It's still early days but it's looking promising for Ferrari, Red Bull and Mclaren. Obviously, Ferrari have to be happiest with a one-two finish but Red Bull were unlucky with Webber having problems dropping him down the starting grid and the very likeable and talented Vettel falling victim to a failure in their fancy new exhaust system.
It was pleasing to see Massa do so well as well. Button, as expected was outshone by Hamilton.
The other teams will have all learnt a lot from today but from a viewer's point of view, the removal of refuelling has not, so far, at least, made things particularly exciting - not a lot of overtaking apart from of faulty cars.
As I say, it's still early days yet - let's hope for some action when Alonso, Schuey and Hamilton are all fighting for the same bit of road.
Sunday, 14 March 2010
Wednesday, 10 March 2010
BTCC Driver Tom Chilton Joins The Sun
BTCC Driver Tom Chilton Joins The Sun
OK, let's break that down shall we?
BTCC - Brilliant!, Tom Chilton - OK, The Sun - Crap!
BTCC
I've been a big fan of the British Touring Cars Championship for many, many years now. I regularly went to the Oulton Park rounds and still would if my family shared my interest and I also saw them in Ireland when they raced there.
My interest grew as I became more and more disillusioned with Formula One. As a child, the British and Monaco Grand Prix were the highlight of my sporting year, seriously overshadowing the FA Cup Final or Five Nations Rugby (it was pre-Italy) both of which were important to me. But, as the Seasons rolled on and the commentators said at more and more circuits, "This is not a good circuit for overtaking" I discovered the BTCC - a competition where overtaking, and even barging-out-of-the-way was a regular event. This was helped by great, cantankerous characters - John Cleland stands out:
The racing was at it's peak towards the end of the last Century with factory teams from Ford, Volvo, Renault, Audi, Alfa, Nissan and more taking part.
Since then, the factory teams have all pulled out - Vauxhall were last to leave last year. This has not proved to be too much of a problem though as the independent teams have filled their places very neatly and the characters still exist - I love the inter-play between Matt Neal and Jason Plato - you can tell they really don't like each other very much and that is brilliant.
Formula One has improved a lot as well since Lewis first appeared - and here the entertaining needle and banter is between Eddie Jordan and David Coulthard presenting for the BBC - still needs more overtaking though.
Tom Chilton
Tom started driving in the BTCC at the age of six. OK, maybe slightly older than that but too young to be any good and too immature to understand what was required. I'm probably a bit jealous here because I never had chances like that when I was a teenager although it would have probably terrified me at the time if I had.
Since then, obviously, he has matured and had a few race-wins. Last year he was unlucky in that he had a particularly uncompetitive car for most of the Season - only coming good at the very end.
He fancies himself as a bit of a playboy and has appeared nude in Cosmo and appeared as a contestant on that game-show presented by Paddy McGuinness where 30 women check out blokes for a date. I'm not convinced he's had the success yet to warrant the playboy status. I've read his article on the Sun Website which wasn't easy because there was a fault either with their page or my laptop so it kept jumping to some weird search error. The article was somewhere between mediocre and OK which is all you need for a tabloid and I couldn't get his "cheeky video" to run at all.
The Sun
Living in Merseyside, I'm supposed to hate The Sun for the lies they printed about Hillsborough. As it is, they did eventually apologise and you have to remember that the team working there now have nothing to do with the ones who published the lies - it's a bit like punishing someone for what their grandfather did. I wouldn't expect their circulation to start rising in Liverpool, though, the hurt was felt very deeply but I would like to see a Scouse boycott of Radio 5-Live, it is there where the original perpetrator and still Hillsborough-denier Kelvin Mackenzie is allowed to ply his trade.
The reason I don't buy The Sun is the same reason that I don't buy any tabloid newspapers - they are all aimed at gullible people who can't read very well. They publish gossip about people I don't care about like Jordan or Mufti from The Sugarbabes, they publish opinion as though it is fact, and they try to scare the public about things they need not really be worrying about (TV News is bad for that too).
So there you go - three articles for the price of one!
OK, let's break that down shall we?
BTCC - Brilliant!, Tom Chilton - OK, The Sun - Crap!
BTCC
I've been a big fan of the British Touring Cars Championship for many, many years now. I regularly went to the Oulton Park rounds and still would if my family shared my interest and I also saw them in Ireland when they raced there.
My interest grew as I became more and more disillusioned with Formula One. As a child, the British and Monaco Grand Prix were the highlight of my sporting year, seriously overshadowing the FA Cup Final or Five Nations Rugby (it was pre-Italy) both of which were important to me. But, as the Seasons rolled on and the commentators said at more and more circuits, "This is not a good circuit for overtaking" I discovered the BTCC - a competition where overtaking, and even barging-out-of-the-way was a regular event. This was helped by great, cantankerous characters - John Cleland stands out:
The racing was at it's peak towards the end of the last Century with factory teams from Ford, Volvo, Renault, Audi, Alfa, Nissan and more taking part.
