Lewis Hamilton, Throwing The Hammer Down!

True to my word, I have revived this blog, as Sebastian Vettel is no longer the reigning Formula 1 World Champion.

Once it became clear early on in the season that one of the Mercedes drivers was going to be WDC I found it hard to decide whom to pull for. While I've never disputed his speed or talent, Hamilton has often rubbed me the wrong way in the past, so early on I was leaning towards supporting Rosberg. Though as time wore on, between Lewis' undeniably awesome drives and Nico's continual devolution from a seemingly intelligent, well thought, racing driver to a rather smarmy, mildly desperate, best-of-the-rest racer I found myself hoping Hamilton would just embarrass his entitled rich boy teammate.

So in the end, I'm glad Hamilton won, as any other outcome would have been unsatisfactory. However, I am also glad Rosberg ended up losing in style, between refusing to retire his crippled car and then immediately going to congratulate Lewis. Nico definitely upped his stock doing those two things. Maybe if he ups his game, it would even be possible to root for him next year?

The main reason I don't entirely mind the dominance of Mercedes is the fact that it isn't completely one sided like the Red Bull dynasty was. At least Rosberg is winning races, consistently landing on the podium, staying in touch with his teammate, and generally making decent starts. Though that last start of Nico's looked like he was visited by the ghost of Mark Webber.

It was really satisfying seeing Vettel squirm this year in his Red Bull. If Ricciardo hadn't won a handful of races, it would be have been easy to forgive him and just say that he didn't have a car that could do the job, much like Alonso's Ferrari, but alas, we know that while Red Bull were beaten, the RB10 was in fact capable of winning races. I tell you, Ricciardo won a lot of fans that day he scored his maiden victory and kept on gaining more fans every time he bested Seb.

Another thing I was really glad to see was Williams' return to competitiveness. Years ago when I first started getting into F1, for some reason they became the British team I supported. I've stuck by them over the past decade, so it was nice seeing Bottas and little old Felipe up on the podium more often than not.

Speaking of Williams, you have no clue how happy I was to see that stupid turd Pastor Maldonado languish in that piece of shit Renault. While I kind of felt for Grosjean, I'm still pissed at him for fucking Alonso out of the 2012 title... Seriously though, I can't wait till Pastor's oil money dries up and he is out of F1. I have never disliked an F1 driver as much as I deplore him!

The only things I disliked about this season were the horrendous sound of the cars and Bianchi's accident.

FOTA Feets in Mouth

While I understand why some teams/manufactures do not want a puny tiny silly budget capped two-tiered series I also found it hard to believe that they all weren't going to sign up for the 2010 season. While it is hard to imagine a F1 with out Ferrari is is also hard to imagine Ferrari competing in any other series but F1 as its main outlet of competition... so I was not too worried about Ferrari leaving. I don't think anybody really was. I'm not saying it couldn't and won't happen but some thing very foul would have to be a-foot, or happen to cause such a thing to occur.

Another thing I found interesting from lightly reading comments left on news stories regarding Williams breaking ranks and signing up for the 2010 season before the other FOTA teams did were all the people giving Williams a hard time about what they did. All the big manufactures don't need to be in F1. They are in the series to sell cars by competing well. Other teams are there to sell energy drinks as well as for the spirit of competition. Williams is there to do nothing but race and attempt to win. McLaren is practically owned by Mercedes and Ron Dennis is looking to start making more super cars. Ferrari will always sell cars no matter what. Toyota, Renault, & BMW are just there to attempt to move more road car units. Dietrich Mateschitz and his two teams exist because the dude has more money than he knows what to do with and loves racing, plus it probably helps move a few more cans of Red Bull for him. Same deal with Vijay Mallya of Force India. Has a lot of money, likes racing, brands cars with his products.

WilliamsF1: They go racing. That is it. So why give them shit for signing up for F1 in 2010? They've got nowhere else to go and nothing else to do.

I hope the FIA and the FOTA can find a common ground concerning budgets. It would be nice to see some new and competitive teams come into the fold, but everybody has to be competing against the same set of rules. That much is a fact.

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"