What sort of flag is that?

Very pleased to see Mark on the podium yesterday. He is one of the best drivers on the grid, and very high up the list of decent blokes.

But what was that behind him? There was an outcry from the Australian side of the sofa: "That's not an Australian flag! It's horrible".

And I looked and agreed. Something didn't look right.

So I investigated (ie, had a look on google and fiddled with a pic from the podium). Here's what the flag looked like according to FOM:

and here's what it should really look like:

Obviously the colours are a bit out, but it's the aspect ration and the size of the stars that make it look wrong. Wrong in the sense that it looks like a child has drawn it.

I'd be very unhappy if it was my national flag, and frankly the Union Flag quadrant does look nasty here - although it's actually quite close to the 5:3 aspect ration commonly used on land for the Union Flag. At sea, the ratio is apparently normally 2:1, like the Australian flag, which is not surprising as the Australian flag is based on the design of the White/Red Ensigns that you'll see on ships of the British Royal/Merchant Navies.

Given that Bernie is normally such a stickler for detail, I'm very surprised that he allows this sort of thing. Can we go back to real flags over the podium please?