Archive for February, 2010

Quick! Change Luca’s password

We’ve all been amused by the intermittent Twitterings of F1Scoop, an F1 journalist whose scurrilous alter ago has four times as many followers as his real self. But for genuine sauce one has to turn to ‘The Horse Whisperer’, an unnamed writer (believed by some to be Luca Cordero di Montezemolo himself) who appears on the Ferrari homepage. This morning he brought his scathing but elegant turn of phrase to bear once again on F1’s new teams in a piece entitled For whom the bell tolls.

I loved this bit:

As for the twelfth team, Campos Meta, its shareholder and management structure has been transformed, according to rumours which have reached the Horse Whisperer through the paddock telegraph, with a sudden cash injection from a munificent white knight, well used to this sort of last minute rescue deal.

It’s no secret that Bernie Ecclestone is the man behind the cash injection in question, although how much was injected and into which vessel remains a mystery. What is interesting, though, is that Colin Kolles comes as part of the package. When Bernie puts money into an enterprise he likes to have eyes and ears on the factory floor. It looks like Colin has taken on the mantle of John Macdonald.

Next, we have the Serbian vultures. Firstly, they launched themselves into a quixotic legal battle with the FIA, then they picked the bones of Toyota on its death bed. Having got some people on board, around whom there was still a whiff of past scandals, they are now hovering around waiting to replace whoever is first to drop out of the game, possibly with backing from that very same knight in shining armour whom we mentioned earlier.

Could he mean Mike Coughlan?

This is the legacy of the holy war waged by the former FIA president. The cause in question was to allow smaller teams to get into Formula 1. This is the outcome: two teams will limp into the start of the championship, a third is being pushed into the ring by an invisible hand – you can be sure it is not the hand of Adam Smith – and, as for the fourth, well, you would do better to call on Missing Persons to locate it.

All very amusing stuff, and executed beautifully. Still, this is the sort of thing that would cause an employee to get into a lot of trouble, residing as it does in a prominent spot on the website of the oldest team in F1. If I were working in the comms department, I’d be asking IT if there was a way of blocking Mr Montezemolo’s access to the content management system, at least until the first espresso of the day had kicked in.

In any case, given the fragile state of F1’s economic health at the moment, perhaps the Horse Whisperer ought to pay closer attention to the sentiments of the John Donne poem he alludes to in the title of his piece:

No man is an island,

Entire of itself.

Each is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manner of thine own

Or of thine friend’s were.

Each man’s death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls.

It tolls for thee.

“Take me to Stirling’s…”

Legend has it that if you step in to a London cab and say, simply, “Take me to Stirling’s,” then you will be conveyed thither to Mayfair, and the mews residence which Sir Stirling Moss calls home. This morning I was privileged to have an appointment with Stirling to interview him for my next book, so I thought I’d put this legend to the test.

In the great tradition of Apple advertising (“Some sequences shortened”) we’ll flash past the bit where I leave my phone at home and nearly miss the train to London. Let’s begin at the taxi rank outside Waterloo station on a grey and chilly February morning.

“Take me to Stirling’s please.”

“Wot?”

“Stirling’s”

“You wot, Guv?”

“Stirling Moss’s house.”

“Where’s that, then?”

Thus was another panel stitched into life’s rich tapestry of small disappointments. Still, at least he didn’t say, “I had that Michael Jackson in the back the other week…”

I undertook the last part of the journey on foot and was shivering by the time I reached the door.

“My dear chap,” said Stirling, “you should stand in the loo for a few minutes. It’s much warmer in there.”

So Mrs Lady Moss decanted me into their beautifully toasty ground floor facility for a few moments before popping back with a steaming mug of tea. This all had a suitably restorative effect and the interview proceeded according to plan.

So, yes, a bit of an odd start to an interview, but not as strange as the time Gary Numan walked into the room carrying a bowl of Doritos and said, “Nibbles?”

Books, books, books

It seems like an age since I finished it – that’s because it is! The Art of the Formula 1 Race Car, with words by me and excellent bespoke studio photography by James Mann, rolled off the presses last week. It’ll be on sale from mid-March.

The book features a range of Formula 1 cars from the Alfa 158 to Lewis Hamilton’s championship-winning McLaren Mercedes MP4-23. The Alfa we photographed is one of only two left in the world and it is the actual car in which Farina won the first world championship grand prix in 1950.

In between is a miscellany of machinery, each of which has an interesting tale to tell as well as fitting into what TV scriptwriters would call Formula 1′s ‘story arc’.

If you fancy a taster then you can see a selection of the photographs and some adapted text in the most recent issue of F1 Racing magazine.

You can order a copy here. I’ll put in one of those fancy windows-in-the-sidebar as soon as I can work out how to do so without utterly wrecking the site.

Fuel if you think it’s over

It’s been a very exciting week in the F1 universe. We’ve seen the first Formula 1 test session of 2010 and the launch of the Virgin Racing team – or, at least, we would have seen the launch of the Virgin Racing team if they’d remembered to put 50p in the meter.

Ferrari set the pace throughout the Valencia test, but at the risk of being labelled a sourpuss (you’d have good reason to; well over 30,000 people attended the test, and some websites went down more often than Didier Drogba in the penalty box) I ought to point out that it’s far too early to draw any firm conclusions. The Valencia circuit has very few straights or fast corners; besides, the potential variance in fuel weights between cars is 150kg or thereabouts. On a circuit like this, which is composed of short squirts and is principally a test of traction, you need to know the fuel weights to understand which cars are working and which aren’t.

Or you can ask a photographer. These doughty souls spend their professional lives lining up fast-moving cars in their telephoto lenses. They can tell you which cars and drivers are out of shape.

Feel free to put a tenner on Fernando Alonso being champion in 2010. I may even do so myself. But don’t forget that Ferrari were quick in winter testing before the 1991 season, and before that year was out Alain Prost had been given his marching orders for comparing his car to a truck. 

Still, Renault must be fretting a tad that Bobby K ran out of fuel before the end of his long run…