Anyone but Alonso - Silverstone

Anyone but Alonso – the slightly warped world of the anti-fan – Silverstone GP 2011

The start of British Grand Prix weekend seems to be dominated by all the talk of all the technical changes to the exhaust systems and the like.  My only comment on all this is that it must all surely be Alonso’s fault as he is the only one not moaning about it.  Come to think of it, is it a coincidence that it’s Jean Todt, as head of the FIA, that has made these specific changes that may possibly benefit his old team?  Of course it’s a coincidence, surely?

So race day begins and it’s a race of two halves – half the track dry, half wet.  It’s also a race of two eyebrows as Teflonso settles into third place from the start.  ‘Old Father Time’ Schumacher again forgets that drivers no longer just move out of the way for him and he promptly gives Kobayashi a rather impolite kiss up the butt.  Maybe Schuey should be sponsored by a rhinoplasty surgeon, the amount of new nose cones he’s had this season.

Kobayashi was in the action again a bit later as we see an interesting new pit lane tactic.  He decided to take out Force India’s wheel guns as he drove down the pit lane, a piece of cunning genius that definitely scores a ‘10’ on the Evildeedsometer.

Button mugs off Massa, who’s driving skills seem to deteriorate faster than the ever mentioned Pirelli tyres over the course of a race – then our very own leader of the Brat pack, Hamilton, breezes past Teflonso.  I can only presume he was caught by surprise, presumably because his eyebrows were obscuring his rear view mirrors.

Nigel Mansell in his capacity as Head Steward, proves he’s never one to forgive a slight against the UK and hands Schuey a rather harsh 10 second stop and go penalty.  Too late to give Damon Hill the ’94 championship he deserved, but o how I laughed anyway.  A nice close up of Schuey’s hands as he overtakes Petrov, it actually looks like he’s wearing thick mittens.  Maybe at his age he is starting to feel the cold and his arthritis is playing up?

It looks like Kobayashi didn’t need to nobble the Force India team as they have managed to do that all by themselves – some clown has decided to try to put Sutil’s tyres on Di Resta’s car.  Then, in a Dick Dastardly moment, a Ferrari mechanic manages to disguise himself in Red Bull overalls and manages to sabotage Vettel’s pit stop, thereby giving the master of the fluke unfortunate incident, Teflonso, first place.

Watching on TV it was nice to see the new ‘Cable-Cam’ flying back and forth across the circuit.  Strangely enough, we see more images of the cable cam than from it.  Then again the same can be said of the coverage of Di Resta’s race, as the BBC decides to ignore the latest British hope.  I think his foreign sounding name has fooled the TV director into ignoring any news or action of him.

The chameleon Ferrari mechanic then changes his skin to mimic McLaren overalls and ‘accidentally’ forgets to put a wheel nut on Jenson’s front right (or front left as Jenson thought).  Is it just me that thinks it quite scary watching a driver that doesn’t know his left or right?  Button – one hell of a racing driver, but a really crap mini-cab driver.

The weekend’s misery is compounded by Webber overtaking Hamilton, whose McLaren team had obviously run out of money to put enough petrol in his car.  I’m now gutted I didn’t send them my ‘5p off a litre’ voucher that I got the last time I was in Tesco’s, at least Lewis could have made a fight of it then.  Massa is now threatening to take Lewis’s 4^th spot, but as he’s almost certainly forgotten how to overtake a decent driver, Lewis should be alright.

It was nice to see the Red Bulls scrapping it out on the final lap.  Either Webber has improved his driving or Vettel has improved his acting, as it almost looks like there are no team orders.  We then hear the frantic team messages to Webber ordering him to back off and the confusion is cleared up.

At the final corner Massa proves he can’t even push drivers off the track as well as his team-mate, as he attempts to stitch up Hamilton and fails.

Well, thanks to the chameleon Ferrari mechanic, Teflonso sneaks the win - although I hear there was a Stewards enquiry into the caterpillars sitting high on his face affecting the cars downforce.  I’ve actually come to the conclusion that he is the model for the new ‘Gypsy Thunderbird’ figurine, so he should be looking forward to next seasons Romany GP.

And so on to Germany for the next episode of Some Mechanics Do ‘Ave ‘Em.

