Mud slinging and a race in Hungary
Human reactions to situations tend to remain consistent for all of their lives. If you observe children in a sand pit you will have some idea what I mean. A little boy will have his back turned to his friends staring into the distance at something or other when, “whack!” he feels a clod of sand land on the back of his head. The boy won’t trouble himself with an awkward enquiry about who lobbed the sand and why. He won’t even turn round to see who was responsible for the outrageous assault. Instead he will bend over, scoop up a healthy portion of sand and lob it squarely at anyone standing behind him. Similarly, John Prescott, Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister, while out campaigning during the 2001 general elections, was working a crowd with his practised smile and generous handshake when “splat!” he felt an egg break on the side of his head. Prescott didn’t trouble himself with needless arguments or enquiries. He simply raised his left arm and landed a smart left hook on the jaw of his stunned assailant.
In similar vein, McLaren, smarting hard about being found guilty by the FIA of being in possession of Ferrari’s proprietary information, decided that an equal and opposite reaction was called for. More than a week after the FIA decision but – cleverly – in time to take advantage of the free publicity in advance of a weekend of Formula One racing, McLaren issued a wordy statement on Wednesday accusing Ferrari of being the villains of the piece. Nigel Stepney, Ferrari’s engineer, was trying to do the right thing by leaking Ferrari’s secrets to McLaren. Ferrari, so the allegations go, are scaly bastards and Stepney was just about fed up of them bending the rules and racing “illegal” cars. Coughlan, McLaren’s blameless enegineer, was simply trying to marshall up the facts so as to present a complete dossier to the authorities who determine these things. Ferrari were such bastards that they had raced a car with an illegally movable floor which gave Kimi Raikkonen an easy victory in Australia at the beginning of the 2007 season.
If you cut through all the guff, you get down to a fundamental reality. What is the common denominator in all of this? McLaren is a quintessentially English team. Stepney, notwithstanding his Italian employers, is English. Coughlan is also English. What McLaren are really saying without troubling themselves with laying on too much innuendo is this: “English people play fair in all instances. The Italians – well, we all know about them don’t we? Isn’t Italy the home of the mafia? It is beneath contempt to imagine that we, an English team, would bend the rules but perfectly understandable that a team of greasy, shiny-suited, garlic-eating, hand-waving, shouting Eyeties will as a matter of course!”
In other words, if you have never understood why the Brits were the most reluctant members of the European Union, you now do. If you have never understood the thinking behind the English sneer, you now do. The world is full of lying, conniving scoundrels. England is not.
The scandal has given motor racing pundits something to write about ahead of the least exciting race of the year (perhaps that isn’t quite correct – I am not sure which I dislike more, Hungary or Bahrain). The Hungaroring is the slowest, dullest circuit on the planet. On a dry day, one has to employ clothes pegs to keep one’s eyes open for the duration of the race – especially after a good lunch prepared from fine ingredients purveyed by the Italian genius, Guiseppe.
Having said all of that, the most exciting race of last year was the Hungarian Grand Prix. It was the first ever wet race at the Hungaroring and, consequently, produced beautiful, unpredictable mayhem. English wonder boy, Jenson Button, achieved his first and only ever Grand Prix win there by keeping his head and coming out on top after starting from fourteenth place on the grid. So, if you know of any efficacious rain dances, get dancing!
If it stays dry I expect an easy win for the world champion. Fernando Alonso seems to have got rid of his Lewis Hamilton induced demons and remembered that he has two back-to-back world championships under his belt. He seems to have remembered that, while young, he is still vastly more experienced than his rookie team-mate and easily capable of teaching Hamilton a thing or two about top-end racing.
I don’t think any of this is a bad thing for young Hamilton. My delight at his roaring start was tempered by worries about things getting to his head. The lad is flesh and blood after all. Things coming too easily to anyone inevitably make them complacent. It is good to fight to achieve greatness. Every respected driver in the Formula One pantheon has had to and Hamilton will feel a lot better about himself if he finds himself up against it.
