Fantasy Formula 1: Singapore

Fantasy Formula 1: Singapore - the other stuff

According to Eddie Jordan (and he's completely reliable, right?) tomorrow is the day when we'll find out some of the big changes in driver line-ups for 2013.

Schumi to retire again? Robohamilton to join Mercedes? Kovaleinen, di Resta, Perez or just about any driver (currently in F1, or even dead, it doesn't seem to matter) in the vacant and tantrum-stained McLaren seat? Massa dropped by Ferrari? Perez in the Ferrari? Perez in every conceivable car, possibly at the same time? With knobs on?

More importantly (being a BBC viewer) who will get Jakey-Wakey's ipad and chance to trip over forklift trucks? I don't think Lee McKenzie is quite up to it: her stock question is "So (insert driver name here) tell us what happened". Brilliant. Wish I'd thought of that. Mind you, if they decide to put her in the post ahead of James Allen, I'll be positively dancing. Dad dancing, admittedly, but dancing all the same.

Who do I want to see in a top seat for next year then? Perez in a Ferrari sounds like a winner to me, and I'd quite like to see Grosjean in a McLaren, although I'm not sure he's quite ready for it yet. I still miss Nick Heidfeld and his lovely beard, so how about Quick Nick..?

And so we come to the important matter of the Fantasy Formula 1 random bits and bobs...

Naughty corner: Has to be the Schumiester, doesn’t it? Made worse by the fact that rather than saying “hands up – it was my fault” he tried to come up with some flannel about “maybe there was a problem with car...” Yes, there was. The problem was holding the steering wheel.

Hero: This doesn’t mean I suddenly think he’s great, or want to be his bessie mate, but di Resta did a very tidy job, didn’t he?

Fantasy Formula 1driver of the day was Vettel, wavy finger and flashing helmet (plus a great race) handing him 29 points.

It is getting rather close at the pointy end, with only 8 points keeping Mark E out front for the 14th time. With the top 8 all within 100 points, it’s looking good for a late battle over the 6 remaining races.

393 points now separate first and last. I’ll be honest with you – I don’t think Henry is going to win this year.

A quick rummage through the FF1 stats box reveals Alonso still out front, but Vettel now up to 3rd, whilst (and I want you to try and remain calm) de la Rosa isn’t last any more! He’s handed that particularly unpleasant batten to his team-mate Karthikeyan, and for good measure nipped up to 21st as well. Ferrari are still top team, with Lotus 2nd, and Hispania are still last, but not by miles.

Olie B continues his steady progress – he’s moved up the standings for 9 races in a row now, and is currently 12th, 133 points adrift of the lead. Has he got time to make it all the way to the top? Tune in next time!

Oddly, all the teams bagged FF1 points this race, including Williams, even though Maldyolddough and Senna were respectively parked in a garage and by some Armco. “Well, How come?” I don’t hear you ask. The FIA classify someone as completing the race if they are within a certain amount of laps of the winner. Even though he was parked, Bruno had still done more laps than Petrov when Seb tootled over the line.

Next race: Another great circuit coming up – it’s the Japanese GP on the 7th of October.

(More chillout stuff tonight - Robert Miles' 23am. To be honest with you, I don't think he's quite grasped the concept of 24 hour clocks...)

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