2006: Things Wot We Have Learned

Well that was exciting wasn't it... Now we've all had a chance to sit back and catch our breath, you have to admit it turned out to be a pretty good season - certainly something you wouldn't have counted on after the first few races.

But then F1 always has a way of surprising you. (Apart from when Max Mosley gets involved; then it tends to just disappoint you, depress you, horrify you and make you want to go and follow Extreme Chess or something instead).

The FIA overturning the decisions of its own stewards to ensure the banning of Renault's mass dampers was a piece of predictably unsavoury and ultimately thickheaded politicking that threatened to overshadow the year, and as ever revealed and taught us more about the sport than we knew before. (Primarily, that when it stinks it REALLY stinks.)

However it was only one of many, many things we learned from the 2006 season; and so here in no particular order are a few others:

Things we have learned in 2006...
• That the age-old rule about cutting chicanes no longer stands. Well, sometimes. Kind of... Er, depends who you are.
• That the Red Bull brigade bafflingly value Scott Speed over Christian Klien and should clearly be renamed Complete Bull at once.
• That despite McLaren's wonderful shiny MP4/21 paint-job, you can't polish a turd.
• That Super Aguri weren't that bad after all - and could even be a good deal better next year too.
• That the authorities were actually capable of delivering a pretty entertaining - even compelling - qualifying system.
• That external primarily aerodynamic devices that directly affect aerodynamics aren't actually areodynamic so long as they're on a Ferrari.
• That there are other nox-fixed parts of the car that have a far more direct effect on its aerodynamics than mass dampers and should therefore also be banned... Yes: steering wheels have to go.
• That Jenson Button can win a GP, and that James Allen's voice can reach a pitch audible only to dogs when it happens.
• That Anthony Davidson is as good a commentator as he is a driver (that's 'excellent' by the way).
• That nothing became Schumi like the manner of his going.
• That Ferrari must (and will) change now he's gone, and Ross Brawn's gone.
• That the F1 Digital+ TV channel MUST return. Now.
• That rain is a good thing. Particularly in Hungary, and the event should definitely be moved into their rainy season as a result.
• That sometimes the weight of being hyped up as the uber-rookie doesn't help you make a genuinely great career start: can Hamilton avoid the pitfalls that Rosberg encountered?
• That we missed Spa very badly.
• That we will miss Suzuka equally badly.
• That Max Mosley must go.

And that's it from Motormouth - bye bye and thanks for reading throughout the season; and don't forget you can find all the articles from this year archived online at www.f1motormouth.com

The Choice Of Champions

More then ever before in previous seasons I’ve noticed a debate emerging this past couple of weeks with a strength (and a cod validity) that's quite unexpected over who the worthy or 'real' champion would be this year...

Although pundits mean 'deserving' when they say 'real', the real champion is actually very simple to decide as it is based on things like real races and real points; rather than races that happened in your head or on your Sony Playstation.

It's easy to see why a 'worthy' champion debate might emerge, what with the way points have been overhauled, rule reinvention and regulation tweaking have played into making Ferrari look tainted (again) and also how some final bravura performances from Schumi and final twists have played to the gallery.
What's not so easy to see is why anyone with half a brain thinks it's in any way a useful or justifiable way to pursue any kind of intelligent or logical dialogue about the sport.

Just as Red Bull's dumbass axing of Christian Klien was based on hard numbers rather than softer, more telling facts (that might actually have suggested they should keep him and he was doing pretty well all things considered, thanks) so the Championship is also calculated on a purely mathematical basis.
The champion is no more and no less than the person who comes out on top; worthy or not, fair or unfair. For the loser it's hard cheese, life sucks, and all that. End of story.

The debate would have been equally worthless last year, when Kimi Raikkonen was clearly the 'worthy' champion, as reflected in many popular and professional polls and awards; none of which, you may have noticed, actually caused points scored across 2005 to magically reassemble in his favour.
He was an inspired and daring all-or-nothing racer compared to Nando's route of apparently duller and businesslike competency that year (mirrored in Renault's more conservative strategies); a contrast never more apparent than at the European GP - and who picked up the spoils there too? Exactly.

Worthiness or mitigating circumstances are simply not valid currency - though even today many would still say Niki Lauda was the 'moral victor' or 'worthy' or 'real' champion in 1976.
Well tough titty; because James Hunt was the real champion (and a great one too). Just as Keke Rosberg was the real champion in 1982 when it really should have been the gobsmackingly mercurial Didier Pironi (or who knows, even the equally mercurial Gilles Villeneuve...) - it's worth bearing in mind that Rosberg only took a single victory in his championship year, which is a pretty uninspiring stat...

And in the end, after all the twitching and meddling from Lady Luck, it happens that Alonso is the real champion this year. Schumi is the real runner-up; his last race one that showed him at his very best - spirited, ballsy, deft and committed.

The way to judge the championship is on reality, not a world of alternate possibilities. Would they, after all, have made it a more exciting year? No of course not.
Anyway, now we've cleared that up, when's the next race?

A TV Dog's Dinner

You could almost hear the collective "D'oh!!!" waking up thousands of families across the UK very early last Sunday morning, as F1 fans shouted their despair from downstairs, once again missing out on a crucial piece of race action - and this time possibly the most important moment of this year's championship as Schumi retired at Suzuka.

It's not the first time of course that ITV have dropped the ball in their television coverage of F1 this season; far from it - just another numbing low point in their poorly scheduled, ad-intensive product.

Actually I didn't totally miss Schumacher's crucial retirement as I was smart enough to be listening to Radio 5 Live, which boasts two major advantages for the serious F1 fan: firstly it features Maurice Hamilton, and secondly it doesn't feature James Allen.
In fact it frequently also features the excellent Anthony Davidson; as complete and comfortable (and expert) a pundit as he is a driver. (Whether or not Davidson gets a race seat next year is my acid test of whether there actually is a god or if the universe we live in is no more than a cruel and meaningless void).

It wasn't just the Japanese GP coverage that disappointed. Being an 'away' race it also meant that things like the crucial qualifying sessions got the usual careful ITV scheduling treatment, finally appearing on screen at the crack of mid afternoon on the Saturday.
I tell you if I had four digital TV channels at my disposal and had forked out a nebulous amount of money for the F1 broadcasting rights, I'd certainly make sure it took priority over the likes of 'The World's Funniest Animals' and re-runs of 'Emmerdale'.

When it comes to broadcasting Formula One on TV, you have to conclude that it's something that's far too important to be left to TV people. You also can't help but wonder whether the Beeb might even make a better job of this kind of thing nowadays: they certainly seem to take clever use of their portfolio of channels more seriously.
Match that with a lack of advertising breaks and you can imagine that it might be a seriously compelling proposition. Nonetheless, I still can't see any reason why commercial interests should make ITV's coverage such a pig's ear.

There are plenty of conceivable options as far as advertising in the F1 programming goes; from simply locking out adverts for the duration of the race (with more elsewhere), to leaving rotating web-style 'banners' on screen the whole time, or even allowing people to pay to 'opt-out' of watching adverts.
You could also look to a more heavyweight and complete sponsorship package of the whole product - or split it section by section. But you really need to take it all more seriously that ITV seem willing to do at present.

We've been here before, I know, but surely somebody needs to take Bernie aside and start talking about a proper multi-screen, pay per view, stand-alone channel, backed and produced by F1 experts.

Still; on we go to Sao Paulo for what could be an exciting and emotional end to the season, and to the end of Michael Schumacher's career. Anybody fancy a wager on whether they cut the post-race coverage short to show that repeat of the episode of 'Airline' where that bloke can't find his cello at luggage reclaim?


(*This article appeared in an edited form on Teletext on ITV; 16/10/2006)

Orders Please...

It's always 'glass half empty' for some people, isn't it? When things aren't going absolutely 100% or more their way they just glare at you like they're sucking on a lemon... Apart from when he actually won the Japanese GP, Fernando Alonso (possibly about to take his second WDC title) spent the last couple of weeks wandering around with a face like a slapped arse.

Have you ever seen anybody looking so grim? Look into his eyes and you'd have thought the prize was a wet weekend in Withernsea.
The reason, of course, is that he was equally close to NOT taking that title, and this is a sport where second is nothing more than the first of the losers.

Having said that, even Schumi, after losing his engine at Suzuka (and probably the championship at that very same moment) managed to go back to the pits and smile while shaking hands with all his crew. Okay it was a fake smile and it looked like someone had selotaped his lips back to his ears, but dammit at least he tried; and you know that at that moment he would - for all the gloss he might want to put on it - be heartbroken inside.
Still, at least it's not all doom and gloom in F1-Land...

One comedy gem (surely accidental as the team has been irony-free since the late eighties) is McLaren's announcement that they're branching out into selling a strategy software application for businesses, based on their own software which they use for race strategies.
For anyone who hasn't noticed; having failed to deliver at least two perfectly achievable titles in the last five years alone, the team is on the verge of its first win-less season since 1996. You just hope they don't mention that on the packaging...

Someone who certainly hasn't lost his sense of humour is Ferrari's Technical Director and Head of Bumptiousness Ross Brawn who, clearly seeing some kind of job in stand-up comedy during his forthcoming sabbatical year, demanded that other teams (that'd be Renault) 'play fair' as the season draws to a close.
To their eternal credit no teams actually responded to this; doubtless being far too busy wetting themselves, changing their underpants and then wetting themselves again.

If Brawn genuinely wasn't having funsies in his comments about fair play, then his utter lack of self-awareness clearly extends beyond the many, many antics of years past to such recent events as his star driver ignoring chicanes in Canada and Hungary, and trying to turn the Monaco circuit into the world's most expensive short-stay car park. Not to mention that 'blocking' nonsense at Monza.
Having said that, I must say I hope that Renault do go for team orders, and I hope Ferrari do likewise...
The stand-alone performance of cars hasn't really brought excitement to the sport this year; it's been the on and off track dirties and controversies, peculiar regulation changes and novel rule 'clarifications' that have driven the championship drama.

