1000 Not Out!

This is my 1000th Blog Post!

Number 1 was a bit serious - I hadn't got into my stride of  commenting on car news items at that point.

And I was right. 

That was November 2009 by the way - when the World was a better place but we didn't know it.

In fact, it wasn't until 2021 that the end of the World was announced.

By me.

And it was 2018 when I foresaw the end of Top Gear.  I may not have said it, but I definitely foresaw it.

Number 999, just last week, was an amusing electric Bentley story.

So, what have I got for today's Number 1000 story?

An amusing story about a Yorkshire cyclist who decided that a car had passed him too closely so sent footage of it to the Police.

That footage also showed the cyclist squeezing his bike through this gap:

(The car on the left is parked)

The BBC story is here together with the video. There is no news of the car driver that he reported.  But there is news that the cyclist ending up with over £1200 in fines for riding without due care and attention.

I have a vision of the police officer watching the footage then spotting this.

Poetic.

Kit Kars

Have a Brake.

Have a Kit-Kar.

Crash Course Car

It's not the first time I've reported an unsafe safety car.

But unlike in that instance, this was an experienced Safety Car driver (and ex DTM driver)

He's somewhat damaged this Aston Martin Vantage Course Car...

...rather spectacularly:

Doesn't look like a mechanical failure so just an embarrassing one.

Nobody was hurt.

In 100 years time, will this be a vintage Vantage?

Zipping Along

F1 with subtitles.

Or, here in the UK, postcoding along - because we have postcodes rather than zip codes.

And, depending on your postcode, you may be in more or less danger of encountering a driver with points on their licence.

Auto Express enlighten us in this article today.

At first, I thought I lived in the 9th-safest-from-idiots but further examination shows that not only does L64 no longer exist but, when it did, I lived in L46.

I am most concerned, though, that 3 of the 10 worst postcodes for convicted drivers are in Leeds.

My cat is from Leeds.

There is no way I'm letting him behind the wheel.

They've taken the shine off Top Gear Magazine.

It's June 1st!  This means that the July issue of Top Gear Magazine has appeared in my porch.

I knew it was going to be different.  In the June edition, the regular columnists, Andy Franklin, Paul Horrell and Sam Philip pointed out that they were doing their last columns for the magazine.  They haven't been sacked or anything, but recently appointed editor-in-chief Jack Rix has decided that it is time to stamp his own style on the publication and shift a few things around - although he chooses not to mention it in his regular introduction piece.

Columnists in the past have often been the Top Gear TV presenters - notably, at it's peak, Clarkson, Hammond & May. And, more recently Chris Harris - but never Flintoff or McGuinness - maybe because THEY ARE NOT MOTORING JOURNALISTS!

Clarkson, Hammond & May were columnising back in 2010 when I last reported on a revamp of the mag.  That coincided with the recently outgone editor-in-chief first taking over.  The magazine has evolved in those 14 years and we have now lost a couple of features that I really liked such as Mark Riccioni's monthly bemoaning of his fleet of vehicles and the monthly history of a different car manufacturer (although last month the manufacturer was Lego)

The new columnists are Mike Channell (Radio Active anyone?) who I fear is going to be talking about gaming every month, Jethro Bovington who they have been trying to get us used to for a while now and Natalie Pinkham who I fear is going to be talking about F1 every month.

Oh yes, and she's a woman.

Going back to 2010, the magazine was printed on glossy paper.  Magazines in general used to be referred to as "the glossies."

You can't call them that now because most of them aren't.  Cost cutting.  Top Gear lost its glossiness many years ago but at least the front and back covers were still glossy.

Until today.  Look how dull and lifeless it looks in my photo.

It's lost its shine - inside and out?

In 2010 I asked and answered these questions...

So, is it a change for the worse?

No.

Is it a change for the better?

Dunno.

Is it change for change's sake?

Maybe.

Can you spare some change?

Go away.

Today I say...

So, is it a change for the worse?

Maybe.

Is it a change for the better?

Not so far.

