grumpyf1

For those of a certain age (better know as middle-aged and grumpy), the name Jeff Lynne conjours up certain, youthful memories of catchy tunes, brilliant pop sensibilities, a white bloke with an afro, sunglasses and some high-quality use of strings in a rock band (as opposed to modern acts palling up with a symphony orchestra and poncing about being pretensious on stage). Ring a bell? No? He was in The Idle Race. And The Move. He pretty much WAS The Electric Light Orchestra (who incidently are, in a movable event based around my mood swings, often my favourite band). He has produced records by The Beatles (yes, The Beatles!), Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, Regina Spektor, Dave Edmunds and a whole bunch of other folks and is soon to return with a new ELO album (bearing in mind he isn't exactly speedy at that process. Soon could be next decade.) Oh, and he was a member of 80's supergroup The Travelling Wilburys. Except, according to some dingbat in The W...

Well... what did you think? The first race of 2010 wasn't stunningly exciting, was it? Pretty unexciting in fact. Interesting yes, but not a thriller. The new kids on the block (Lotus, Hispania & Virgin) weren't as far off the pace as expected, but were pretty much about as reliable as we expected (ie, not very) with the exception of Lotus, who got 1 car to the end and the other at least classified as a finisher. Hispania just got the better of Virgin when Senna dragged his car into it's 19th lap before it finally packed up. Chandhok managed less that 5 laps in the entire weekend in his Hispania - a bump he didn't even know was there got him on his 2nd race lap. After my irritation with BBC commentator Jonathan Legard last year ("Hamilton pushes on"), Pit lane poppet Lee Mackenzie got my goat this weekend with her brilliant questioning style. I think she instructed every driver that dropped out of the race to "Just tell us what happened". Oooh. G...

Ahh..... the warm glow that is having F1 back again. Mmmmmmm. Nice. And in about 19 hours we move up a gear to the race itself. But that's tomorrow. In the meantime, we had qualifying earlier and it was pretty interesting... First of all, I just became a Chandhok fan. Poor guy - He'd never even driven the car before, the seat didn't fit and I'm surprised he didn't have the handbook out, reading the little notice about not going over 50mph for the first 1000 miles, and trying to work out where the volume control was for the stereo. In the end, he was about 10 seconds off the pace. Sounds a lot, but when you consider his last drive in an F1 car was a test last year, that's darn good. Nice one Karun. A slight whinge - The graphics have changed this year and they seem to have opted for a slanty style of showing positions. I think it slopes the wrong way, boys. A bit counter-intuitive (did I just type that? Sorry). Sort it out. As for the rest of quali, well, it was ...

Goddammit. I'd written a witty, clever and frankly pretty bloody good blog post on the subject you're about to read, when Internet explorer (destroyer would be more appropriate) bombed and lost it all. As you're well aware, you can never write anything nearly as well the second time. Pah! I was all cheerful to. Now I'm grumpy again. Situation normal, then. In around 11 hours time, the wait is over and F1 cars finally hit the track for first practice ahead of Sunday's first race in Bahrain. 24 drivers, 12 teams and this lot await you. If you haven't already watched the five season preview video's on the BBC F1 website, get over there now. It's like being up the pub with your mates, including cheeky mickey-taking and the opinionated shouty one that everyone puts up with because of his girly laugh. Oh, and they talk about F1 a bit too. I haven't laughed that much at sports coverage... er, ever. And what a great season we've got coming up too. Probab...

Well, they finally made it, albeit under a different name. Campos became Hispania, and today they finally launched their car (although this is the only photo I've found of it so far). They couldn't have left it much later and neither of their drivers will have driven the car when they turn up for the 1st race in a week's time. Not exactly a promising start, is it? With US F1 not making it though, at least we do have 2 more teams than last season. The car has been built by Dallara, so assumingly Hispania will need to take it back to the dealership for a change of oil and a service at some point. Drivers? Well, Bruno Senna we know about already (2nd in GP2 in 2008) but Karun Chandhok is even less spectacular, having won 3 races in GP2 in the last 2 years. To be fair though, that's not exactly rubbish, is it? Tough gig for the pair of them - let's hope they don't make fools of themselves or the press will have a field day. Someone really should have explained to th...

The FIA have published the list of teams who will be competing this season's F1 championship and, as expected, US F1 aren't on it. But neither are hopefuls Stefan GP, with an FIA statement saying they won't be allowed an entry at this late stage. Boo! So we've got 12 teams, including one we haven't even seen yet that hasn't turned a wheel and has an amusing TLA (that's "three letter abbreviation" to you). So hurah! Here we go and let's all be thankful for HRT! (NP: The 12" version of Men at Work's "Down Under" - I didn't even know there was one until this year...)

Whilst the big teams are choosing which Lear jet to take to the first race and the smaller ones are trying to remember where they put their sun-tan lotion and arguing with each other over whose turn it is to carry the engines in their hand luggage, there's still plenty going on in the world of F1. US F1 have finally admitted there is no way they can make it into the championship this year and have asked to defer their entry until 2011. This might well pave the way for Stefan to be given a last minute entry, which would be most entertaining. Especially if Jacques Villeneuve comes back, as that would make it 5 World Champions on the grid at the same time. Meanwhile, the Campos team have changed names before they've even turned a wheel. Recent shifts in ownership now mean they are the Hispanic Racing Team (or HRT for short. No, honestly. They should be a big hit with ladies of a certain age. Has it just got very hot in here, or is it me?). They should be having an official launch ...