Skip to main content

Team Willy!

Image
By

Williams sort-of launched their new car the same day as Ferrari, but suffered from a very British attack of not wanting to make a big show of it, so no journalists were in attendance, except for a scamp from Autosport who snapped this picture.

I'm always excited by a new Williams car, and that's a tidy motor - notably different to the Ferrari and McLaren too. I love the Williams team, although I've never been quite sure why. Maybe it was because they were successful when I was first getting into F1. Maybe it's their very British nature - so much more down to earth that Mclaren. Maybe it's Frank & Patrick's no-nonsense approach and refusal to pander to their driver's egos. Maybe it's because they're from Oxfordshire, the county I grew up in. Maybe it's because they ran Damon Hill, who's still my favourite all time driver.

Grumpy F1 pre-season preview? Oh, go on then....

Williams haven't won a thing for quite a few years now after much success in the 80's and 90's. Occasional promising results have too often been scuppered by driver or tactical errors. They're still canny though, and capable of thinking up something no-one else has. I really hope they can for 2010. Rosberg & Nakajima did well last year, but they've replaced Nico with... Nico (Hulkenberg). And Kaz with the longest-toothed F1 driver of all time, Barrichello. Rubens is good, make no doubts, and Nico... well, we'll have to wait and see.

Barrichello doesn't seem to get lucky. In fact, if it wasn't for bad luck, he wouldn't have any luck at all. Last year with Brawn he finally had a shot for the title without team orders...and still got beaten. He can be great some days and a bit pants on others. I hope he gets the chance to mix it with the kind of company he got used to last year, and doesn't wind up battling Lotuses and, er, Virgins. Ooh, hang on - we'll have to think about what we call that team carefully, won't we...

Hulkenberg? If I'd done some research, I might be able to tell you how he'd got on pre-F1. Shockingly, I have - he was GP2 champ last year, so he'd good. How will he cope in F1 with the teensy bit of testing you're allowed nowadays though?

(NP The Excellent '86 album, titled and by They Might Be Giants)
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Faking it for real

By
As Donald “I’m really great, everybody says so” Trump is so fond of pointing out, there is a lot of fake news around nowadays. Honest. Your friends at Facebook think so too, and have recently been publishing their top tips for spotting false news – by placing them as ads in newspapers. Considering they came in for considerable criticism themselves, that’s like shouting “Squirrel!” and pointing at a tree whilst you hastily kick away the prize begonias you just trampled. To help you make sense of this (and because I’m a caring person), I thought I’d run you through their suggestions and help to explain them for you. I know. I’m lovely. 1. Be sceptical of headlines READING THIS ARTICLE WILL IMPROVE YOUR SEX LIFE!!! And explain that catchy headlines, or stuff all in capitals might be a bit iffy. 2. Look closely at the URL You can find out more about this at www.wowyouregullible.com if you want to understand how phony web addresses are a sure sign of dodgyness. 3. Investigate...
Post a Comment
Read more

Going Underground

By
The US presidential election and Brexit must have made me more nervous than I’d realised. It seems I’ve created an underground bunker without realising I was doing it. Still – we’ve all done that at some point, right? No? Ah... In that case, the fact that I have inadvertently turned my cellar into a rudimentary survival shelter, just in case it all kicks off, demonstrates a severe case of bunker mentality. Fretting about Donald and his wall, and Hillary and her emails, clearly made me more paranoid that I thought about the possibility of WW3 kicking off. Whilst attempting to find a specific size of imperial washer the other day (turns out I’d mis-filed it in the nut cabinet – Tsk!) I was struck by what a lot of jam and chutney we have in the cellar. And I do mean a LOT. There are boxes of boiled-up sugar and fruit and more boxes of boiled up vinegar and fruit. We’re still only part way through 2015’s output too. Then there’s the plastic containers holding pasta in various for...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is it cold? Snow way...

By
Lunch out? Not unless you want snow balls... I’ve got a confession to make.  Lean in a bit, because I’m going to whisper it. Bit more. Did you have curry for tea? OK, good. I’m a weather nerd. There, I said it. When I was growing up, I didn’t want to be an astronaut or a fireman – I wanted to present the weather on the TV. I was lining myself up for a career at the Met Office when, at about 18 years of age, I discovered I was allergic to studying. Anyway, despite a jam-packed and varied career over the subsequent years, I still have a fascination for the world of meteorology. I even have one of those clocks that projects the time and the external temperature onto the ceiling at night, so I can see how cold it is outside whilst lying awake worrying that I might have wasted my life and been more successful with girls if I’d been more into cars than clouds. So far this year, I’ve gazed at a chilly reading of -5C a couple of times, and been grateful for previous sensible ch...
Post a Comment
Read more