So I say go for it: Dastardly & Mutley in the Ferraris, Pinky & The Brain over there in the blue corner - do your worst; block, scheme, weave, whatever... All I'd ask is that we're open about it.
It's probably a bit late to expect team orders in Brazil, with Schumi now unlikely to claw the driver's title back; but with it still theoretically open to him you should never count him out. And if events turn his way, then a little bit of scheming could come in very useful.

I have to say I think it's the inherent dishonesty of covert orders and tactics that's the problem, not orders or 'out in the open' team strategies in themselves: maybe it's time the FIA revisited the subject, as it's a mess of their making - the usual indistinct murk of dos and don'ts that a legal brain like Max Mosley could surely make a better job of.
But then, as we all know, it's sometimes easier to clarify a poorly-written rule in somebody's favour rather than have them fall foul of a well-written one in the first place. Playing 'fair' - like most things - would be easier if the FIA had the mind to make it so. But they don't.
And as long as that's the case, there *will* be scheming and conning, dirties and tricks.
They just seem curiously content to leave it that way...

Down To The Wire

This season promised so much before it actually started. Then once the first flag dropped it fell into a drearily dull and predictable mulch before controversies like Michael's Monaco madness and the FIA's mass-damper ban threw things wildly up the air again, and brought us back towards something approaching a classic season finale.

But what's really brought the excitement back? Simple. H20. Buckets of the stuff at both Hungary and Shanghai. Best innovation of the year: rain!

Even things like the new qualifying system don't make for as much fun as the odd torrential downpour. The wet stuff separates the men from the boys; the boys tending to disappear sideways into the gravel (or sideways into DC in the case of Felipe Massa).
Hungary's spray-filled air was equally thick with chaotic excitement, and the 2006 Chinese GP was no different, with the sport's best brains going into overdrive to snatch every advantage from the treacherous conditions.

Shanghai not only showed Schumi at his best; keeping his head, constantly adjusting and waiting for things to come to him when he couldn't do anything else - it also showed Renault at its weakest; making an amateurish mistake of changing something that was working perfectly well, throwing Nando's race out of the window in a single pit-stop. (It wasn't the rear wheel change that was the real problem, it was changing wheels at all in the previous stop...)

Seeing the Michelin and Bridgestone tyres gaining and losing form, against each other and in ever-changing conditions, reminds you of what a dumb decision a single tyre supplier for 2007 is.
I'd have at least two suppliers - in fact, I'd prefer three or four. Tyres are so crucial these days and dropping all variation and competition is another drab, standardising piece of Max's dumbing-down jigsaw.

Wet races aren't just about tyres though, as the wildly differing wet-skills of Schumi and Nando at one end (masterful) and Massa and Speed at the other (on a par with my gran) show. And China wasn't just about skill either, as Kimi Raikkonen (having a blindingly good run) would surely testify.
He must be dying to get to Ferrari after five years of varying levels of frustration and outright despair - although he still has to go to Suzuka and Sao Paulo first to find out what fresh hell McLaren have in store for him there...

And now it's down to the wire. Two contenders, 116 points apiece with two races to go; one likely to favour Michelin runners and one likely to favour Birdgestone. You could see from Schumi's unfeasibly excited bouncing at Shanghai that he wants to walk away with both those races in his pocket, having broken his China duck.

Whether he will is of course unknowable. And strangely enough, I'm not actually that bothered. I just want it to rain. Lots. That way it'll be a finale where we all win...

Excursions & Chicanery

Some drivers find it very difficult to stick to the road these days. Here in the real world for example it's clearly too much like hard work for arrogant, slappable oafs who don't like boring things like pavements or zebra crossings to get in the way of a good mobile phone conversation.

Still you'd have thought that clever, talented, experienced and focussed F1 drivers would better understand the difference between 'road' and 'not road' wouldn't you...
Yep. And you would of course be wrong.

Tyre bosses complaining about the surface of kerbs at Monza hit a slightly surreal note: surely they should be concerned at how their tyres perform on the track itself, not off it - and hopefully that's where their drivers will be planning on keeping their car.
This isn't to belittle safety matters of course, but the best way of avoiding a meeting with a barrier is to actually drive on the circuit itself and not on kerbs, gravel or run-offs.

Concrete run-off areas may well be safer than gravel, but they are also something of a 'get out of jail free' card for drivers these days. You don't want harm to come to them, but at the same time you can't help feeling a price ought to be paid for going off track. Like not being able to get back onto it, for example.

Whereas once you would be bogged down in gravel and unable to continue, now there is no penalty from huge run-off aprons and you can just take a nice comfy excursion and pootle back on a few seconds later.

Beyond the matter of run-off areas, Michael Schumacher has been spearheading a campaign to make chicanes a thing of the past too, prompting a novel FIA "clarification" following the Hungarian GP that appeared to fly in the face of decades of perfectly understood, observed and upheld rules.

Actually it wasn't just Hungary: a lot of people seem to have forgotten that Schumi also left out any bits of circuit that didn't appeal to him in Canada earlier in the year, where he appeared to decide that he really just couldn't be arsed with the final chicane at all on a number of occasions.
You have to wonder why circuits actually bother with chicanes or white lines or kerbs - or basically a track - when all and sundry can drive wherever appeals to them with apparent impunity.

Having said that, now that all the grid have basically been told that, contrary to popular belief (and indeed rules) that you can block others by cutting chicanes, it will be interesting to see if any resulting lawlessness backfires on Charlie Whiting and the FIA...
Let's hope so.

TV Times

Congratulations to Sky One for finally applying TV's current fad for cretinously formulaic celebrity based competition shows to Formula One; or at least to a driving show featuring David Coulthard and Eddie Irvine.

But while I generally welcome the chance to see more F1 drivers on telly I'm not convinced that some hideously contrived motor racing offspring of 'The Match' and 'Project Catwalk' (imaginatively called 'The Race') is necessarily the way to go.

Between the Grands Prix themselves (whose television coverage in the UK seems to revolve largely around Jenson Button) there isn't a great deal to keep the F1 fan occupied; no TV version of Autosport magazine or F1 Racing for instance (although I wouldn't be surprised if some featherbrained exec at ITV Sport is thinking about starting up a rolling 24-hour Jenson Button interactive news channel at this very moment).
One intermittent show that's worth looking out however is 'Inside Grand Prix' over on Motors TV (Sky).

'Inside Grand Prix' is a sponsor-based show (Williams partner Allianz being that sponsor), that is therefore a teensy bit team-biased, but nonetheless has loads of fascinating interviews and also useful technical articles with excellent 3d graphics.
Unfortunately, having originated in German and with variable production values, the voiceovers and graphics often don't seem to match, and with a narrator who always sounds as if he's reading the script at gunpoint it's a pretty peculiar viewing experience at times.

I always thought that extending the old Bernievison digital TV channel beyond its GP coverage to become a full-time F1 channel with news and documentaries, season reviews, classic races and historical profiles would be an excellent proposition.
That would be hugely unlikely though, given that there aren't even plans to bring back the original channel itself that I know of. But if any billionaire out there is planning on doing it, just email me and you'll have your Director of Programming sorted.

In the absence of any full-blooded F1 telly schedule though, we can at least give two and a half cheers to ESPN Classic Sport for running genuinely classic Grand Prix races from decades gone by on their channel each weekend. It's a feast for the eyes: cars that actually looked different to each other, thrilling racing, dangerous looking run-off fencing and quite terrifying haircuts. Well worth a look, honestly...

Apart from that, and short of Jenson starring in another series of 'I'm At Honda, Get Me Out Of Here!' it may be that 'The Race' is the best we can expect for now. Until the season ends - and we have nothing at all.

Goodbye, Farewell... Michael Bows Out

So farewell then Michael Schumacher: MS, Schumi, Schu, Rainmaster (and many other names, kind and unkind, bestowed on you across a long and amazing career). You're finally going, and with your exit you're ushering in a new age.

No matter exactly how you feel about Schumacher - and lord knows there must be a million wildly differing points of view, mostly extreme at one end or the other of the love/hate spectrum (he's a man who does not particularly inspire any middleground) - you can't deny that the sport will be a different, and probably lesser, animal without him next year.

To fans of German stereotyping Michael Schumacher is the Red Baron; a two-dimensional caricature of cold, clinical attitude, arrogance and villainy. To Motormouth he's the Red Herring; a fascinating layered creature of all kinds of misunderstood and misleading traits and messages.
He's not invulnerable, he's not always great in the rain, he's not always brilliant under pressure or in traffic. If he was perfect he'd be boring. But he's not - and that, given the greatness of his achievements, makes him far more interesting.

Jacques Villeneuve's comments that Schumi will be forgotten are clearly wide of the mark under any plain interpretation, although the extended direction of the comments - that he may not always be remembered perhaps for the best reasons - is probably less contentious.
JV was of course on the receiving end of one of Schumi's more famous dastardly and desperate split-second 'dirty tactics', and is probably better placed than many to give a first hand account of the person we're dealing with.

Michael Schumacher actually retained something of a dignified silence over Villeneuve's pot-shots, and probably isn't too worried by what JV thinks of him: when all's said and done, for whatever reasons (and they will include several impressive world records) he will be remembered far longer than JV in any case.
He's probably also aware that those achievements will be forever bundled with controversy and mixed feelings. And he probably won't be in the slightest bit bothered by that either. To Schumacher winning has always been everything - the rest is mere static.

Some hardened Schumacher fans go ape if you suggest that his sportsmanship may be less than perfect (suggesting they're either forgiving to a fault, a bit thick, or possibly registered blind) - and especially if you bring up driving into people or walls for tactical advantage.
Why so defensive? Surely you have to admire the ambition and psychology of someone who can think at that scale and at that speed? It may be dirty, and it may be cheating sometimes, but it's an astonishing gift nonetheless; and let's not forget how drab this season was until Monaco...

And so here we are; looking back at a 15-year F1 career laden with many amazing records: 7 World Championships, 90 GP wins, 153 podiums, 68 poles, 1354 career points, 22 hat-tricks of pole, fastest lap and victory - which makes comparisons with drivers of a different age redundant.

