Ferrari being blog standard
Everyone gets angry sometimes, it's just part of life. Whether it's frustration with some aspect of modern life, unhappiness with a friend or colleague or stupid tourists dawdling about in tube stations, there's always something that will leave you needing to vent a bit of frustration.
In the olden days, before the internet, iPhones and indigestion, people presumably just wandered around, shouting randomly at passers by. But thanks to the fact that we live in the 21st century, everyone now has a nice neat outlet for their anger. Namely, they can set up a blog. And what works for someone who is ticked off by the bloody tourists, with their massive maps standing right in front of the ticket gates looking confused works just as well for an international motor racing team, as the latest emotive missive from Ferrari has proven this week.
Their first angry moaning last year over the new teams planning on joining the grid in 2010, their infamous and spectacularly pompous statement decrying the history of these brand-new startups was an exercise in how to rant, with the statement containing the lines: "Can a world championship with teams like them - with due respect - have the same value as today's Formula 1, where Ferrari, the big car manufacturers and teams, who created the history of this sport, compete? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to call it Formula GP3?"
And now, with those very teams that the Italian giants so decried last year now flopping about and struggling to make it to the grid in any sort of half-decent shape, with half of them still car-less and those with cars either terminally unreliable or Lada-tastically slow, the team have powered up Wordpress once again to belch out another cathartic rant. But this time, there's a pleasing element of smuggery to the whole piece, as well as the usual buckets of snobbishness. A winning combination.
And yet once again, if they have a point to make (and there is a point to be made somewhere regarding the selection, management and subsequent failings of some of F1's newest teams) it is drowned out in the same way that so many angry ranty blogs are drowned out, namely by the unrelenting noise of it's own self-indulgence.
So while F1's most grandee of teams can bang on about "Serbian vultures" and "holy wars" and "loyal vassals" and the like, the overall tone of the piece tends to turn the reader off the message that they're trying to get across. Just like a blog tirade, or a ranting maniac in the street, or a badly-written sarcastic weekly F1 e-mail, the Ferrari statement ends up managing to turn you against the point that they're making. Which is a shame, because they clearly put an awful lot of effort into it.
Not as they've got much to worry about
Yes, despite what PW just said, it seems that the chances of USF1 being around even by the time that we've pressed send on this e-mail, never mind by the time the season gets going, are fading by every passing hour.
Right now, Charlie Whiting is touring the sparse expanse that passes for their Charlotte HQ with a clipboard and a frown, assessing quite how screwed the team is, after this week's revelations from a USF1 insider that staff had quit the team, wages weren't being paid, production screwups had left half-built chassis lying around for weeks at a time, and a whole long list of other reasons why USF1 are probably doomed.
The one complication to this seemingly simplistic story of the team's imminent demise is the role of potential saviour Chad Hurley, founder of YouTube and hoster of billions of grainy 30 second videos of kittens being sick on some carpet. Hurley is known to have sent advisors along to the current round of European-based negotiations over useless touring car man Jose Maria Lopez's future in the sport he hasn't really entered yet, but what they are actually advising is unclear.
Some reports suggest that Hurley is ready to leave the sinking USF1 ship and jump aboard the Stefan GP dinghy, or Campos's Dallara-designed raft, along with Lopez himself. Other reports claim that the video-hosting magnate is trying to merge the USF1 team with either the Serbian lot or the cash-strapped Spanish squad. The only thing that everyone really seems to know is that nobody seems to know precisely what is happening.
The other weird part of Hurley's potential involvement in the USF1 potential rescue package is that he's bothering at all. Not because he shouldn't bother, but because if he is that fussed about getting the team into the sport in some way shape or form, could he not just dip into the $1.6 billion he sold YouTube to fellow internet heavyweights Google for in 2006 to help out the team's finances?
Surely even if the team really are short a good 20-30 million Euros, that's really the equivalent of lending a cash-strapped mate twenty quid's worth of booze money for the night for a man so endearingly loaded? It certainly seems a lot more straightforward than trying some sort of convoluted merger with a bunch of Serbian chancers or a team in such similar financial straits as to have been bought out before the season has even started?
Still, maybe all the rumours are wrong. Maybe his advisors are just there on holiday or something. And what does PW know anyway. After all, it would never lend it's cash-strapped mate twenty quid's worth of booze money. Far easier on PW's own wallet to try and fob it's cash-light friend onto someone else for the night.
Quote of the Week
"I myself went to the Sentul Circuit, and it was definitely not the standard Formula One circuit, but I'm sure with some renovation, this circuit could...host the [world] touring car championship," - FIA President Jean Todt pays Indonesia's premier motor racing venue the worst compliment in the history of time.
News and Rumours
- The affair of the century is back on, as the tabloid media suggest that Lewis Hamilton and Nicole Scherzinger have rekindled their romance after splitting late last year. PW is in no way bitter that Nicole refused it's own offer of a bunch of flowers from the all-night garage, four cans of purple tin and a pork pie. Not at all.
- "Under the circumstances, I would do it the same way again," was the heartfelt and determined claim of Christian Klien, who ignored his chance to drive for Peugeot at Le Mans in favour of fruitlessly pursuing an F1 drive, and has been left with a reserve role with the Le Mans team after his efforts spectacularly failed.
- Vijay Mallya and Force India have swapped technical director for the coming season, with James Key leaving the team to be replaced by Mark Smith, neither of whom PW has ever heard of. In a follow-up exercise next week, Mallya will be looking to rearrange the furniture on the deck of the Titanic.
- And then, as if by magic and just a few hours before this PW was about to be sent out, Key resurfaced at BMW Sauber as their new technical director, where he will continue to never be mentioned.
- BBC F1 presenter extraordinaire Jake Humphrey can currently be found humiliating himself in a spoof video cover of Eric Prydz's tits 'n' techno brainfart 'Call on Me' for the corporation's 'Sport Relief' charity extravaganza. The video, which is at least 30,000 times less funny than anyone involved in it seems to think it is, also stars walking self-parody Gary Lineker, tedious personality vacuum Fearne Cotton and shouty Dragon's Den man Duncan Bannatyne making an absolute prize tit of himself. Check Jake's brief but cringeworthy contribution out from the 1.27 mark here.
Shameless Patty Links
- The Head talks about why the FIA probably should have switched USF1 and Stefan GP around already here.
- PatroniseF1 attempts to defend Schumacher's more questionable moments here.
- Keep up to date with all the times from the final pre-season test of the year in Barcelona here, or read Patty's preview of the test here.
- Check Patty's news section for disappointing re-hashes of the day's news.
- Tweet Patty or e-mail us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Yours all the more pork pie for us-ingly,
Patty Weekly
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