Like the Murphys...
The Bahrain Grand Prix is less than two weeks away from bringing the curtain up on another "thrilling" new F1 season, and disaster is set to strike the latest efforts by the desert track organisers to do anything remotely interesting to make their track memorable.
After the decision to switch to the bafflingly complicated "endurance" track layout for 2010, presumably because the original layout didn't contain enough dull bits, was met with a universal shrug of everyone's collective shoulders, the new plan was set to be an unprecedented gathering of all 20 remaining living F1 champions, all the way from Jenson Button back to the 83-year old Jack Brabham.
The generous collection of F1 stars would have formed the opening part of F1's 60th anniversary celebrations in 2010, and was all set to make Bahrain vaguely-noteworthy. With Button, Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher all already on the grid anyway, and Jacques Villeneuve likely to be there with Stefan GP, the race planners set about gathering in the rest of F1's surviving elite.
And, as a group of well-fed and self-publicising ex-world champions like nothing better than the chance to eat well and publicise themselves, the acceptance letters came pouring in. Mika Hakkinen, Damon Hill, Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell, Niki Lauda, Keke Rosberg, Alan Jones, Jody Scheckter, Mario Andretti, Emerson Fittipaldi, Jackie Stewart, John Surtees and Brabham himself have all said yes, and that number will be bolstered by Juan Manuel Fangio's nephew.
Added to all that, the organisers plan to bring together the title-winning cars of each and every world champion, and aside from those too frail, overweight or expensive to insure, those cars are set to be given demo runs by their original pilots. It all sounds ruddy bloody awesome.
Sadly, though, the eagle-eyed amongst PW's readership of tens will have already spotted that the final list is notably incomplete. For a start, 2007 world champion Kimi Raikkonen is yet to confirm whether he'll be attending. That particular snub might not be too surprising, seeing as Kimi spent his time in F1 treating public appearances with no small amount of derision, almost to the point where he considered driving the car to be a little too much "in the spotlight" for him.
The other missing champion is a certain Mr Nelson Piquet Sr, no doubt still embroiled in the mother and father of all strops with the sport over its treatment of his slightly-crap offspring, who can now be found crashing into things in some NASCAR feeder series or other.
PW would just like to clarify that the pair of stragglers are probably really busy with stuff right now, what with Raikkonen having to enter a rally the weekend before Bahrain, and Piquet having, um, stuff on as well, PW would imagine. This is not, repeat not, evidence of any sort of bitterness. Not at all.
Honest.
26 is just a number
And so, the end has finally come for the USF1 team. And the oft-promised 26 car 2010 grid has disappeared, replaced by a slightly smaller and disappointing 24 car grid, and a promise to find someone else in time for 2011, by which time Mercedes, Renault and Toro Rosso will have probably all withdrawn and we'll be back to 20 cars. Still it was a nice dream while it lasted.
But though the USF1 team's eventual collapse was as inevitable as it was slow and tedious, the decision by the FIA not to replace them on the grid with the Stefan GP team was seen by many as being something of a surprise. When in actual fact, it really wasn't.
Brilliant though Stefan GP have been, and even though PW was fully behind their efforts to get on the grid, the idea of the FIA chucking a team onto the grid in Bahrain just over a week before the start of the season would have been a ludicrous exercise even by the FIA's standards of dubious calls down the years. It was only really through a combination of endless news reporting and confident Stefan GP press releases that we all sort of accepted the idea that they would just drift into USF1's vacant slot like it was the most natural thing in the world.
So, we should mourn the loss of our 26 car grid, we should cry for the lack of Nakas on the 2010 grid, but one thing we probably shouldn't really be is surprised.
Quote of the week
"These people fooled the FIA, FOTA and all the teams, FOM, all the employees they hired, 'Pechito' Lopez, and Milos Pavlovic, the other driver they had signed to be in the project." - J-Lo's manager Felipe "Roger" McGough has a blistering rant about the USF1 failure, notable by the apparent namedropping of terminally useless F2/GP3/F3/whatever feeder series will have him Serbian driver Milos Pavlovic as the planned second driver with the American team. Milos Pavlovic!!
Headline of the week
"Raikkonen aiming to finish in Mexico" (Autosport) - It's nice to have ambitions, isn't it.
Redundant PatroniseF1 Unpublished Article of the Week
"2010 Team-by-Team Preview - USF1"
News and Rumours
- Force India have ended any rumours that they might have been set to be thrown out of the championship by successfully submitting their accounts to Companies House by the agreed deadline. "The matter was a storm in a tea-cup, as there was never a real risk to us," the team's brilliantly-named CEO Otmar Szafnauer bellowed triumphantly.
- The FIA is funding a feasibility study to sound out the idea of moving the Australian GP from its peskily entertaining current home of Albert Park in Melbourne to a dire new Tilkedrome in the inaccurately-named suburb of "Avalon". The reasoning behind this move is, unsurprisingly, the fact that the Avalon track plans contain the option for floodlit racing, as Bernie Ecclestone continues his crazy desire to see every non-European race squeezed into stupid local timeslots to placate lazy Europeans.
- Nico Rosberg has shown worrying signs of the early onset of delusions of grandeur, after claiming in an interview with Bild that he will "definitely be on a par with him [Schumacher] and win races this year. To do that I have to beat him now and then." Brilliantly, the optimistic cherub went on to clarify that his main weakness was that he is "sometimes too ambitious".
- Let the jokes commence! Renault have announced that the first part of their lucrative link-up with Formula One's first ever Russian driver is a sponsorship deal with infamous crap car maker Lada. Vitaly Petrov's Russian connection is believed to be responsible for this link-up between a dubious car brand renowned for producing consistently slow cars.......and Lada. Arf! Arf!
- Tamara Ecclestone, meanwhile, is focusing on the important things in life as the new season approaches, using her influential position in F1 circles to get foie gras taken off the menu of every meal served for every team and sponsor on the F1 grid as part of her work as a PETA ambassador. Whether or not the removal of the fatty pate from team menus will count as part of their ongoing cost-cutting efforts remains unclear, but that stuff's not cheap, you know.
Shameless Patty Links Section
- The Beard questions Ferrari's stance on the new teams here.
- The Head summarises some conclusions from pre-season testing here, and laments the loss to F1's American ambitions over USF1 here.
- Stay up to date with PatroniseF1's hugely exciting bumper 2010 season preview here.
- All the latest news from the buildup to the start of the new season will be in Patty's news section. Eventually.
- Tweet Patty here, or e-mail us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you have a comment or want to cancel your subscription to this hellish service.
Yours sorry it's Thursday-ingly,
Patty Weekly
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