Bahrain Race... Alonso leads redwash

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. Good idea Lee. They probably hadn't thought of that.

Anyway, the race itself saw Webber deploying a brilliant smokescreen tactic to try and stop anyone from overtaking him, and Alonso laid down the first marker to his team mate by nipping past Massa at the start. Vettel looked to have it in the bag until a dodgy spark plug caused him problems (it wasn't the exhaust, no. The big hole in his bodywork was though). The inevitable happened, and he was passed by Alonso, Massa and Hamilton. Schumacher didn't shine, getting beaten by Rosberg (bet he's happy!) and Button wound up 7th. Welcome to McLaren Jens - I suspect you'd better get used to this. The Saubers seem to have been fast in testing only, and neither of them made it to the end either.

So Alonso won on his first outing for Ferrari. Shame he hadn't practiced what to do during the Italian national anthem. Schumi used to conduct the team, Massa always does a spot of chest thumping. Kimi looked, er, well, bored. Nando looked decidedly awkward and uncomfortable. Still, he'll get used to it.

As for the rule changes, the pit stops were great, cars nipping in and out rapidly, but there wasn't much in the way of overtaking on track and nearly everyone changed tyres once only. Even then, no-one seemed to be clinging on to the track by the tips of their tyres. What's the betting we get a mandatory 2 stops introduced if that keeps up?

F1 2010 - 7 out of 10. Must try harder.

(The Monkees would very much like you to board the Last Train To Clarksville.)

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 ...

"It's all gone quiet..." said Roobarb

If, like me, you grew up (and I’m aware of the irony in that) in the ‘70s, February was a tough month, with the sad news that Richard Briers and Bob Godfrey had died. Briers had a distinguished acting career and is, quite rightly, fondly remembered most for his character in ‘The Good Life’. Amongst his many roles, both serious and comedic, he also lent his voice to a startling bit of animation that burst it’s wobbly way on to our wooden-box-surrounded screens in 1974. The 1970s seemed to be largely hued in varying shades of beige, with hints of mustard yellow and burnt orange, and colour TV was a relatively new experience still, so the animated adventures of a daft dog and caustic cat who were the shades of dayglo green and pink normally reserved for highlighter pens, must have been a bit of a shock to the eyes at the time. It caused mine to open very wide indeed. Roobarb was written by Grange Calveley, and brought vividly into life by Godfrey, whose strange, shaky-looking sty...

Suffering from natural obsolescence

You know you’re getting old when it dawns on you that you’re outliving technological breakthroughs. You know the sort of thing – something revolutionary, that heralds a seismic shift it the way the modern world operates. Clever, time-saving, breathtaking and life-changing (and featuring a circuit board). It’s the future, baby! Until it isn’t any more. I got to pondering this when we laughed heartily in the office about someone asking if our camcorder used “tape”. Tape? Get with the times, Daddy-o! If it ain’t digital then for-get-it! I then attempted to explain to an impossibly young colleague that video tape in a camcorder was indeed once a “thing”, requiring the carrying of something the size of a briefcase around on your shoulder, containing batteries normally reserved for a bus, and a start-up time from pressing ‘Record’ so lengthy, couples were already getting divorced by the time it was ready to record them saying “I do”. After explaining what tape was, I realised I’d ...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog