Tuesday 28 August 2012

Yes i know its been a long time, but Spa is this weekend. Hurrah





Whey and indeed hay …. Put that javelin down and pack away those hurdles. The Olympics are over and despite the Paralympics about to start; it’s back to the wonderful world of formula One and the rain-tastic Spa-Francorchamps, a proper manly circuit for big hairy chested men.

Well it’s been a quite month for the F1 circus;

Ross Brawn has complained that things are “too random” these days and the fans want to go back to the days when Schumacher would pound round and round in the lead and his team mate knew his place. I suspect this is less what Ross wants and more what the Mercedes Benz board of directors want. Everyone expects Mercedes to call a press conference any day now and call a halt to the whole sorry mess, any minute now. Much like their double DRS gizmo which will be banned from next year to try and stop other teams coming up with even more sneaky was to read the rule book.

Eric Boullier over at Lotus, has been waggling his eyebrows and telling anyone that will listen that “of course Kimi can win the championship” whether this is a case of trying to convince Kimi that he can actually beat the Ferrari and Redbull drivers or indeed whether he should stay another year at Lotus is anyone guess. There is a lot of talk about Lotus having a car to do the job, personally I’m not so sure, yes Kimi looks like the Kimi of old that would race the backside off the car then get out and have an ice cream, say four words before wondering off laughing at all the fuss. I just don’t think the team has that killer, “tell Grosjean to crash the car NOW” instinct that they used to have.

In the mean time, Dany Bahr far from getting the message about leaving Group Lotus well alone and just not being welcome anymore, has decided to sue Lotus for wrongful dismissal. Good luck with that loser.

Over at McLaren and Hamilton has been flying round the world taking picture and partying in Ghana judging by the tweets. For a man supposedly haggling over the small print of a new contract, he looks to be having the time of his life. Jenson meanwhile has been organizing a charity Triathlon for extra fit people to show off and for his underwear model girlfriend to get all sweaty flogging herself round. Personally I’d rather be on the veranda with Lewis knocking back the G&T’s, even Nicole being there would be better than a muddy field with sweaty fit people. Both drivers, of course, still believe they can win the championship.

Alonso has been spending the last few weeks with different girls around the world by the look of his twitter feed. As bizarre as it sounds I’m starting to rather like Teflonso these days. He takes great pictures, always has a stunning lady to hand and comes across as a jolly great bloke when out with his mates. None of the faux ‘Gangsta’ shtick that Hamilton seems to want these days or the bone headed iron man nonsense that Jenson comes out with.

Massa seems to think he’s going to get a new contract from Ferrari any day now. I wonder if he’s been getting advice from the same lawyers are Mr Bahar ?
The Redbull chaps have been very quite over the last few weeks. That either means they’ve all been on holiday or that they have all decamped to Adrian Neweys garage to redesign their honest to goodness, not really as such ‘blown’ diffuser.

As for the rest of them, well they all think they’ll do well at Spa, my favourite would be Alonso, just because he’s got the bit between his teeth and his Mojo cranked up to WIN. Redbull have a major redesign of their diffuser to work on and McLaren seem to either be right on the money or way off on the settings. 
But this is Spa where a hairy chested driver like Kimi, Alonso or Lewis can make the difference, or perhaps even Webber or Jenson with a bit of a tail wind and some of the forecast rain.

Here are the current standings with still lots of points to play for;


1 Fernando Alonso  164
2 Mark Webber       124
3 Sebastian Vettel  122
4 Lewis Hamilton    117
5 Kimi Räikkönen   116


Don’t forget to update you predictions before Friday .. good luck.