Is it change for change's sake?

Maybe.

Can you spare some change?

Go away.

Hmmm.

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"

Formula Gone

It's not just cars that are getting bigger.

The Formula 1 season is too.

It is in the news today because they have announced that there won't be a Chinese Grand Prix in 2023.

But that would still leave 23 which is the biggest calendar ever.  I'm glad I don't watch F1 any more - it would take up nearly half a year's worth of Sundays to watch races that have a devalued points stake and the last few races will probably be moot anyway as a decent driver/car combination will have wrapped up the championship before Halloween.

When I was young, there were about a dozen races - mostly in Europe.

Then Bernie started chasing the money and along came such noble countries as Russia and Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

And of course China, who, apart from assorted human rights issues, seem to have cocked up Covid which is the actual reason why they are not hosting now - stuff human rights, Sky need more viewers.

Meanwhile, a European country not known for hosting F1, Romania, had a problem with a vehicle for a different multinational today.

Literally a vehicle.

A Coca-Cola Christmas lorry in fact:

Oops.

Looks to me like a fridge in the trailer has had a fault. The BBC story is here.

Also looks to me like there are loads of different uses for Coca-Cola.

Although putting out fires doesn't appear to be one of them.

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.

The Unflushable Turd

It returns once more.

This week, the odious tax-avoider, gun-smuggler and bribery-accused has been mouthing off with some more demented BS.

He claims that his friend, Russian Prick and gay pin-up, Vladimir Putin is "the guy who should run Europe" and that Putin didn't start "this whole [Ukraine] business as a war".  He also reckons President Zelensky "could have stopped the war by negotiating with Putin."

Maybe the clueless imbecile should have tried negotiating with the four muggers who stole his watch in 2010.

The disfigured testicle, also, rather than condemning the racially offensive terms recently used by Nelson Piquet about Lewis Hamilton, stated that he was "surprised Lewis hasn't just brushed it aside."

Apparently, "people say things, and people talk about people if they happen to be little bit overweight, or a little bit undersized like me. I'm quite sure people have made remarks about that. If I'd have heard it, I'd have been able to deal with it myself without too much trouble."

You're not "a little bit undersized" Bernard, you're a maggot.

Now I know he is into cars, but I suspect that he doesn't regularly catch up on Metro's Car Blog - very, very few people actually do.

But, if he does catch this article where I am somewhat rude towards him, I know he will be able to brush it aside and deal with it without too much trouble.

Broke

It looks like Fox News are getting uppity about Bloggers posting links to their stories so if these links are broke, you'll have to search their site if you want to learn more.

Anyway, talking of broken things and brakes:

According to Fox News, Charles Leclerc has "wrecked" a $1.5 million vintage Ferrari.

This vintage Ferrari:

Niki Lauda's from the 1974 F1 Season.

I put "wrecked" in quotes since what he has actually done is effectively backed it into a barrier damaging the rear wing a lot - and probably other stuff but he still drove it away from the incident.

The cause was brake failure.

As opposed to failure to use the brakes:

That spectacular crash, also reported by Fox, HAS actually wrecked the car...

...and a bit of a convention centre.

Nobody in the building was injured and the driver, miraculously, is in a stable condition in hospital.  He told the police that he had lost control of the brakes - more like he hit the accelerator instead of the brake.  Then he hit a concrete planter instead of the brake.  Then he hit a convention centre instead of the brake.

Flipping Chevrolets!

Earlier this week, Fox News asked the question, "Should you stay in your car during a tornado?"

The answer was "Probably not"

Just to sort of make their point...

The sixteen year old lad driving this Chevrolet Pick-Up had a scary experience.

It was turned onto the driver's side, spun around, then righted again by a tornado.

The local Chevy dealers though have offered him a brand new truck to replace it.  The story is here.

Meanwhile, on a lighter note, and also from Fox News this week, here's a funny story involving KFC, Mercedes F1 and Twitter:

Alternators

I am a very successful motoring journalist who has just sold my internationally acclaimed TV Show about motoring (with an amusing bent) to Netflix.

