formula 1 maggots

[sidewall]

Couldn't believe that mistake by Button. Did you guys see Kimi got fastest lap?

[land]

Couldn't believe that mistake by Button. Did you guys see Kimi got fastest lap?

Didn't see that. Can't wait for him to get in a race with normal circumstances he has definitely shown he's still got it if you ask me

[Hugh Conway]

this thread needs more James Hunt

[Hugh Conway]

this shithole is like.... force india? with it's attachments

[PNWbrit]

bunch of pics from Rush on jalopnik. scenery looks nice
http://jalopnik.com/5894846/ron-howa...-sexy/gallery/

More from the set of Rush. I really can't wait to see this movie. 1976 was such a great season to be a nine year old, British, F1 fan.

[PNWbrit]

Well China was quite the race.... almost random tire performance is getting more than a bit silly though.

[esseff]

Well China was quite the race.... almost random tire performance is getting more than a bit silly though.

I was thinking the ban on blown diffuser's are bringing Vettel back to earth. Possibly Mercedes has the new F-duct design dialed properly after three races. The Finnish Nazi looked good...albeit he didn't appear to 'race' anyone as he drove away. Mercedes could have had a one-two if the pit crew didn't release Schumi before his front wheel was attached...bummer.

[PNWbrit]

Yep, Vettel is looking somewhat more ordinary this year... I was wondering if Schumi would have been able to do anything about Rosberg without the wheelnut issue. Maybe go onto three stop strategy? Maybe the Mercedes pit wall would have just got him the win? Kimi was fun to watch until his last set of tires gave up on him though, think it was Webber that he gave a driving lesson to early in the race with just a beautiful pass.

[f2f]

[sidewall]

Perez is setting up a smoke screen.

[Hugh Conway]

that'll be useful to help his team members escape the riots

has anyone done a bernie vs iraqi information minister meme?

[PNWbrit]

AGI) Rome - A Molotov cocktail exploded near the Force india team's rental car with 4 mechanics on board, caught up in clashes between the police and protesters in Bahrain yesterday evening. Obliged to stop due to the clashes, the four men saw the explosion close to their car but luckily no one was hurt and no damage was done to the car. The four mechanics returned to their hotel and will be working this weekend at the Sakhir track. Another member of the team has instead asked to return home since he did not wish to stay on in Bahrain. The president of the Bahrain International Circuit, Zayed R. Alzayani, minimized these events saying, "It was an isolated incident and my wife too was caught up in it. The protesters did not attack the cars and it was a coincidence that they were there. No one was hurt. I do not command the police and they know what should be done"

[PNWbrit]

Bahrain denies entry to Sky news reporters while allowing Sky sports reporters in

Awesome.

[Hugh Conway]

And Bernie gives a nice reminder why nobody wants to be a backmarker team anymore. Fuck you Bernie, Forza Force India!

Fuck this race, reminds me everything I hate about F1 currently. Shitbag hosts with no fun, shitbag ruler, neutered drives, bitter nasty politics. Hope nobody gets injured in the race or in demonstrations beforehand.

[f2f]

HC, i just got a year old F1 Magazine issue last year. it's from just when they didn't go to bahrain so the whole issue is full of quotes of him and jean toad: "F1 would never go to such horrible places! F1 is apolitical" etc. pretty funny how a year changes things. also "we'll never do more than 18 races". fucking senile prick.

fuck them.

joe saward has a good summary here:
http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2012/...thers-stories/

[Hugh Conway]

That is a good summary

Depressing to see a shit like Todt - who's sons team is part owned by Bahrain I believe - and the rest get away with such transparent bullshit. Par for the Course

[f2f]

[sidewall]

Watching Kimi battle Vettel was great stuff. He was so damn close but no cigar.

[PNWbrit]

Have to agree with Schumacher on this I would far rather go back to the sprint format with more durable tires and refueling. Keep the DRS and KERS to make overtaking easier.

Kimi had the faster car yet couldn't drive it like he wanted to get close to Vettel. If he had it would have been a repeat of China and he'd have dropped put of the points.... this isn't racing.

Edit: Ecclestone unveils Auschwitz grand prix

BERNIE Ecclestone has unveiled plans for a Formula One car pointing session through the grounds of Auschwitz.

The four foot-tall outrage perpetrator was given a boost after yesterday’s motorised spectacle in a human rights atrocity passed off without a hitch for anyone who doesn't live there.

Ecclestone said: "It will all be done very tastefully with the start lights in the shape of a menorah in tribute to fact the race is taking place during Passover.

"We won’t have the winners mount the podium and spray each other with champagne on the site of one of humanity’s greatest crimes as that would be tacky.

"Instead the drivers will have bronze, silver and gold stars sewn onto their jumpsuits. As long as the sponsors don't mind."

The race will be started by actor Ralph Fiennes firing a rifle from a balcony overlooking the starting grid while wearing a grimy vest and smoking a cigarette.

Meanwhile Ecclestone also wants to change the F1 rules so the cars can be lubricated with whale blubber and each race begins with the burning of the host country's international aid budget.

He added: "If all goes well we're looking at Jerusalem as a potential venue, provided we can drive straight through the Holy Sepulchre and get the Dome Of The Rock flattened to make way for a hot dog van."

