grumpyf1

Friday?! Are you sure? What the hell happened to the rest of the week?! Well, it's certainly been a busy one if you're a F1 driver's wallet, especially if you belong to Ricciardo, Vergne, Hulkywulkyberg or Raikkonen. All have seen themselves stuffed with extra cash as their owners confirmed drives for 2013. Ricci and Vergne are staying put at Red Bull Jr, whilst Hulkenberg moves to Sauber. But the most exciting confirmation was that His Royal Icemanness is staying put at Lotus. It was great to seem Kimi's facial expression exactly the same as it was before with joy. Top bloke. Anyway, here's those random FF1 bits I know you all crave like the pointless-stats-and-facts-junkies you are. That makes me your crap dealer. Sweet. Naughty corner: No major culprits this race, so I’ll have to plump for Perez, largely because we all know he can do much, much better than that... Hero: Lewis and McLaren. 5 wheels in 3.3 seconds. Just wow. Fantasy Formula 1 driver ...

I’ll be honest with you – I didn’t see qualifying, as I was away for the weekend, being vaguely sociable for a change. Well, drinking mostly. Same thing, isn’t it..? What I did pick up was that Seb was continuing his dominant form, being right at the pointy end during the Free Practice sessions, and then nailing pole comfortably during quail. It certainly looked ominous for Sunday... And so it proved to be. Das Sebulator squeezed Webber at the start, scything into a lead that he was never to be relieved of, for the whole 60 laps of the Indian GP. Alonso was doing his best to stay in touch, diving between the McLarens into a temporary 3rd place, only for them to pincer him back. After a couple of scary, millimetre-perfect, corners of battling, Fernando had to settle for 4th with Jenson ahead, and Lewis behind, him. Schumi’s dismal end to his second stab at F1 continued it’s drawn-out death throes, as a slight clip by Vergne left the veteran German with a puncture and a blo...

Well, now. Here we all are again. Some of us have, no doubt, had a fascinating day. Others have probably been discussing the correct pluralisation of the word Fez with their niece via twitter. *ahem* Anyway, there's the small matter of getting the brightly coloured blobs of information that look like dog food but taste like fire out of the tablecloth of facts that was the Indian GP, Fantasy Formula 1-wise. Clear? No... me neither. It seemed like a good metaphor with a cunning Indian twist at one point, but it all went horribly, horribly wrong somewhere.... So, whilst I hand myself over to the Crimes Against The English Language Police, here's the stats: Naughty corner? Hmmm.... it'd be dull to go for Hamilton yet again, and the Massa incident looked more like a plain-old racing one, rather than the boy from Brazil's fault... so... no-one. Blimey. Hero: He only came 10th, but Perez avoided the first lap carnage and managed to drag his Sauber up to 10th. Way ...

New track, exciting layout, great corners, dusty - on paper, the shiny new Indian GP should have been a belter. Initial jitters and teething problems (multiple power failures, commentary boxes with no windows, dog caused red flagging of FP1) happily melted away in the 30C sunshine, but at least one thing was constant - Hamilton was in trouble with the F1 fuzz yet again, failing to slow down while yellow flags were being enthusiastically waved during practice, netting him a 3 place grid penalty, along with Perez. For Lewis, 2nd in quali became 5th on the grid, leaving a Red Bull lockout at the front, with Seb on pole again, followed by Webber, Alonso and Button. Vettel scampered off at the start - that's all you really need to know about his race, as no-one got ahead of him for the duration. Jenson tried hard (as usual), but never got the gap down enough to mount a challenge. Jenson passed Webber after the first few corners, whilst multiple shunts occurred down the cheaper ...