Since then, the factory teams have all pulled out - Vauxhall were last to leave last year. This has not proved to be too much of a problem though as the independent teams have filled their places very neatly and the characters still exist - I love the inter-play between Matt Neal and Jason Plato - you can tell they really don't like each other very much and that is brilliant.
Formula One has improved a lot as well since Lewis first appeared - and here the entertaining needle and banter is between Eddie Jordan and David Coulthard presenting for the BBC - still needs more overtaking though.
Tom Chilton
Tom started driving in the BTCC at the age of six. OK, maybe slightly older than that but too young to be any good and too immature to understand what was required. I'm probably a bit jealous here because I never had chances like that when I was a teenager although it would have probably terrified me at the time if I had.
Since then, obviously, he has matured and had a few race-wins. Last year he was unlucky in that he had a particularly uncompetitive car for most of the Season - only coming good at the very end.
He fancies himself as a bit of a playboy and has appeared nude in Cosmo and appeared as a contestant on that game-show presented by Paddy McGuinness where 30 women check out blokes for a date. I'm not convinced he's had the success yet to warrant the playboy status. I've read his article on the Sun Website which wasn't easy because there was a fault either with their page or my laptop so it kept jumping to some weird search error. The article was somewhere between mediocre and OK which is all you need for a tabloid and I couldn't get his "cheeky video" to run at all.
The Sun
Living in Merseyside, I'm supposed to hate The Sun for the lies they printed about Hillsborough. As it is, they did eventually apologise and you have to remember that the team working there now have nothing to do with the ones who published the lies - it's a bit like punishing someone for what their grandfather did. I wouldn't expect their circulation to start rising in Liverpool, though, the hurt was felt very deeply but I would like to see a Scouse boycott of Radio 5-Live, it is there where the original perpetrator and still Hillsborough-denier Kelvin Mackenzie is allowed to ply his trade.
The reason I don't buy The Sun is the same reason that I don't buy any tabloid newspapers - they are all aimed at gullible people who can't read very well. They publish gossip about people I don't care about like Jordan or Mufti from The Sugarbabes, they publish opinion as though it is fact, and they try to scare the public about things they need not really be worrying about (TV News is bad for that too).
So there you go - three articles for the price of one!
Wednesday, 3 March 2010
Aston Martin Cygnet
Nooooooo! This is basically a Toyota iQ, built in Britain, with a leather interior, Aston grille and £30,000 price tag.
I can see the logic in that Aston need something with good emissions and economy to offset those of the barges in the rest of the range. They may even be able to tempt away some of the Chelsea Tractor drivers who like the idea of an Aston badge and have to drive through the Congestion Zone to get Tarquin to school.
The Cygnet will have Toyota engines. I don't know if they'll actually have Toyota written on them or not - I'd want "Aston Martin" written on the engine block of any Aston I owned.
The iQ is undoubtedly a very cleverly designed vehicle - not big enough to take four full-sized rugby players like their advert implies - but still very well packaged nonetheless. It costs about £10K to £12K so if I was in the market for a small car, I'd go for a Fiesta instead, or, if I was in the market for a very small car, then maybe an Aygo although that is one sector I don't see myself venturing into for the next forty years or so.
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
N3W C4R RE615TRAT10N5
I saw four 10-Reg cars today. I probably saw ten 04-Reg cars as well but I wasn't really looking out for them. I didn't see any 10-Reg's yesterday but then again I'd forgotten they were out. I think most people would have forgotten they were out unless they were actually getting one.
The new registrations coming out twice a year certainly makes it less of an event than when you had to wait for the First of August. I remember the excitement as a child seeing a Ford Capri or Morris Marina sporting the new plates but, then again, I suppose I always was a bit of a saddo.
I'm not convinced that the same pride exists today in showing off a new car on new plate day - a lot of people simply do not understand the format of the current style of plates even though it isn't that complicated: The first letter represents the region, S for Scotland, Y for Yorkshire, E for Essex, K for Northampton etc. The second letter represents the office within that region. The two digits represent the year if registered from March to September or 50 plus the year if registered from September to March. Then, finally, the last three characters are random letters.
I looked at the DVLA site a few weeks back at buying DA10WEN with a view to selling it at a massive profit to any of the many Welshmen out there called Dai Owen but the DVLA have that one reserved.
Apparently I can have DC10WEN for £399 though.
I've never actually wanted personalised plates myself. M3TRO is gone anyway, probably on an Austin Metro, but why do people think that 3s look like Es? These are the same people who will pay absolute fortunes for some ridiculous examples.
TO55ERS isn't available either.
The new registrations coming out twice a year certainly makes it less of an event than when you had to wait for the First of August. I remember the excitement as a child seeing a Ford Capri or Morris Marina sporting the new plates but, then again, I suppose I always was a bit of a saddo.
I'm not convinced that the same pride exists today in showing off a new car on new plate day - a lot of people simply do not understand the format of the current style of plates even though it isn't that complicated: The first letter represents the region, S for Scotland, Y for Yorkshire, E for Essex, K for Northampton etc. The second letter represents the office within that region. The two digits represent the year if registered from March to September or 50 plus the year if registered from September to March. Then, finally, the last three characters are random letters.
