Sep 25, 2006

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.

Sep 18, 2006

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)

Sep 11, 2006

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.

Sep 4, 2006

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".