Or I might be - in an alternative Universe where horrible things like Brexit and Jeggings and Vauxhall Agilas never happened.

If only.

Autocar today are looking at some if-only situations that could have changed motoring history - albeit not as much as me having my own TV show.  The article is here.

They look at how The Second World War could have been avoided by the bloke who drove into Hitler going a bit faster.

They sort of blame the recently deceased Frank Williams for annoying Adrian Newey enough such that he left Williams.  This led to McLaren and then Red Bull taking over the dominance or Formula 1.

They ask what would have happened if BMW hadn't bought Rover from under Honda's nose in 1994.  This is a trickier one with pros and cons on both sides but I can't help but think that the Rover and MG marques wouldn't have disappeared when the four directors took over and made a complete hash of it all.  The Triumph name might still be on some cars too.

Then it's back to F1 and the question of what would have happened if Gilles Villeneuve hadn't been killed in a crash during qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix in 1982.  Maybe his nephew wouldn't have had a career?

Next in line, what if Saab had an equivalent version of the other GM branded plug-in hybrids The Chevrolet Volt and Vauxhall/Opel Ampera?  Given the relative lack of success of the Chevrolet Volt and Vauxhall/Opel Ampera (which is a shame - they were ahead of their time) then I doubt if it would have made much difference.

Finally, they return to Rover with the question, "What if... BMW had made the Pininfarina 1100?" Pretty sure that is a typo - it should read "What if... BMC had made the Pininfarina 1100?" But never mind, it is an interesting question and they even get a mention of the recently deceased Prince Philip in there.  It suggests a world without The Austin Allegro.  Very interesting.

However, what if the Autocar Team had thought a little longer...

A good question would be: What if Major Ivan Hirst had convinced a British car company to take on building the cars he found in a certain car factory in Wolfburg?

Or how about?: What if this year's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Race Director Michael Masi had thought a little longer?

Sprinting Ahead?

Today is the British Grand Prix.

Years ago I would have been very excited by this event.

Today. Not so much.

I gave up on F1 when they sold out to Sky and from what I've heard and read on the subject, the races themselves became more processional and therefore more boring as the years went by.  If you look back at my posts around 2011 you see how disgruntled I got.

However, I found myself in a pub yesterday afternoon and the they were showing the inaugural Sprint Race Qualifying - and it felt a bit like a single-seater Touring Car Race:

That is a good thing.

OK, most of the action happened at the start they they settled down to more of a procession.  But at least there was some action - and there were still some decent overtaking moves later on.

Here's the take of the BBC's Chief F1 writer Andrew Benson.

I struggled recognising the Teams. I suspect it is still the same ones as when I used to watch but they've been renamed.  Alpine is obviously Renault while AlphaTauri seems to be Toro Rosso.  Meanwhile, Haas seem to be the Cannon-Fodder-Team-Making-Up-The-Numbers Team who go bust every year to be reborn again.  And always come last.

So - do I watch the race today?

Not unless I find myself in a pub.

False Idol

I refer to Billy Idol - rebel from my youth:

Only now, according to Fox News, he's promoting snitching on people who leave their engines idling when stationary, especially when parked outside schools.

Now I am actually in favour of this scheme - although not sure how it is actually policed - you're supposed to get a financial reward for grassing someone up.

But this is Billy Idol!  Not cool.

Meanwhile, in other Fox News, I learned that on Saturday, when I was looking for famous people born on Feb 29th, I could have had one of the greatest American racers of all time - if only he'd born one day later.

I refer to Mario Andretti who turned 80 on Friday:

If you look him up on Google you see he is the Italian-Born American whose birthplace is in Croatia. (But it was in Italy 80 years ago - they moved the border in the meantime)

 

I'd have thought he was even older than that.

 

Not that I need an excuse, but now for a picture of the most beautiful F1 car ever:

Dirty Air

A very interesting article about something I'm not interested in.

ie F1.

