Welcome back! (Sort Of...)

Look sort of familiar? Well it should do - the Lotus colour scheme is back in F1 after a 16 year gap. They are officially Lotus too - if they were to miraculously win a race, it would count as another one for the Lotus records book. All this seems a little weird, when you consider that it's mostly owned by a Malaysian Businessman and backed by the Proton car company.

They certainly have a big bit of history to live up to, but are wisely only looking toi finish races this year. That might still be a bit optimistic, seeing as Rottweiler Mike Gasgoyne only got the ball rolling 5 months ago. Still, he's worked something near to miracles with the performance of several other teams... usually just before his attitude finally gets too much for them and he was given his P45. Prospects? Scrapping with Virgin at the back, although they have a couple of experience drivers who have both won races...

Jarno Trulli is most famous for losing his rag last season and waving his arms around like a windmill on a breezy day at a somewhat bemused Sutil, and creating that curious situation dubbed "The Trulli Train" whereby his pace tailed off but no-one could get past him. Still, he's a good driver and a great qualifier, so might be able to haul the car up the grid a bit. Expect extra carriages on the train this year though.

Heikki (Crikey!) Kovaleinen kind of disappeared at McLaren. Occasionally great, he mostly did a Heidfeld, and just vanished compared to his star team-mate. He needs to rebuild his reputation, but a new team at the back of the grid? Wow. He's going to need to shine VERY brightly to get noticed.

Nice to see a car in those colours again, isn't it?

Comments

Making an exhibition of yourself

Now and again, it’s good to reaffirm that you’re a (relatively) normal human being. One excellent way of doing this is to go to a business exhibition. Despite what you might have surmised from reading my previous columns, I am employable, and even capable of acting like a regular person most of the time, even joining in the Monday morning conversation about the weather over the weekend, and why (insert name of footyballs manager here) should be fired immediately. The mug! True, there are times, often involving a caffeine deficiency, where it is like having the distilled essence of ten moody teenagers in the room, but I try and get that out of the way when people I genuinely like aren’t around to see it. As part of my ongoing experiment with what others call ‘working’, my ‘job’ involves me occasionally needing to go and see what some of my colleagues get up to outside the office, and what our competitors do to try and make sure that they do whatever my colleagues do better than ...

Unstable Stables: Throw away the key

It’s comforting to know that there is one less threat to the people of Cumbria this week, following the conviction of white supremacist, Ethan Stables. The 20 year old from Barrow had planned to attack the town’s New Empire pub in June 2017, in the midst of a gay pride event. Despite social media posts saying he was “going to war” and planning to “slaughter”, online searches about how to make bombs and chemical poisons, and expressing hatred of Muslims, Jews and gay people, he claimed his online comments were merely to impress far-right friends. Fortunately, following Facebook posts about his intentions, the police were tipped off and armed officers intercepted him as he headed towards the pub. His aim was to kill anyone he found, with a machete. In a bizarre slip-up, Stables had erroneously added an innocent woman to his neo-Nazi Facebook group. When he vented his outrage at the Furness LGBT support group’s event, the shocked woman contacted the authorities. He’ll have ple...

Is it foggy? No.

When I get put in charge (which is bound to happen soon), I'm going to introduce a whole raft of new laws, for I shall be a just and fair ruler. I'm quite liking the title of 'Most Marvellous Emperor Of Sensible Regulations And Bountiful Lovingness Not To Mention Exceedingly Handsome', but it might be a bit long. On that basis, I'll settle for the more informal 'He Who Is Smashing' from my loyal subjects. Anyway, I digress. I do that sometimes - had you noticed? Here, then, is the first law that will introduced: grumpyf1 law No.1 - Turn your fog lights off, you complete git. Don't get me wrong; If it genuinely is foggy, fog lights are quite handy. The reason for introduction of this law is because 96% of the time (based on my own in-depth research) it isn't foggy when some utter cockwomble blinds you. This has always been a bit of a problem but in the last couple of years it seems to have escalated out of control, possibly because of the...

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