Malaysia ought to bring welcome relief from the G20
The G20 was in town this week and England’s loafers seized the opportunity to have a party. They weren’t content with standing on each others shoulders hoping to catch a glimpse of Barack Obama and his babelicious wife, Michelle, as the President’s unbelievably enormous limousine (nicknamed “the Beast”) swept into Buckingham Palace for an audience with Her Majesty the Queen. What they wanted was “red meat”. The idea was to burn a few banks, crucify some bankers, disembowel Sir Fred Goodwin (the former boss of the Royal Bank of Scotland) and generally have a jolly old knees-up in the City of London. These worthy individuals (let’s call them the “Furious Fucks” for convenience) had not quite factored PC Plod into their well worked plans. Plod phoned his mates from up and down the Kingdom and offered them a pint, a sandwich and a guaranteed punch-up. Plod’s mates liked the plan. The game was afoot.
When I arrived at work in the City yesterday, the building in which I work was surrounded by police vans and armoured vehicles. After verification of my identity, I was allowed in to join my colleagues in observing the battle between PC Plod’s mates and the Furious Fucks from a good vantage position. A division of the Furious Fucks had occupied an empty office building behind ours and were planning on using it as a sort of “operations centre”. PC Plod’s mates had other ideas. Dressed in full combat gear – black, battle suits, shields, helmets, everything – about a hundred of Plod’s mates moved in. The battle was short. The Furious Fucks appeared to be somewhat lacking in arm-to-arm combat training (someone should have words with their commanders). One by one we saw the Furious Fucks emerge in the company of Plod’s mates. Calmly, the Furious Fucks were offered a few free nights in one of Her Majesty’s institutions. They considered this, thought it to be a splendid idea and gratefully accepted. Battle over.
Unfortunately, the Furious Fucks had scattered themselves about the City in disparate groups. As I tried making my way home I found my speed somewhat slowed by a complete absence of public transport in the City. Bus drivers did not want to drive through the City and underground stations were closed in case the Furious Fucks decided to help themselves to useful things like ticket machines and turnstiles. I trudged home feeling increasingly infuriated by the Furious Fucks and hoped for a distraction. Thankfully, I did not have long to wait. This is the weekend of the Malaysian Grand Prix; a race I have invariably enjoyed since the first one in 1999.
After the revelation of the extraordinary promise of the Brawn cars last week in Australia and the stunning driving skills of Lewis Hamilton MBE, the stage was set for a thriller in Malaysia. But, once again, McLaren have managed to balls it all up for their highest paid employee. Hamilton has been disqualified from the third place he earned at the Australian Grand Prix because the team “deliberately misled” the race stewards about an overtaking manoeuvre Lewis Hamilton performed on Jarno Trulli. McLaren are spinning this as being down to their sports director, Dave Ryan, and nobody else. McLaren hardly need this. Only two years since an employee of the company, Mike Coughlin, was caught stealing Ferrari designs and having them photocopied in a branch of Prontoprint in Woking by his ignoramus of a wife, this is stupid. But that is a problem for McLaren.
Plenty will be said about this by the experts this weekend but my reaction has less to do with the incident and more with the manner in which these things are dealt with in Formula One. I am extremely irritated – and not for the first time.
Why oh why can we not have certainty at the end of a race? We whoop it up, crack open the bubbly and feel excited if our choice of driver does well in a race but are then told days later that, “er, actually chaps he’s been disqualified”. This after-the-fact stewarding is going to ruin the sport we love if these cretins aren’t careful. What do these idiots want: the fans to puke out the champagne, cork it up in the empty bottles retrieved from the dump and serve it up for the next race? Come on!
Which other sport treats its fans so shabbily? When was the last time you heard of a football or rugby match result altered days later because of a refereeing mistake? If this were the case in football, England would have been stripped of their 1966 world cup win and history would be different. If a driver or a team is deemed to have infringed the rules as a consequence of what is discovered by inspection of video evidence, that driver or team should be punished, but the race result should never ever be interfered with. I mean, for pity’s sake, is nothing sacred? I despair, I really do.
So here we are then; no points for Hamilton and McLaren and the Brawn team at the top of the table. Only a week has gone by since the last race, so the teams will not have had very much time to develop their cars. The performance and pace of the cars should, therefore, be pretty much the same as it was last week. Assuming the Brawn cars have no reliability issues – and anyway, why should they? – they must be the team to watch this weekend.
Ferrari don’t look too shabby either. Their history at Sepang is second to none since Michael Schumacher christened the track ten years ago, four months after breaking his leg, and taught everyone else a driving lesson. Kimi Raikkonen – one of three world champions this season - chose to sit out last season and I suspect will want to cement his reputation at a circuit he enjoys. He won at Sepang in a McLaren in 2003 and again – this time in a Ferrari – in 2008. I should think he’s the chap to be reckoned with.
