Williams jump the gun

I'm confused. I know that's not a big surprise to many of you, my default expression usually showing something like that anyway. But that's a new Williams car, right? And Barrichello out testing it in Valencia, yes?

But Williams haven't launched their 2011 car yet. I guess there's no law saying you can't just go out and use your shiny new motor, but tradition suggests that you usually show it off to the press a bit first, whilst your drivers wear freshly-ironed race suits and make sure their hair is combed nicely and they flossed their teeth after last night's super-healthy meal.

Williams never seem particularly bothered with the usual showy bit of F1 though. If it doesn't make the car go quicker, they aren't interested. Good for them. Rather liking the colour scheme I have to say. But apparently that's interim too.

This may all have to do with new signing Pastor Maldonado and his big sponsorship money, of course. Untried in F1, and definitely NOT just a pay-driver (according to the team), Williams really need him to perform. Their history as one of F1's top team is starting to look a bit distant.

In the other seat is F1 pensioner Rubens Barrichello. Still quick (as proven when he had the right car and no team orders at Brawn) and immensely useful in terms of experience, it would be nice for the old fella to get a chance at some more wins.

Unless something amazing has occurred at Williams though, this seems unlikely. The best they can hope for is to move up the pecking order a bit, and hope to do battle with any of the front running teams who have a bad season.

I do hope they can. I really do.

(Still Mr Walker on Radio 2)

Comments

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 ...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog