A (fake) Team Principal writes

Formula 1 Grand Prix, China, Friday Practice

“Don’t understand,” he growled. “You saying they meet to discuss ways to make sport cheaper and better and bring in plan to make it more expensive with more people, less overtaking and less safe? You saying they want all tyres, all time, which will mean all teams will choose same ones anyway or choose bad ones for track and not be safe? You saying we going six seconds quicker? Why? What is point? If racing is good doesn’t matter how fast cars go? Good kart race is good race. Why go six seconds faster at Monza? Bit dangerous, no?

“Not F1 monkeys anymore, F1 donkeys,” he growled and hung up.

I was a bit surprised at that to be honest. You know, those chaps on the SG had all sat down and without any input from technical people, engineers or anyone with any real knowledge of how racing actually works and with little or no proper research to hand they’d blue-skied a range of brilliant solutions designed to make the sport slightly different.

I mean, they’d reached back into the past and identified some things that the sport had forgotten about and brought them back in a vibrant, exciting way. Honestly, there’s no pleasing some people.

Anyway, that’s all by the by. Indeed, Vlad called me back five minutes later and after listening to him shout about how “f***ing squirrels should be extinct, they are vermin, no?” he told me that in all likelihood none of the things that came out of the SG meeting will ever happen, so I shouldn't bother trying to locate Super Aguri fuelling rigs or think about running supersoft tyres in Malaysia next season.

That freed me up to think about Monaco, the jewel in the crown™. I can’t tell you how much I was looking forward to this race, what with the models and celebrities and the yachts and the parties.