Alonso faced with tricky exit

While Lewis Hamilton coins it in after his exhilarating maiden season in Formula One, it seems that Fernando Alonso, his McLaren Mercedes team-mate, may be faced with spending his way out of the team. The Spaniard is contracted until the end of 2009 on a generous £15 million-a-year salary.

But Alonso will not be able to walk away without some intense and urgent negotiations. Santander, the Spanish multinational bank, sponsors McLaren to the tune of £10 million a year because of the link with Alonso and there is at least one more significant Spanish sponsor involved.

Losing Santander would be a big blow for McLaren in a year in which they have already been fined £50 million for the infamous spying affair.

That may push McLaren into demanding compensation from Alonso, particularly after he effectively “shopped” the team to the FIA, the governing body, in the final trial that led to the biggest financial penalty in world sport.

Senna visit stopped

Lewis Hamilton was prevented from visiting the grave of Ayrton Senna, his boyhood hero and three-time world champion, who is buried at the Morumbi cemetery, not far from the Interlagos circuit, because of fears that the occasion would be hijacked by the paparazzi. He had even asked Viviane Senna, Ayrton’s sister, for permission.

— The legal pain goes on, meanwhile. McLaren have started an action against Ferrari in Italy for introducing alleged illegal documents into the FIA hearing that condemned the British team to their spectacular fine in the spying row.

— We wonder if the fathers of McLaren’s drivers found time to bury their differences last night. Anthony Hamilton, Lewis’s dad, reckoned that he has been blanked by José Luis Alonso, Fernando’s father, all season.

—Time to count the cash after the rugby union World Cup. A raft of sponsorship deals will cancel out the 4.5 per cent fall in sales that the Rugby Football Union suffered in its last accounts as the England team struggled. The BBC paid £160 million to hang on to the broadcasting rights for the Six Nations Championship until 2013. The shirt sponsorship deal held by O2 expires next year and the company will have to find much more than the present £3 million-a-year deal if it wants to renew.

— ITV calculated that more than 16 million viewers watched the World Cup final. EDF, the power company, reckoned it supplied enough electricity during the key two hours to keep the London Underground going at peak time – four times over.