Nerves and a race in Monte Carlo

While young and foolhardy, I prided myself on my self awareness and felt able to take on the most formidable of arguing opponents without a blush. Age and experience have since disabused me of this foolish notion. The instances when I have found myself tongue-tied and embarrassed are legion and hardly worth recounting, but one leaps to the memory as I contemplate events shortly to unfold in a ridiculously wealthy principality on the French Riviera.

While living the life of the left bank intellectual in Paris many years ago, my two Welsh friends and I discovered that if we were able successfully to pass ourselves off as university students, we could avail ourselves of a hot, hearty meal in any of the lavishly appointed university student canteens dotted about the city. Parisian students enjoyed the luxury of a generous government subsidy which allowed them to eat as sumptuous a meal as steak, chips, salad and a large glass of good red wine for the nominal sum of 10 Francs (about £1 in those days). Unsurprisingly, this presented an irresistible temptation for three hungry left bank intellectuals.

While patiently standing in the dinner queue one evening, my eye was caught by the shapely form of a tall, blonde lass with hair that went all the way down to the beginning of her well rounded, denim covered behind. I thought there was no harm in striking up a conversation with the girl and, perhaps, inviting her to join us in partaking of the French government’s largesse. She seemed pleasant enough when, adopting the direct approach, I boldly grabbed her hand and theatrically declared “Je suis tombé mal pour toi et le sentir que je dois vous faire savoir. Mon nom est Iames et je suis un intellectuel de banque gauche. Quel est votre nom ? (I have fallen badly for you and feel I must let you know. My name is Gitau and I am a left bank intellectual. Pray, what is your name?”).

Nevertheless, beyond telling me that her name was Suzanne from Groningen in Holland, she said no more. I did not allow this to stem the flow of my ridiculously theatrical delivery and proceeded to regale Suzanne with all manner of nonsense. All Suzanne did was stare at me. But as I spouted more and more rubbish Suzanne’s stare became colder and colder. Soon I felt much as one might when forced to stare into two blue cubes of ice set in the frosty compartment of a refrigerator. I began to feel discombobulated. An awkward silence fell between us and Suzanne turned to face the direction of travel: the food counter.

Realizing that my time would soon be up, I racked my brains for a trick, a clincher, a thing which when uttered would cause the milk of human kindness and goodwill to gush out of Suzanne like water from a burst dyke. It was then that I remembered the date and the events which were to take place a few hundred miles to the south of where we were standing three days thereafter.

“Suzanne,” I said, “have you any interest in motor racing?”
She turned and slowly stared at me from head to toe. “I would rather stick a broom up my arse than watch cars going round and round a circuit in some shithole.”
This, surely, should have been sufficient to give me reason to shut my mouth and keep it so shut - save for mouthfuls of food and wine – until I was safely out of that student canteen, but it wasn’t. I was made of sterner stuff in those days, you see.

“Ah, that is where you get things wrong, Suzanne. This weekend’s racing action is not in any shithole. Indeed youwould not recognize its venue as a circuit of any description. It is happening on the streets of Monte Carlo! This ought to be an instant draw for one so lovely as you, Suzanne.”

Before I could allow her to say anything in response to this, I drew myself up to my full height – which isn’t very vast, I know but it’s the thought that counts – and declared “my friends and I will be watching the racing action on Sunday from noon in the Café Notre-Dame on the corner of quai St-Michel and rue St-Jacques. We shall be honoured if you will grace us with your elegant presence.” All Suzanne did was sneer at me and keep her eyes and body pointed towards the man ladling out coq-au-vin and potatoes. I made a mental note of the observation that Suzanne did not object to the food-ladler being unsparing when serving her – he too, it seemed, was smitten.

Come Sunday, as my friends and I were settling down into comfortable positions with a refreshing glass of Kronenbourg lager placed within easy each, I nearly fell off my chair when Suzanne calmly walked into the Café Notre-Dame. She pulled up a chair as she signaled to the waiter to serve up a Kronenbourg as if this were the most natural thing in the world. This was the first of many an F1 Sunday with Suzanne. Formula One does have its allure…

My thoughts turned to Suzanne on Friday evening when I met two gentlemen who said they had been somewhat turned off Formula One by the events of recent races. I was puzzled. Upon further enquiry I was able to establish that they were not fans of F1 as a sport but fans of particular elements of each racing weekend. One, a diehard Ferrari fan, had lost interest in the sport because, in his words, “What’s the bloody point if Ferrari aren’t even scoring points?” The other, a Lewis Hamilton fan who has arranged an appointment with the local tattoo clinic to have the words “Lewis Champ Hamilton” tattooed on his forehead cannot bear to see his hero being outpaced by Jenson Button and all the other “small” guys.

