Skip to main content

Monaco Magic


It doesn't matter if it's dry or wet, who's on pole, who's quick or what your talent level is (in some cases, not vey high) - Monaco nearly always provides a great race. 2010 didn't disappoint either. In qualifying a dejected Alonso sat it out after pranging his car big time in the morning, whilst Webber put in a stunning lap (missed by the TV coverage - d'oh) to claim Red Bull's 6th pole of the season. Bob K was a surprising 2nd and Vettel only managed 3rd.

Pretty much straight away the race got exciting as Vettel sneaked past Kubica, followed minutes later by Hulkberg inspecting the barriers a little too closely in his Williams in the tunnel. Button has an unwanted extra in his McLaren leading to an overheated engine.

It was Barrichello's turn later in the race with a crash so fast and violent it made you jump in your seat. Assumingly it got his attention too. Another safety car period ensued, and a 3rd was caused by an drain cover wanting some attention. Drain covers need love too. Remember that.

Just when it looked like Webbo finally could pull out the lead he'd kept trying to, Chandhok and Trulli decided some acrobatics were required and the silver merc was back on track for a 4th appearence.

With some funky new regulation about safety cars and last laps in place, Schumi decided he prefered his version of the rule book and nipped past Alonso for 6th. The race Stewards (including Damon Hill - Oh! The beautiful irony!) felt their copy was better and gave him a 20 second penalty post race for being flippin' cheeky (I'm not sure they actually said that though). 6th became 12th. Woops. Talking of Alonso, last to 6th is pretty good at any racetrack, but at Monaco, his drive was something special.

But the day belonged to Webber. Pole, no mistakes and an emphatic win.

Awesome.

(Tonight it's a 12"/80's stylee collection and an alarmingly funky version of Yes's "Owner Of A Lonely Heart". Sound to me very much like it was taped off the original vinyl using a very cheap C60. Ahhhhh.... cassettes. I miss you.)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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 ...