Riderless.

I was at Oulton Park yesterday watching the British Touring Cars.

I saw Lewis Hamilton...

...'s brother Nicolas.

But I didn't see ITV's (formerly BBC's) Steve Rider who retired from broadcasting after the coverage finished.

But then it is very rare to see a member of the ITV Sport team as they are usually in their on-site studio.

Maybe I should have arranged to be around the pit area when this photo was taken:

That is Nic Hamilton behind his right shoulder.

It's incredible to think that he is 75 years old.

Steve - not Nic!

That makes him the same age as Jay Leno who discussed his age with James May in this bit of YouTube from last week.

An entertaining edition with two car blokes having a pleasant and interesting conversation in a Triumph TR6.  Jay looks very good for his age - until you compare him with Steve.

I know which one I'd like to look like when I'm 75.

And it's not the one who's garage I'd like to own when I'm 75.

Tinie Package

Yo!

Apparently Tinie Tempah now calls himself just "Tinie."

Dropped the surname.

Has he had an embarrassing divorce like Cheryl or Rylan or Roseanne?

Apparently not.

But he is fronting a new car show - Bangers: Mad for Cars.

Which, based on the first two episodes, is badly mis-named.

A Sierra Cosworth, a Volvo 850R, a Porsche 911 and a Honda NSX can hardly be purchased for banger money.

There are only 4 episodes and so far, I'm up for watching the rest.

Tinie is not a racing driver or a motoring journalist so there is an element of my (one of many) pet peeve here in that he shouldn't be fronting a car show.  Although he's a bit better than Paddy McGuinness & Freddie Flintoff - but just as crashy.

His side-kick is a racing driver.  Not one I'd heard of before but she has had a little success (dare I say a tinie amount?) and is by far a better motoring presenter than Tinie.  Meet Naomi Schiff:

Interesting that she is wearing a ROKiT logo there.  They sponsor Nicholas Hamilton, younger brother of her mate Lewis. I just realised that I haven't a clue what ROKiT actually do so I looked them up.

It seems they do everything.

Meanwhile, back to the show. Tinie & Naomi have to choose a car each and perform some sort of challenge down at Llandow Circuit overseen by a local.  But most of the show is Tinie trying to choose his car - which is actually quite interesting in parts.

He also spends a lot of time driving around in his own G-Wagen.

Wouldn't you have thought that if he wanted a 4x4, he'd have got a Disc-Overy.

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.

A Question of Sport

I don't watch A Question of Sport.  It's awful since they parachuted in Paddy McGuinness.

I did however watch a sportsman on Question Time.

I refer to Sebastian Vettel.

I haven't watched Question Time in ages - I tended not to like it because of the Gammons in the audience.  I wasn't going to watch this one despite Seb being on it but then I spotted that comedian Geoff Norcott was also on it so I gave it a go.  Geoff Norcott's hand was the last one I shook before Covid meant that we couldn't do that any more.

It has improved.  There was only one right-wing pillock in the audience and he suitably demonstrated his pillockness.

Seb didn't actually say too much apart from pointing out that Brexit is a mess and admitting to being a bit of a hypocrite about thinking green while travelling the World racing cars.  But he did give a very good account of himself in a debating programme using a second language and he really impressed Planet f1's Finley Crebolder.  I suspect Lewis Hamilton wouldn't have been as eloquent.

Today's sport on TV is the Women's FA Cup Final - I'm not watching it.  I suspect a lot of people aren't watching it which might be why ITV Sport have decided to showcase the middle BTCC Race today on ITV1 (also known as "ITV") rather than the usual ITV4.  This features Lewis Hamilton's brother and Rick Parfitt's son but they are always at the back of the field so don't tend to get much of a mention.

I found it a bit irritating because the presenters and commentators were trying to explain everything to the new viewers but they did get a very interesting race with plenty of action.

ITV4 meanwhile showed Twins.

So the question of sport for ITV is: How many people will watch the third race today?

Racing Home

Monaco-style Grands Prix events could be hosted on English roads under new laws coming into force on Monday.

So says the BBC.

Well that sounds good.

Apparently, a spokesman for London Mayor Sadiq Khan said: "In considering whether to support a Grand Prix in London, the mayor would need to see what the impacts are on air pollution."

Sounds too PC to me.

Certainly too PC for a GP.

He then went on to say that the mayor was in discussion with Formula E over whether a race involving environmentally friendly electric-powered cars could be held on London's streets.

