Skip to main content

Petrov stays put

Image
By
It was all looking a bit shaky for Vitaly Petrov. The rumour-mill was strongly suggesting that his time at Renault was over and he'd be out on his ear (and possibly F1 altogether).

Surprisingly, Renault/Lotus (or whatever they are calling themselves this week) have signed him back on for 2 years. Petrov is a bit of a strange one: He seems to lack consistency, lurching from mediocre race and silly mistake to flashes of brilliance and gritty determination. Maybe someone with some power in the team was still narked about Monobrow bunking off to Ferrari, and were happy to sign Vitaly again on the strength of his race-long triumph of keeping the Spanish grump behind him at the last race, inducing Alonso to a) not win the title b) shake his fist at him in a way most unbecoming of a Gentleman.

Whatever the reason, Petrov finds himself once more in a situation not dissimilar to Massa at Ferrari. If he beats his clearly rather good team-mate Kubica, it's likely to be seen as a bit of a fluke. If he gets thrashed by him, his stock will continue to fall. Tricky, huh? Still, it is possible to make a difference in a situation like that; You only have to look at Rosberg, and to a lesser extent, Webber and Button. All did well against a team-mate expected to blow them not just off the track, but probably the surface of the planet.

And can Renault move up the field now they've got a bit more stability? It's going to be tricky for Vitaly...

(Playing today: Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Maximum Joy" best of from 2000... ooh, a whole decade ago!)

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Making an exhibition of yourself

By
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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Suffering from natural obsolescence

By
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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A fisful of change at the shops

By
A recent day out reminded me how much the retail experience has altered during my lifetime – and it’s not all good. I could stop typing this, and buy a fridge, in a matter of seconds. The shops are shut and it’s 9pm, but I could still place the order and arrange delivery. I haven’t got to wander round a white-goods retail emporium trying to work out which slightly different version of something that keeps my cider cold is better. It’ll be cheaper, too. But in amongst the convenience, endless choice and bargains, we’ve lost some of the personal, human, touches that used to make a trip to the shops something more than just a daily chore. Last weekend, we visited a local coastal town. Amongst the shops selling over-priced imported home accessories (who doesn’t need another roughly-hewn wooden heart, poorly painted and a bargain at £10?) was one that looked different. It’s window allowed you to see in, rather than being plastered with stick-on graphics and special offers calling ...
2 comments
Read more