Superass

I am so sick of the F1 drivers bitching about their superlicense fees! I am a very fucking good driver, taught by a former 3 time consecutive auto cross champion who was a SCCA nationally licenced driver who also professionally drove in Formula Vee and am myself professionally licensed to teach in most of the states in The United States of America the art and science of driving to people of any age, sex, creed, etc... and I'm pretty sure I could artfully scare (in a good way) many of the people reading this blog with my mastery of driving were I driving a 1996 Ford, a 2005 GM, a Lotus, or a Ferrari... My goal in life is to test drive cars and write articles about said cars and test drive Bridgestone tires. I will probably never be paid a small fee to do either and I'm a fucking good driver and would be happy to make my living driving competitively. Sure, I'd be unhappy about the man taking some, be it in license fees and/or taxes due to the absorbent amount of money I made driving in circles for a shitload of money with other professionally licensed drivers... but ya know what? I'd live with it.

I professionally teach people how to drive. People who don't know how to drive well, on roads full of licensed drivers who also don't know how to drive well either and that's a lot more fucking dangerous than me and a bunch of other professionally licensed drivers making a shitload of money to compete for a dickload of cash driving in circles in cars built to sustain life after heavy crashes. I have a better chance of dying in my profession than Fernando Alonso does. I can statistically prove it right now: Senna died in 1994 driving an F1 car. It is 2009 now. Nobody has died driving an F1 car since 1994. In 2007 41,000 people died driving just on United States highways alone. So eat a dick. I made $27,000 last year.

Fuck you.

I've spent 75,000 miles on US roads teaching people to drive in the last 2 years alone. I've made roughly $50,000. Somehow I'm not dead. F1 drivers competitively drive about 5000 miles a year tops and make much more than $25K a year on average.

Go to hell!

I think the FIA should give me some of that money that is supposed to go to their "Safe Driving" program to help me keep my car going that I owe $13,000 on and my mouth fed. I teach safe driving. F1 drivers artfully drive in a beautiful way to entertain themselves and millions of other folks around the world. I enjoy it, but you know what, my driving job isn't for personal or others enjoyment. I teach safe, sound, and smart driving technique and as much as I'd like to be able to take all my students around a track to show them how to attack a 3-point corner, I'm just happy if they properly navigate a left turn whilst utilizing their turn signal!

USF1

I am very glad to be seeing all of these stories about USF1 in the news recently. This is a good sign. I was worried last week when I saw the first story that it was the only one I would ever see and never again would we hear anything of or about USF1. Hopefully they can keep their momentum and gather funding and get a team going. I wish them the best in their effort to marry F1 and America... for everybody's sake!

Bernie, Honda, and Senna Jr.

I just read an article on grandprix.com that claims Honda has signed Bruno Senna. I found this odd as up until now, there had been no word on whether the team had been "saved" or not, which would make it a rather curious thing to sign a driver if it is not even known if the team would make the grid for the first race.

Obviously things have been going on behind closed doors because signing a driver to a nonexistent team would be a bad thing on many levels, as I'm sure under the circumstances said driver would probably be able to sue if in fact Honda couldn't go racing, since Senna could have easily signed up for another season in GP2, even though the team he was with last season had to fill his seat... so what I am getting at is obviously things are going on at Honda that we don't know about... so I was not surprised to read further on down the article to see that supposedly none other than Bernard Ecclestone may in fact be involved with keeping the team alive. Grandprix.com went on to explain:

"This would not be a surprise as Ecclestone is keen to make sure that the teams are not unanimous within the Formula One Teams' Association (FOTA) and having a financial interest in one of them is a good way to ensure that this happens.

It is believed that the majority of the money to run the team will be coming from Honda itself as it is cheaper to pay to keep the team alive than it is to lay off all the staff."

Go figure?

Luckily Olivier Panis did not show us 'lil Panis...

While the picture is funny due to the striped underwares, it is a sad picture overall. From the Canadian Grand Prix in 1997 when Olivier Panis crashed his Prost F1 car

While it doesn't look like a horrid crash (if you can find a clip of it on youtube) the poor guy ended up breaking both of his legs and showing the world what his underpants looked like that day.

An American F1 team?

I just read a curious story on yahoo.com's UK F1 site. The story claims that Peter Windsor who is a veteran F1 journalist who currently works with SpeedTV in the USA as their on-site personality at F1 races as well as formerly working as Team Manager for Ferrari and Williams back in the 80's and early 1990's has partnered with IndyCar technical and design guru Ken Anderson and are planning a Formula One team to be called "USF1" which would showcase American drivers and technology in Formula One. It is said the team may be based in Charlotte, North Carolina which is the heart of NASCAR country with a possible second location in Europe.

