FOTA? For Once Think Amiably

Now then... Why do you think Red Bull and Ferrari have decided to leave F1's voluntary Teams Association, FOTA?

Could it possibly be that they wanted to spend even more squodges of cash than they already do, and the smaller teams said "you're having a laugh, right?".

I'm sure there will be lots of important statements about 'wanting to work together', 'resource restrictions' blah blah blah, but this is clearly about two of the biggest teams with the largest budgets wanting to win at any cost and thereby ensuring the smaller ones almost certainly never can.

This is like Tesco joining a consortium of small shop owners, then saying 'well, we DO want to help, but we're going to charge 30p less for that pack of yoghurts, so tough titties'.

FOTA was set up by the teams partially to help them agree limits on spending to ensure the future of F1 didn't just look like Ferrari and McLaren winning all the time. Now Red Bull have 2 World Championships under their belts, they seem to have joined the We're More Important To F1 Than You club.

Oddly quiet from McLaren though. Still, the whole thing will now collapse, so keeping quiet will get them some short-lived credit.

Is there much point to F1 if the teams already at the top get to stay there simply because they can spend more cash?

Selfish gits.

(Still listening to Bowling For Soup - this time it's Live And Very Attractive from 2008.)

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 ...

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...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog