Finding even mildly amusing things to say about Mario Theissen is harder than building a Formula One car in a country that's banned motorsport but here goes.

Theissen gained some kind of distinctly serious engineering qualification from Aachen University and joined BMW soon afterwards. He has since signally failed to indulge in any ill-advised job-hopping that might have given us something to poke fun at.

His loyalty and no doubt a sober application to his work were rewarded in 1999 when he was made BMW's motorsport director, with responsibility for assaults on the World Touring Car Championship (highly successful), 24 Heures Du Mans (pretty successful), F1 championship with Williams (less successful than it should have been) and the F1 championship again, this time with BMW's own team (increasingly successful).

Some observers (ourselves included) have pointed out a physical similarity between Theissen and Mr Potato Head, while others maintain that he is the spitten image of his namesake Super Mario, or possibly one of his brothers. In truth, he probably looks most like Ned Flanders, although you could probably level the same accusation at anyone with a moustache and glasses and a house next door to Homer Simpson.

He has not made any risible errors of judgement, he has avoided embarrassing sex scandals and he obstinately refuses to sport garish jewellery, outlandish clothes or silly haircuts. He simply goes about the solemn business of running a Formula One team and actually being rather good at it.

He did, however, give us all a bloody good laugh by sacking Jacques Villenueve in 2007.

Sir Jackie Stewart is a three-time F1 champion from Scotland (the tartan trousers are a dead give-away), who turned out to be quite a canny businessman too.

He's probably almost as well-known today for his pioneering work on safety, which didn't endear him to team and circuit owners at the time but which probably saved many lives. It's easy to forget that when Sir Jackie started racing, most drivers had no more head protection available to them than would be afforded by, say, a ludicrous tartan cap.

Sir Jackie and his son Paul also dabbled in F1 team ownership, when they somehow persuaded Ford to fund a team for them for three years, before selling the team at vast profit to, um, Ford. See what we meant by "canny"?

Since then, Sir Jackie has found lucrative employment as ambassador for this, consultant for that and spokesman for the other, although he did waive his 2009 Royal Bank of Scotland fee after the bank announced record losses, which it had accrued mostly as a result of having to pay his 2008 fee.