[Aerkuld]

johndglynn - I see you're in Northants. That's where I'm originally from. For those that don't know, Northamptonshire, and Northampton in particular, is the home of both Ilmor and Cosworth.
Cosworth were the creators of the DFV which dominated Grand Prix racing for years. They went on to make a great series of F1 and Indy engines for Ford until they pulled the plug last year. Ilmor used to make the Indy car engines for Chevy and later Mercedes as well as all of the modern era F1 Mercedes engines. The two companies are on opposite sides of the town, can't be more than 25 miles apart.
I know that a few years back the Ilmor engine used to get particularly oil thirsty on some of the tracks with sustained high g's. Hockenheim was the worst if I recall correctly. One of the ways around this was to over fill the oil before the race which would show itself in the smokey starts. It often got comments from the TV announcers but it wasn't really a big deal. I suspect this is no different.