Fantasy Formula 1

Well now... This is tricky.

After a great deal of pondering and soul-searching, I’ve decided I’m not going to run Fantasy Formula 1 this year. Here’s why: 17 years after starting it off in the mid 90s, 2012 saw me trying to juggle sorting out results, a race report, various stats and a captioned image, and place them onto the blog, on twitter, into a Word document and out via email. At the same time as doing that, I was trying to fit in writing a 500 word newspaper column that needed submitting on a Wednesday. Consequently, I was spending Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at the computer, then the rest of the week never quite catching up on everything else I needed to do. The BBC’s decision not to show half the races live also means I get to see coverage from those races later in the day, leaving even less time to get a head start on the results.

Surprisingly, the North West Evening Mail haven’t yet cottoned on to my innate crappiness at writing, and are still allowing me to submit grumpy diatribes to them each week (I’ve written 44 columns now). Trying to fit that around FF1, but wanting to get the results out quickly, meant I was rushing things a bit. Being an annoying pedant, I like to make sure I do things properly, which is why this is alltyped proper and grammatically corrict.

These are good reasons on their own, but the reliability of the modern F1 car means most of them finish every race, with only occasional large moves from their starting position. After tweaking driver prices over the last few years, it still seems to be big budget FF1 teams that win – short of a big upheaval of the rules I’ve been using, I can’t see an easy way of changing this.

Finally, and significantly, FF1 started out as a social thing in the office. On a Monday, I’d show up with the results, and colleagues would spend some time pointing out how incredibly useless my team was, whilst I told them they were only jealous that they hadn’t picked Forti Fords and Ralf Schumacher too. Whilst some of you have kindly emailed or tweeted me to let me know you’re enjoying it, generally it’s been pretty quiet.

I’ve been putting a lot of time in... it feels like I’m not getting a lot back out of it any more. I also spend half of the race jotting things down on a notepad, and trying to find new ways of slagging Maldonad’oh off – and that’s not really the point. So this year, I’m going to just watch F1 and enjoy it. I hope you do too. Maybe I’ll blog on the subject from time to time.

Thanks for taking part, and apologies if you’re disappointed. I’ll have a think about 2014...

Best wishes,

Peter

Malaysian Grand Prix - Vettel hot, but not bothered

Malaysia. It's always hot, and it always rains. Except the 2nd part is no longer true (unless you count the drizzly bit around lap 14). Saturday's qualifying session had highlighted the fact that Red Bull and McLaren seemed well matched on pace, but also that Ferrari were struggling. Whilst Vettel bagged another pole, followed by Hamilton, Webber and Button, Alonso was only 5th, and Massa 7th, with Nick Heidfeld an excellent 6th on the grid between the two red cars. At this point, I would like to break momentarily for a small rant: How many times do I have to say Heidfeld is good? Why wasn't he given a top drive years ago? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?! ARE YOU BLIND!!!?? Ahem. The Hispanias somehow managed to a) turn up b) remember to bring cars c) get both of them on the track d) actually get both of them within 107%. Pretty remarkable really. Oh, and it didn't rain. Race day looked a more likely candidate for a drop of the wet stuff. The start was exciting, with

Senna bags Willy drive?

The great thing about F1 rumours is that they change every 5 minutes. Just last week it was looking like Barrichello might be back in at Williams, as new engines, tech staff and a general reshuffle would mean they needed someone who actually knew what they were doing in an F1 car. Which rules out Maldonado, obviously. Now it looks like Senna might be about to get a seat with the team where his Uncle lost his life. I'm sure Bruno's mum must be delighted. I don't hold with all this superstitious mumbo-jumbo though, and with the extraordinary level of safety in modern F1 cars, Bruno should be pretty safe. There is one significant problem with Williams signing him though - and this is going to be a bit unpopular I suspect - Bruno isn't very good. Yes, he put in a couple of reasonable performances with Renault, but Nick Heidfeld (ah... Nick and his lovely beard...) would have been able to do likewise, has he not been dropped. And then they dropped Senna too. Thi

I know I'll regret this...

For @Feisty_Onion @BroughtonLass @LizWestmorland Me... before the grumpiness set in. Have a great weekend.

grumpyf1

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