[f2f]

safety has come a long way since this:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=22e_1335343579

wonder how our parents all survived back then

[PNWbrit]

MAURICE HAMILTON

Villeneuve: Views at Variance

It bothered me on 8 May 1982 - and it bothers me now - that I was not as devastated as some by the death of Gilles Villeneuve. The terrible manner of it, yes. But not the actual loss of one of the most thrilling drivers it has been my privilege to watch.

The truth is, I was subjected to the same feeling of sadness when word of Jochen Rindt's fatal accident came through in September 1970. But it was not the total and utter sense of desolation and shock accompanying the news that Jim Clark had been killed at Hockenheim on 7 April 1968.

That's because Clark was a seemingly indestructible hero who rarely made a mistake. When the supremely gifted twice World Champion died at the wheel of a racing car, the flip side of the coin was suddenly exposed for all its cruelty. So, when extrovert drivers such as Rindt and Villeneuve appeared, the ever-present risk factor seemed to be accentuated and this, in turn, alerted my personal defences.

Pictures of Rindt, forever sideways, covered my bedroom walls but, apart from asking for his autograph, I never met the man. Not so Villeneuve, whose all-too brief life as a F1 driver coincided with my early days as a motor sport writer.

Villeneuve began 1979, his second full season of F1, by winning two of the first four Grands Prix. By the time the Ferrari driver came to Brands Hatch for the non-championship Race of Champions, he was at the top of the points table. Not that you would have known it.

As John Watson hung around the paddock in his Marlboro-McLaren overalls and Mario Andretti buried himself in technical discussion with Colin Chapman over whether to rely on the old Lotus 79 or press on with the troublesome Lotus 80, I found Villeneuve, casually dressed in a tan shirt and brown jeans, leaning against a Fiat 131. No one seemed to notice or bother him. Probably because he was leaning through the window, kissing Joann and disrupting his wife's sewing.

Choosing my moment, I asked for an interview. He agreed readily and we sat on a concrete wall for a chat lasting, I guess, about 15 minutes.

Reading through the story now, one quote stands out because of its relevance to the theme of this column.

Gilles was talking about his early days racing snowmobiles: "They were very twitchy - especially at around 100 mph. There was a lot of sliding and it helped develop a sense of control. If you were second or third, there was a lot of snow flying through the air. In motor racing it's possible to fog your visor in the summer so you can imagine what it was like in snow in winter. You could be looking with just one eye; sometimes you couldn't see at all! You would expect to come off at least three or four times in a season. It helped to build the heart up a little bit!"

It was impossible not to warm to the guy. I saw him a week later at the Spanish Grand Prix, his American-style trailer parked in the dusty paddock at Jarama - much to the annoyance of Bernie Ecclestone, who had yet to bring his meticulous authority to bear on F1 and all its works. That, of course, pleased the Ferrari team no end, particularly when, after supper with Joann and the two kids (Jacques and Melanie), Gilles would saunter into the garage and keep his mechanics company. Small wonder they loved him to bits.

A couple of years later, I was to be reminded of the snowmobile quote when listening to Gilles talk about his drive in the wet 1981 Canadian Grand Prix, where he finished third in a battered Ferrari. A collision had knocked the nose wing askew before it stood up vertically in front of the car for a while and then flew off. None of this fazed the driver, any more than subsequent questions about how he had managed to drive the thing in such a condition.

"It (the wing) came off OK, didn't it?" came the bemused response to what he thought to be a silly question. "Alright, so it might have caused me to crash and everybody would have called me an idiot. But it didn't. The visibility on the straight was alright - just - if I tilted my head. But I couldn't really see on the left-hand corners which made life particularly difficult on the second part of the ess-bend beyond the pits (in their original location at the top of the circuit). So, all I could do was watch my right-front wheel to see whether it was on the dry or the wet patch. I was keeping the right-hand side of the car on the verge of the wet patch, thinking that if it was there then it must clear the barrier on the left-hand side of the car. I suppose I was lucky that it was a wet day so that I could work out where I was from the dry patches on the track."

You can understand why Gilles tended to divide opinion. Personally, I loved this care-free spirit; the refusal to give up; the exploitation of incredible car control and positional judgement. He was blindingly fast. And happy with it. Until the weekend of 25 April 1982 when team-mate Didier Pironi robbed him of victory at Imola.

Two weeks later at Zolder, it was a totally different Villeneuve. I never spoke to him that weekend, leaving it to my friends and colleagues Peter Windsor and Nigel Roebuck to talk with a man who clearly continued to be very angry and was in no mood for idle chat. It was disturbing to witness the sea-change in someone who had just had received a rude-awakening about some of life's more unpalatable aspects.

It was not difficult to imagine what must have been going through his mind when Gilles saw that Pironi had gone a tenth of a second quicker in the final minutes of qualifying.

It does not matter now whether Jochen Mass in the slow-moving March should have been in the centre of the track or whether he should have moved left instead of right. The only certainly was, Villeneuve was not going to lift off. A combination of circumstance and personal chemistry would, on this occasion, have disastrous consequences.

A motor racing photographer once said she always felt the constant need to put her arm round this little guy with the slight build, pale complexion and photogenic features. That summed up the mixed emotions evoked by Gilles Villeneuve. You loved him. But you also feared for him.

[f2f]

change of tone:

[PNWbrit]

It's got to the point that's it's hardly worth holding the race anymore.

Should just draw lots to see who wins.

These new tires are ridiculous.

...and real F1 drivers don't



Wear braces.

[DasBlunt]

Monaco!!!!

fuck Cannes.

[ass-to-mouth]

Monaco. The worlds most expensive parade. Pray for rain.