and, when Lotus reserve driver Karun Chandhok heard about the nets, he couldn't wait to get himself out there for a go.

Straight after his duties finished at the track on Friday, Chandhok went down to the nets with his stacks of won, and within a few attempts he became the first of the F1 fraternity to hit the perfect 27 balls out of 27 balls.

That achievement acted as a spur to onlooking F1 photographers, and it was LAT's Lorenzo 'The Sicilian' Bellanca who took it upon himself to uphold their honour.

As Bellanca hit the 26th ball, having broken his record of 24, he thought that was the final one – so he turned around to the crowd with his arms held triumphantly aloft.

To shouts of, 'No, there's one more to go!', he turned back just in time to see the last ball whizz past him for a miss.

Amid much laughter from onlookers, Chandhok had a huge smile on his face as he reckoned it was the baseball equivalent of Bjorn Wirdheim losing the Monaco F3000 race back in 2003, when he celebrated too early by stopping by his pit crew and lost the victory.