Be Excellent To Each Other

I will definitely try to this year. It's not till August this year, is it? Could be agood opportunity to give Zioette her first taste of her future career.

Could be tempted.

I wanted to go to the British GP at Silverstone this year but it coincides with the War of the Worlds Live musical production at the O2

The what?
Either you have missed out on some rather significant news, or I have.

You have, I believe.

http://www.silverstone.co.uk/php/rm_britishGP.html

Er... Wasn't it moving to Brands Hatch?

No, Donington. I don't think they're ready, though.

Fuck, I'm rubbish.

To be fair, I didn't know either. I just looked it up.

I knew it was meant to be Donington, though, as it's down the road from me.

It's moving to Donington from 2010. It was never seriously moving to Brands Hatch (and that talk stopped years ago anyway) and it was always 2010 for Donington.

Surely even the extended circuit at Brands Hatch would be too small to host a Formula 1 GP?

Yup and the hippies veto'd any plan to extend it, just as they're likely to cause Croft to close.

Apparently people who deliberately move next to a motor racing circuit are allowed to complain about the noise.

I wouldn't want to see that circuit extended anyway - from a spectator's point of view, Brand's Hatch is excellent. You can see 90% of the normal track from the main grandstand.

I hate those people. Years ago we used to do some DJing so 13-16 year olds could spend Thursday night in a town hall rather than out causing trouble. We had signs up everywhere. Someone moved in next door, complained to the council about the noise and we were told to stop doing it.
Wankers.

Indeed, and even then it's vaguely possibly you could miss it, and it WAS a week night.

This is a 5 mile square racing circuit that's been there 80 years.

Yeah. I grew up down the road from Santa Pod and they were constantly getting complaints. Plamersport in Thurleigh were getting complaints too, until they let everyone in the village do a "run what you brung" every two months for free - then everyone stopped complaining

Heh, we'ev just done things like that in tort. mr Chris probably knows more than I do right now. But it's, well, interesting...

Oh I know the fact it was there before makes no difference legally (I'm sure you're aware of the case Croft circuit just had to settle) but it REALLY FUCKING WELL SHOULD DO.

I've just read the case. I think we'll be seeing that in an exam in the none too distant future, as it ticks most of the boxes.

Can't afford a fucking spell checker. No wonder they moved it to Donington.

Silverstone is a bit of a pit, it's slightly improved since they realised that 1 portacabin wouldn't cut it as a toilet for 30,000 people on the stowe end of the circuit but it's still a dull featureless airfield.

I haven't been since they started charging for F1 testing despite the fact they provide no facilities whatsoever and only open 1 (uncovered) grandstand and of course can't guarantee you'll see a single car.

But it's jsut up the road from me....

Some interesting stuff coming from the testing.

The McLaren is absolutely MILES off the pace, and the Brawn cars are way faster than everyone else.

Whilst I expect to see things coming together to meet in the middle, it's certainly a cat to throw amongst the pigeons ahead of the start of the season.

Don't McLaren have a bit of a reputation for sandbagging in testing? Or was that BMW?

I was an ace ad yesterday that I'd not seen before - really badly shot/edited "unstickered F1 cars driving on a busy london road", some crap about the world's greatest car chase. And then DUMMM, DUHDUM DUM DUDUM DUM DUMMMMMM.

Oh yes. Instantly improved season, regardless whatever else happens.

They certainly don't have a reputation for releasing statements saying "Yeah, we're fucked".

More to the point, where did Honda suddenly get their speed from?

They used their brains and Brawn.

5869 KERS bananas

Banankers?

No need to be rude.

But i jsut had a thought. When I was sat in the EarthDreams Honda, the wheel with the buttons on it only had one labelled (which was "KILL"). I bet one team has the KERS button marked "TURBO BOOST!" or "GO FASTA!" or something like that. I will also reckon it would be Red Bull.

Red Bull's KERS button should obviously say 'DEPLOY WINGS'.

It probably does given that this years media pack for STR claims they only bought it because it would piss off people if they owned two teams.

Excellent. I approve of moves like that.

Explain please?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/7948455.stm

Does this mean that the person with the most wins, wins, regardless of point total?

Bizarre!

Yes and yes!

Is it really better to win 9 races, and then not score in any other races, than it is to win 8 races, and finish 2nd in 9?

Malc

Seems so, on my skim reading.

On the plus side, it should mean more overtaking, crashes and millionaires burning to death.

Which can only be good tellybox viewing.

The downside is that there's little incentive if you are third or below, I would have thought.

yep, might as well pull over with 20 laps to go if you're not in the top 5 or 6

Oh fuck off Bernie.

Absolutely fucking insane.

And for the last fucking time, budget caps are unenforceable and do not work.

Wins will only decide the champion - all other positions will be done on points, so it's worth carrying on.

What this does encourage, strongly, is teams building very fast cars at the expense of reliability. It'd be worth having a car that only finished 50% of races, as long as it's faster than everyone else.

Or if, you are Eddy irvine, 54 laps to go.

So it's better to be a quick but reckless driver, than be disclipined and consistent? Fucks sake.

They want Senna, Prost and Mansell back don't they?

Actually, I do too

The BBC are now saying that Massa would've won the WC under the new rules, but forget that Hamilton was dubiously stripped of at least one win last season that I can think of.

Also, I'm sure Hamilton's strategy in the last race would've been different if he knew he had to win it. They just want every season to go down to the last lap, don't they?

the last 2 corners of the last lap.

Good for ratings. They should try and have the last race in Europe as well then. Nothing worse than the last race being in Japan or Australia an being on at 3am

It's a good thing the last race hasn't been in Australia for 15 years then isn't it?

Every race would be good. And season. its good telly watching.

Few years back in the MotoGP was like that, IIRC.

I downloaded the WRC Cyprus stage last night, having not tuned into any WRC stages for quite a few years now.

Where the fuck did all the teams go? It looked like it was just Ford and Citroen.

Will it really go to the last lap? They last changed the points system to stop Schumacher winning every season with 5 races left. This just sends it back in the same direction. Moving the goalposts from one decade to the next also makes it harder to compare different drivers from different era, which is bizarre when the basic principle is 'whoever drives in a circle fastest wins'.

What they should do is add up all the times from all the GPs in a season, and whoever is the quickest wins.

If you fail to finish you get a time of 02:00:00 (which I believe is the maximum length of a GP anyway)

Malc

They're the only manufacturers running teams yes.