Have you ever tried sleeping while watching a game of football on the television? It’s impossible, because every time you close your eyes, and spend a moment in that no-man’s-land between consciousness and sleep, there’s a roar from the crowd, and you are snapped back to reality to see what’s going on.
It’s the same story with cricket, and even tennis. But Formula One is different. Once the cars have zoomed away from the line, you have an almost constant background din, as soothing, if you turn the sound down a bit, as the waves on a beach. And you never hear the crowd oohing and aahing, partly because they would be drowned out by Steve Slater, and partly because there’s never anything to ooh and aah about.
As a result of this, and because you know who’s going to win, you will be sound asleep by lap two.
The viewing figures for the re-run of the Australian grand prix, show that three million people were in front of their televisions. But they don’t show – they can’t – how many were in the land of nod. I know I was.
The important figure, for the future of Formula One is how many got up at 2am to watch the race live. And the answer to that is half-a-million. Some of these, for sure, will have been night-watchmen who’d rather watch anything than a grainy CCTV image of the night. But most will have been the sport’s true fans. And I’m sorry, but half-a-million isn’t enough.
If the sponsors think that a mere five hundred thousand people are bothering to watch their money being turned into vapours and noise, they’ll find something else to put their stickers on. And I can’t blame them. With numbers that small, it’d be easier and cheaper to pull out of F1 and send the fans a Rs 10 note every week.
The big question is why so many people have tuned out of F1 in recent years, and the simple answer is this: it’s mind-numbingly boring. You have no idea which driver is which, you can’t see them doing anything other than turning a steering wheel, and when they get out, they talk like they’re flatlining.
Everyone is crediting Lewis Hamilton with greatness, and, I must say, his opening corner manoeuvres at a few races were genuinely breathtaking, but then at the end of the race he gets out and thanks each of the viewers personally, and the team, and the people who made his stupid tyres. No, no, no. Come on, man. You should get out and shout, “I’m going on the podium now and then I’m going on some women.”
You know this new kid Koivanainenenenan? Why has he not celebrated his elevation to F1 by setting fire to Felipe Massa’s trousers? Why has he not smeared six inches of snot down the side of Kimi’s Ferrari? René Arnoux used to sleep with his boss’s wife. Nelson Piquet used to piss in the car. And still Lewis drones on and on about Ron Dennis and how kind he’s been for reminding him to drink water on a hot day.
Act your age, man. Get drunk. And get laid.
We’ve all read The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe, and if you haven’t, you should. He paints a picture of early test pilots up in the high desert of California, hanging their balls over the line every day and then if – and he does mean if – they landed safely, tearing into Vegas in their Corvettes, to go drinking and screwing around.
Even when seven were chosen to become the Mercury astronauts, and they had to be chisel-jawed, superhero, family men, for their cover shots on Time magazine, the high jinks didn’t stop. They were young. They were doing something dangerous. And they lived. F1 drivers should be the same, not standing around on the grid drinking water from a bloody squeezy bottle.
Then there’s the business of racing. At the moment, they set off, race to the first corner and then spend the next two hours following one another around the track. The only excitement comes in the pits and I’m sorry, but if I want to see men changing tyres and putting petrol in the tank, I’ll pop down to my local service station.
I’ve had many ideas over the years for enlivening the spectacle. Once I even said that a driver a year should be sacrificed to keep us all entertained. But I’ve since realised this was cruel and ridiculous. A broken leg or fractured skull would be just as satisfactory.
I’ve had other thoughts, too. We’re told the cars lose front end grip when tucked in the turbulent wake of another, so overtaking is impossible. Hmm. I’d like to put that to the test by paying the drivers $25,000 a year and then giving them a million dollars a point. This, I feel sure, would overcome any ‘aerodynamic’ difficulties.
Or, if it doesn’t, how’s this for a plan... Bernie Ecclestone employs all the drivers and farms them out, on a rota basis, to the teams. So, in the course of a season, each driver would drive each of the cars. The best man would still win the drivers’, and the best team would still win the constructors’ championship, but we’d get to see Lewis trying to carve his way through the field in a crap car while some no-hoper struggles to get to grips with the Ferrari up front.
What we must avoid is the American system whereby a pace car is sent on the track at the whim of a TV producer. It’s great for bunching everyone up but this is bit like asking Roger Federer to wear a suit of armour when playing Leander Paes. Yes, it levels the playing field but you don’t have a sense that the best man won.
We must also avoid endless rule changes. No one ever says “Hmm, I like football, but let’s see if it would be better if everyone wore their shorts back-to-front.”