Apparently the idea was hatched at the 2008 Canadian GP and it is said that good old Bernie Ecclestone has no objections to the venture (which is always a good thing).

It has been noted that Ken Anderson may be one of the people interested in purchasing the Honda F1 team and was last attempting to purchase Honda's other cast-away team Super Aguri last year... so the guy is pretty serious about getting into F1, which is always a good sign. Coupled with the fact that the guy has a background in racing design (and not just being an ex-race driver like many failed team heads are) and is working with a great mind such as Peter Windsor whom I greatly respect has me quite giddy right now and I honestly do hope to see USF1 on the grid in 2010 or 2011. That would be fantastic! Hopefully this isn't a fluke. I'd like to see this project come to fruition!

And for today's F1 Puerile MS Paint pic:

What this picture of Frank Williams says to me...

While I am pretty sure Sir Frank has never actually strung the words "Eat-a-Dick" together, as he is a far too elegant and proper man... that is what this picture says to me. It is what I imagine him saying to somebody given his pose in the picture as well as the look of contempt on his face. This could have been taken shortly after BMW informed Sir Frank they would no longer be working with them?

Tom Pryce: A Welshman who drove like a Welshman!

I just read an interesting little bit on grandprix.com about a memorial being built to the dearly departed Welshman Tom Pryce who died in a horrific accident at the age of 27 during the 1977 South African Grand Prix. I remember the first time I saw the footage of Tom Pryce's death. It was rough.

Pryce hit a 19 year old track marshal running across the track at approximately 170mph, throwing the marshal high up into the air and more or less tearing the body apart in the mean time in a diagonal fashion in the torso area. It is seriously a foul foul site. The track marshal was carrying a big assed 40 pound fire extinguisher which hit Pryce in the helmet, pushing the helmet as a whole upwards and ultimately partially decapitating the poor Welshman.

The accident is so horrid that it had ended up on "Faces of Death" videos and crap like that over the years. I showed a friend the accident once on youtube (where you can see Tom Pryce & a track marshal die and Budd Dywer blow his fucking head off, but you can't see a bare titty) because he was curious and he told me upon seeing it "They showed that accident over and over and over again on a huge screen at a Slayer concert I was at back in the 1990's"

Never thought I'd be able to find a way for F1 and heavy metal to become friends.

Check out the Tom Pryce memorial thingy as well!

Why is Sir Jackie always pointing at Emo?!

For the past two years or so I have not been terribly good about harvesting current F1 photos during the season for some reason. I still blame it on Michael Schumacher, as ever since he left I'm just not as bat-shit about F1 as I used to be. I don't know why, since the past two seasons have been really great... Idol worship? I don't know? But there really aren't any living Gods in F1 currently. Give it time, sure, but as of now, just a bunch of kick ass youngins. Lewis Hamilton is well on his way, and while he has won my heart, he hasn't done enough yet to call him God... but I'm sure he will eventually.

Anyhow, with nothing better to do in the midnight hours I decided to go hunting for F1 photos from the past season or two and I curiously came across a photo from the Italian GP 2008 of Sir Jackie Stewart pointing his finger at Emerson Fittipaldi which has an amazing likeness to a photo from 35 years ago.

Stewart & Emo 1973:


Emo & Stewart 2008:


Why you always pointing at Fittipaldi, Sir Jackie???? Ya wee Scot bastard!

Formula Drugs

Pictured is former F1 Williams and McLaren driver Juan Pablo Montoya. As a native Colombian he naturally has a nose for sniffing out cocaine. I'm not insinuating JPM was or is a cocaine user, it was just an easy joke due to the picture and him being from Colombia and all...

Interestingly no Formula One driver has ever been busted for any kind of drugs, performance enhancing or recreational by random FIA drug testing. Tomas Enge tested positive for marijuana in 2002 after winning the F3000 championship, a year after he did 3 odd GP's with the Prost F1 team but other than that... nothing. The reason I decided to look into the matter was I was talking to somebody about good old James Hunt (F1 Champ 1976) the other day and that got me to thinking, as that dude liked to party. He was an alcoholic and openly enjoyed smoking a spliff as well as a bump of cocaine here and there. To calm his nerves before races it has been said by some that he would have a beer or two early in the day.

The only modern racer that comes close to Hunt-esque acts is Kimi Raikkonen, whom interestingly entered and won a snowmobile race in his native Finland under the assumed name "James Hunt". Räikkönen has openly admired the lifestyles of 1970s race car drivers such as Hunt.

Soon (in the next month or two) I will be unveiling my first new driver biography in a year or two, on the one and only James Hunt.

With that said, I will leave you with a vintage Hunt interview:

Classic!