Skip to main content

Fast Fun

Image
By

Almost as quickly as you can say “If I see Vettel waving that damn finger again I’m going to break it off and shove it up his exhaust flange” it’s nearly time for another year of Formula 1. Who punched the new cars in the face and broke their noses, eh?

In case you’re one of those footballerists, or can’t see the point of 24 cars going round and round very quickly, then permit me to make a feeble attempt to convert you. Whilst I may worship at the temple of speed, I know a lot of you can’t understand what the fuss is all about.

24 overpaid, ridiculously young blokes driving very quickly in cars – you could do that, right? You’re pretty handy round the Asda car park on a Saturday morning, so how hard can it be?

Quite hard actually. Imagine doing an extreme workout, whilst sitting in a sauna, wearing a duvet. Don’t try it - It’s not nice and it makes you very unpopular with other sauna users. Especially if you’re in the ladies only-one. Apparently, I’m not welcome any more.

F1 drivers have to deal with that, and also manage to carve out mistake-free lap times mere hundredths of a second different, for lap after lap, whilst handling their state of the art 200mph missiles and avoiding hitting the other 23 chaps (Lewis Hamilton wasn’t so good at that last part in 2011).

The cars now have exotic-sounding kit to help the drivers overtake, such as KERS and DRS. Or are they the ones with a permanent sale who sell sofas? DFS? Right – sorry. Whilst purists might disagree with the artificial nature of these things, you’ll have them on your road car before you know it – but with slightly fewer sponsors stickers, or the pop-star girlfriend.

At the end of the day (to scrounge a term from the foot balls), it is the drivers who create the spectacle. Sure, bag yourself the best missile, and you’re in with a better chance, but they do make the difference, and I can’t wait until the weekend, when the Australian Grand Prix kicks off the 20 race season.

There’s much to look forward to as well. Can Vettel retain his title and make it three in a row? Can Brits Button and Hamilton get another title? And we have a further 3 former champions on the grid too, with the 84 year old Michael Schumacher back again (note: check age before posting), the mono-browed Spaniard Alonso, and returning Finn Raikkonen, and  it’ll be exciting to see if the latter can put an entire sentence together that isn’t more effective than Nytol...

Team-wise, Renault are now Lotus, Lotus are now Caterham, Caterham is still in Surrey (note: check relevance) and Virgin are Marussia. Clear? No... me neither.

Whilst The Sebulator (as everyone else doesn’t call him) romped away with the title last season, there were still plenty of epic battles, breath-taking overtaking, drama, crashes and Nick Heidfeld’s lovely beard. 2012 looks likely to be even more exciting, but unfortunately less hirsute.

So all I have to do now is get up early on Sunday for the full, glorious spectacle on BBC1.

Except I can’t – The BBC are sharing the coverage with Sky this year. And by ‘sharing’ what they mean is ‘getting less than previously’. So whilst Sky’s dedicated channel gets the full coverage in High Definition and Surround Sound (plus half of the BBC’s presenters too), Beeb watchers will get half of the races live, and a highlights show later in the day for the others.

So Sunday morning will involve me avoiding, radio, TV, the internet and any form of human contact.

Same as usual, then...
 

(Blimey – I still seem to be here! Thank you for your continued support and kind comments. I made you a cake to celebrate, but unfortunately I ate it. That happens a lot. Better luck next time.)

This blog post appeared yesterday as an entry in the North West Evening Mail's "Big Blogger" competition. Do me a favour - click on this link to view it on their website, please? Thanks to your clicks, I've made it through to the last 6 now! Another person gets eliminated on Monday...

(More ELO. Anyone would think I liked them or something...)
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

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

Shouting in the social media mirror

By
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...
Post a Comment
Read more