Schumacher is a creature of a very modern F1; something reflected in his achievements as much as his weaknesses. However much you love or loathe him, you cannot deny that a huge talent is departing - one which has almost single-handedly defined an F1 era.



(*This piece was originally screened on TV following the announcement of Schumacher's retirement)
(*Career stats correct after Italian GP - 10/09/06)

Radio Ga-Ga

If anybody tells you there's nothing good on radio anymore, they're talking rubbish, because they've clearly not heard any of the F1 team radio conversations, and are really missing out on something as a result.

Obviously I'm not talking about Schumi's transmissions (sadly I can only recall hearing him after the event, thanking pretty much everyone who lives near Maranello in gooey Oscars-style speeches: I'd much rather hear his in-race machinations and strategising). No, as ever, it's the inadvertent stuff that's really revealing.

In Turkey team radio taught us that Christijan Albers doesn't actually understand the qualifying system that he competes in; asking the crew how many go through to Round Two and should he stay in the car (they probably cut off the bit where he asked what circuit he was at and which team he was in...)

But it's not just newbies like Albers that hand out listening pleasure to fans in front of their tellies, there are some mighty (and mightily unexpected) drivers embarrassing themselves over the airwaves.

Renault team radio transmissions for instance are just pure comedy gold. You have to wonder if it's some deliberate unsettling tactic the way they keep humiliating Giancarlo Fisichella by always broadcasting clips of him being told he's nowhere near fast enough, to basically get a grip, and why can't he drive as well as other people do.

Granted, over the past couple of years Fisi has had no problems humiliating himself perfectly well without the aid of his pit crew, but you have to admire the verve with which they've thrown themselves at the job; falling only the slightest bit short of actually shouting "Fisi... You're crap... repeat, you're crap... Over..."

One of the funniest guys on team radio is actually World Champion Fernando Alonso, praised to the skies by commentators for being so perfectly balanced and rational. Yet he's the man who shrieks things like "Did you see what he did?????" and "But I can go faster than him!!!!!", sounding for all the world like South Park's Eric Cartman throwing a wobbly.

He's also the man who at the 2005 Canadian GP radioed in complaining that his car didn't seem to have the right balance; presumably unaware that this is one outcome of having driven it into a wall.

Possibly the most revealing bit of radio was at last year's Turkish GP where Raikkonen swept to victory, fully expecting Montoya to help cushion his points against Alonso. The message from the pits that JPM had goofed, letting Nando through was followed by a silence so huge that it threatened to drown out the engine.

Raikkonen is a man of few words (and mostly incomprehensible at that). But, as his title challenge ebbed further away, no words at all said everything.

Max Mosley's Homologation Game

Homologation. Crazy word, crazy concept. When I first heard Max Mosley pompously rolling it around in his mouth at a press conference I almost ruptured something inside (as I did when I first heard Lloyd Grossman coin the term "Tudorbethan" on Through The Keyhole).

Sadly though (and in a large part due to Mosley and the FIA), F1 is often now less exciting to watch than Through The Keyhole, and homologation could help drag the sport further into some new kind of dumbed-down dark age.

Homologation; the freezing of engine development, is yet another gem in Max's plans for the utter ninnyfication of the sport - and now apparently something as inevitable as it is undesirable.

The original arguments on freezing specifications and altering the longevity of engine were always framed as 'cost saving'- a worthy, yet probably untrue and certainly improbable justification.

The cost per unit of an engine is nothing compared to the full-blown development costs of an engine package. By moving his very very expensive goalposts around from v10 to v8, to lasting two weekends, then one, and to now move to a stage from whence they are frozen, Max clearly doesn't bring down costs - the budgets of small countries could probably be swallowed up in that kind of work.

Huge lunges at development and redevelopment against radically shifting rules are surely far more costly than ongoing development in a single direction.

Homologation seems yet another shift towards some peculiar Mosley-esque vision of a sport that dares to be the pinnacle of its kind by cutting back on technology, power, innovation and ooomph.

Yes... Ooomph. That thing certain car manufacturers refer to as Va Va Voom. F1 used to have it in spades - and by definition it should continue to have it in spades... bigger spades each year quite frankly.

What next? Limited V4s? Dragging down engine power and technological imagination may work for some things (though I have no idea what) but that doesn't make it right for F1. That way madness lies: It's already a sport, and it's called lawnmower racing.

To some, the 2008 landscape may be fantastically rational and as sensible as a pair of nylon slacks, but that's not why I watch F1. And as far as I'm aware it's not why most of us watch F1. To me its future looks pretty backward. If it regresses any further, it'll probably be classed as "Tudorbethan".

Button It!

When Jenson Button won his maiden Grand Prix victory in Hungary, there was talk in the media of him getting "the monkey off his back". As monkeys go, it must have been about the size of King Kong's dad - and ironically it was largely placed there by the media and press themselves.

I don't think I know of any other British F1 driver who has had to endure the constant pressuring and prodding Button has received over the past seasons. Not Hill, not Mansell, not Hunt... Nobody.

The press have undoubtedly become more hyperactive, cynical and bruising in their treatment of sports stars and celebs over recent years, and it must surely be unenviable to not only have to excel in what you do but also traipsy through the minefields of the British media's ever more spiteful 'Build em up, Knock em down' mentality every day of your life.

Button has so far managed remarkably well (a couple of self-induced PR disasters aside); and you can only hope that his first GP win isn't a cue for them to pile on more pressure.*

I used to think Button was little more than an ego in overalls (and there's nothing wrong with ego in itself - obviously you need it in spades in this sport). But I've softened. Over the past year or so I've warmed to him and even felt quite sorry for the coverage he gets.

When I say 'coverage' I include 'favourable' coverage. So complete is ITV's craven love-in with him in its F1 programming that a number of my friends actually refer to it as the Jenson Button Show. And that's a great shame as it alienates people who would like to like him.

Race after race, coverage on telly and in the papers revolves around him while the title battle lies elsewhere: it's as if there's some appalling fascination with building him up every fortnight just to beat themselves up when it all goes skew-wiff; Hungary being a very welcome change.

At some point you can imagine that Jenson courted the media to raise his profile and PR. And probably rightly so: Anthony Davidson might well have a race seat by now if he were a better media whore and PR nut.

The problem with attracting all this attention though is these things always turn out very Faustian. The press don't court him because they love him, they do it because he's useful to them.

He'll be equally useful as a hate object when they tire of him too. Hopefully Jenson and his advisers are now skilled and mature enough to rise above all that nonsense as they shift from 'he'll never win' to 'one win wonder' to 'F1's great briton' to 'F1's brit has-been'.
As they surely will.


(*Footnote: True to form, ITV's Turkish GP coverage lurched onto the screen with a huge great Jensonvision tribute that lasted the best part of twenty minutes. Way to go guys!)

Instant Car-ma: Punishment & Just Desserts

I got to thinking about summary justice when re-watching a 'Season Review' of 1982 a few days ago. If you're familiar with the season you may recall an incident between Nelson Piquet and Eliseo Salazar at Hockenheim...

A simple lapping move came unstuck when the Chilean clumsily nurfed Piquet straight through a tyre barrier. The Brazilian leapt out of his car and flew at Salazar in a spectacularly inept hybrid of kick-boxing and bitch-slapping. Fantastic stuff.

I couldn't help but think that you simply don't see that kind of thing anymore. More's the pity. The closest we got recently was Schumi rapping on Sato's helmet at Spa last year, telling him he "needed therapy".

And given how drab and dull the 'racing' tends to be these days, surely we should be glorying in any action that we can salvage from the sport. We should even demand that incidents and disputes are settled in public for our entertainment, not by stewards behind closed doors.

Surely the Scott Speed Australian GP episode would have been better settled Springer-style; Speed sending the 'bleep' machine into overdrive with rabid tirades, till DC jumps up from his chair and lands a Glasgow Kiss on the insolent upstart and gets dragged away by bouncers in front of whooping fans?

Springer, Trisha, Kilroy, Judge Judy... there are dozens of summary justice formats that would be perfect for settling F1 disputes. All of them more exciting than any race this year.

Kilroy's whispering, patronising tone would have been perfect for defusing Michael's Monaco faux-pas; the orange-skinned presenter sidling up to him, jamming a microphone in his petulant face and saying, "Hhmmmmkay, they all say you're a cheat: How does that make you feel?"

And can you imagine how effective a crowd invasion of the podium in Austria 2002 would have been in helping inform Ferrari's number one driver and strategists on the pros and cons of team orders?

Justice in F1 has certainly improved in both visibility and consistency with the introduction of permanent stewards, but there's still a long way to go as the oddly matched penalties for Alonso and Schumacher at Hungary clearly showed.

The more immediate, open and impactful that a penalty can be, the better: they never impede genuine racing and sportsmanship - but simply reinforce the line over which you don't step.
And if they could find a way to bring back the kick-boxing too, then I think the sport can only benefit.

Are The Days Of Passing Past?

To me, one of the saddest indictments of modern F1 is Fernando Alonso's post-race comment at the European GP: "After my second stop, I just turned down the engine to look after it for next weekend... I think second place is a fantastic result from this race."

Well, quite frankly, I don't. I think it's a cop-out and a disgrace: it cheats Alonso's fans and everyone elses'. Have they paid good money to see their heroes sit back and tootle along when they should be roaring on to the flag? No - patently they have not.

Can you imagine the outrage there would be if David Beckham said "Well, we'd scored that first goal Desmond, so we thought we'd just arse around for the rest of the match... you know, take it easy like. Brilliant, eh?"

I can - and if he did, I'd be first in a very long queue to kick him in the shins. And I don't even follow football. But if any sportsman feels that it's somehow okay to insult their fans so brazenly, then I'm sorry but they need a very serious reality check. Involving slaps.

The current lack of full-on racing and overtaking isn't really Fernando's fault of course. It's the fault of engine and tyre rules, aerodynamics, carbon brakes, all kinds of things. Most of which can be laid at the big, posh, Parisian doorstep of the FIA.

It's their regulations that continue to allow, and encourage, passing in the pits - and race strategies that avoid any actual 'racing'. If they can't understand what a disappointment that is to the average fan then they don't deserve to run the sport.

Reducing downforce whilst re-introducing slick tyres for more mechanical grip is all very well, but the real clincher can only be the outright ban of traction control and similar electronic driver aids, making all crucial manoeuvring a matter of driver skill.

The FIA also apparently plan to bring in a split rear wing, though designers from the teams seriously doubt its effectiveness. Still, at least it was notable as one of those few occasions when the FIA actually asked for the teams' opinions before completely ignoring them.

Just as crucial as the cars are the circuits: how often this year have you heard commentators say "this isn't an overtaking circuit"? Well if it isn't, then why is it on the calendar? Someone needs to get an expert group of drivers renowned for 'racing' together to make them good overtaking circuits.

Let's face it: who should know better how to do that? Overall the sport surely still needs serious measures to improve itself if it's going to survive. And wouldn't be great if it were saved by its stars rather than its masters?

"Our Survey Says..."

There can be few things in this godforsaken life more unwelcome than random market surveys... Explosive diarrhoea perhaps. Accidentally slamming your bits in a filing cabinet, or fracturing your coccyx. Or possibly the idea of ITV's James Allen following you around with a microphone, commentating on your entire life. But probably not much else.

One exception though, would have to be a survey about your life's passion, which purports to be useful and interested in your opinion but is nothing of the sort. Say hello to the FIA/AMD 2006 Survey of F1 fans.

At such a crucial and pivotal time in the sport's history you'd have thought a definitive and official survey of fans might weigh heavily on matters of purpose and principle; on the sport itself. But no. What we got was a succession of questions about podcasts and mobile phones.

Whether we download boredomcasts of the latest joyless, life-sapping F1 processions onto our watches or whatever is frankly irrelevant compared to whether we want overtaking and thrills and racecraft, or whether we should be allowed to remove Max Mosley by popular vote.

Given that last year's survey unsurprisingly identified the Spa circuit as a massive favourite amongst F1 fans, you'd have thought any responsible and responsive sporting body would not then allow that circuit to be thrown off the following year's calendar.

But you'd be reckoning without the spectacular ability of F1 to shoot itself in both feet whilst stabbing itself in the back (and probably a few other self-destructive cliches on top of that). So we lost Spa and yet another lesson from the 2005 survey went unlearned.

And what's this fixation with mobile phones? - they're for ringing people (or subjecting them to craptacularly annoying music on public transport if you live where I do, apparently) - not for watching GPs: can you honestly say there's any value in pratting around with mobile when they can't even get TV right?

If I'm going to be asked about how I want to watch F1, I want to be able to give answers like "in full, no adverts", "on a dedicated interactive TV channel", "all race weekend", and "on the edge of my seat, which currently isn't possible thanks to you idiots."

Sadly though, the FIA/AMD survey - as it was last year - appears to be little more than an exercise in getting the likes of you and me to tick boxes once they've already decided what outcome they want.

If you filled in the survey, then what can I say? that's 15 perfectly good minutes of your life you won't ever be getting back. It may seem cynical to take such a dim view when our opinions are being asked for, but when everything's as irrelevant or loaded as this survey suggests, then surely it means that the FIA take an equally dim view of us.

Is F1 For Real?

If you watch that World Wrestling nonsense, or if you're lucky or old enough to remember the wrestling on World of Sport (where old ladies used to try and knock the villainous Giant Haystacks unconscious by throwing their mules and handbags at him) then you'll see where I'm headed with this...

It's obvious that the WWE wrestling is utterly faked; with its catcalling, squabbles, blatant baddies and underhand fighting (painstakingly scripted and staged to make up for a thuddingly dull sport) - and it's gradually dawning on me that F1 must surely be faked too.

When I say F1 is faked, I don't mean in the sense that the moon landings were faked - as if it's some huge deception. No, I simply mean it's all staged and made up for our entertainment like wrestling. Perhaps it was starting to really go off in the mid nineties, and Bernie decided that something had to be done.

And so, after decades of top notch sport and sportsmanship, it was transformed into the most widely broadcast comedy farce in the world. Still convincing enough to hoodwink the casual observer, but for those who dig any deeper, clearly contrived and unreal.

Consider the evidence: for a start would a real sport shoot itself in the mouth with both barrels like F1 did at Indy 2005? Of course not: that would be even dumber than a Vin Diesel movie. It's just not possible - it's only explicable as a huge plot twist.

Likewise when Ferrari threw a wobbly about tyre regulations in 2003, causing the FIA to change the rules and the press to laugh openly at Ross Brawn in a press conference... Again, clearly impossible. Just another set-piece drama to reverse flagging ratings.
As was Schumi's Monaco parking incident this year. Obviously. Nobody is that poorly skilled. My cats can drive better than that, and they don't even have opposable thumbs or a super-license. No F1 driver - or World Champion - could possibly do that by accident; and doing it deliberately could only be a spectacularly inept attempt at cheating, or to do the bidding of F1's puppetmasters and grab worldwide attention just as the season was getting really boring.

Another giveaway is when you notice actors on the grid. Not Sly Stallone, Michael Douglas & Co freeloading at GP weekends, but when they're actually driving the cars... Anybody who's been paying attention knows that Scott Speed isn't real. The plainly fake name aside, he's obviously actor Sean William Scott playing an angry airhead. Who can't drive.
And Rubens Barrichello: clearly the bloke who plays Frasier. Who unsurprisingly spent the first half of the season driving like a middle-aged talk-show host. Ever wondered why you never see Nick Heidfeld and Hayley Joel Osment in the same room? Exactly.

So where next for F1 - The Movie? Well in a very dull, accountancy-based heist plot, Bernie seems to be making off with all the money. And in general, Max Mosley continues to play Doctor Evil and threaten the sport with all kinds of ludicrous deaths. The rest is just processions and politics.

The best outcome has to be that it's not like WWE, but more like Dallas: we wake up and find it's all been a dream, Ayrton Senna's still about and they didn't ban turbos.
However if, god forbid, I'm wrong and this IS all real, then what kind of a sport are we all watching?

Exclusive Johnny Herbert Interview

EXCLUSIVE: Motormouth caught up with Johnny Herbert; one of Britain's F1 greats and now Midland F1's Sporting Director for a wide-ranging chat about Midland, 2008, driver moves, regulations, technology and much, much more. This article appeared in many different shorter TV versions on Teletext.



Some Communications Centres in the blazing hot Magny Cours paddock are always busy, like Renault and Ferrari; buzzing with the constant churn of the media, the wealthy and the usual fair-weather friends that such vast success inspires.
Others, like McLaren with its hastily posted "Invited Guests Only" signs - clearly caught a bit on the back foot by the departure of Juan Pablo Montoya a day or two earlier, would wish to be less busy than usual.
But it's perhaps unsurprisingly in the Midland F1 Communications Centre, the least pretentious and willy-waving of all in the paddock, that communications are most friendly, helpful and effective.

Ron Fine, the team's affable Communications Director, pulls Johnny Herbert, Midland F1's Sporting Relations Manager, from the vast, deep grey trucks that back onto the garages at a moment's notice, and we wander down to their hospitality suite to settle down in the shade with some cool drinks for a chat.
Herbert turns out to be possibly the nicest man you might ever meet; immediately friendly and frank - and he's also someone whose previous life as a driver gives him a great perspective on the sport's intrigues, cycles, politics and relentless technological march.

I ask how the Sporting Relations Manager role suits him - looking after a whole team, when previously as a driver it was all just about himself: "Oh, it's still all about me..." he laughs, "No, when you're this side of it you want the best for the whole team, to get the best from both cars. I'm enjoying it - I'm still learning it and learning how the whole thing evolves and the way the whole thing works around the way the team puts things into practice."
"Originally it was more to do with the media side of things, because of how the rumour mill was churning (surrounding Jordan in 2005), so I was brought in to be the friendly face for people to talk to, but it did get quieter and much more together."

The media role persists, with ongoing stories about the future ownership of the team he admits: "Even now, there are rumours about where this place ends up, but it's really a much calmer atmosphere within to be honest. The original idea was to do very much the press side of stuff, dealing with the drivers and the sponsors; the easy stuff... but now there's a bit more the engineers, the ongoing stuff and what's going on with the FIA towards 2008 and so-on."
I ask if that fuller role is more interesting than just the media side of things for an ex-driver: "Oh yes, but I wouldn't have wanted to just dive straight in, because I hadn't got any experience in that area. Hopefully it'll get more in-depth and there'll be more of the running of everything the way it needs to be."

Herbert originally joined the team last year, and a lot has happened since then... "From the Jordan era to this year it has changed very quickly - I thought it might take longer to shake that off, but it hasn't - and everybody's very dedicated to it, and of course there's all the rule changes which everybody's talking about at the same time. You'd think (the rule changes) would benefit the smaller teams such as ourselves, but of course they're not actually settled yet, so we don't know quite what they're going to be - we've got a good idea but we don't know exactly so we'll have to wait and see."

I ask where he hopes Midland will be by the end of this year, and where they hope to be next year? "We've come from a position where we had no chance of getting through to the second round of qualifying to now hopefully getting that consistency there that we do qualify both cars in that second round."
Which gives some room tactically as you look to the race itself...
"Oh yeah - exactly. We still need to improve our race pace... we've seen it sporadically but we need to see it more consistently. To compete against the others that's what you need: that's probably the biggest thing we need to work on for the moment."

So, for 2007? "Once we can get that race pace side of things going, and we know what is happening with F1 in 2008 basically then we can structure ourselves in a way that aim towards 2008 really..." So that ideally puts you in a position to then develop for both 2007 and 2008 simultaneously?
"Yeah, exactly - sure. I think 2008 will be the main one because of the amount of change."

One area where Johnny Herbert has a naturally deeper awareness of sensitivities and dynamics is in the nurturing of the two Midland drivers; Monteiro and Albers. What's it like to look after and push two competing talents working for the same team as well as for themselves? "The competitiveness between the drivers is always, I think, a positive thing because I think it just lifts the drivers, which lifts the team, and which helps everything work much, much more efficiently. But we're not looking at winning or podiums of course; we're looking more at the latter part of the points."
Whilst his approach to inter-driver competition seems healthy, does he find the Red Bull approach of threatening drivers a bit destructive by comparison? "It's destructive, but I suppose there are certain points that you have to get to if things aren't going your way - Red Bull for example, they expected a lot more, but they haven't got it. The Toro Rosso has probably effectively started to out-drive the Red Bull cars, and then the pressure's on Red Bull, the drivers, the engineers and everybody else to get it together to be able to keep them behind, so then the pressure does up itself. But then that's Formula One."

The Midland F1 drivers, the odd tangle aside, seem to have been quietly doing okay so far... "Yeah, they're doing okay really. They have helped development, and the car has gone forward. So the guys back at the factory have all done the aero work and put it on the cars, the drivers have given their input, and it has been really positive - and it has got better. It's not easy to close the gap on the big guys, but we've been able to do that - we're not up their exhaust pipes of course, but we have got closer."
Herbert's main concern for his drivers is not losing the pace from qualifying to the race itself: "As I said the only thing we need to do is to get the race pace better; and that's down to the drivers being able to get the best from the car - if they can get the best from the car in qualifying and get it into the second phase of qualifying then I don't see any reason why they can't have a better race pace."
If they can sort that, then it looks to build a virtuous circle: "It's good for their careers, it's good for the team, it's good for all of us."

Knowing what a great F1 driver Johnny Herbert was, you can't help wondering if he misses it a bit... I ask if he's driven the Midland M16: "No... though actually I almost did the other week!" he says, referring to almost sitting in on a recent test session. "Tiago had a problem with his neck, and Christijan had a problem with his back. He eventually did do the day, but they did phone me up to see if I was sitting around throughout the day, which would have been quite an interesting one, It was close. My comeback was close!" he laughs.

It's inevitable that I'd also want to ask Johnny about his own time as a driver. I ask what his favourite cars were, not necessarily because of having taken wins in them, but more because of character and driveability... "Well, I was very lucky and fortunate in that I got the end of the turbo era: I drove the Benetton Ford and the Lotus Honda - and they were good. They were very 'brute force' power, they had about 950 to 1000 horsepower when I drove them, but then of course you had the big tall wings, the big front wings, the big fat tyres - they were really awesome to drive."
Were they really very different to drive, as they always look like they got thrown around a lot more? "Yeah; a different style completely because it was all more or less 'brake very very late, get round the corner, get the turbo spinning again, short-shift through the gears and get going again - they were pretty awesome things: I would say that was the best thing ever. But the early nineties were good as well, because we still had the big tyres and wings and everything else and they were really good too."

Johnny Herbert's F1 driving career lasted several years, during which - as ever - the sport was in huge transition. And although he cites cars like the old Lotus as a favourite, he was still competing in cars such as Saubers and Stewarts, which have a lot more in common with today's cars.
By the time Johnny retired from driving, the cars were designed and built to parameters and regulations which, at a basic level, have changed far less than during the years that he drove.
I wonder if any of that kind of power or brute force or 'oomph' he used to enjoy is missing from the contemporary F1 car? "It's one of those things. It's typical with the designers - the way they've tried to reduce everything, they've still been able to achieve, this year probably for the first time, the same G-forces that we had in the early nineties. They're up around 4G again which probably we haven't seen since those days when we had slicks and big wings. So the G-forces are still there."

Nonetheless, in recent years, driving styles have been less riveting, more conservative? "You have to be very careful - a bit like a ballerina on her toes, it's all very delicate the way you have to drive; whereas again, now you have people like Kimi and Fernando, maybe those two, who are very aggressive with their cars. I think we lost a bit in the early 2000s, but it has slowly crept back, which I think is good because as a driver I always think the ultimate was being able to grab it by the scruff of the neck and basically drive the pants off it."

I ask his opinions on today's crop of British drivers; the up and coming, and the already established. I suggest that you've got to feel pretty sorry for Jenson so far this season. He agrees: "Yeah - Well, he's been under a bit more pressure because Rubens has come through after a bit of a slow start to the season."
But then Rubens has upped his game, hasn't he... "Yeah, well, he's had to. He's under pressure too for the first time in quite a long while. Rubens is no slouch - he's a good qualifier and he's a very consistent racer too."
"For Jenson it's a shame, as the Honda hasn't come to fruition - it looked good at the beginning of the year; and then it was back to that position of qualifying well but racing badly, and now it's sort of - well, the qualifying isn't that good and the racing's about as same as the qualifying. So it's not too good at the moment. But you've got to see how that pans out. He's just got to stick at it. It might change next year, and he might be absolutely brilliant."

DC seems a lot happier, I suggest. Even though Red Bull may be lacking a bit right now, it seems the right kind of place for him...? "Yeah, he seems to have had a new lease of life at the end of his career really. Recently probably hasn't quite gone quite so well - it's been a bit mixed. As you said, there's a been a little bit of a depression because obviously the Toro Rosso's been pushing right up their backside... But, yeah, he's enjoying it. The car hasn't been as good as they expected - and it's probably been 50-50 between him and Klien at the end of the day."
I suggest that it's a bit of a shame that in fact Christian Klien has sometimes been doing a good bit better than DC and losing out to mechanical failures or whatever, and the Red Bull policy of choosing / sacking drivers on points doesn't necessarily reflect their true performance...
Johnny, whilst accepting that, still understands the harsh but clear team perspective on it: "No, but it's always black and white unfortunately. People always look at black and white, they very rarely look at the reasons why... and that's always a problem."

How about Anthony Davidson? "Anthony? Well... it's one of those unfortunate things. I always feel he should have a chance because I think that he's a not half decent driver. Of late he's come back because of the Friday practice sessions again this year, though perhaps the car isn't as competitive as it was. Sadly though the chances for him are going to be very limited as there aren't many seats left. I think he's done a good job but never really had a proper opportunity to show that."
With Montoya having so recently and abruptly left McLaren, I wonder what his thoughts are on the much-talked about Lewis Hamilton with regard to Ron Dennis' team... "Well you'd think they'd test him and see how he is - and if he's not ready, then maybe farm him out for a couple of years and then bring him back."
"You know, Alonso did fine by doing his Minardi bit and then getting his Renault chance, so from that point of view I don't think that's a problem for him, but then of course McLaren don't want to lose him."

What were his thoughts on Montoya walking away from the sport? "Well, to be honest, I think for him, it was probably the best thing for him... He obviously can't have been enjoying it or having fun with it, and was very disillusioned with it..."
I think many of us wouldn't have been surprised to not see him on the grid next year - but disappearing right in the middle of the season? "No, I've not really heard any negatives about it really, I think it was probably the right thing to do from his point of view - It wasn't going to happen, he didn't want to stay, so why not go now."

Possibly the only other 'rising' Brit might be Gary Paffett; though his chances of a seat next year are surely fairly slim? "Paffett... I must say, I don't know how much testing he's actually done... there's too many hanging around for a very limited amount of slots. Out of the two, you'd think it would be Hamilton, yes... because of what he's done, he's been with McLaren a long time, he's doing well in GP2..."
"Why would you put Gary ahead of him? So you would think it would be Hamilton. Then of course there's Kovalainen - now you would think that Flavio would put him somewhere. So then that's limited the seats."
While we're on the subject of the limited likely slots in 2007's line-up, I ask about the possible Midland seats. "I have no idea what we're doing next year yet..." he replies. Not in any kind of cagey or defensive sense though.
He just sounds as if it genuinely isn't an issue to get in the way at this point of the season; his drivers have their work to do with continuing to up the team's performance, so why cloud things with distracting talk of seats and line-ups.

The 2007 grid is, of course, fascinating to speculate on though, so we chat a bit further about other teams' options. With regard to BMW he says, "Heidfeld I'm sure will stay. But Jacques's been doing better so he might well end up staying. He's had a good year to be honest..."
And what about Kimi? "Well if he's off to Ferrari or has done his deal with Ferrari I would have thought Michael will always have that "I'm number one"... and how does that work, because Kimi's not going to go there as a number two..."
I ask him where he'd put his money right now as far as Raikkonen is concerned: Ferrari or Renault? "Er... well, actually - I suppose, knowing Flavio, I guess I wouldn't be surprised..."
He too finds the general lack of confirmations to any team, or of definitely parting with McLaren, quite noticeable: "It's very quiet though isn't it? It's amazing how quiet it is. And there's the assumption that he has gone - that's the big thing. It's very strange. It'll be interesting." It certainly will...

As we've been discussing the regulation changes for 2008 and how they may impact his, and other teams, it seems natural to bring up the other major 2008 talking point; the arrival of Prodrive. Will it be good to see David Richards back? "Yeah - it'll be interesting to see him running his own outfit, as we've obviously seen him before running the Honda team as BAR, he's had his rally experience and his sportscar experience and they've always done very, very well. Formula One is a different thing though, especially when you're doing it yourself. There's a lot of pressure on you to get everything together to make it work out."

Time has flown, and I've filled up loads of tape with questions I hadn't even planned on asking. What started as an interview has just played out into a long, diverting and hugely enjoyable F1 chat.
It's fascinating to hear someone with so much experience from all angles of the sport giving you the benefit of his thoughts. After saying thanks, I walk away through the baking heat, strangely noticing how it's not felt the tiniest bit like work.

You leave the Communications Centre feeling almost obliged to support Midland from here on, simply for being so accommodating and helpful. Or maybe it's one of those underdog things; like the reason so many people loved Minardi, or indeed Jordan.
They're a bunch of phenomenally talented guys working at the highest levels of sport - and to not be on top in a sport so fiercely competitive and where 'on top' is about the only thing that gets noticed, probably hurts a great deal more than it deserves to.
Nonetheless, seeing ways forward, ways up to that rarified top level, is exactly why they're there. And you only want to wish them well with it. This year, next - and of course in 2008.

Given the somewhat limited options for excitement elsewhere for the rest of this season, I've certainly promised myself to go whooping at every success that comes Midland's way.
And I hope they'll be giving me plenty to cheer about.

Bring Back Bernievision

Bernie Ecclestone - you either love him or loathe him. Or, like me, you find time to do both...

He's a polarising figure who's come to amass around £2.2bn in wealth from F1 through very astute business and very smart politics.

As someone who basically started by running Brabham in the seventies, he's come a very long way indeed, seeming to absorb each important and money-making facet of the sport over the successive decades until he pretty much owns it all.

As F1 "supremo" (wouldn't that be a fantastic word to have on your business card) he tends to be on the side of the fans and the sport, (as opposed to Max Mosley, who clearly models himself on Alan Rickman's classic pantomime Sheriff of Nottingham from 'Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves'); although he does still have lapses...

Bernie didn't manage to prevent a completely preventable and unmitigated disaster at Indy last year, even tossing back smarmy answers at Martin Brundle (in his finest hour) on live TV, and looking like a pratt fiddling while something big and important burned.

Still, he has had some great ideas - like the outrageous 1978 Brabham BT46 'Fan Car'. And perhaps, most importantly, "Bernievision" - the name people gave to his phenomenal digital F1 channel you could get on Sky a few years ago.

It was a perfect match of sport and technology: I tend to take most things in my stride, but as an F1 fan and a telly addict I was blown way by its amazing capacity to deliver something approaching the ultimate at-home GP experience.

Bernievision gave you a multi-screen setup where you could pick main feed, onboard shots, pit lane coverage, leaders, midfield, looped repeated highlights, timing data, driver profiles, and all kinds of other geeky goodness.

Not only that but it was on for every single part of the event: Friday practice sessions, full Saturdays - practice and quali, even the Sunday warm-up and full race build-up. It was able to make everything so exciting (even when in reality it perhaps wasn't) and allowed you phenomenal levels of scrutiny - I spent most of 2002 watching Kimi Raikkonen's engines grenade themselves from millions of fascinating angles...

Once an idea ahead of its time (reflected in the original lack of take-up) it's now in danger of being lost, when it could be a crucial tool in distributing F1 to all the "markets" Bernie wants to get onboard.

F1 needs a dedicated media division focused on bringing back that service and getting it on every digital network on earth. Never has the sport needed more people to get excited about it, and what a great legacy it would be for Bernie to do just that...

Friday Bloody Friday

If you've been to a grand prix this year, and paid to attend on the Friday you'll probably have noticed something... the feeling of being ripped off. More than in previous years, Fridays seem to be giving far less to fans as their heroes sit out the sessions in the garages.

There are currently ideas being aired among the bosses to change Fridays so they give more for fans, but in the meantime they could at least consider supplementing the Free Practice sessions with some kind of paint-drying event to really liven things up.

Thanks to Max's 'cost cutting, improving the sport' engine rules - about as predictably disastrous as any scheme that has the word 'improvement' in it - Friday's Free Practice sessions have been pretty poorly used by the top names so far.

If you're keeping up with it via the web, a paper, or Teletext of course, then it's merely one more crushing disappointment and a Mosley monogrammed nail in the coffin of F1. If you've paid good money to go and watch, then it's infuriating beyond belief.

Fans shell out lots of money to attend GP "weekends" - and to have all the stars barely touching the circuit for a third of it because they don't want to turn over their engines or use up any tyres, puts a big dent in your enjoyment, believe me.

Admittedly there are some cracking third drivers who do put some laps in - Davidson, Wurz, Kubica; though Alex has done a fair bit of showboating, throwing in some very cheeky low-fuel flyers for the hell of it despite Sam Michael saying that Williams don't do that kind of thing... (It's probably just fun for them to stick a finger up at BMW.)

The problem is that while third drivers can afford to properly 'drive' their cars on a Friday, anyone on the grid can barely afford to fire them up in case they damage them, lose performance, or wear them out.

The less laps the actual race drivers spend out there on Fridays, the less prepared they'll obviously be (even with third drivers gathering data). And, as good as the third drivers are, fans want to see the stars. Harsh but true.

Often this season, about half the field barely turn a wheel in the 1st session, and don't do much in the 2nd either. That's shoddy - it really is. If the fans can be bothered to turn up, then the F1 circus should have the decency to put on a show.

Otherwise one of the hidden costs in Max's engine cost-cutting may be yet more disgruntled fans walking away from a sport they love but can't bear to see dismembered and destroyed.
Fridays may not be race days Max, but you ignore them at your peril.

Mad Max

When you heard earlier in the year that Max Mosley was, amongst many other surreal, daft and outright barking things, suggesting age limits on drivers did it suggest any related bright idea to you too?

Yes, absolutely spot on: Age limits on FIA Presidents. It's surely the only way to stop the madness...

The constant battle between the teams and the authorities (it was Jean Marie Ballestre's FISA before the FIA) seems to have gone on forever. It's an epic battle for the soul of the sport: good versus evil, or at the very least basically nice versus profoundly stupid.

And there's still no sign of it stopping, even with the GPMA breakaway series threatened by the manufacturers apparently over and done with; Mad Max always apparently issues edicts at random to open up old wounds or start fresh battles whenever peace looks like breaking out.

It's not random of course: Max isn't thick. Just because pretty much everything he does in rewriting sporting and technical regulations appears to suggest he should get the Queen's medal for contributions to thickness, it's not that simple.

Everything has a purpose and as often as not many pronouncements may have more to do with calling bluffs, shifting the ground on which other battles are being fought, than they do on any superficial level.

And let's not suggest the teams are blameless in all this either - they have their own plans for the future (that now includes Renault, who had originally suggested the baffling idea of trying to run and plan a team on a year-by-year basis) and so does Bernie.

He'll have bags of ideas about where he wants the sport to go - both idealogically and geographically. I would hope in those plans is a section about bringing back his Bernievision multi-screen digital TV channel - an idea once ahead of its time, but now surely an absolute winner.

Still, one of the best bits of F1 news so far this year is Max confirming this is his last mandate as President. It does come tinged with sadness though, as he says he has "a substitute ready..." My guess is that it (sadly) isn't going to be Paul Stoddart.

If I'm correct, there was talk a while back of Jean Todt ending up succeeding Max; a legacy that would confirm to many that the FIA and Ferrari have an unhealthy relationship. But it might be just the kind of deliberately inflammatory (or plain mad) parting gesture one ought to expect...

Lest We Forget...

It must be difficult not being one of the top four or five drivers. It's the F1 equivalent of being Bill Pullman. Or do I mean Bill Paxton? No. No, I was right first time... Pullman. See, that's exactly what I mean. If you're not A-list material, it's easy to become a bit forgettable - or, worse still, invisible.

If you're anything less than a genius driver in a phenomenal team, then however great your achievements, you can be ignored in the noisier static of the media.

Nick Heidfeld for instance (apparently no taller than an Action Man in real life, and so always subject to visibility problems) is a consistent, clever and reliable driver. And very fast on a good day. His 2006 hasn't exactly been fab, but it's certainly not been a disaster either, and he's still done some great driving. It just happens to have been eclipsed by the front runners.

Felipe Massa too has been nothing less than workmanlike (in that he goes around demolishing things...) and has quietly done a good job helping the Ferrari campaign. You only really tend to notice the errors of course.

Nico Rosberg gets talked up as F1's David Beckham - a vaguely plausible comparison until you realise that he actually looks more like a blonde girl with mumps than an international footballer. And with a couple of great races already this year (Bahrain & Europe), he stands a chance of stepping out of his dad's not inconsiderable shadow.

His dad's big shadow is not merely middle-age spread: he was an awesome racer (note the word 'racer', not simply 'driver') during the eighties - fast, fearless, fair and supremely gifted. If Nico has some of that in his genes, then it's his duty to all of us to bring it back into the sport.

Takuma Sato has actually been doing a great job, given the tools he has to work with - and it's only because he's so far off the pace that he's really not in your face. Something for which Michael Schumacher is probably extremely grateful. But there he is, pulling indecently good performances out of a half-decent car.

There are others too: Villeneuve, Webber, Coulthard, Ralf Schumacher, Trulli... even Montoya and Fisichella aren't too bad - they're just put in the shade by team mates working at a completely different level.

Let's face it, you have to be pretty damned good to get into F1 in the first place (unless you're a Pay Driver or Yuji Ide of course) so quibbles about how drivers compare always have to accept a certain level of excellence to even get off the ground.

But in a sport so singly defined by the winning, the taking part sometimes gets a teensy bit forgotten. And given how talented and committed all these guys are, that's a bit of a shame.

Hang on! I *DID* mean Bill Paxton! Sheesh!

Half-time 2006: Ifs & Buts

"If..." goes the old commentators' cliche, "is F1 spelled backwards". Not at the school I went to, it's not matey: that's just poor spelling, which tells you more about the parlous state of the education system and the calibre of F1 pundits than what a bitch Lady Luck can be when she's sat back watching the GP.

Still, as we sit here at something approximating half-time, it is one of those phrases that seems to make sense of a season of crushing predictability, random incident and fateful decision.

What would have happened if McLaren had a genuine combo of speed and reliability, rather than the general absence of either? What if Honda got their aero issues cleared up months back? Well, in truth, they'd probably still both be floundering in Renault's supreme wake, with only Ferrari probably looking like they'd made any comeback at all.

What if Aguri had a proper chassis back in March? Not much change there either: Ide still wouldn't know how to drive it, and Sato would probably just crash it a bit quicker. (Let's face it, he's only had such a 'clean' season because he's not going fast enough to have an accident...)

If Schumacher hadn't been sent to the back of the grid, would he have won in Monaco? Certainly not if I'd been a steward, because he wouldn't have even been taking part. But what if he had been able to park better than that old woman off the 'Driving School' programme? Would he have got away with it then?

Parking skills are something Fernando Alonso is likely to need to develop with his move to McLaren next year. Oh, and the patience of a saint if Raikkonen's 5 wasted seasons there are anything to go by. I wonder if he's regretting that decision just yet...

