Silver Arrows pointing in the right direction?

Two years ago, this team were World Champions, after resurrecting the abandoned Honda Team. They did do a brilliant job but, lest we forget, that car was designed by Honda with their multi-million pound input and years of experience. The slow tail-off in performance over 2009 highlighted Brawn's slip from the pinnacle once left to their own devices.

Last year, having been brought out by Mercedes, the slip continued, although they managed to be comfortably the 4th best team after the title contenders. Even with Michael Schumacher driving. And yes, that does still sound weird.

Schuey was disappointing last year. He's still a bloody good driver, but was comprehensively outshone by Britney in the other car. Princess Nico was very good though, and the car clearly didn't suit Michael. Things move fast in F1, and the lack of testing available clearly hampered the 7 times World Champ.

So 2011 is crunch time for Michael, Mercedes and, to a lesser extent, Rosberg. Michael needs to get back on top of his game straight away, or I can see him walking away from F1 for good. Mercedes need to prove they can cut it on their own (considering McLaren, who were having an off-season to some extent, still bettered them with the same engine) and Rosberg has to show he can still beat his illustrious team-mate.

First testing hasn't helped matters - KERS and other reliability issues have hampered their running time, and rumours that Mercedes are about to buy out Brawn's remaining 24.9% aren't helping.

It's an important year for Mercedes - silver arrows through the ambitions of the other teams, or blunted again.

(Accompanying this post are Sparks, with the weird, self-titled album from '72.)

Comments

Shouting in the social media mirror

It was always tricky to fit everything you wanted into the intentionally short character count of Twitter, especially when, like me, you tend to write ridiculously long sentences that keep going on and on, with no discernible end in sight, until you start wondering what the point was in the first place. The maximum length of a text message originally limited a tweet to 140 characters, due to it being a common way to post your ramblings in Twitter’s early days. Ten years later, we’ve largely consigned texting to the tech dustbin, and after a lot of angst, the social media platform’s bigwigs have finally opted to double your ranting capacity to 280. Responses ranged from “You’ve ruined it! Closing my account!” to the far more common “Meh” of modern disinterest. As someone rightly pointed out, just because you have twice as much capacity doesn’t mean you actually have to use it. It is, of course, and excellent opportunity to use the English language correctly and include punctuat...

A fisful of change at the shops

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 ...

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 ...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog