I've sold my stocks in Band-Aid

Yesterday it was announced that Ross Brawn is set to become the new team principal of Honda's F1 operation. Curiously enough Ferrari announced the same day that Jean Todt AKA "The Nervous Ferret" would no longer be in his current position of F1 activities.

While both stories surprised me, it was mainly due to the fact that they came out on the same day. Many knew Todt's time was running out at Ferrari and that Ross Brawn would come back to F1 and be running a team, but I imagined many folks (myself included) thought Brawn would be taking Todt's position. Not that Todt would be replaced by some Italian guy and Brawn would be taking over Honda.

I still wonder why Brawn didn't take over Ferrari. He claims it was due to the fact that he became reacquainted with his family and that Ferrari wouldn't have been much of a challenge because they are still in good working order, but that seems like a cop-out answer to me in all honesty. OK, so he didn't wanna go live in Italy again. Living in the UK does sound much nicer. However, I think Ferrari are about to enter another dark age, such as the one Todt, Schumi, and Brawn helped drag Ferrari out of... so taking over Ferrari and not having the team slide into oblivion would have been a challenge. Maybe a challenge Brawn wasn't interested in tackling. By taking over Honda, who have in the past had semi-decent cars at times, he can't do any worse than Nick Fry or the rest of the team have done so the results are only going to get better over the next two years and Brawn will never have to worry about looking bad. He has already said that his engineering prowess will really have no effect on the 2008 car, as it has already gone into production. So his ass is covered this year any how.

I could be wrong and it could be the truth. However, if he was looking for a challenge then I guess that Honda was the team to go with. They sucked ass this year, they have money, a decent driver in that of Button, Brawn knows Barrichello, and I'm sure the money was right... not to mention a challenge was presented.

The only good news about Jean Todt's departure is that his poor fingers he nibbles on all the time will finally have a chance to heal and his fingers will no longer be shrouded in Band-Aid's

For the time being, I am going nowhere near the Renault-McLaren info case. I'm just letting this one unfold.



Lastly, Schumi tested today for the first time in over a year and topped the time sheets. I called this one, but I wanna see a test where he and Hamilton are together.

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"