The Blog of G

This craziness landed in my Twitter stream via some of my ex-work-mates in Blacknight namely Brian and Niall

Seeing as how some friends of mine have been/are away Snowboarding I wonder have any of them tried this…

Thanks to Darragh Doyle for sharing

F1 tweets of the week from @redbullf1spy

We’re launching on Wednesday because that’s when the test begins, not because it takes two days to put it together the first time…

…now, fit nosecone A onto chassis B, remembering to use jack C. If nosecone generates lift, assembly has been installed upside down…

The Superbowl ads, some actually inspired me to look up the products, shame the ones that I found interesting are US only either way, I may be starting to loose my ad blindness

And finally, given the week that’s in it, I can’t really neglect to mention George Lee. When the game wasn’t going your way, you picked up the ball and ran away. Thanks for wasting the electorates time, energy and money. There’s a word beginning with C that rhymes with hunt that I think suits you perfectly sir. but on a lighter note…

Thanks to Damien Mulley for sharing.

Continuing the whole Hungarogate ™/McLaren implosion saga, I’ve lost a lot of respect for both drivers over the last few days but with the coverage of Lewis’s ‘clarification’ today, I’ve lost even more respect for him. Don’t get me wrong, He’s a rookie and it was inevitable he would make a rookie mistake at some point. Whether or not he swore at the boss or not is now irrelevant, the fact that he felt the need to go to the press to ‘clarify’ doesn’t seem like the behaviour of someone that wants to ‘rise above it’ to me. That’s the rookie mistake, that’s disappointed me so much.

I’m tired of all this McLaren mess, maybe some classic McLaren action will help me forget…

Nope that didn’t work!

I’ve decided this season needs a theme tune so here we go…

Seems I may have been premature laying all the blame on Fernando for Hungarogate ™ with the news that Lewis wasn’t following team orders at the start of the session.

As a result Fernando was a bit peeved. So he decides he can’t see whether there are white lines on his tyres or not and spends 9 or 10 seconds on the radio checking that the team put the right set on. As a result Lewis misses his opportunity to do a flying lap by 4 seconds.

Now all hell has broken loose, McLaren are once again in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, let’s not forget Lewis’s accusations of team orders in Monaco, Fernando’s accusations of favouritism, The whole spy mess and now Hungarogate ™. It seems to me what should have been a dream season for McLaren has turned into a nightmare.

Is it just me or are both drivers acting like a spoilt brats?

Eddie Irvine seems to think so and he makes some interesting points. I have to say, I agree with him when he says…

To block Lewis like that in qualifying was one of the most stupid things I’ve ever seen and it reminded me of Michael Schumacher’s move on Jacques Villeneuve at Jerez in 1997

I think Eddie managed to sum up what I found so offensive about this whole thing…

“I can’t condone cheating, but if you must do it, there’s got to be a subtler way!â€?

At least when Michael and Ayrton were caught they were trying to make it look like an ‘accident’

I can see where he’s coming from, I am starting to think that Lewis has been manipulating things when speaking to the press, but then what driver hasn’t at some point in his career. Still that bit of arrogance that’s starting to show is a sign of what’s happening at the moment and I’m surprised we haven’t seen more of it. He’s the most successful rookie of all time by a long long way and it must be so hard to resist being arrogant when you are in a class of your own.

Last Saturday, when this all went off, I thought that maybe there was a culture of cheating starting to build in McLaren, I now think it’s more to do with 2 giant egos battling to be number 1 in a team that will not publicly condone such a thing and despite the success they have had in the past they have mostly come when there has been a ‘natural’ number 1 in the team (sorry DC I love your attitude these days but you were never a match for Hakkinen, except maybe the day Ron ordered you to let him pass). Remember Senna and Prost? That ended well for McLaren didn’t it

I feel myself, it’s only a matter of time before one of the brats throws the toys out of the pram and does something even more stoopid (and probably dangerous) than what we saw this weekend. I really hope it doesn’t come to that but barring Ron actually names a number 1 driver I can’t see this ending any other way. The question is which one will it be, the young gifted rookie or the 2 time world champ?

25 years ago today, a hero of mine died in a horrific accident. I will never forget seeing the footage of the crash on the RTE news. I refused to believe what I saw with my own eyes, I was only 8 years old, after all and I had just seen the greatest driver of his generation and my unquestioned racing hero, Gilles Villeneuve die.

Gilles was the reason that I started to follow F1, how could anyone not be drawn to a character so charismatic, so talented, so fast, so determined and so entertaining? if you haven’t seen this before then your in for a treat, if you have then why not cruise down memory lane with me for a minute or 2 and remember Gilles for what he was, pure, unfiltered Racer.

Other coverage; Grand prix, Formula 1

A while back I posted about an upcoming event where Nick Heidfeld and BMW were arranging to do some laps of the Nordschleife in a modern F1 car and I was thrilled by the prospect but also concerned that the parties involved wouldn’t have the cohones to give it a lash.

Well surprise, surprise there’s no new lap record, not even close, you can read about it here.

I’m thoroughly disgusted, I consider it a missed opportunity of gargantuan proportions, a tragedy, I’ve managed a faster lap than that in a Ferrari 355! (approx. 7 minutes 40 seconds from memory) All be it a virtual one in PGR3