The road to Hell (Michigan)

This week, undoubtedly fuelled by being trapped indoors by the rain with only the kids for screaming company, I decided I wanted to become a Travel Writer. Not one of those ones that visit Venice and remark that they found the quaintest little coffee shop just behind the third piazza on the right. And I definitely did not want to be one of the ones that wrote ‘Ten rambles through the Salisbury plains’ either.


I wanted to be like Bill Bryson, actually I think I wanted to be Bill Bryson. I wanted to visit places like Buttsville (Pennsylvania) just to see how many arseholes lived there. I had to see if there was a Dentist in Snaggletooth (California). I wanted to know how demanding the ladies were in Iron Knob (South Australia). Would Dissapointment (Kentucky) really be one? And I really, really needed to know what they drank out of on Whisky Dick Mountain (Washington). That was it, I had made up my mind, I was doing it.

My wife, once she had stopped laughing at me however, had other ideas. What about the children, who was going to look after them whilst I was off gallivanting in search of funny sounding places? A good question, as much as it pained me to admit it. Sod it, I would take them with me, although that would rule out visiting Titty Hill (England), as what was the point if I had the kids with me?

They are actually easier to control in the car anyway, they’re locked in place for starters, and if their noise got to be too much I would unleash the secret weapon. Normally I’m only allowed to have the car stereo’s volume at a maximum of 14, and only that loud if it’s a track the wife particularly likes. But I have discovered (when she was at work of course) that if I play Marilyn Manson as loud as 19, the kids kind of go into a trance, all slack jawed and silent. Works every time. She also said we had to be back by tea time, which seriously put paid to my plans of visiting Twatt in (all of) Scotland.

I decided to visit Butts Green (Essex), the kids spend so much time rolling around the grass anyway, and it was only 35 miles from home. I packed a bag full of healthy snacks and drinks, as well as a big bag of sweets to help with the bribery. I had my notebook, two pens and a Valium so I was set and we were ready to go.

We managed to get to the top of the road before the five year old informed me that she was busting for the toilet. My eldest is 16 for God’s sake, you would have thought that I had been in this game long enough to make the kids go to the toilet before we left. Then again, I’ve been carrying a wallet since I was 16 and after we had dealt with all things toilet and re-departed, we had to return again to pick that up.

The only excuse I can offer for having to return a third time is that I have only been carrying a mobile phone for a mere ten years, so was bound to have forgotten it given my track record. I’m sure our neighbour, as she waved us off for the fourth time, was starting to think I was trying to catch her stealing my plants or maybe the lid from our bin, as I had noticed hers hadn’t got one.

We hit traffic within 10 minutes, of course we did, why should I expect that anything in my life was going to be plain sailing? The bag of sweets turned out to be sugar-free so they went out of the window. I ask you, what kind of sick mind invents something like that. I bet it was the same kind of idiot that believes in telling children there is no such thing as Father Christmas, as it just perpetuates the commercialism of the birth of Jesus, or some such lily livered tree hugging codswallop. I was not happy, and obviously nor were the kids, they can smell a phoney a mile off.

I went to put the Marilyn Manson CD on but it was missing from the case, this was dire. I made a frantic phone call to the Wife to see if she had moved it, she had. Apparently me picking her up from church every Sunday, blasting Mr Manson’s version of ‘Personal Jesus’ had been deemed inappropriate. I do have a history of allegedly playing the wrong song at the wrong time though. Whenever the Mother in Law starts to leave our house after another visit, I have a habit of blasting ‘Stairway to Heaven’ on the stereo. Some people just can’t take a joke, and now the joke was on me.

I tried to fob them off with raisins but that only resulted in a food fight, which then obviously ruled out giving them an apple. The last thing I needed was to be hit with one of them whilst driving at 50 mph. That was of course if we ever got to go any faster than the tortoise mph that we were currently doing. Thirty minutes later I gave in, and turned the car around in defeat.

As we pulled up and trudged out of the car, my neighbour asked me what I had forgotten this time. With a sigh I replied “I forgot that you don’t have to go to Michigan to visit Hell.” She gave me a quizzical look, put the lid on her bin, and scurried into her house.