Hello you lovely people.
So the days are getting shorter as
the warm summer breeze starts to turn damp and just a bit chilly. It’s the time
of year for long walks in the woods, kicking up the leaves, collecting conkers
and big roast dinners with the family, then falling asleep in front of the TV
and thankfully the F1 circus rocks up to the interminably dull Sochi
circuit.
Russia has many fantastic cities;
Moscow with its Red Square, St Petersburg
with the Hermitage and Sochi with its errrr .. with that thing the ..
errrum. Oh yeah the industrial truck park round the back. No wait .. there’s
that big round international flag thing, yeah that was interesting. A big long
corner with no overtaking on it .. yeah. That corner was … well it looked nice,
the one between that Aldi super store and Ikea outlet depot. Its supposed to be
a the track winding its way through what is apparently the 2014 winter Olympic
village, but it just looks like a brutalist theme park to me.
Yet another track shoehorned
around an out of town shopping centre to promote a country by showing a really
dull 2.4 miles of its car parks. I mean
Russia is a pretty big place, there is an awful lot of it and not an awful lot
of people living on vast chunks of it. So why slap a street circuit around one
of the least visually appealing ones?
[insert pictures of Dollars here]
Monaco works because it has the weight of history
behind it. Its slap bang in the middle of the city and it uses the landmarks to
promote the city. It looks exciting, it looks dangerous and you can see the
drivers having to work for their money.
Singapore works because it’s in
the middle of the night, its brash bright neon lit, loud, fast, dangerous and
exciting. You can’t really see the actual city but you can imagine it behind
the floodlights and grandstands as an exciting place to visit. It has mystery
and the lure of the orient about it.
Sochi meanwhile, looks like you
can get a good two for one offer on cabbages soup, if the highly visible,
highly armed and very mean looking troops don’t turn you away first. Oh it
looks bright and sparkly new … but would you actually want to go there?
No this weekend has far more
interesting things happening than a stodgy old race in Russia, trust me. But
I’m afraid you’re going to need satellite TV to catch it, starting at midnight
on Saturday we have the Australian V8 from Bathurst. One of the truly great
race tracks in the world. An absolutely amazing ribbon of tarmac carved up the
side of Mount Panorama in New South Wales. This is a real circuit for real
proper drivers with grit and determination. Go and look for it on YouTube, type
in Bathurst 1000 and marvel at what a car can do when its driven on the edge of
reason round a mountain.
I have a bucket list of races I’m
going to attend before the red wine catches up with my liver. Bathurst is front
and centre top 3, behind a Le mans hospitality suite and grandstand seats over
the start finish line at the Indy 500. As events go, the V8’s round Bathurst
has to be seen to be believed. The fans drink enough booze to sink the titanic,
they even had to limit the amount of beer being brought onto the circuit to 24
cans per person.
Next up and following right behind
the Ozzy V8’s, round 6 of the WEC from
the Fuji international circuit in Japan. Yes I know it’s turning into a bit of
a Porsche benefit year, but trust me, it’ll be worth getting up for, Fuji is a beautiful
circuit.
Okay, watch those two if you can,
then when the F1 start you won’t mind if it’s as dull as an English Rugby
second half performance.
Other news … Bernie reckons the
whole shebang will be sold off to the highest bidder before the end of the year
! Yes, odd news this, it might just be Bernie dangling a line during a slow
news week to the more naïve elements of the press pack. But who knows with
Bernie! Maybe CVC have had enough of teams asking for more money, they’re
currently loading the cars with all the loot they can carry, Kevin has been
sent back to check under the sofas in the staff canteen to look for any loose
change they may have missed. The Big boss is sitting in the driver’s seat
nervously checking his watch, the EU could be round any minute asking difficult
questions and he’s not the one who’s
going down for this blag.
If CVC were to sell the right to
F1 to some other shadowy group of faceless money men, Bernie would get a whole
new shed full of dirty cash and no doubt be left in charge, despite being one
hundred and eleventy stupid. oooh sure Its’s
all probably just more Bernie smoke and mirrors .. time as ever, will tell.
Good news for the Lotus peeps.
Renault have said they’ll buy the gig and have signed something that keeps her
Majesties customs and excise from the door until the end of the season. There is
still no actual official announcement on what’s actually been bought and whose
paying for what. There are apparently
several creditors with noses out of shape, you’d think they’d be used to that,
having bank rolled Maldonado these past two years. One theory is, Renault will
withdraw the team for 2016 so there are no Renault engines on the grid, which
means they can redesign the whole thing and restart the team in 2017 with a
brand new engine thus avoiding the whole tokens/points/money FIA mess thing.
Because they have told Redbull and
by extension Torro Rosso what it can do with its engine contract. Tired of
being blamed for the teams problems and passed over when the glory is being handed out, Renault will
not be supplying engines to either team in 2016. Now as I’m sure you’re all
aware a car without an engine isn’t much of a race car. It’s not really a car
at all is it? it’s a sled, and that’s about it. So Redbull have been flouncing
around and waving their hands in the air and threatening to hold their breath
and generally acting like spoilt children. See they treated Renault appallingly
badly for years, and when they went knocking on the doors of other engine
manufactures “demanding” no less, that they “give them an engine and it better
be damn good mind you” No company
appears to be ready to deal with this petulant team.
They told Audi it had better give
them an engine and stop with all the WEC nonsense right away, Audi mumbled something
about being busy and winning and not needing the grief. Then VW who sort of own
Audi got caught cheating on their road car emission tests and suddenly F1 with
a team not known for hushing up engine problems, was not the place for a toxic
brand.
So they went to Ferrari who said
they had a couple of old units knocking around they could have at cost. Redbull
said no Ferrari were to give them the best newest engines for free or they’d
tell Bernie Ferrari was being mean. Ferrari laughed and told them to get lost.
So Redbull knocked on Mercedes
door demanding the same engines as the works team and this time they brought
Bernie along. But Mercedes are winning and they don’t need the grief either.
Bernie wasn’t happy about this and so in Japan, quite unrelated of course you
understand, Mercedes who won the race at a canter were strangely absent from our
television screens. Mercedes just shrugged and said “No, Redbull are not getting
our engines in 2016”.
There’s always Honda I suppose …….
Hahahahahahahahaahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah
Ok, Sochi then, Merc and Ferrari,
chased by Redbull and Williams .. Lotus now it’s got some money and Force India
with something to prove. Verstappen will be the only thing worth watching if
Mercedes don’t get any air time again.
Good luck
No comments:
Post a Comment