Skip to main content

Try to stay awake now - it's RRA time! (and it's not as good as Hammer Time)

Its a tough one to make interesting... so I will instead apply equal measures of sarcasm, vitriol and, possibly, pointless meandering.

Fresh on the heels of yesterday's blog post about HRT (snik!) leaving FOTA, it seems that the teams are now upset about someone (*coughREDBULL*) flaunting the noble agreement that is the Resource Restriction Agreement (RRA).

This worthy concept was introduced voluntarily by the teams themselves a few years ago, and therefore is policed only by their good selves also, which sounds very much like putting me in charge of security at the main Cadbury Creme Egg depot. Wherever that is now. I know nothing. I wouldn't tell you anyway if I did.

Anyway, this agreement limits the amount of time and cash each team can spend on developing various bits of the car, wind-tunnel testing and just about anything to do with making the car whatsoever, the idea being to stop the big teams spending money equivalent to Ireland's overdraft on making a wheel nut just a teensy bit more aerodynamic.

Just for a change, Red Bull are under the microscope, with the insinuation being something along the lines of "You don't go THAT fast unless you cheated". Interesting thought, but one that didn't add up when anyone challenged the RB Boys over their front wing flexing, diffuser, or anything else come to that, last season.

The self-imposed penalties are basically that you lose the amount of time you overspent last season against your development for this season. But cunningly, on an incremental scale. Where have you heard that before? Yup. my FF1 competition.  Gits! I'll do you for copyright!

Anyway, investigations are being made, there will doubtless be some bitching, posturing and snidey comments, and the whole thing will go boobies-up in no time.

Still, Red Bull won last year, and no RRA can take that away from them.

Gentleman's agreement? This is F1 we're talking about.....

(Tonight's very thin bit of brown tape doing the analogue hissy thing through my stereo is still the whopping Best Of The Eighties compilation. Arcadia's "Election Day". Crikey.)

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 ...

Unstable Stables: Throw away the key

It’s comforting to know that there is one less threat to the people of Cumbria this week, following the conviction of white supremacist, Ethan Stables. The 20 year old from Barrow had planned to attack the town’s New Empire pub in June 2017, in the midst of a gay pride event. Despite social media posts saying he was “going to war” and planning to “slaughter”, online searches about how to make bombs and chemical poisons, and expressing hatred of Muslims, Jews and gay people, he claimed his online comments were merely to impress far-right friends. Fortunately, following Facebook posts about his intentions, the police were tipped off and armed officers intercepted him as he headed towards the pub. His aim was to kill anyone he found, with a machete. In a bizarre slip-up, Stables had erroneously added an innocent woman to his neo-Nazi Facebook group. When he vented his outrage at the Furness LGBT support group’s event, the shocked woman contacted the authorities. He’ll have ple...

Is it foggy? No.

When I get put in charge (which is bound to happen soon), I'm going to introduce a whole raft of new laws, for I shall be a just and fair ruler. I'm quite liking the title of 'Most Marvellous Emperor Of Sensible Regulations And Bountiful Lovingness Not To Mention Exceedingly Handsome', but it might be a bit long. On that basis, I'll settle for the more informal 'He Who Is Smashing' from my loyal subjects. Anyway, I digress. I do that sometimes - had you noticed? Here, then, is the first law that will introduced: grumpyf1 law No.1 - Turn your fog lights off, you complete git. Don't get me wrong; If it genuinely is foggy, fog lights are quite handy. The reason for introduction of this law is because 96% of the time (based on my own in-depth research) it isn't foggy when some utter cockwomble blinds you. This has always been a bit of a problem but in the last couple of years it seems to have escalated out of control, possibly because of the...