I looked at the DVLA site a few weeks back at buying DA10WEN with a view to selling it at a massive profit to any of the many Welshmen out there called Dai Owen but the DVLA have that one reserved.
Apparently I can have DC10WEN for £399 though.
I've never actually wanted personalised plates myself. M3TRO is gone anyway, probably on an Austin Metro, but why do people think that 3s look like Es? These are the same people who will pay absolute fortunes for some ridiculous examples.
TO55ERS isn't available either.
Thursday, 25 February 2010
Mini Me
I got a book about Minis for Christmas - I found it very interesting - there were even a few mentions of the Metro. I used to drive a Mini back in my student days at the end of the Eighties. It was a 1-litre Mayfair and it was an automatic so you could beat anything away from the lights.
In those days, a Mini Clubman looked like this...
It was basically a standard Mini with a square front and a better dash.
So when MINI (note the capital letters - it's how you're supposed to distinguish the new BMW-Owned version) announced their Clubman you could be forgiven for thinking there would be a similar revision but no - this was to be an estate variant. Now Mini-traditionalists would expect this to be called a Traveller or Countryman like this example here...
Doesn't that look good? Any road up, the MINI Clubman (capital letters!) was a pretty good car except for the doors. They went with the split side-opening rear doors which irritated some drivers due to rear view issues. But I quite like the retro look so that's not my beef. My beef is the suicide-side door behind the driver's door - BMW refused to put this on the left-hand side for right-hand-drive cars so anyone getting out of the back using this door has to do so into the road rather than onto the pavement. This was well-documented when this car was launched in 2008 but I do think that the design of a British-built car based on a British icon should cater for British roads.
The latest incarnation of MINI, due to go on sale in the Autumn, does now use the Countryman name. I spotted this short film on the Fifth Gear site a couple of weeks back and Top Gear Magazine have done a brief review of it. It seems to be bigger than most MINIs - in fact it is Golf-sized (don't you just hate those "it's like a Golf but not a Golf" ads? - maybe I'll do a post about car ads - after all I did do car insurance ads) It has two separate fully-adjustable rear seats (with the option of a bench instead but how often do Mini (or MINI) drivers have three people in the back of their cars?) It also has the option of four-wheel drive which makes you feel a bit safer in the current weather but stuffs your fuel economy. Most importantly, it has conventional, non-controversial rear doors. It does seem, though, to be getting even further away from the true Mini ethos but why not?
For the Mini-traditionalist who likes the MINI, there is the entry-level MINI First and for the Mini-traditionalist who doesn't like the MINI, there are plenty of good, nippy, reliable and cheap small (even Mini-sized) cars from Japan, Korea and Malaysia. And for the real Mini-traditionalist, there are still plenty of real Minis built in the '80s and '90s on the market - I regularly see one on a 51-plate as well.
In those days, a Mini Clubman looked like this...
It was basically a standard Mini with a square front and a better dash.
So when MINI (note the capital letters - it's how you're supposed to distinguish the new BMW-Owned version) announced their Clubman you could be forgiven for thinking there would be a similar revision but no - this was to be an estate variant. Now Mini-traditionalists would expect this to be called a Traveller or Countryman like this example here...
Doesn't that look good? Any road up, the MINI Clubman (capital letters!) was a pretty good car except for the doors. They went with the split side-opening rear doors which irritated some drivers due to rear view issues. But I quite like the retro look so that's not my beef. My beef is the suicide-side door behind the driver's door - BMW refused to put this on the left-hand side for right-hand-drive cars so anyone getting out of the back using this door has to do so into the road rather than onto the pavement. This was well-documented when this car was launched in 2008 but I do think that the design of a British-built car based on a British icon should cater for British roads.
The latest incarnation of MINI, due to go on sale in the Autumn, does now use the Countryman name. I spotted this short film on the Fifth Gear site a couple of weeks back and Top Gear Magazine have done a brief review of it. It seems to be bigger than most MINIs - in fact it is Golf-sized (don't you just hate those "it's like a Golf but not a Golf" ads? - maybe I'll do a post about car ads - after all I did do car insurance ads) It has two separate fully-adjustable rear seats (with the option of a bench instead but how often do Mini (or MINI) drivers have three people in the back of their cars?) It also has the option of four-wheel drive which makes you feel a bit safer in the current weather but stuffs your fuel economy. Most importantly, it has conventional, non-controversial rear doors. It does seem, though, to be getting even further away from the true Mini ethos but why not?
For the Mini-traditionalist who likes the MINI, there is the entry-level MINI First and for the Mini-traditionalist who doesn't like the MINI, there are plenty of good, nippy, reliable and cheap small (even Mini-sized) cars from Japan, Korea and Malaysia. And for the real Mini-traditionalist, there are still plenty of real Minis built in the '80s and '90s on the market - I regularly see one on a 51-plate as well.
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