There are still lots of ifs surrounding the 2007 driver market, most of which rest on Michael Schumacher. Fisichella clearly hasn't been re-signed by Renault as their choice for first driver, and Maranello don't know if they'll have Schumi or Kimi (They surely won't have both).

Also, you have to assume that some 2007 decisions may also hinge on 2008, when Prodrive joins the grid. They're not going to be the bigger names of course, but this is chaos theory writ large, where everything affects everything else.

And there are still ifs surrounding the sport itself, despite the GPMA teams signing up for 2008. If Mad Max continues to mess with the future of engines and so-on, tossing grenades into the mix, then there's still plenty that could happen. Including manufacturers simply walking away from F1 forever.

Any ifs for the rest of this season? Well, probably plenty; but none likely to change the outcome of the Championship sadly. After anticipating a really close, competitive season, it's been quite a letdown. Let's just hope those ifs at can at least add a bit of excitement.

Fun, Fun, Fun...

Ron Dennis calling for more fun in F1 was bound to raise eyebrows. The boss of McLaren suggesting that the sport is too dull and serious is a hefty case of the pot calling the kettle... well, if not black, then certainly a very dull and sombre McLaren grey.

And who's right? Well, as usual, both sides and neither side. Yes the sport does need more to attract and intrigue bigger and younger audiences - that's so simple a point it should be obvious to all but the occasional bumpkin, village idiot and Max Mosley.

But how you actually bring fun to a sport without taking away the mystique could be a difficult question: a driver doesn't need a water pistol to look like a clown when he can just stomp down the pitlane and have an hilarious hissy-fit at Jacques Villeneuve on live TV.

At the same time, the sport can generally appear too aloof and full of itself - fans deserve to be closer to the action and to their heroes a lot of the time (which BMW Sauber is commendably trying to address with its special "F1-land travelling experience sideshow" thingy...)

Back in the seventies some drivers used to camp in the centre of tracks like Kyalami and have barbecues with the punters. Whether you'd want Kimi Raikkonen mumbling at you like Kenny from South Park over over some undercooked sausages is open to question, but then that's never going to be a possibility nowadays anyway.

Nonetheless, special and unique events to bring heroes and fans face to face are surely a good idea... and they're surely possible. This is F1 after all! Anything's possible! (Well anything apart from an emergency chicane at Indianapolis apparently, but I digress...)

Bernie's Mr Fixit isn't he? Why can't he go a bit Willy Wonka and organise for each race ticket to have a unique number on it, and get each race organiser to hold an "Evening with the Stars" to which all the grid are committed? (A couple of hours each GP Friday evening, say...)

All the hundred lucky winners get a special pitwalk and a reception with goodie bags and drinks, and get to meet the drivers, who also do onstage interviews with the press. Then maybe there's another special prize for just one of the hundred on top of that?

A Prize-Draw event isn't fun in the clowning-around sense, no... it's a thousand times better and it generates better feeling. If I want belly laughs I'll watch my "Best of Takuma Sato" DVD. But Ron Dennis seems to be confusing fun with true engagement.

With things like the Prize-Draw, people tell everyone they know, they post their photos online, they make other people want to have been there. Everyone wins. Keep it up, do more, build on it and you have a virtuous circle: something much longer lasting and less messy than a fight with silly-string.

New Teams, New Teammates

In Paul Simon's classic song "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover" one particularly imaginative and hurtful method that he didn't cover was telling your lover you're splitting up with them fifteen months in advance and then carrying on as if nothing's happened.

And yet that's basically what Fernando Alonso did to Flav and to Renault immediately after he delivered them both titles in a loved-up, landmark season: jumping ship to McLaren and causing no end of mayhem in the ongoing "Kimi to Ferrari?" saga.

Whilst you'd have thought that Ferdy's experience at Renault in 2006 might be a bit weird following such a shocking decision, that's really not happened at all: the team have resisted doing things like put drawing pins on his seat and carried on like the utter professionals they are.

Alonso too, has managed a serenely committed start to the season, and it's not surprising that it's over at McLaren - where things remain unclear and uncertain - that the atmosphere seems perpetually wretched and stressed.

Ron Dennis's problems are of his own making of course... who's staying: Kimi or JPM? Or neither??? You'd want to think that he's going to try and keep the Kimster and have himself another uber-pairing like that of Prost and Senna.

But it's worth bearing in mind that their relationship was self-destructive to the extent of taking each other out in Japan in 89. And combos of genius can end up even worse: witness the tragic loss of Gilles Villeneuve in pushing his competition with Didier Pironi beyond the limit in 1982.

It's unrealistic to expect complete harmony between team mates in such a highly ambitious sport but some combos do work pretty effectively, particularly when a certain level of difference in ability, stature and priority helps keep things ordered for both team and drivers.

And whilst gimp-like doormats actually end up making the team look stupid and taint the reputation and the achievements of the "star" driver - yes, we're talking Schumi and Rubens here - a solid first and second driver relationship is still great when it works.

So how can McLaren dispel the clouds of doubt and gossip and rumour; of sulk and counter-pout? Simple... Get it over with. Ron: decide! Kimi: decide! Talk to each other and talk to us. Get done with the lawyers and get on with the sport.

Raikkonen must still be wondering though, how Ron could possibly love someone else enough to spoil his singular role as the McLaren wonderboy (especially after giving them so much for so little reward). It's no wonder divorce lawyers are such busy people...

Ant Rant

I did actually promise myself that I wasn't going to write columns devoted to particular drivers. I promised my editor too, so I can probably expect to have a keyboard whacked across my face for trying to sneak this one through...

But please indulge me just this once, because it's crucial - it really is. So who is it that's so important they warrant this? Schumi? Ferdy? The Kimster? JV, DC or even our own Jenson Button? Nope. They have acres of print and screen devoted to their charmed careers. No - it's Anthony Davidson.

What I want to know is what Davidson has done in some previous life that's stopping him from being F1's next Great Briton? A man who often matched and frequently bettered Jenson Button and Dan Wheldon in karts should clearly not be where he is now.

In British F3 he partnered Takuma Sato throughout the 2001 season to come second in ever improving races and with obvious pace, persistence and a wily, ballsy penchant for overtaking. But since becoming Honda's 3rd driver, things have clearly drifted - not helped by the team effectively leaving him on the bench, Gil de Ferran bringing in Barrichello, and the team being reluctant even to let him do things like the Williams shoot-out test.

Davidson is known by many names: 'The Ant', 'Little Ant', 'Boy Friday', 'F1's Best Kept Secret' - and, quaintly, by a friend of mine as 'That Total Ginger Studmuffin'.
The Boy Friday moniker comes from his 3rd driver duties with Honda this current season, and in 2004, where his scorching sessions in both years sometimes led to lazy (and fundamentally wrong) notions that he was running on fumes. He also has a phenomenal reputation as a test driver.

His feedback to engineers in testing and developing cars is well renowned, as is his searing pace not only on short runs but over huge distances, week in week out. He has also had the very briefest of actual GP outings.
Nothing though, ever seems to give Ant enough kudos to have a decent team put him in a race seat; something not helped by his lack of absurd Buttonesque ego or PR presence. F1's Mr Nice Guy is sadly also F1's invisible man.

But, and I don't use the word lightly, Goddammit! Somebody give him a drive! At a time when even people like Ide (who simply couldn't drive an F1 car, let alone communicate with his team) manage to get seats and when apparent heavyweights (cunningly disguised as has-beens) like Barrichello can flap around so uselessly without getting sacked or punched, it's criminal that Ant isn't on the grid.

The burblings of a drive at Aguri in 2007 sound dangerously like a dead-end though: he deserves way better than that, and it's high time a top team manager came to their senses and put him in a race seat worthy of his considerable gifts and skills.

Rant over: Peace, out.

Monaco - Flawed Jewel In The F1 Crown

Wow! It's Monaco! Woohooh! The glitz! The glamour! The shiny opulence of it all!

Rubbish - most people's experience of the Monaco Grand Prix isn't glamourous at all: it's just sitting in front of a telly, shouting at interminable adverts and hurling abuse at James Allen.

Monaco always has some kind of Get Out of Jail Free card, and never gets a rough ride from the authorities despite the fact that it is the very opposite of everything they demand from every other event.

It's a narrow, unforgiving circuit that would be struck off the calendar in a flash for safety reasons if it were based anywhere other than the diamond encrusted cliffsides of Monte Carlo. And before I get taken for some raving communist let me just say I honestly don't mind that: I just think there are far better venues that get treated abysmally (Silverstone or Spa for instance) and I don't like double-standards.

That rant out of the way, Monaco has certainly staged some memorable races in both the past (1982's surrealist comedy where pretty much everyone took it in turns to lead the race in the final couple of laps, stopping after 100 yards each) and the present (Raikkonen creaming the field in 2005 - and one of the most quietly classy passing moves of the season by Nick Heidfeld).

There's also the hilarious one-upmanship of the teams and their daft publicity stunts: the Red Bull 'Star Wars' pit crew last season who got so much extra coverage from the cameras that it was even more embarrassing than it need have been when both their cars dropped out. Or the Jaguars in 2004 with fabulous diamonds in their nosecones to promote 'Ocean's Twelve' - until Klien put his Jag into a barrier and the diamond was never seen again. Somewhere there's probably still a Marketing executive being punched in the windpipe every hour for thinking that one up....

And yet it's hard not to want to make an exception for Monaco - it DOES look very cool, it can thrown up spectacular moves and crunches as the grid powers into St Devote, the cars sound massive as they tear through the tunnel and out into the harbour...

Okay, I admit it. It IS glamourous. But only in a ludicrous way. Monaco is great because it typifies and magnifies the excesses of the Formula One world. If ever you wanted to distil the essence of F1 - money, egos, marketing and spectacle - you couldn't find a finer or more potent mix than Monaco.

As a race, it's pretty good (but I defy anyone to disagree that there's far better on the calendar - or NOT on the calendar in the case of Spa...) but as F1 it's brilliant.

