A Spicy Tale

This year will mark the 10th Anniversary of me posting this story.

I probably won't be doing anything to celebrate the event.

But how times have changed.

At the time, I pointed out that nobody seemed remotely interested in an F1 boss marrying a Spice Girl.

Now they are all over the press - albeit the gutter press:

Not sure why everyone commentating is saying that Geri has been humiliated though. Either the latest WhatsApp messages are fake or Christian is the one with the problem.

Am I adding to the situation by commenting on it?

Probably not - nobody reads my musings.  But others are enjoying wading in:

That's The Sunday Telegraph with an extremely clever pun using the word "formula" because he is an F1 team boss.  I'd read that header at least three times before I spotted it.  You wouldn't catch me doing anything like that.

Thank you for reading "A Spicy Tale"

Umbrage, Pus and a Homologated Lightweight Chassis

Silly story out of F1 today.

Even Lewis Hamilton says it is silly.

Here it is on the BBC F1 page.  The Mercedes team were fined €25,000 after qualifying for the Singapore Grand Prix because they filled out a scrutineering form saying Hamilton would comply with the regulations not to wear jewellery - and then he wore his nose-stud.  Apparently, he is "the only driver to wear significant amounts of piercings."

It doesn't say whereabouts these piercings are - or how the scrutineers check whether they are in place or not.

Anyway, he is taking the Alex Higgins Bow Tie defence and got a letter from his doctor claiming exemption for medical reasons.

F1 claim that body piercings are against the rules as they are in danger of getting a bit hot in a fire.

I would have thought them being ripped out during a crash would have been more of an issue - but I don't follow F1 these days so I may be missing something.

Meanwhile, Lewis is also in the unusual position of not running away with the championship this year.  This is mostly due to the success of the Red Bull Team - who suddenly find themselves under investigation for breaking budget rules.

One person who has been speaking out on the subject is Mercedes team boss Heinz Wolff who never falls fouls of the bow tie rule:

Sorry, that should be Toto Wolff - and he has fallen foul of the bow tie rule:

Anyway, Red Bull boss (and Mr. Ginger Spice) Christian Horner has taken umbrage and is talking about legal action.  But his team need to concentrate on rules about having enough fuel to test when you do a qualifying lap - because they didn't - so their top driver, Max Verstappen,  ended up eighth on the starting grid.

Max reckoned that Singapore is a difficult circuit to overtake on so he wouldn't be able to win from there. 

He was right - his team-mate won.

He did finish 7th though, two places ahead of Lewis.

Maybe Lewis was being weighted down by his jewellery.

Hot Wheels

I've never seen Days of Thunder.

So I didn't know who Rowdy Burns was when he was mentioned in this Car+Driver story.

It is about the overnight theft of 192 wheels and tyres from the cars in a Texas car lot:

I guess they aren't big on locking wheelnuts over there.

The article also mentions "Robin Reliants" - I guess I should be impressed that Americans have even heard of the Reliant Robin, even if they can't get the name right. They do some sums in the article too:

Considering the approximately four-hour window that the police figure it took to perpetrate the crime, that’s a theft rate of one wheel every 1.25 minutes. And the thieves removed nearly 1000 lug nuts in the dark. Whoever the perps are, clearly Rowdy Burns needs to hire these guys.

Hence the Rowdy Burns comment - I had already decided Christian Horner would be interested in them.

The article also makes the very good point that they must have been packing plenty of spare battery packs for the cordless impact guns that were used in the heist. Imagine trying to do that using a wheel brace or with cables trailing all over the place.

Now the thieves have to try and sell the wheels on knowing that the Police will be out looking for them:

Oops!

Would You Like Fries With That?

You would think a Spice Girl marrying an F1 Team boss would be big news.

But no.

I've only just spotted this Fox News story from 5 days ago and I hadn't heard it elsewhere.  Geri Halliwell is now engaged to Christian Horner, Red Bull boss.  Apparently they've announced it in The Times just like Benedict Cumberbatch did last week - that one was widely reported - I knew about that.

Maybe the F1 press are more concerned with the rather bad news about the smaller teams going into administration and worse.

The general motoring press have had a few interesting stories like this moron being quite rightly sent to jail for taking his girlfriend's car into a motor race.  An inexperienced driver like him could have caused total carnage.

Or there is the launch of Top Gear China.

I suppose I've not really looked for F1 stories since I stopped watching it.

 

Or maybe there is just less interest in F1 generally since the BBC did their dirty deal with Sky.

 

And I certainly don't follow showbiz gossip so maybe that's why I didn't know about Geri.  Maybe she's not famous any more - after all, I was fully aware of the truly awful news that S Club 7 are touring again.

 

And one of them seems to turned into Rutledge Wood.