So long, you tall bastard!*

So Alex Wurz is retiring from racing immediately, not even bothering to finish the last race of the season. How unprofessional! I'm assuming this was Sir Frank's gift to Alex, letting him say he's done quit and thru with racing, preferring to spend the rest of the season at home with his new child who was born on the 30'th of September while Alex was out racing in Japan. Yeah right. If that were the case he would have retired the week of the Japanese GP. Everybody knew he wasn't going to be back next year considering Alex hasn't had the best season, or best career for that matter. So for the last race of 2007 Williams will be testing a potential seat filler for 2008. I think he is sticking around as a tester, which is a job he enjoys and is lauded to be very good at. The old boy is just done with active racing. I for one will miss him. Alex has a great personality and retention of his soul. Both of these things are missing from most F1 drivers, the slow and the fast. It would have been nice to see Alex race another season. I strongly doubt Williams are going to make the much needed massive step forward to return them back to title contention next year, so having Wurz racing wouldn't have hindered any thing from that stand point. I mean this year he has scored 13 points to Nico Rosberg's 15 and Nico is one hot piece of property... not to mention a very fine looking young man. That's only a two point difference between a guy touted as being a future world champion and an old gray toothed racer. Sure, Rosberg has been more consistent scoring points in 6 races, while Wurz only bagged points in 3 races, but Alex's hauls have been much greater. I think that says a bit of something... though consistency is very important in F1. Still, it would have been nice to see Alex in a race seat for one more year. I think next year he would have done much better since Williams are slowly improving and Alex would have regained his racing chops. Oh well. What's done is done and I wish everybody involved the best of luck.



The same deal went down with Ralf. We all know Ralfie wasn't even offered a contract for next year. He didn't quit. So Toyota was nice too I suppose. But Ralf has just been a huge let down period, little Schuey or not. The thing I will miss about Ralf is his grasp of the English language. Of all the guys that are English as a second language students, Ralf has owned the paddock for quite some time as the most polished speaker... and I greatly respect that, since I'm American and we all know that American's greatly dislike people that don't speak the language well if they are surrounded by it. Actually, we just hate Mexicans. But that's another batch of biscuits.

I really wish Wurz had retired in Japan just so I could have titled this entry "Wurz says: Konichiwa, Bitches!"


* Wurz is 6'1"

Lew's Looming Championship

By the looks of things Lewis Hamilton will probably tie up all the loose ends in China and secure his unprecedented first black, rookie, youngest championship. While I'm neither for it nor against it, for some tiny reason I can't help but feel bad for Alonso. Emo Fittipaldi held the record as the youngest guy to win a world championship for 33 years. Alonso took that record, but only got to hold it for 2 years. I guess that's what you get for being a dick and helping get your employers chucked out of the constructors championship, along with a $100 million dollar fine. Obviously what goes around comes around, but I still feel a little sorry for Alonso.

He had that image of a nice boy that could race fast and beat a Michael Schumacher. Then he moves to McLaren for "a new challenge" and a boat load more money, expecting to own the place and it just didn't work out. Now he looks like a huge asshole, and isn't even going to win himself a championship. I'm not even sure why I feel any sympathy, I just do. Not much, but a smidge.

The thing to be learned from all of this is to see how Lewis Hamilton evolves over the years. Right now he is the nice, gregarious, gap toothed rookie that everybody loves. Will he too become a snake in a few years time, if he isn't already? I wonder. If for some strange reason Lewis suffers a career ending crash maybe he should go in to politics, since I must say I'm quite impressed with how he wrangled McLaren this year and was able to mind fuck a two time world champion (and this is all AFTER being impressed with his quality drives)

Another person I feel sorry for is Ralf Schumacher. His brother is Michael. That's pretty much all one has to say about that. Ralfie is out of Toyota at the end of the year, and I'll be suprised if he pops up with another team, so next year may be the first Schumacherless year since 1991. The guy has 6 wins in his 10 year career, which is not too bad at all. But then you think about his older brother with his 91 wins in 15 years and your opinion of Ralf drops considerably. It is arguable to say that with out big brother Ralf would have never gotten a drive, but he did, and overall, did not do too horribly. I mean, Ralf is number 33 on the lists of most wins. Obviously Michael is at the top of that list. So the guy should be cut some slack, cos he's not a bad racer, he just is a bad racer compared to the greatest of the modern era, which so happens to be his brother.

I'm curious to see who Toyota picks up to fill Ralf's seat and how well the newbie does, considering Toyota has been in F1 since 2002 and have done a whole lot of nothing. I'm hoping they get their shit together, as I'd like to see the world's largest auto maker be a little more competitive... but at this point I don't see that happening, though I hope I'm wrong.