Apr 24, 2006

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.

Apr 17, 2006

The Egos Have Landed

Over the past couple of years most F1 drivers appear to have been the subjects of highly successful charisma bypass surgery; being by and large unforgivably drab and giving precious little entertainment out of the car.

This year, however, looks like it could be excellent fun as a sudden rash of egos, tantrums, swearing, taunting and - dare I say it - personality, appears to have broken out.

A fine example is Michael Schumacher who, with all the self-awareness of someone who thinks the world revolves around him (but that it clearly doesn't do it well enough) is demanding that a bump be removed from the Melbourne circuit because he was clumsy enough to drive over it.

Schumi crashed because of this same "notorious" bump three years ago; suggesting that 1) he might be in some way aware of it and 2) he might want to avoid it. Like virtually every other driver managed to, in fact.

Then there's the $5000 fine for Scott Speed's swearing outburst in a stewards' hearing. Given that Giancarlo Fisichella didn't get fined a single Euro for announcing on live TV that his Renault was "F***ing S**t", Speed must have used some pretty fruity language indeed. I want a tape.

Someone else who can have very few toys left in his pram right now is Montoya, who lashed out at Kimi Raikkonen apparently for the simple reason that the Finn managed to whup his ass on the track by battling him for position and coming out on top. Strange...

Perhaps the most bizarre outburst so far this year though is from Moto GP star Valentino Rossi, who clearly believes he is living in 17th century France and has challenged Fernando Alonso to a duel.

Ferdy could probably be very good in a duelling situation, particularly if he grew that hilarious pointy chin-hair again and put on a big cloak. Sadly though this duel (possibly a hugely inspired PR stunt?) would only involve bikes and cars.

It's good to see some personality back in F1: it's easy for things to get lost under all those helmets and overalls, and livening up an already lively season with a wealth of ego-based idiocy has to be a great thing.

And what with the Speed versus DC row, and Liuzzi versus JV, there's every possibility that the race at San Marino could be spiced up by simply replacing it with an almighty punch-up and bitch-slapping session on the grid instead...

Apr 10, 2006

Wings & Things

You've got to feel sorry for Renault, who had the temerity to make noises about Ferrari's 'flexi' wings: so the FIA went and put Renault under scrutiny instead... D'OH! Then other teams 'revised' their wings after the FIA started tutting at them too.

The only people left apparently unscathed were the reds who said they never did anything wrong anyway and, following a friendly chat with the FIA, changed theirs as well. For 'performance' reasons. Ahem.

I have to say I love front and rear wings whether they flex or not: they're beautifully sculpted assemblies that have a huge role in defining the car's character, as well of course as the airflow over, around and behind it.

What I can't stand though is all those ridiculous extra mini-wings, winglets, wingettes, and sticky-out wing-style aero improvers... Whatever language you use they're ugly as hell and they're sprouting everywhere.

Winglets are only a very recent blot on the landscape too, much like mobile ringtones or McFly - look at a car from 2001 and it looks as smooth as a baby's bum by comparison.

Just as the very silly 'tower wings' of 1998 were quickly and effectively banned, there surely has to be some decent legislative way of outlawing these ridiculous devices. (And McFly ideally...)

Okay so they're deliberate aero elements, but there must be a way of reframing the regulations to allow designers more freedom of bodywork design at the outset, but preventing these dog-ugly devices from being bunged all over sidepods and chassis.

It's ridiculous - F1 is supposed to be the pinnacle of motorsport, but line the cars up and it looks like they've all been vandalised by some deranged squad of ninja panel-beaters...

Winglets are only really there, like flexi wings, to get around aero regulations. But rather than make rules that are subverted in such easy, effective and ugly ways, why not regulate around absolute standards and dimensions, then step back and leave the rest to designers?

What the sport needs, as ever, is sensible legislation where it's needed and a lack of interference the rest of the time; be it bodywork, engines or other components. What it gets, as ever, is the exact opposite.

Apr 3, 2006

A Qualified Success

For 2006, despite many great suggestions in F1 magazines and websites, the FIA went and introduced one of the most bizarre Qualifying sessions imaginable. (Even after conducting a huge web survey hilariously saying they wanted to listen to fans...)

Although it could have been worse, it's still clearly over-complicated, deeply flawed, has a pointless and boring 3rd section, and appears to be counterproductive to its original intentions.

Bernie said that qualifying should ensure maximum exposure for all sponsors (particularly with regard to smaller teams) so how can a speed-test system that counts those teams out in the first round succeed in helping their global exposure?

It can't of course. It's a shambles. Hugely entertaining for the most part, but still a complete hostage to randomness: a surreal mix of It's A Knockout, Mike Reid's Runaround and The Krypton Factor. I'm only surprised they left out Bullseye and 3-2-1.

Will the qualifying system change? Very probably to some extent, if only making that final section a teensy bit less pointless. Already the revelation that it was so poorly considered that it could be exploited for fuel strategies has already led to one loophole being closed. Even so, the third segment is still impossibly drab.

The last couple of seasonal variations on Qualifying were pretty unsatisfactory too compared to the old one hour free-for-all, and despite much hand-wringing pretty much nothing useful got done.

The main problem of last year's Qualifying system (apart from being a drag to watch) was it progressively punished poor performance with a further handicap.

It did, admittedly, lead to mixed-up grids and some scintillating comebacks from Raikkonen whenever he fell foul of 10-place engine penalties. The most exciting race of the year - Japan, with top showings from both him and Alonso, resulted from a mixed up grid too.

But if you just want the grid mixed up for the hell of it, you shouldn't pretend that Qualifying should be in any way rational: you should just decide grids with tarot cards or lottery balls.

Or best of all, Most Haunted's Derek Acorah getting possessed and bellowing out the drivers' names before collapsing exhausted to the floor.
Go on, admit it: you'd pay to watch that... I know I would.