And anyway, making the cars different every year means the richer teams can adapt, while the poorer ones can’t. It means the gulf between the front and the back of the grid gets wider and wider and wider.
Finally, we’ve got to look at the world’s tracks.. All that matters is that overtaking is possible on Every Single Corner.
I like F1. I really do. I like the idea that the car makers go to engineering firms to design the absolute best, road-going rocket that current technology allows. But I want it to be glamorous and exciting.
Someone, and I think it’s going to have to be me, must lay down a new set of once-and-for-all rules, every single one of which is geared to make sure the car behind can easily get past the one in front.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
Global Financial Meltdown
It is extraordinary to think that in the last few months, Lehman Brothers, AIG, the Bradford & Bingley, Washington Mutual, Northern Rock and Fortis – as well as two banks in Belgium, one in Germany and one in Iceland – have all either gone, or been Communistised.
This, in case you are eight, and you have no idea what I’m talking about, is like waking up one morning to find Toyota, Volkswagen, General Motors, Mercedes and Renault have all been made bankrupt. Which, I’m fairly sure is what will happen next. Along with every other company and person and government in the world.
The problem is simple. For the last few years, most banks have been lending more money than they have. They’ve been living in a never-never land where they could borrow a hundred quid at three per cent interest and lend it on at five. They must have known that one day, the whole pack of cards would come tumbling down, and so it did when some Pakistani bloke
woke up one morning and thought, “Shit. I can’t afford my mortgage any more.”
The upshot is that today, the surviving banks are extremely reluctant to lend money to anyone. So when a pottery company in Trichur into trouble, the management won’t be able to borrow their way round the problem. They’ll go bust. This means their workforce will be made redundant, which means they won’t be able to afford to keep paying their house loans. Which means their houses will be repossessed by the banks, who will have to sell them off for 50p. Because no one’s buying. And that will make the banks even less likely to lend, and so we find ourselves into an ever-deepening spiral of recession, doom, crime, terror and disharmony.
For the next few years, you’re going to think a chicken biriyani is the last word in decadence. What’s more, your children will get a lump of coal for Christmas, and they will love it. They will give it a name and play with it, like they used to play with their private parts. Before you had to sell them in exchange for some rice.
This means Sony won’t sell any PlayStations, which means they will have to lay off their workforce, which means the problem will spread to Japan. And China. And India. So, thanks to the bone-idle Pakistani borrowed half a mill to buy a stupid prefab house, the whole world has had it. You’ve already lost your savings. Soon, you will lose your job. Then your house will go, and the only way to survive will be to murder the postman and eat him.
Have you seen 28 Days Later? That film where a plague kills everyone and, strangely, removes all cars from the planet as well. Well that’s what the streets will look like. There will be utter desolation, apart from a few eco hippies running around rejoicing because, at last, they’ve got what they’ve wanted for so long.
Naturally, you imagine that governments won’t allow things to get this bad. Really? Because, as I write, the debt carried by Iceland’s banks is six times higher than the country’s entire GDP. Then there’s Ireland, which has guaranteed every saver’s deposit account, even though a catastrophic failure of the system would leave them with a bill three times higher than the country’s entire annual earnings.
Of course, governments could get round the problem by increasing taxes, but what’s the point when everyone is unemployed so no one’s paying tax anyway? Or they could print money, which will lead to massive inflation. A loaf of bread will cost Rs 8o crore, so the 8,000 savings you took out of the bank in its last few days of solvency and hid under the stairs is not going to be enough to buy even a paper clip, leave alone a Maruti Alto. It’ll be goodbye Nissan Z car, hello Zimbabwe.
This will cause lots of governments to borrow cash which they won’t be able to repay. So they’ll go bust as well. Which means the army won’t get any money so when civil disobedience begins – and it will, when everyone has eaten all the postmen – there will be no one on hand to sort it out.
Of course, because no one will have any money, no one will be buying any oil which will cause massive pressure in Iraq, which will turn into a blood-bath as all the Middle Eastern states pile in, and the West is unable to stop them, because America’s gone tits up and Sarah Palin’s back in Alaska burning polar bears to stay warm. And remember, this is all because a Mexican man chose to fill his pickup with fuel, rather than pay his bloody mortgage bills.
Meanwhile, all schools will have closed, and the only people to survive in Britain will be those with pigs, sheep and vegetable gardens. And guns, because at night, those without such things will come round and try to steal yours. You may very well have to die defending your cabbages.
The only solution, so far as I can see is to bomb, immediately and extensively, the whole of Pakistan. Not only would this be a punishment for their slap-dash accounting, but also it would be a deterrent for those in the future who think, “Nah. I can’t be bothered to pay off my mortgage. I’d rather buy some sweets.” We may have to shoot a few bankers too, to bolster morale.
