FerrarsiFERRARI
 Gilles Villeneuve as nature intended, back when Ferrari were crap but almost lovable. No team polarises fans quite like Ferrari: some believe that they can do no wrong, despite a vast and growing body of evidence to the contrary; other, sounder minds put them in roughly the same category as Lucius Malfoy, Jabba the Hutt and Sandi Toksvig. Until fairly recently, the team had a reputation for passionate disorganisation, which occasionally somehow produced a decent car, and there was no end of very good drivers queuing up to put their mark on a contract for the scuderia, only to be disappointed by the tractor they were given to race. The Brawn/Todt/Schumacher/Byrne axis changed all that. Suddenly the cars were quick, driveable and bullet-proof, while behind the scenes this highly political team fostered its "special relationship" with the FIA, leading to all manner of dubious rule interpretations in favour of the red cars. That the team inspires such extreme reactions is partly a product of its own success (many people love to hate the ultra-successful - just ask Man Utd, Bill Gates or Patrick Kielty) but also because of the strutting arrogance and faux innocence with which it has been achieved. The lesson, which seems to be repeatedly lost on Ferrari, is to win, lose and get caught breaking the rules with equal good grace. Some of our readers doubtless question the extent of dotdotdotcomma's continued antipathy towards the scuderia but when repeatedly faced with the team's insufferable arrogance in victory, sanctimonious posturing at perceived wrongs and instinctive refusal to accept blame, it's the only sane response. There. We got all the way through that without once calling them a bunch of cheating c*nts.
Mercedes-Benz is a German motor vehicle manufacturer improbably named after Buffy the Vampire Slayer stars Mercedes McNab and Julie Benz, who played dumpy failed vampirette Harmony and fiendlishly sexy uber-vamp Darla respectively. TIGRA 16v: The tooltip with lowered suspension and a racing windscreen wiper and Farce IndiaFORCE INDIA
 Kimi Raikkonen about to swipe Force India's Adrian Sutil out of fourth place, Monaco 2008. After Ireland, Russia and Holland had had a go, Indian billionaire Vijay Mallya stepped in to buy the old Jordan squad, encouraged by F1's desire to break into the Indian market, presumably because the sub-continent is home to an awful lot of potential new smokers. Despite looking every inch the medallion man, Mallya is undoubtedly a shrewd operator, albeit one who was foolhardy enough to become the team's fourth owner in as many years, and he was welcomed into the paddock by everyone except Flavio Briatore, who thought he was taking the piss. For its first season in 2008, the team boasted customer Ferrari engines, Mike Gascoyne as Chief Technology Officer and, um, Giancarlo Fisichella but when Super Aguri stopped turning up to keep the Force India cars off the back row, the team looked like becoming a perennial back-marker, although at Monaco in 2008 Adrian Sutil came within a handful of laps of claiming fourth place, until Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen lost control braking for the Nouvelle Chicane and punted him out of the race, an incident that the FIA saw fit to overlook.
 Max Mosley's preferred option for the location of the new FIA offices in Amsterdam. The FIA (or Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile to give it its full, inexplicably french, name) is an ominous association formed to represent motorists and motoring organisations. Its headquarters are at 8 Place de la Concorde, Paris (ring top bell), coincidentally just up the rue from one of the city's best bordellos. The federation acts as the governing body for a number of motorsport series and championships, mostly in a venal or, if we're feeling charitable, incompetent manner. It should not be confused with the Fédération Internationale de l'Alcosport, which governs Drink-A-Long-A-Grand-Prix almost as badly. Comprising 222 member organisations, the FIA can also boast a Senate, a Court of Appeal and a General Assembly and it wouldn't take a stretch of the imagination to see its activities as part of a sinister plan to get itself recognised as a sovereign state in its own right. It's not a million miles from how Hitler started, that's all we're saying. Its decisions have at times left the FIA open to accusations of favouritism and manipulation and its credibility wasn't helped any by revelations that its married president, Max Mosley, was partial to sado-masochistic orgies involving more tarts than you can fit on one hand. Mosley, seeing no incompatibility between his behaviour and his position, failed to tender the resignation that many were keenly anticipating. They claim to do a lot of work on road safety but we've never knowingly seen any of their campaigns.
FIEh? regulations stipulate that overalls are ventless, in order to provide the maximum protection to the driver's posterior, or, in the event of an accident, the car seat.
However, Ferrarsi and MoreHades are understood to have fitted their overalls with a single slit, allowing the overall to expand slightly at the bottom, and enabling driver assistance with the blown diffuser.
Farce India are believed to have fitted their overalls with a pair of side slits, maximising air flow around the seat for a full hot-blown diffuser effect, taking advantage of their corporate catering policy.
Following intensive debate and representations from the other teams, the FIEh? have insisted that Farce India reduce the size of their slits by 50%, MoreHades by 20%, and Ferrarsi have been granted leave to continue with their existing slits on the usual grounds that their overalls are red in colour, so long as the drivers wear red underpants as well to ensure that no-one else notices.
The teams' experimental overalls technology has begun to catch the attention of motorsport figures around the world, particularly in EasyCar, where Danica Fitchick is said to have expressed particular interest. dotdotdotcomma's rogue pictures editor has been sent across the pond to obtain pictures of the prototype in testing.
|
