Hamilton’s home advantage

What do you call two silver things that cost millions of pounds and keep crashing into each other? The Mercedes Formula 1 team.

You’re right – that isn’t funny. Which is exactly how team boss Toto Wolff saw it when Nico Rosberg ‘forgot’ to turn into the corner on the last lap of the Austrian Grand Prix last week, causing his team-mate to crash into him on the very last lap.

A sure-fire 1-2 finish turned into an acrimonious 4-1, as Hamilton took the win from Rosberg, and the chastened culprit limped home with a damaged car.

Sure, it’s not exactly the world’s biggest problem, as the drivers remain 1st and 2nd in the championship title hunt, and the team themselves are comfortably leading the constructors’ table. But it does highlight a problem for them that refuses to go away; If these two highly-paid racers can’t play nicely, and the other teams catch up a little, they could well start taking each other out of two races – the one on the track, and the one for the title.

And what do points mean? For the teams, the higher you finish in the championship, the larger the slice of the financial prize pie you get. This isn’t just about pride and prestige; it’s about cold, hard, cash.

How timely it is, then, that the F1 circus rolls into Silverstone this weekend for the British Grand Prix. Either of the two title protagonists could walk away from the event in the lead.

For Rosberg, it would extend his season-long run at the pointy-end. For Hamilton, a win would be a glorious moment for him and his adoring fans at his home race, and maybe enough to put him at the top. That home support may be just what he needs to take charge and demoralise his rival.

Whether you like him or not, the blinged-up boy with the famous chums and expensive lifestyle is clearly supremely talented, and already a multiple-title winner. For his German rival, beating Lewis would open up his slender points lead, but would undoubtedly be less popular – especially after last weekend.

And what of the other Brits at the British GP? Jolyon Palmer is in his first season racing at the pinnacle of motorsport, and currently drives for Renault – the word “pointless” neatly describes both his current points tally and his hopes of winning the race, or even getting in the points.

At the other end of the experience scale, Jenson Button is in his 17th season and piloting the slowly-improving McLaren. A win seems highly unlikely, but would undoubtedly be a hugely popular moment in a sporting year low on British success. A spot of rain would help.

Should this be the popular Brit’s last season in F1, a certain shouty ginger bloke has recently left a (formerly) successful BBC motoring show. JB would be an excellent replacement.

See you on the sofa on Sunday. Bring munchies. And earmuffs – I may be doing a lot of shouting at the TV.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 8th of July 2016. The paper retitled it as 'Car crash TV at its finest...', which may be their best ever change. Nice one.

It was indeed a suitably tense race, which never quite reached the potential it promised. On the bright side, the subsequent time penalty for Rosberg puts him just 1 point ahead of Hamilton. Bet against Lewis winning another title? Nah. Nice try Nico.

Listening to a strangely beautiful thing - a piece of music called "I Am The Doctor" from Doctor Who, but slowed down by 500%. Sounds odd, no? On the contrary - broodingly lovely... check it, as they say, out...

"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 ...

Shouting in the social media mirror

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...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog