Alonso provides happy ending for the tifosi...

If you're not a big fan of Formula 1, you probably thought that race was pretty dull.

Two things: Firstly, why are you reading this then? It's a blog about Formula 1. Are you totally nuts or what?! Secondly, it wasn't dull but in fact very tense. Okay, after the first lap or so it wasn't a thriller (cue Michael Jackson) but it was edge of your seat stuff as far as the championship goes.

For the first time this season there was no Red Bull parked on the front row, with the more traditional Ferrari & McLaren battle reconvened for the Italians' home race, and at the start it didn't look like it was going to go to plan for them. Button got a good start and even though Alonso made a robust move to intercept him (translation: He tried to barge him out of the way), Jenson was first into the first corner... just. Massa held his own against Alonso too, whilst a fast starting Hamilton was up to 4th and then challenged Felipe a bit too late. Floppy front wheels aren't generally a good thing in F1 and Lewis parked up in a gravel trap and headed home on foot. You win some, you don't make it to the end of the 1st lap... er.... some. He admitted it was his fault, which was probably sensible, as he was later than your average train in his attempt to get down the inside.

Button and Alonso fought tooth and nail for lap after lap with the Brit just in front, whilst Vettel encountered what he thought was an engine problem, but seems to have been sticky brakes. The tension remained at high voltage until lap 38, when Alonso's stop finally popped him out just in front of Button. Mind you, McLaren may as well have stuck a bloody great big advertising hoarding out in front of Ferrari's garage saying "We're going to make a stop now, care to plan your strategy accordingly?" so clearly did they signpost when they were about to stop.

Vettel unusually decided to go for his compulsory tyre change on the very last lap, but running on tyres he was happy with had done the trick. Having lost places earlier in the race with his phantom engine problem, he handily made them up at the end, finishing ahead of Webber.

Mark had spent an entertaining race watching The Incredible Hulkenberg taking a naughty shortcut at regular intervals, and can feel justifiably aggrieved as he couldn't get past the cheeky German. No penalty came though so Mark had to nail him big time later in the race.

Hispania were involved in a bizarre incident when Yamamoto bogged off from his pitstop without anyone noticing that the radio guy had his arm in the cockpit. There's some footage on YouTube - the phrase "ouch" comes to mind. They've been fined $20,000 for an unsafe release.

So at the end of the race, the final 3 were the same as in quali, Alonso, Button and Massa. Vettel made it up to 4th, Rosberg 5th, Webber 6th, Hulky 7th, a (completely unnoticed) Bob K in 8th, Schumi 9th and Barrichello 10th.

Webber sneaks back into the lead of the championship (not bad work for a guy who only came 6th) and we have the tantalising prospect of 5 fly away races with the top 5 drivers less that a win apart on points.

Formula 1? Boring? Not bloody likely.....

(NB: I would like to apologise for the flagrant lack of sarcasm and grumpiness in this report. Normal arsey service will be resumed as soon as I'm in a bad mood again. Shouldn't take long....)

(Listening to disc 2 of the remastered A-ha album Scoundrel Days. You know the sort of thing, B-sides and rarities. It's rather spiffing actually.)

The Schaf Shuffle

The weather – source of endless fascination, conversation, irritation and (just recently) excess irrigation. And a fidgety weather presenter on the BBC... I’m endlessly fascinated with the weather, and will confess to making sure I catch the BBC’s updates whenever possible. Not the local ones, where half the presenters look like they got dressed in the dark, or ITV, where they seem to know very little about actual weather, but the national forecasts. Delivered by actual Met Office personnel, their job entails a tricky mix of waving your hands about a bit, explaining about warm fronts without smirking, and trying not to look too pleased whilst mentioning gales force winds and torrential rain. Or stand in front of Cornwall. Each has their own presenting style, but there is one who intrigues me above all the others. Step forward, Tomasz Schafernaker, the 37 year old man from the Met who breezed onto our screens in 2001, as the youngest male ever to point out that it was going to r...

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 ...

RIP Jenwis Hamilbutton

We are gathered here in this... (looks round a bit) um... blog, to mourn the passing of Jenwis Hamilbutton. His life may have been short and largely irrelevant, but he touched the lives of so many people that... sorry? Oh. Apparently that was someone else... Jenwis Hamilbutton rose briefly to fame on twitter during 2010, when he was retweeted by BBC F1 presenter Jake Humphrey, having criticised his shirt. A similarly unspectacular claim to fame occurred when a tweet he crafted at 1am on a windy night appeared in F1 Racing magazine. An amalgam of bits of Formula 1 drivers Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button (mostly the hopeless bits), he came into existence via 3 pints of cider, a Creme Egg and the Electric Light Orchestra’s mournful 1986 farewell album “Balance Of Power”, played loudly over headphones. In his short existence, he was followed on twitter by Paul Hardcastle of “19” fame, and a bunch of slightly odd but jolly nice people, whom he was never entirely sure actually exist...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog