Aug 28, 2006

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!)

Aug 21, 2006

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.

Aug 14, 2006

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?

Aug 7, 2006

"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.