The weather is always unpredictable in Malaysia and nothing gets the pulses racing better than a sometimes wet/sometimes dry motor race, so I can safely put this week behind me from Saturday morning and have a marvellous weekend. I hope you too will,
Enjoy Malaysia!
Gitau
03 April 2009
When I arrived at work in the City yesterday, the building in which I work was surrounded by police vans and armoured vehicles. After verification of my identity, I was allowed in to join my colleagues in observing the battle between PC Plod’s mates and the Furious Fucks from a good vantage position. A division of the Furious Fucks had occupied an empty office building behind ours and were planning on using it as a sort of “operations centre”. PC Plod’s mates had other ideas. Dressed in full combat gear – black, battle suits, shields, helmets, everything – about a hundred of Plod’s mates moved in. The battle was short. The Furious Fucks appeared to be somewhat lacking in arm-to-arm combat training (someone should have words with their commanders). One by one we saw the Furious Fucks emerge in the company of Plod’s mates. Calmly, the Furious Fucks were offered a few free nights in one of Her Majesty’s institutions. They considered this, thought it to be a splendid idea and gratefully accepted. Battle over.
Unfortunately, the Furious Fucks had scattered themselves about the City in disparate groups. As I tried making my way home I found my speed somewhat slowed by a complete absence of public transport in the City. Bus drivers did not want to drive through the City and underground stations were closed in case the Furious Fucks decided to help themselves to useful things like ticket machines and turnstiles. I trudged home feeling increasingly infuriated by the Furious Fucks and hoped for a distraction. Thankfully, I did not have long to wait. This is the weekend of the Malaysian Grand Prix; a race I have invariably enjoyed since the first one in 1999.
After the revelation of the extraordinary promise of the Brawn cars last week in Australia and the stunning driving skills of Lewis Hamilton MBE, the stage was set for a thriller in Malaysia. But, once again, McLaren have managed to balls it all up for their highest paid employee. Hamilton has been disqualified from the third place he earned at the Australian Grand Prix because the team “deliberately misled” the race stewards about an overtaking manoeuvre Lewis Hamilton performed on Jarno Trulli. McLaren are spinning this as being down to their sports director, Dave Ryan, and nobody else. McLaren hardly need this. Only two years since an employee of the company, Mike Coughlin, was caught stealing Ferrari designs and having them photocopied in a branch of Prontoprint in Woking by his ignoramus of a wife, this is stupid. But that is a problem for McLaren.
Plenty will be said about this by the experts this weekend but my reaction has less to do with the incident and more with the manner in which these things are dealt with in Formula One. I am extremely irritated – and not for the first time.
Why oh why can we not have certainty at the end of a race? We whoop it up, crack open the bubbly and feel excited if our choice of driver does well in a race but are then told days later that, “er, actually chaps he’s been disqualified”. This after-the-fact stewarding is going to ruin the sport we love if these cretins aren’t careful. What do these idiots want: the fans to puke out the champagne, cork it up in the empty bottles retrieved from the dump and serve it up for the next race? Come on!
Which other sport treats its fans so shabbily? When was the last time you heard of a football or rugby match result altered days later because of a refereeing mistake? If this were the case in football, England would have been stripped of their 1966 world cup win and history would be different. If a driver or a team is deemed to have infringed the rules as a consequence of what is discovered by inspection of video evidence, that driver or team should be punished, but the race result should never ever be interfered with. I mean, for pity’s sake, is nothing sacred? I despair, I really do.
So here we are then; no points for Hamilton and McLaren and the Brawn team at the top of the table. Only a week has gone by since the last race, so the teams will not have had very much time to develop their cars. The performance and pace of the cars should, therefore, be pretty much the same as it was last week. Assuming the Brawn cars have no reliability issues – and anyway, why should they? – they must be the team to watch this weekend.
Ferrari don’t look too shabby either. Their history at Sepang is second to none since Michael Schumacher christened the track ten years ago, four months after breaking his leg, and taught everyone else a driving lesson. Kimi Raikkonen – one of three world champions this season - chose to sit out last season and I suspect will want to cement his reputation at a circuit he enjoys. He won at Sepang in a McLaren in 2003 and again – this time in a Ferrari – in 2008. I should think he’s the chap to be reckoned with.
The weather is always unpredictable in Malaysia and nothing gets the pulses racing better than a sometimes wet/sometimes dry motor race, so I can safely put this week behind me from Saturday morning and have a marvellous weekend. I hope you too will,
Enjoy Malaysia!
Gitau
03 April 2009
posted by Gitau at 2:29 pm
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