Simon Fuller Spices Things Up

Simon Fuller... Name ring a bell? How about if I mention the Spice Girls? No? Well, let me put you out of your misery (although I'm probably partly to blame for that misery by mentioning the Spice Girls in the first place)...

Simon Fuller is '19 Entertainment' and the man responsible for the Spice Girls and S Club 7 (I personally think it's very big of him to own up to that...) and he is also the man now responsible for bringing stacks of clever yooftastic funtainment to Honda Racing.

Quite who at Honda had the great idea of bringing in Fuller I don't know, though it has all the hallmarks of a particularly punchable marketing executive - and why it's so crucial when they should be concentrating on not weeing away their race weekends is simply beyond me.

Nonetheless there he is, ready to help bring modern showbiz tricks into the biggest showbiz sport in the world. Who knows, maybe his pop and entertainment formats can bring a new dimension to the way F1 is presented and to the way it appeals to audiences...

He could pull together shows like "Jenson's Deal or No Deal" where a panel have to guess how many of the boxes in front of them contain contracts between Jenson Button and any number of different teams (and whether any of them are worth the paper they're written on).

Or a special "Pimp My F1 Ride" where teams compete to build a more or less viable car from a 4-year old chassis with the aim of making it look utterly cool, so long as it still goes at least one lap per lap slower than everybody else.

I'd quite like to see a special F1 edition of Antiques Roadshow where a bunch of experts inspect Max Mosley and tell him he's worthless, (old gags, always the best...) or a variation on The Apprentice, where Mike Gascoyne goes round teams, helping them build better cars and repeatedly gets thrown out with the words "You're fired!"

Best of all they could do their own lottery show where random events and the fickle finger of fate conspire to... Oh, hang on, that's called Qualifying isn't it.

The Fuller/Honda relationship, and the Ron Dennis "More Fun!" statements both smack a bit of desperation; like some government initiative, or a lame geography teacher who wants to be loved.

Truth be told, F1 honestly doesn't need that (although the idea of an F1 version of Fuller's Pop Idol format would be good if only for seeing Ant Davidson cream a whole bunch of mediocrities from the 2006 grid). On the whole though, if the sport is good then everything else will follow.

And if it isn't good then no amount of superficial tarting like this is going to help.

Kicking The Habit

Well, I'm just glad they're stopping tobacco advertising in F1. I'm fed up with switching from Camel to Marlboro to Lucky Strike to West, depending on who I support... I even had to give up and switch to Nicquitin patches when I supported Williams.

That's a lie of course; nothing more than pure, lame sarcasm. It's just that the constant idea that people are idiots ruled by pavlovian responses to advertising and branding is one that annoys me to seething point.

Advertising does work of course, or else brands wouldn't fork out vast sums of money to fritter away on cars that go so fast you can barely see their logo. And admittedly people are often idiots too. (How else do you account for the frankly inexplicable popularity of Robbie Williams?)

But that doesn't mean that there's a massive fog of idiocy that gathers whenever people watch sport and forces them into taking up smoking or switching their zombie-like allegiance from brand to brand.

Philip Morris, the owners of Marlboro, have apparently decided that the Ferrari red is now synonymous with Marlboro and so plan to continue spending a huge amount of money on the team even if they can't show their logo, possibly moving towards a red car devoid of other logos.

It was this extraordinary strategy - and presumably a hefty and secure financial commitment behind it - that led Ferrari into allowing Vodafone (who would gladly have been their title sponsor) to part ways with them and leap into the arms of Ron Dennis and McLaren.

Already Ferrari often replace the Marlboro wordmark with a bunch of anonymous blocks, and McLaren used to replace the West wordmark with the drivers' perfectly fitting names (possibly the only remotely fathomable reason for having Montoya in the team).

Even further back, McLaren used to replace Marlboro with the word McLaren in the same typeface: very cheeky and a pretty effective trick on anyone without 20/20 vision.

But will the 'non-Marlboro' Marlboro Ferrari be worth it for Philip Morris? I have my doubts: Ask most people why a Ferrari is red and they won't stroke their chins and say, "Ah... this is of course because red is the primary swatch in the brand palette for Philip Morris's Marlboro cigarette line..." No, they'll look at you as if you're an imbecile having a particularly stupid day and say, "Because it's a Ferrari of course... Durh!"

Probably the main group of people who actually would know the answer are already F1 fans and already committed to either smoking or not smoking: You can't help wondering if it's not like burning money. Sponsorship, like smoking, can be a very expensive habit.

The Euro Issue

It's a Eurosceptic's dream really - alighting upon the European GP, getting really wound up and bellowing "European??? It's always in Germany!!! What does that tell you?!?!" before going on to somehow relate it to fishing quotas and the end of the world as we know it.

Still, it's actually a very good point. The 'European' isn't genuinely a European GP at all. It's just a second German GP. Just as the 'San Marino' GP is a second Italian GP.

With talk of bringing on a second Spanish race, you surely have to wonder if there's a better way of handling the 'European'.
I have to say if I were Max or Bernie then, apart from getting a decent haircut, I'd drop the San Marino GP, and drop the Nurburgring as the 'European' venue too.

Imola could then alternate with Monza as the venue for the Italian GP, or it could be one of the many genuinely European venues for a genuinely European Grand Prix.

There's only room in the calendar for a finite number of Grands Prix, so giving Spain a second one purely as a sop to Ferdy's newest fans seems pretty fickle and shortsighted.

Why not do something more constructive and have a proper "roving" European GP that takes in Zandvoort and Estoril and this second Spanish venue? There are plenty more good tracks that could inject some more personality and variety too: Donington, the A-1 Ring, Paul Ricard...

Short of adding half a dozen extra races to the calendar (which I must admit I'm all in favour of, although it would be completely unfair on the teams and their families, damn them!) I'd take the opportunity to re-jig the summer into an extended and geuninely European sector of the season.

At the same time, other chunks of the season could be rethought and reorganised into more geographical legs of the Championship.

Sadly Bernie thinks in 'markets' not 'circuits'. And whilst there already exist plenty of great venues, he's always going to jump at somewhere with a vast untapped TV audience. And build a shiny new Hermann Tilke abomination in it.

In fact, that Hermann Tilke's German and he gets to design all the tracks!!! What does that tell you, eh??? Eh???

What's In A Name?

When I first heard the name 'Team Super Aguri' I thought it must be an insanely violent Japanese cyberpunk cartoon on Sky. Surprisingly it turns out to be something even better...

In my head they had outlandish haircuts and went around doing superhuman things, and the truth isn't far off: despite their first pit stops being choreographed by the Chuckle Brothers, what the team have actually achieved in so little time is a pretty superhuman feat.

We've all grown used to a relatively stable line-up of teams of late, and it's great to see new ones like Aguri diving in. In the eighties and early nineties it seemed like dozens of crazy new names would appear and disappear each season.

It would be nice if more teams had such lively sounding names though: Super Aguri is just the kind of name we need, and in fact Yuji Ide does sometimes sport a strangely Manga haircut too - so that's perfect.

Red Bull always sounded just right for a cool fast team; and their second team Toro Rosso is a brave and cheeky attempt to extend that vibe, but makes the staggering faux-pas of nicking the word 'Scuderia'.

And although I'm not actually a Ferrari devotee, even I hold the somewhat irrational belief that nobody else has the right to call themselves 'Scuderia' anything...

'Midland' however, must be the most non-F1 name ever dreamt up - even when they put 'F1' right next to it. It could only lack more glamour if they called the team 'Kidderminster' or 'Derek'. Even calling it Scuderia Midland wouldn't save that one...

It seems a bit unfair to blame Midland for being dull though: that's like blaming the rain for being wet... go to www.midland.gg and you'll be surprised they didn't paint the car completely grey. And make the drivers wear grey nylon slacks.

Super Aguri could certainly teach the big teams a few things about exciting names: Renault becomes 'Equipe Ultra Flav', McLaren becomes 'Silver Shiny Ronster Monsters'... it would be the perfect marriage to James Allen's hyperactive commentaries.

It still leaves us with the problem of what to call Midland though. I'm still working on something sexy and exciting that starts with the word 'Conglomerate'...

Born In The USA

I wonder if your reaction was the same as mine when you heard Scott Speed had been fined $5000 for using abusive language during the stewards' hearing after the Australian GP?

"Yay! F1 has its own John McEnroe! Er, except without the talent."

Speed seems such a perfectly arrogant and caricatured Californian that his real name is probably 'Scott Speed 90210'.
And he'll certainly need a lot more than mere attitude if he's to compare to America's greatest F1 drivers.

Phil Hill of course was the USA's first F1 World Champion back in 1961, and the following years saw some seriously useful drivers like Richie Ginther, Peter Revson, Dan Gurney and Eddie Cheever on the grid.

Cheever was certainly one of the sport's nice guys and a real talent, although sadly never a real legend. The States' most recent star, and last World Champ, was Mario Andretti who spearheaded Lotus's victorious 1978 season in the "ground effect" Lotus 79.

Mario's son Michael drove (or rather crashed) for McLaren for much of 1993, spending most races covered in gravel at the far end of the track. And then for the next thirteen years... nothing.

Thirteen years without an American driver! Think about that... Given the country's fondness for razamatazz, other motor sports, and their love of absurd and horrendously inefficient cars in general, that's a pretty shocking statistic.

Which brings us back to Scott Speed, who defended his attitude and language, saying "I'm the American out there"; apparently under the impression that he's starring in a John Frankenheimer movie for gung-ho thickheads where Uncle Sam saves the world through F1.

Do you know why Narain Karthikeyan didn't rage that he was "the Indian out there" last year? I'll tell you: he'd have sounded like an insufferable nitwit, that's why.

The basic question seems to be whether Speed is a rising star with attitude to match, or a gobby yank who should do his talking on the track?

Quite frankly, who cares: unless he's truly amazing, his most useful contribution to F1 will be to help reinvigorate interest in the USA, already hobbled by last year's disgraceful farrago at Indy. And that, nitwit or not, he's surely capable of...
The spats and swearing are just a hilarious bonus for the rest of us.