I found it today linked from the BBC News site.

It looks at the science behind making overtaking more possible and therefore the racing more exciting by the 2021 Season.

It makes a lot of sense. Although making the cars squarer would have the same result:

The BTCC is much more exciting.

 

But it doesn't matter how exciting the F1 Racing becomes - I'll still not be watching.

 

It isn't very accessible.  It is too expensive to visit actual races.  It was taken off free-to-view TV in the UK and in many other countries.

 

Basically, they don't care about the fans.

 

Unless you count the ones in the wind-tunnels.

Gordon's Got a Gong

Gordon Murray that is.  I did a piece on him back in April 2016.  Not that the BBC seem to want to recognise one of our great British engineers.  (Although born in South Africa, his parentage was Scottish and his nationality is British)

He designed the McLaren F1 and five F1 Championship winning cars including Ayrton Senna's 1988-Winning McLaren.  He's been involved in many innovative projects since.  Fortunately, at least Autocar have the story.

 

The gong he's been given in the New Years Honours List is the CBE (Commander of the British Empire)

 

I think great engineers should be given a Knighthood, but apparently they go to particularly odious Tory MPs called John who threaten to vote against Teresa May's Brexit deal: 

When is a Turbo not a Turbo?

When it's an after-shave?

Mmm, nice.

 

But not what I'm thinking about.  How about when it is a fish?

Amusing but no.

 

Actually, it is when we are talking about the Porsche Taycan:

Porsche's upcoming electric car will come in three flavours, Taycan, Taycan 4S and Taycan Turbo.

 

Except purely electric cars don't have turbos.  Autoguide have the full story here.  I guess "Turbo" just means "top of the range" in Porsche-speak.

 

It's  just a name.

 

Nothing to get wound up about.

Stock Response

My most recent two posts have been about football and about a small hatchback with bits missing.

This one combines the two.

It comes from this BBC story.

 

Some football pitches have running tracks around them.

 

Ballymena United's has a racetrack running around it.

 

And we aren't talking Formula One.

 

Inevitably in Stock car Racing and Banger Racing, cars may just, ever so slightly, COLLIDE!

 

So the odd one is getting shunted on to the pitch - and churning it up.  This isn't damage that can be easily remedied by a bloke wandering on to the pitch with a hoe at half-time.

 

Maybe they should change their name to Ballymena ROVERS.

Ring Me Sometime

The F1 Season has started again.

I saw something about practice on the TV schedule today.

I'm waiting for the BTCC to restart.  (April 8th if you're interested)

F1 is definitely losing appeal.  And making the cars uglier isn't going to help.  But they have to do it - if it saves just one life it'll be worth it.

I'm talking about The Halo Device:

Autocar have an article on it here.

 

I suppose when you see it, the word that is supposed to come to mind is "safety".

 

It's probably something to do with how my mind works, but when I see it, the word that comes to mind is "thong".

Women Drivers, Eh?

Here are some:

The one on the left has just been given a new job.  She is going to be a test-driver for the Sauber F1 Team.

 

The one in the middle is rallying legend Michele Mouton.

 

The one on the right has recently criticised the one below.

But then again, I sort of did too - in 2015.  And so has Jensen Button now.

 

The recent criticism is about her ("her" being Carmen Jorda) claiming that a "physical issue" was the barrier preventing women from competing in Formula 1 or Formula 2.  Susie Wolff, the third woman in the top photo responded with a tweet pointing out that motorsport doesn't care about gender.

 

Susie Wolff became the first woman in 22 years to take part in a Formula 1 race weekend in 2014 - and is married to the team boss.

 

I'm not too sure that motorsport doesn't care about gender - especially given by the responses to her tweet and the fact that it has taken until 2018 to sort out the grid-girl situation.

 

However, if you want to see a really tough woman driver, please watch the video in this story. 

Her name is Charmaine Laurie.  I was very impressed when I first saw the footage which was before it had been identified that it was a woman driver.

After I knew it was a woman driver though, I was impressed at exactly the same level.