The gods seem to have deserted Ferrari. Perhaps not exactly. I think they have deserted Kimi Raikkonen and Ferrari by association with him. Raikkonen must have upset someone in an earlier life. He has justly earned the title of the unluckiest man in F1.
I haven’t got great expectations for this weekend’s racing, I am afraid, but I will watch the race in the hope of a disappointment like I got last year. The championship this year is too close and too important for any race to be ignored, so, even if you have to grit your teeth,
Enjoy Hungary!
Gitau
4 August 2007
In similar vein, McLaren, smarting hard about being found guilty by the FIA of being in possession of Ferrari’s proprietary information, decided that an equal and opposite reaction was called for. More than a week after the FIA decision but – cleverly – in time to take advantage of the free publicity in advance of a weekend of Formula One racing, McLaren issued a wordy statement on Wednesday accusing Ferrari of being the villains of the piece. Nigel Stepney, Ferrari’s engineer, was trying to do the right thing by leaking Ferrari’s secrets to McLaren. Ferrari, so the allegations go, are scaly bastards and Stepney was just about fed up of them bending the rules and racing “illegal” cars. Coughlan, McLaren’s blameless enegineer, was simply trying to marshall up the facts so as to present a complete dossier to the authorities who determine these things. Ferrari were such bastards that they had raced a car with an illegally movable floor which gave Kimi Raikkonen an easy victory in Australia at the beginning of the 2007 season.
If you cut through all the guff, you get down to a fundamental reality. What is the common denominator in all of this? McLaren is a quintessentially English team. Stepney, notwithstanding his Italian employers, is English. Coughlan is also English. What McLaren are really saying without troubling themselves with laying on too much innuendo is this: “English people play fair in all instances. The Italians – well, we all know about them don’t we? Isn’t Italy the home of the mafia? It is beneath contempt to imagine that we, an English team, would bend the rules but perfectly understandable that a team of greasy, shiny-suited, garlic-eating, hand-waving, shouting Eyeties will as a matter of course!”
In other words, if you have never understood why the Brits were the most reluctant members of the European Union, you now do. If you have never understood the thinking behind the English sneer, you now do. The world is full of lying, conniving scoundrels. England is not.
The scandal has given motor racing pundits something to write about ahead of the least exciting race of the year (perhaps that isn’t quite correct – I am not sure which I dislike more, Hungary or Bahrain). The Hungaroring is the slowest, dullest circuit on the planet. On a dry day, one has to employ clothes pegs to keep one’s eyes open for the duration of the race – especially after a good lunch prepared from fine ingredients purveyed by the Italian genius, Guiseppe.
Having said all of that, the most exciting race of last year was the Hungarian Grand Prix. It was the first ever wet race at the Hungaroring and, consequently, produced beautiful, unpredictable mayhem. English wonder boy, Jenson Button, achieved his first and only ever Grand Prix win there by keeping his head and coming out on top after starting from fourteenth place on the grid. So, if you know of any efficacious rain dances, get dancing!
If it stays dry I expect an easy win for the world champion. Fernando Alonso seems to have got rid of his Lewis Hamilton induced demons and remembered that he has two back-to-back world championships under his belt. He seems to have remembered that, while young, he is still vastly more experienced than his rookie team-mate and easily capable of teaching Hamilton a thing or two about top-end racing.
I don’t think any of this is a bad thing for young Hamilton. My delight at his roaring start was tempered by worries about things getting to his head. The lad is flesh and blood after all. Things coming too easily to anyone inevitably make them complacent. It is good to fight to achieve greatness. Every respected driver in the Formula One pantheon has had to and Hamilton will feel a lot better about himself if he finds himself up against it.
The gods seem to have deserted Ferrari. Perhaps not exactly. I think they have deserted Kimi Raikkonen and Ferrari by association with him. Raikkonen must have upset someone in an earlier life. He has justly earned the title of the unluckiest man in F1.
I haven’t got great expectations for this weekend’s racing, I am afraid, but I will watch the race in the hope of a disappointment like I got last year. The championship this year is too close and too important for any race to be ignored, so, even if you have to grit your teeth,
Enjoy Hungary!
Gitau
4 August 2007
posted by Gitau at 11:38 am
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