Maybe the mayor doesn't know that Formula E races have already been held in London - albeit not on the roads.

The article is a bit confusing as it uses cycling as an example - "We had the Tour de France here, we had a Grand Depart in Yorkshire a couple of years ago and roads were closed as part of that event and thousands of people came to watch it."

OK.  But if that worked so well - what is so different about this coming Monday?

Anyway, in anticipation of Monday, I have devised my own GP circuit a walking distance from my house:

I believe that this will be particularly challenging for Lewis Hamilton and his chums because it contains a nice Monaco-style Bus-Stop chicane plus a hump-back bridge and a level crossing meaning that every quarter of an hour or so, the cars will have to wait for some trains to pass.

Bernie would be turning in his grave if he were dead.

Hope His Air-Brakes Work

This is impossible, right?

Apparently not.

 

What you are looking at is a picture of an articulated lorry jumping over a Lotus F1 car - including driver!

 

FoxNews had the story yesterday.

 

Well, the story is true - but the picture misleading.

 

This is what actually happened: 

They broke the World Record for the distance jumped by a tractor & trailer unit and also the suspension of the tractor unit.

The F1 car was racing alongside (or behind as the photographer was looking) the jump and would have been flattened if it had been where the photographer initially wants us to believe it is.

Still very impressive.

Here they are receiving their World Record certificate.

I knew there had to be some interesting F1 news somewhere this week.  (Sorry Lewis, only joking, well done to you too)

Is Formula 1 Real Racing Any More?

I don't know, I don't watch it any more.

But that question was asked by Andrew Benson, the BBC's chief F1 writer on their F1 Website.

Now, being the BBC's chief F1 writer, he isn't going to answer no to that question - but his justifications don't really add up for me.  He quotes some stats that seem to show that drivers are driving as hard as they were before the BBC sold out to Sky but the very fact that the question is being asked is evidence that there is something wrong.

As it happens, the timing of F1's waning excitement is entirely coincidental with the Sky deal - the cause appears to be the Pirelli Tyre rule-changes making it easier to overtake.

What?

Easier to overtake!?

How can that be worse for a sport where processional racing has impacted on excitement for years?

Well, apparently, drivers are having to slow down to preserve their tyres.  Lot's of media interest was generated by a Lewis Hamilton quote over his pit-radio from the Spanish Grand Prix - "I can't drive any slower". Here is one example.

Judging by the highest-rated comments on Andy's article, those still enthusiastic on the sport all seem to agree that the tyres are an issue.

This weekend sees the Monaco Grand Prix.  This was always the highlight of the F1 Year for me - and for many F1 fans.  Now the BBC has even lost the rights to cover this race live - whoever did their negotiations (Ben Gallop, Barbara Slater, Mark Thompson) really were inept beyond belief.

Highlights is not good enough for me and there is no doubt that audience figures are dropping - globally as more countries are putting F1 behind paywalls.

So silly tyre rules need sorting!

How to Drive (...Telegraph Readers Mad).

Part 2 of what promises to be an amusing series of articles appeared in The Telegraph motoring section today.

Ed Cummins, a 25-Year-old Telegraph journalist is learning to drive.

He writes about it in an amusing way - at least I find it amusing.

Some others do not.

Part 1 is here and part 2 is here.

I don't think he is being particularly honest about his lessons - he is playing it for mild comedy - which is fine by me - but some Telegraph readers don't seem to appreciate it - it's probably the same lot who complain about Alexei Sayle writing for The Telegraph. As I've mentioned before, I love the fact they get wound up.

The first comment, by someone calling himself cpf99, is actually very constructive making some good points about how Ed could have made more of modern teaching techniques and he also makes the obvious point that Ed is probably getting a freebie here in return for plugging The AA Driving School.

After that, though, it's the usual Telegraph-reader-who-doesn't-get-the-joke fodder and one deluded person called steveleeoflondon who wants us to believe that "When I was 10 I watched my dad carefully all the way to our holiday destination and worked out what the pedals did and how the gears work etc. When we got to the other end I asked him if I could try driving on the half mile long private road which formed part of our destination. I jumped in, adjusted the seat then drove using all the (4) gears, stopped, did a three point turn and drove it back and parked it. Easy."

He'll probably tell you he went on be World Rally Champ and taught Lewis Hamilton how to drive.

That's Telegraph readers for you.