Of course, it is possible, I’m sure, that by the time you read this, everything has sorted itself out. Inflation is low, Mercedes are recruiting staff to cope with demand for S Classes, the eco hippies are back in their box, writing silly press releases about climate change Armageddon and your kids are getting a quilted Bentley laptop case for Christmas.
This, in case you are eight, and you have no idea what I’m talking about, is like waking up one morning to find Toyota, Volkswagen, General Motors, Mercedes and Renault have all been made bankrupt. Which, I’m fairly sure is what will happen next. Along with every other company and person and government in the world.
The problem is simple. For the last few years, most banks have been lending more money than they have. They’ve been living in a never-never land where they could borrow a hundred quid at three per cent interest and lend it on at five. They must have known that one day, the whole pack of cards would come tumbling down, and so it did when some Pakistani bloke
woke up one morning and thought, “Shit. I can’t afford my mortgage any more.”
The upshot is that today, the surviving banks are extremely reluctant to lend money to anyone. So when a pottery company in Trichur into trouble, the management won’t be able to borrow their way round the problem. They’ll go bust. This means their workforce will be made redundant, which means they won’t be able to afford to keep paying their house loans. Which means their houses will be repossessed by the banks, who will have to sell them off for 50p. Because no one’s buying. And that will make the banks even less likely to lend, and so we find ourselves into an ever-deepening spiral of recession, doom, crime, terror and disharmony.
For the next few years, you’re going to think a chicken biriyani is the last word in decadence. What’s more, your children will get a lump of coal for Christmas, and they will love it. They will give it a name and play with it, like they used to play with their private parts. Before you had to sell them in exchange for some rice.
This means Sony won’t sell any PlayStations, which means they will have to lay off their workforce, which means the problem will spread to Japan. And China. And India. So, thanks to the bone-idle Pakistani borrowed half a mill to buy a stupid prefab house, the whole world has had it. You’ve already lost your savings. Soon, you will lose your job. Then your house will go, and the only way to survive will be to murder the postman and eat him.
Have you seen 28 Days Later? That film where a plague kills everyone and, strangely, removes all cars from the planet as well. Well that’s what the streets will look like. There will be utter desolation, apart from a few eco hippies running around rejoicing because, at last, they’ve got what they’ve wanted for so long.
Naturally, you imagine that governments won’t allow things to get this bad. Really? Because, as I write, the debt carried by Iceland’s banks is six times higher than the country’s entire GDP. Then there’s Ireland, which has guaranteed every saver’s deposit account, even though a catastrophic failure of the system would leave them with a bill three times higher than the country’s entire annual earnings.
Of course, governments could get round the problem by increasing taxes, but what’s the point when everyone is unemployed so no one’s paying tax anyway? Or they could print money, which will lead to massive inflation. A loaf of bread will cost Rs 8o crore, so the 8,000 savings you took out of the bank in its last few days of solvency and hid under the stairs is not going to be enough to buy even a paper clip, leave alone a Maruti Alto. It’ll be goodbye Nissan Z car, hello Zimbabwe.
This will cause lots of governments to borrow cash which they won’t be able to repay. So they’ll go bust as well. Which means the army won’t get any money so when civil disobedience begins – and it will, when everyone has eaten all the postmen – there will be no one on hand to sort it out.
Of course, because no one will have any money, no one will be buying any oil which will cause massive pressure in Iraq, which will turn into a blood-bath as all the Middle Eastern states pile in, and the West is unable to stop them, because America’s gone tits up and Sarah Palin’s back in Alaska burning polar bears to stay warm. And remember, this is all because a Mexican man chose to fill his pickup with fuel, rather than pay his bloody mortgage bills.
Meanwhile, all schools will have closed, and the only people to survive in Britain will be those with pigs, sheep and vegetable gardens. And guns, because at night, those without such things will come round and try to steal yours. You may very well have to die defending your cabbages.
The only solution, so far as I can see is to bomb, immediately and extensively, the whole of Pakistan. Not only would this be a punishment for their slap-dash accounting, but also it would be a deterrent for those in the future who think, “Nah. I can’t be bothered to pay off my mortgage. I’d rather buy some sweets.” We may have to shoot a few bankers too, to bolster morale.
Of course, it is possible, I’m sure, that by the time you read this, everything has sorted itself out. Inflation is low, Mercedes are recruiting staff to cope with demand for S Classes, the eco hippies are back in their box, writing silly press releases about climate change Armageddon and your kids are getting a quilted Bentley laptop case for Christmas.
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