DRS Baby Yeah?!

So F1 is off again (at last) and now we have new toys like the Drag Reduction System. Is it any good? Well who really knows? There seemed to be two overtakes caused by it and I can't say that either was that dramatic. Oh well, to be expected I guess. It just didn't seem to make enough difference but maybe thats because the straight in Oz just isn't long enough. Hopefully the next race should sort out an answer to that!

In fact the most exciting bit (for me at least) was Jensen's short but dramatic battle with Felipe. Exciting stuff in which the flappy rear wing appeared to play almost no part whatsoever. The comment that 'I was in front before the corner' has to be the best bit though. If you're in front you probably wouldn't chicken out before the next corner.

Early signs are that Red Bull are top of the heap. Hopefully they keep up (or down?) their usual reliability score and it will give us an exciting championship. Fingers crossed anyway!

Gone Karting

I have just been out for a practice session at Daytona karting in Sandown. It was a fairly cold day with a wet track and it was a brilliant laugh. Slipping and sliding all over the place, several spins, a couple of bumps and dodges, knackered forearms by the time it finished. Everything you could want.

It was the first time I've been outdoor karting. I've done a few laps on the local indoor track but its just not the same thing, especially in the wet. On slicks! The first turn up there is a high speed sweeper and its one of those 'how brave do you want to be' corners, where you just have to fling it in and hope for the best. At the start of the session, it was turn in and watch the kart carry on straight for a bit, but at the end it was scrabbling around for grip the whole way through.

Afterwards (as usual) it put me in the mood for finding out more about racing these things on a regular basis. Every time I try something like this, I want to be a race driver again. So I fire up Google and start surfing. The first thing that hits me is that there are an awful lot of indoor kart tracks around the place and not so many outdoor ones. The second is that if you want to start karting as a sport, all the info out there seems to be from the 90's!

I was staggered by the sheer lack of up to date info there is. Lets start at the top, the organising body for all motorsport in the UK (including karting) is the MSA. Its not too bad to start with, then you get into the karting section and things start to fall apart. You need to complete an ARKS test before you can race so you go to their site to find out about it. Now apart from having a design straight out of the original Ark it seems not too bad. Until you dig a little deeper...

The ARKS page mentions the KCB ProRacer card which along with the Kart Tyro class would seem to be a great way to getting started. So you follow the link to the Kart Control Board to find out more, except it doesn't work. Now I'm not one to be put off easily so I do a little digging. It seems that the Kart Control Board was disbanded in 2003!

So then you can eventually make it to the ABkC website, surely this is better? No, quite frankly, it isn't. Again an ancient design which makes it incredibly hard to see what's going on and almost nothing useful. Especially on the 'getting started' pages which are quite possibly the worst web pages I have seen since 1995.

Surely a better job can be done than this? It shouldn't be that hard to find out what needs to be found out should it? I mean its easy enough to find an arrive and drive karting session (although most of their websites seem to be stuck in the last century again).

Which brings me on to another point. I eventually found out that after buying a kart and race gear I would need to join a club, pay for a test and of course pay the meeting fees for each race. The meeting fees alone are around £45 so why on earth would I do that when I can do a practice and race at an arrive and drive centre for about the same price!

So why is there not a more organised arrive and drive championship? There are plenty of centres that could host championship races, it would encourage people to race more regularly, the competition would help to advertise the centres. I can only see upsides to it, except for the person who has to organise it of course! Maybe its time to start my own championship?

A New Era Dawns

In a move that is sure to surprise almost no-one, Fernando Alonso and McLaren announce that they will not be together next year. The only real surprise was that it took this long for the press release to arrive.

So the guessing game begins, where exactly is Alonso going to end up next year? The guesses seem to include all the major teams, but the ones that strike me as funniest are Toyota and Honda.

Can you imagine the ex-world champions delight at being offered a drive at Toyota? "I can't drive there, they wouldn't win if they were actually running a Ferrari, but look at the size of the cheque!" A tricky decision indeed. Then again Honda isn't that much better. For some reason though I just can't imagine that Barrichello will just get dumped in the off season. At least I hope not, it seems poor reward for an entire career as a number 2 driver.

The FIA seem to be doing their usual job of trying to screw it up for everybody by removing small parts of the competition every few months. An engine freeze for 10 years seems at odds with the whole point of F1 to me. I always believed that F1 is a car building competition. The FIA seem to be forcing it towards being a one make race series. The annoying thing is that its the fans, desperate to see some overtaking, that have pushed it that way. Thats not to say that one make series are bad, some of them have fantastic races. They just aren't F1.

With all this intrigue I feel we are heading towards a new chapter in F1. Some of us, (yes I'm old enough) remember the days of Senna, Prost, Mansell et. al. with fondness. People speak as if there hasn't been any real racing since, which I believe is just plain wrong. I remember seeing some race long processions in those days, not to mention people winning by over 30 seconds. Boring grand prixs are not a modern invention. But in those days you still had some serious drama! There was a great feeling that despite the undoubted class of Senna he would have to go and fight to take the championships he so obviously deserved. And the fight wasn't going to be easy with the people he was up against. There was cheating, there was politics, there was fighting in the teams, there was danger. And now we get the whole same recipe being stirred up for us again.

There is the ex-world champ, kicked out of his team. The new kid on the block who could sweep all before him. The current world champion who will just be waiting to collect the win if others fumble it. Not to mention the new guys, that haven't really had a chance to prove themselves yet.

Things are looking up for the coming year, and I can't wait.

They Think Its All Over!

It is now (appeals notwithstanding). Well I think disappointing is the correct word for that. After 4 secs of excitement at the start of the first lap it all went dismally down to nothing for Lewis Hamilton. As the saying goes, not with a bang, but a whimper.

I suppose we should be celebrating Kimi Raikonnen winning the championship and I'm sure some are, but from here it seems as though Lewis lost it instead. After all the drama this season, to have it decided by a mechanical (nearly) failure is just about as typical as it gets. You have to say though, it couldn't have gone to a more dull person. I always try to hold firmly in mind the moment when Martin Brundle found Kimi for a grid walk interview in 2006 at Interlagos. On live ITV with (as Martin likes to remind us once per race) 5 million people watching, the conversation began...

"Did you catch the presentation?" says Martin referring to the Schumacher retirement special which had just finished.
"No," says Kimi, deadpan as ever, "I was taking a shit."

Its moments like that that make sporting heroes, but with Kimi he does his best to send you to sleep the rest of the time.

I still don't get where McLaren's strategist in charge of Hamilton's race comes from. Wherever it is, is not somewhere they value being able to think on your feet or adapt quickly to changing situations. Three pit stops? Hello!! I'm pretty sure that was a bad idea well before the race, but to not be able to see that it was a bad idea during the race is unbelievable.

At least Fernando didn't win though. I think the smugness would have been unbearable. As it is his comments after the race do kind of beggar belief. I think its fairly safe to assume he won't be working with McLaren next year after that little lot. But then again stranger things have happened.

It kind of pains me to be nasty about him because previously I've enjoyed watching his driving. Who can forget the all-time classic "giving the finger to another driver whilst travelling backwards around Monaco with only two wheels on your car". I still laugh about it now, then I remember it was Fernando and I calm down again. That was a moment of genius though. Most people would have been far to busy crashing to even think about it. But again, he has shown extreme dedication to slagging others off when he could just concentrate on beating them instead.

Oh well, I'm sure we'll have just as much fun next year watching the same old circus roll around again. But for now we get a holiday. Lets make the most of it!