Well, well, well. If you are like Suzanne and only watching Grands Prix out of boredom or dedicated to individuals and not the sport itself, this is the weekend for you. If you watch no other race in the F1 calendar, be sure not to miss the Monaco Grand Prix. It is with much regret that I have never made it to Monte Carlo for the Grand Prix or anything but rest assured it is high on my long list of places to see before I die.

I have a feeling Ferrari have a point to prove. Watch this space.

It should be a corker of a race – Monaco always is. So grab a glass of whatever you fancy and,

Enjoy Monaco!

Gitau
23May 2009

English perfidy in Barcelona?

The English have a habit of upsetting people even when they do not wish to. Latin types spend their nights in dread of “perfidious Albion” and usually tread with caution around the English. In a sport where one is literally placing one’s life in the hands of others, it is perhaps best to remember the lyrics of the song from West Side Story called A Boy Like That I Have a Love: “stick to your own kind”. This is the advice which, I am sure, Rubens Barrichello’s grandmother would have given him upon learning that he was about to sign up with Brawn GP, an English racing team with a team-mate driver who happens also to be, well, English.

You might recall that a couple of years ago Spanish racing driver, Fernando Alonso, another emotional Latin, convinced himself that he had been stitched up by the English. He had joined McLaren, an English F1 team, and was partnered with a new English rookie called Lewis Hamilton. The Latin temperament got the better of the Spaniard and the sorry affair ended in acrimony.

I am unsurprised that the Portuguese driver, Rubens Barrichello, is feeling decidedly miffed. He finished yesterday’s Spanish Grand Prix convinced he had been double-crossed. Saturday had not gone ideally and all he was able to do was qualify in third place. But he used his loaf and his vast experience at the start of the race to take off so expertly that not only was he able to get past second placed man, Sebastian Vettel, but also the pole-sitter and his team-mate, Jenson Button, an Englishman.

This should have been enough. Since both Barrichello and his team-mate were in identical cars and racing using exactly the same three-stop strategy, in the absence of a crash, he had the race win comfortably in the bag. But, no, Ross Brawn, ace strategist and team principal of Brawn GP quietly (some might say deviously) switched Jenson Button to a two stop strategy. Result: Button got ahead of Barrichello and took the chequered flag in first place for the fourth time this season. A guaranteed win had been snatched away from Barrichello by the man who mastered the dark art of mid-race strategy switches with Michael Schumacher at Benetton and Ferrari. He sank into a sofa at the end of the race and asked nobody in particular “how did I lose that race?”

You could argue this two ways. You could say that Ross Brawn read the race appropriately – as he is paid to do – and chose to go for the switch so as to maximise points for the Brawn GP team. That would be reasonable, I think. Alternatively, you could, if you are an Anglophobe, say that the English team principal of the English Brawn GP team stitched up his Portuguese driver.

The latter view is, I respectfully argue, erroneous. It is still very early days in the season. Ross Brawn spent many years working at Ferrari and understands the Latin temperament very well. The last thing he needs is a suspicious Latin muttering into his helmet every time he sits in a Brawn car. Brawn GP is not Ferrari in the Schumacher days. There is no prima donna world champion who needs cosseting at Brawn. Winning the constructors championship would be like finding platinum at the bottom of your toilet – at least that is what everybody would have said at the start of this remarkable season. Brawn does not need to favour Jenson Button – not just yet anyway.

And remember, nearly all of the Formula One teams are English, so they surely must have learned about English perfidy before now...

The most famous non-English team is, of course, Ferrari. What the devil is going on? Kimi Raikkonen, the best paid driver in F1 seems to have given up completely. The team appears to be in disarray. I am no fan but I do not like to see Ferrari so out of sorts. It just isn’t edifying. Whatever one may feel about the team, one cannot contemplate Formula One without Ferrari. It just wouldn't be Fomula One.

Monaco, the most glamorous race on the calendar, is on in a fortnight. Let’s see how well young Jenson can perform there.

Gitau
11 May 2009

Postscript

I have received more correspondence about my last piece than any other I have written on this blog. It is flattering, very welcome and most encouraging. Thank you.

People seem to have been exercised by two things. First, there is great curiosity about the enigmatic Spanish beauty, Delicia. Information about what became of her seems to be much desired. Nobody would love to know the answer to that question more earnestly than me. I am afraid, alas, I do not know. All I can say is I hope she lives and breathes somewhere where perhaps I can find her before the end of my days.

The other thing I have been asked about made me laugh out loud. “What has Uganda got do with anything, Gitau?” one person said. Another asked “why discuss Uganda if you have a willing Delicia in your flat?” I refuse to answer these questions. It is 2009, my friends, google “discussing Uganda” or “Ugandan affairs” and all will be revealed. Better still, take out a subscription to Private Eye. You may find it offers useful information.

Jenson Button is on pole position for tomorrow’s race. Fingers crossed....

Gitau
9 May 2009

Escape to Barcelona

The news on the airwaves on Wednesday afternoon this week reminded me of a series of curious conversations I had many years ago with a Catalonian girl called Delicia. She was working as an au pair in Paris for a well to do American family stationed there and I used to meet her in a seedy café called the Café Marseillaise from time to time. I often extended an invitation to Delicia to join me at my flat for discussions about surrealism and, perhaps, Uganda but she always declined. I would add sweeteners to the invitation like “I have a lovely unopened bottle of Chateau Lafite” or “I make an excellent lamb roast” but these were as nothing to Delicia.
“Why should I?” she would say in a throaty, lisping voice which drove me nuts.
“It may be a pleasurable experience for you,” I would reply.
She would then laugh and pat her bag in a knowing fashion. “I have all the pleasure I need,” she would say.

One day Delicia confided in me. She extracted a little kit from her bag which she opened and showed to me. It became clear that she regularly employed the kit with abandon. “Heroin?” I asked. She nodded. Feeling somewhat concerned, I then asked a couple of incredibly stupid questions.
“But why do you do it?” I asked.
“It helps me forget,” she said.
“Forget what?” I went on.
“Forget about me,” she said, insouciantly.

On Wednesday, Alexander Mosley, the son of FIA boss, Max Mosley, was found dead in his posh Notting Hill flat. He had overdone it with the old heroin. Like me all those years ago in Paris, the media networks began moralising. Predictably they spoke about his outstanding intellect, his vast wealth, his age, blah blah blah. None of them thought to say “well done, Alexander – at least you died happy.” If you were Alexander Mosley you might have had reason to look back and think, like Delicia, that sometimes one needs to escape from oneself – even if it means going to a place from which there can be no return. Alexander’s antecedents were so bizarre that it is not in the least bit surprising he suffered awkwardness with women.

Alexander’s grandfather, the founder of the British Union of Fascists, Oswald Mosley, was a proper shit. This did not cause him any trouble when it came to the fairer sex, though. While married to the daughter of a marquess, he conducted affairs with her stepmother and younger sister and a score of other women, including a baron’s daughter. Once his wife was dead from illness, leaving him a vastly enriched widower, he married the baron's daughter. Alexander's father, Max Mosley, is an enthusiastic and unembarrassed proponent of le vice Anglais (which I wrote about at length on this blog in July 2008). Enough reason, then, for Alexander to seek to escape from himself from time to time. To my mind, if the escape ended up being permanent, well, what of it?

Alexander Mosley’s death ahead of this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix in Delicia’s home province prompted me to think that there may be a gentleman or two in Tokyo who should be actively considering committing hara-kiri. At each race when the Brawn GP cars (formerly Honda F1) lead the Formula One pack in full view of millions of television viewers everywhere and are then plastered all over the front pages of the world’s newspapers the next day, somebody at Honda must cry bitterly into his Kirin. Honda dropping their Formula One team at the end of last year must be the most stupid decision ever taken by a motor vehicle manufacturing company.

Motor vehicle manufacturers are taking the worst hammering since Gottlieb Daimler invented the high-speed petrol engine. Since the credit crunch began, the world has taken a collective decision not to buy new cars. Every day the news seems only to get worse. Today, Toyota, the world’s biggest car manufacturer, announced its worst ever figures and its first loss in 46 years. Acres and acres of cars are gathering dust in massive yards across the world. Car companies are doing all they can to try and shift some of these cars but to no avail. The splendid advertising opportunity afforded by Formula One must surely be a godsend.

You see, Grands Prix are not typically won by ordinarily-badged car companies. How many ordinary Joes can afford to buy a Ferrari or a McLaren-Mercedes? A volume manufacturer at the top of the tables is a matter of immense pride to them and a poke in the eye to the motor car aristocrats. It is the holy grail. In a year when they need all the help God can afford Honda, idiots, declined the gift Ross Brawn offered.

By way of comparison, look at the behaviour of Renault. They went to town when Fernando Alonso won two world championships in a row in a Renault. Advertising hoardings all over London were advertising Renault road cars but featuring Alonso’s F1 car. This happened for many months after the season was over and long forgotten. How much more could Honda be milking this season? You can see the newspaper advert already: “Ferrari, 0 points; Honda , 50 points. Ferrari, £150,000 at least per car; Honda, £15,000. Are you doing the maths?”

Oh well, I suppose hara-kiri swords are cheaper in a recession...

It is a race weekend and the action takes place in a European city, Barcelona. This usually is the time when the contest really begins. The teams are within driving distance of their garages and parts can be adapted a great deal more readily. I expect we will see far more significant advances from the big money teams than we have been used to. A lot is at stake this weekend. Whatever you do, do not miss the race.

Oh, and by the way, while you’re scratching your heads and doing the sums, do,

Enjoy Barcelona!

Gitau
8 May 2009